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UPCOMING: be/com/ing a monument Guided by Czar Kristoff Hosted by Low Pressure Summer School

When: June 15, 2025, Sunday, 2-6PM

Where: Space 63, Comuna, 238 Pablo Ocampo Sr. Ext., Makati City

What: Monuments are generally constructed to commemorate a significant event or person. Their presence is also used to navigate a city, a town, a place. Urban monuments reflect how our ancestors used trees, mountains, and rivers as landmarks to remember their way. What would happen if monuments suddenly moved? How do you think we would identify locations or arrive at destinations? How could we become navigators without monuments?

In this fourth iteration, participants will reflect on the symbolic and material construction of monuments: how they are built, preserved, celebrated, neglected, or dismantled. Through conversations, mapping exercises, and collaborative activities, participants will look into publishing as a form of monument-making: a way to record, transmit, and navigate personal or collective histories beyond stone or steel. Register here: https://forms.gle/7gbDgpiWxz76gT4w5

*The first iteration of Be(com)ing A Monument was designed for Ultradependent Public School, held at BAK basis voor actuele kunst in Spring 2023. https://www.bakonline.org/program-item/ultradependent-public-school/.

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A Teardrop Falls In Every Marking: Sticker Landscapes 14.75 x 18.5 in / 20 pages  / Digital blueprint / Softbound / Self-published / Edition of 10 / Printed in Laguna, Philippines

A Teardrop Falls In Every Marking: Sticker Landscapes is Czar Kristoff J.P. latest large scale publication. It is an exploration of sticker leftovers sourced from local office and school supply stores. First introduced in Touch By Touch (2023)—a four chapter publication tracing themes of migration, memory and intimacy in the context of the Philippines—this re-issue invites the viewers to engage deeply with these discarded shapes, revealing new form of pictures. 

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Thank you Daria Tuminas for the opportunity to talk about the independent publishing practices here in PH in What Makes A Photobook Sustainable? (Published by @sppnetwork and @manual.editions, Edited by Tamsin Green). Along with Liang-Pin Tsao of @lightbox_lib, Taipei and Caron Toshiko and Andi Ari Setiadi of Gueari Galeri, Jakarta.

This book is a compendium of 40 case studies of sustainable approaches to photobooks along with roundtable discussions, quotes, provocations and essays on elements of sustainable design, production and distribution.

manualeditions.com

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Documentation of be/co/ming a monument, a presentation about my publishing journey at Fundacion Sansó, Manila, March 01, 2025.

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A preview of my contribution for Further Reading Print No. 4. Learning Within, Learning Without: Modes of Design Inquiry. Published by Further Reading + Each Other Company.

https://www.instagram.com/further.reading/

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A Teardrop Falls In Every Marking: Fish Cages Around Laguna de Bay 5.5 in x 8.5 in / 60 pages / Laserprint on green bond paper / bounded by green thread and abaca fiber / enclosed in white plastic envelop / Self-published / Handmade / Printed in Laguna, Philippines.

A Teardrop Falls In Every Marking: Fish Cages Around Laguna de Bay takes inspiration from the Laguna Copperplate Inscription (900 AD), the Philippines' oldest dated document. Discovered in 1987 near the mouth of the Lumbang River by a laborer named Ernesto Legisma, the inscription records a pardon issued by the Chief of Tundun (now Tondo, Metro Manila), clearing a man named Namwaran and his descendants of a debt equivalent to 926.4 grams of gold. Using found images from Google Maps, this publication captures the intricate forms of fish cages in Laguna de Bay, the country’s largest lake—a vital yet fragile ecosystem spanning 940 square kilometers. Producing up to 90,000 tons of freshwater fish annually and supporting 13,000 fishermen, Laguna de Bay is a lifeline for many. However, industrial pollution, agricultural runoff, and domestic waste have severely degraded its waters, threatening both livelihoods and ecological balance.

