I walked up and down the arrivals terminal of Berlin Brandenburg Airport looking for Jun Sabayton. He arrived from Manila a few hours ahead of my flight from San Francisco but offered to wait for me.
When I finally spotted him, surrounded by a trolley filled with suitcases and a giant cardboard box (which held an artwork he hand-carried all the way over), he greeted me with a huge grin and warm hug.
For various creative communities in the Philippines, Sabayton is ubiquitous. He won the prestigious Gawad Urian Award for his production design work on Lav Diaz’s monumental 2004 film Ebolusyon ng Isang Pamilyang Pilipino. He has acted in, hosted, and directed various television shows ranging from comedy to political commentary to reality TV, including Wasak, Word of the Lourd, Tanods, and Kontrabando.
He also appeared in films like Quark Henares’s Rakenrol, a coming-of-age story where Sabayton plays a caricature of himself as a struggling multimedia artist, and Blue Bustamante, a story of an OFW working as a stunt man in a Sentai show, directed by Miko Livelo. Sabayton’s wide-ranging work in film and TV, he says, stems from his need to survive. He took any job he could get to earn money, working in front of the camera, behind it, and everywhere in between.
Sabayton and I were the first of a large delegation of participating artists and cultural workers to travel to Berlin for what felt like to me, as an art historian, an exciting moment for Philippine art.
Earlier this year, the artist-run organization Green Papaya Art Projects invited writer-curator-artist Erwin Romulo and Sabayton to organize an exhibition in the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD) space as part of DAAD’s Artists-in-Berlin fellowship program. The longtime friends staged the fifth iteration of Jumpcut, an ongoing exhibition series initiated by Sabayton in 1999.
At various points over the last 25 years, Jumpcut surveyed moving images and new media works in the Philippines. Jumpcut 5: Videoke Philippinen was thus envisioned as a broad introduction to Philippine experimental film. I was later brought onto the team to curate the public program and write the exhibition text that would accompany the show.
Punk proclivities
Sabayton’s work typically employs satire to critique social injustices — an interest that, he says, began when his family moved to Manila from Cebu in 1987. He recalls his Filipino language teacher organizing rallies to advocate for better pay and working conditions for the faculty. At Manuel L. Quezon University and the University of the Philippines, he attended meetings hosted by the League of Filipino Students, a student-led national democratic group that formed during the Martial Law era, which left an indelible impression on him.
Sabayton also turned to punk music for its anarchic, do-it-yourself ethos, discovering experimental films through zines like Herald-X. Bands like The Clash, Face to Face, and Wuds amplified his frustration towards sociopolitical injustices. In a 2014 interview with Esquire Philippines, he recalled how Wuds’ lyrics in “At Kalimutan Ang Diyos” fervently influenced him: “Malaking bahay, magarang kotse, maraming pera / Magandang asawa, may mga anak, magandang damit / Masarap na pagkain, sikat na sikat kasi may pangalan / Pero nakalimutan ang diyos.” (Big house, a classy car, lots of money / good-looking spouse, children, lots of clothes / delicious food, popular because it has a name / but has forgotten God.)
“Parang gano’n ang lyrics ng punk,” he explains. “Hindi lang siya music.” (That’s what the lyrics of punk are like. It’s not just about the music.)
The late ‘90s fundamentally influenced Sabayton’s life trajectory. Initially a student at Centro Escolar University, he later moved to Mowelfund Film Institute where he learned the practical trade of filmmaking under the likes of Rox Lee and Raymond Red. Artist-run spaces like Big Sky Mind, Third Space, and Surrounded by Water fostered collaboration with young students and other like-minded individuals, shaping Sabayton’s enduring and interdisciplinary curiosity.
This was also the period Sabayton joined the newly formed Furball Inc., an art collective-turned-production house founded by Lyle Sacris, Karlo Estrada, and Mark Laccay. The group formed to support one another’s avant-garde artistic projects; its dark humor and unorthodox approach challenged the conventions of Manila’s creative scenes at the time.
For example, “Reincarnation” is the Philippines’ first eight-channel artwork — a tower of eight stacked TVs with synchronized video from 2004. To fund their activities, like acquiring a physical space, the group took on commercial projects that were widely lauded — like Radioactive Sago Project’s “Astro,” which won MTV Philippines’ award for Best Video and Best Director in 2005, and Kyla’s “Hanggang Ngayon,” which required Sabayton to climb down a sewer to retrieve cockroaches for a one-second b-roll despite his pathological fear of insects.
While their physical space closed in 2008 and even as they embarked on separate careers, the group remained close friends. Prompted by the death of Edsel Abesames, a former group member, Furball staged an exhibition in Modeka Art Space in early 2024, which initiated the momentum for the Berlin exhibition.
