ANITO, a Tagalog word used across the Philippine archipelago to refer to ancestor spirits that reside in nature,11Santos, Narry F. “Exploring the Filipino Indigenous Religious Concepts of God, Soul, and Death in Relation to the Spirit World.” Phronesis: A Journal of Asian Theological Seminary 13, no. 2 (2008): 31-55. is Justin Talplacido Shoulder’s latest work in their two-decade long eco-cosmological and shapeshifting performance oeuvre based on queered ancestral myths. Shoulder, also known by their artistic alter ego Phasmahammer, invents distinct characters through hand-made costumes, prostheses, environmental effects, and gestural languages. For ANITO, Shoulder transformed a near pitch-black stage into a futuristic tropical rainforest floor with inflatable copper-colored tendrils and a soundtrack of distant birdsong and rustling leaves. Entangled among the root-like coils were Shoulder and fellow performer Eugene Choi, their near-naked and dormant bodies made only partially visible by dappled light piercing through a cloud of fog that hovered above. To the sound of a reverent hum, Shoulder and Choi slowly unfurled from their subterranean slumber—the anito awoke.

Appearing in Philippine folklore and mythology alongside supernatural beings such as the kapre (tree demon) and tikbalang (humanoid animal), anito are believed to dwell in the Balete tree (Ficus Indica). In Philippine mythology, the Balete tree is thought to be a portal connecting the skyworld, underworld, and middle world of humanity.22In Philippine folklore and mythology, the ‘Skyworld’ refers to a multilayered world in the sky inhabited by deities; however, this is a generalised descriptor and has distinct characteristics and variations depending on the ethno-linguistic group. See: Francisco B. Demetrio, Gilda Cordero-Fernando, and Fernando N. Zialcita, The Soul Book: Introduction to Philippine Pagan Religion (The Philippine Reader #1), GCF Books: Quezon City, Philippines, 1991. In the context of this performance work, the Skyworld refers to “a Queer Filipinx Future Folkloric space of storytelling.” It is common practice for those of us in the Philippines or in the diaspora to speak the Tagalog phrase “tabi tabi po” when encountering a Balete tree, or when moving through grassy fields or dark rural areas. In English, the phrase translates to “excuse me” or “may I pass?” and is uttered to respectfully acknowledge the presence of spirits and ask for permission to pass through their territory.

Shoulder drew on these mythological practices through the hour-long performance. They envisioned the copper tendrils as the roots of both the Balete tree and the Port Jackson Fig, its close Australian relative. This hybrid organic system was thus conceived as a host organism that reflected Shoulder’s own diasporic background and their engagement with both Philippine pre-colonial animism and Sydney’s underground queer club scenes.  Resembling curious and hungry megafauna, Shoulder and Choi roamed the staged forest environment, hybridizing their own bodies by attaching the inflatable rhizomes to their arms and legs and metabolizing them into auxiliary limbs. Their newly metamorphosed embodiments silhouetted against a projection of a sun-drenched horizon, Shoulder and Choi communicated through a gestural vocabulary of guttural bellows and throaty clicks. They wrestled and merged their ancient and bulbous forms into one giant megafauna. As the lighting dimmed, they receded and roared into the darkness.

An ominous simulation of moonlight and the flicker of fireflies signaled a shift in the performance’s atmosphere and tempo, one that conveyed Shoulder’s spatio-temporal reimaginations. Now veiled in an intricate baro’t saya33The ‘baro’t saya’ or ‘baro at saya’ (or ‘blouse and skirt’ in English) is a national dress of the Philippines worn by women combining elements from precolonial native Filipino and colonial Spanish styles. organza, Shoulder emerged from the tubular carnage, spinning to a crescendo of discordant metallic noise. This ghostly apparition reminded me of Mebuyan, the Bagobo deity of death and rebirth believed to be the guardian mother of the underworld.44Christian Jil Benitez, “Mebuyan, the Tropical, and What Could be Erotic: A Mythography” in Renan Laru-an, Writing Presently, Philippine Contemporary Art Network, 2020. 71-89. As if channeling her, Shoulder’s spiraling movements seemed to signify the cyclic returns of life and death. Aptly, Shoulder-Mebuyan disappeared into darkness as quickly as she appeared.

Following her exodus, the inflatable mushroom-like geodes in the background billowed, doubling in size. From the cleavage hatched red and white diamond-patterned limbs, operated by puppetry. I recognized these architectural prostheses and atmospheric animators from Shoulder’s previous performances and underground queer parties such as Monsta Gras and Pink Bubble. Stage right, Choi was slowly enveloped by one of these limbs, which symbolically ‘returned’ their body to the other world from which they emerged. The reverent hum that inaugurated the performance continued to be heard—the end is the beginning is the end.55“The end is the beginning is the end” is a nod to a previous party and performance held by Justin at Firstdraft Gallery in 2015 (of which Choi performed in) and the name of the final Monsta Gras party held in 2020.

In ANITO, Shoulder blended artistic media—costume design, puppetry, drag, mimetic choreography and experimental electronic music—to embody interspecies creatures and create otherworldly environments. True to their belief in worlding otherwise, Shoulder entangled ancestral and queer mythologies through shapeshifting lifeforms, creating a performative space that was neither here nor there, beyond the geographical borders of the Philippines and Australia. Each performative figure in Shoulder’s speculative world was an inhabitable and itinerant prosthesis whose hybrid materiality bypassed spatio-temporal strictures. In the miraculous mythscape of ANITO, Shoulder spawned a portal to the spirit world.