A Teardrop Falls In Every Marking transforms digital mapping into a tangible archive, inviting readers to engage with landscapes often reduced to data on a screen. By printing these structures— which what Czar Kristoff J.P. calls /monuments/—it preserves a fleeting moment in time, bearing witness to both human ingenuity and the ongoing environmental decline of a lake that has long bound history, sustenance, and survival. Order here: tinyurl.com/ATeardropFallsOrderForm

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Banderitas in my publication Touch By Touch (2023)

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Book club I have been organizing recently under the umbrella of Pook Aralan UnReLearning. Designed for artists and cultural workers in Region IV-A, Philippines.

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A new iteration of be/com/ing a monument presented in Sala Polacco in Trieste, as part of the #ResidenzeVettori, a residency program by Teatro La Contrada.

By focusing on the journey of Filipino migrant workers in Trieste, the one day exhibition/workshop/karaoke party aims to explore how, when, and why monuments are built, maintained, polished, celebrated, forgotten, demolished, and redefined. Czar Kristoff J.P. highlights the issues of migration, labour, the individual and collective struggles and aspiration of Filipino migrants in the city of Trieste. Supported by Ministero della Cultura, Regione Autonom Friuli Venezia Giulia and Comune di Trieste.

be/com/ing a monument, Czar Kristoff J.P., 12 July, Saturday, 6PM, Sala Polacco, Trieste, IT.

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Sunset Garden: Looking At The Horizon, with Zeus Bascon and friends. June 2024. Hosted by Blocleaf Café, Manila.

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Recent studies

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Launched last weekend at @kioskrotterdam. Promiscuous Infrastructures brings together more than twenty contributors—art and social practitioners, researchers, and educators—including the twelve core members of the Promiscuous Care Study Group, who have been researching and writing about caring infrastructures and promiscuous care for several years. This project takes seriously the urgent need to imagine diverse infrastructures of care at every scale of planetary existence. The resulting interdisciplinary publication comprises essays, visual schematics and scores, personal letters, recipes, and conversations, which emerge from the work of the study group, situated around the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam.

Promiscuous Infrastructures: Practicing Care (2024), First Edition. Published by Journal for Aesthetics & Protest, Leipzig and @wdka_research_center, Rotterdam.

Edited by Michelle Teran, Marc Herbst, Vivian Sky Rehberg, Renée Turner and The Promiscuous Care Study Group.

Contributors: Carla Arcos, Jacquill Basdew, Selma Bellal, Seecum Cheung, Cooking Something Up, Yoeri Guépin, Marc Herbst, Czar Kristoff J.P., Pablo Lerma, Judith Leijdekkers, Carmen José, Edwin Mingard, Skye Maule-O’Brien, Lola Olufemi, Laurence Rassel, Vivian Sky Rehberg, Reading Room Rotterdam, Kari Robertson, Yusser al Obaidi, Michelle Teran, Renée Turner, and Julia Wilhelm.

Book Design by Yusser al Obaidi and Julia Wilhelm. Poster and Map Illustrations by Carla Arcos.

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be/com/ing a monument presentation at SSPACE, Silang, March 22, 2024. Additional photos from Jepren Solis.

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Preview of my contribution for Resilient Architecture (with Cengiz Mengüç and Matt Plezier) inside PrintRoom's Leesmap Vol. I. . Collection of temporary architectures made of tarpaulin material, photographed from 2016-18 in the provinces of Laguna, Camarines Sur and Bohol Island, Philippines alongside with archival images of bahay kubo / nipa huts, the pre-colonial architecture in the Philippines, found on Flickr.

Leesmap is conceived and published by PrintRoom, Rotterdam. Printroom's Leesmap is inspired by the traditional Dutch "leesmap", a file with popular magazines. It playfully gathers a range of (maga)zines made by artists and publishing platforms. Leesmap is distributed in multiple places from the hairdresser's and dentist's waiting room to the art space, laundromat, library and living room.

Designed by Cengiz Mengüç. Printed by Stencilwerck.