The first Jumpcut exhibition emerged while Sabayton was drinking at Ringo Bunoan and Katya Guerrero’s Big Sky Mind bar and cafe in 1999. He spoke animatedly about how filmmakers are artists too, referencing the way German director Christoph Janetzko scratched, colored, and physically manipulated celluloid film. At Bunoan and Guerrero’s encouragement, Sabayton organized an exhibition and invited sixteen filmmakers to contribute to the show in a crossover of disciplines. In an interview with The Manila Times in 1999, Sabayton succinctly summarises the impetus for his exhibition: “It all boils down to the same thing — making images.”
So it was fitting that, for the Berlin show of Jumpcut 5, Furball came together to create Videoke Philippinen — a bespoke and operational videoke machine that pays homage to the collective’s heritage in music videos through sixteen video works. For example, Ricardo “Dix” Buhay’s Juan Direction from 2023 begins with clips of caged pigs on the back of trucks being transported across Manila while Frank Sinatra croons the opening lyrics of “My Way”: “And now the end is near.” Quark Henares’ 2005 work, 63 Seconds of People Screaming at Objects, is exactly as it sounds: people screeching at video equipment and innocuous items.
Sabayton’s practice will, at times, take on loud pronouncements of advocacy. But it’s also in his small and personal gestures of sharing knowledge that make the most meaningful change.
In Sabayton’s Markang Demonyo, a budots remix of “My Way” — a genre of dance music originating from the Bisaya-speaking region — is set over visceral news clips of former President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs, juxtaposed with clips of Duterte attempting the undulating moves of the budots dance. The contrast of kitschy, fast-paced drum kicks over devastating images of mangled bodies emphasizes the vulgarity of Philippine politics that Sabayton calls attention to.
Romulo, who helped organize Jumpcut 5, says that punk music and rage against sociopolitical inequality initially fuelled Sabayton’s activism. But over time, the artist learned that his activism may be best expressed through art. Sabayton’s famous ongoing performance project known as “BAYAW for President” references the Filipino brother-in-law archetype, using satire to stress and criticize politicians. BAYAW — which stands for Bagong Alyansang Ayaw sa Walanghiya, or New Alliance Against Assholes — began in 2013 as a sketch called “Make Your Own Campaign Vid” in The Word of the Lourd, which later caught the attention of future President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr., who urged Sabayton to stop imitating “serious” politicians like himself.
Art’s pervading possibility
However, Sabayton’s art activism extends beyond art as an isolated activity. He sincerely and infectiously believes in art’s pervading possibility to change the world. Like his BAYAW character, Sabayton’s practice will, at times, take on loud pronouncements of advocacy. But it’s also in his small and personal gestures of sharing knowledge that make the most meaningful change.
Early in our Berlin trip, before the other artists arrived, Sabayton and I set out to a vintage flea market in the Schönberg neighborhood. We weren’t looking for anything in particular but tried our luck in finding film equipment.
As we strolled the tables of endless knickknacks, he stopped us in front of a camera vendor, pointing out the different models and explaining what type of film each used. He perused through their offerings while I wandered off on my own and sat down on some steps to wait for him. Ten minutes later, Sabayton excitedly hurried over with a huge grin on his face and a large box in his hands.
“It’s a Super8 projector!” he gushed in Tagalog. “I think it works!”
He arduously carried this forty-pound projector across street blocks and train stops. Once we returned to the artist’s residency apartment we were staying in, Sabayton eagerly took the projector out of its case and set it on a low console unit in the living room.
“Come here,” he gestured to me as I squatted next to him while he fiddled with the machine’s buttons, reels, and drums. “Wait, I brought film,” he said, jumping out of his squat and hurried into the room.
Sabayton returned with a bag full of seventy-year-old film which, he explained, is part of his “Malalim Ang Gabi: Filipino Home Movies A Decade After The War” performance piece that screens the home movies of his wife’s family. As he threaded the reel, he softly explained how the machine works. When the celluloid flickered to light, he ardently exclaimed, “‘Yan!” (That’s it!)
At that moment, I began to really understand Sabayton. At times, he presents himself as a jokester: Satirical and pointed, of course, but always with a cheekily devious grin. But as an artist who is within various creative communities, he innately recognizes that art is everywhere and is in everything — whether in a dusty projector or on the peeling layers of posters of a city’s street corners.
Sabayton makes art, yes. But more than that, he is passionately serious about art making, which can be found in his generosity of time and the care he gives to others.
Rolling Stone Philippines Magazine — Coming Soon
