Quezon City, 1999. Furball coalesced out of filmmakers, visual artists, designers, musicians, performance artists, and media practitioners on the cusp of a new century, eager to dive deep into the primordial soup where emerging technologies and sensibilities were ripe for the picking. Collectively, their body of
work’s unifying thread lies in how diverse their approaches were which is natural, given the variety of backgrounds these artists come from.

Together, in various permutations, they instigated music videos, corporate audiovisual presentations, TV shows, performances, parties, gallery exhibitions, and feline welfare programs. It was a time before Instagram, art fairs, and independent film festivals–not that this was a distant past, but understanding what it took to make art at the time sheds light on their ethos If any commonalities have organically emerged over time, it could very well be their shared vernacular and mischievous sense of humor. The art department bore the moniker “art death” with pride, in jest of a burgeoning culture of freelance work. They made offbeat shirts, only to give them away and not for profit. Neither a Viva Hotbabes film nor a post-apocalyptic imagining of Cubao in 2040 were too far out for them to take on.

Cubao served as Furball’s official headquarters until 2008, gathering artists from different walks of life from the UP College of Fine Arts and Mass Communications, Ateneo de Manila University, the Mowelfund Film Institute, and beyond. The 18th Avenue warehouse complex and the dimly-lit haunts of the Marikina Shoe Expo (now known as Cubao X) served as their third places as they drew deep from the well of Philippine popular culture.

When early video technology was underestimated for its limitations, Furball embraced its perceived low-fidelity and grit as counterculture’s character. They listed credits as surnames in alphabetical order, dismantling hierarchies in film production in favor of collective credit. When it comes to their parties, everyone has their own stories, and even different versions of a single event. Some of those stories are best left anecdotal.

Over the course of two decades, Furball mutated into something more than a production house or an art collective. After all, it wasn’t pure work that held these people together. Their collaboration was founded on genuine connections beyond contracts and hours clocked in. As they went on into different
strands of art and culture, they brought with them this utter lust for life, producing playful gestures and serious work that continue to surprise.

In hindsight, their covert operations of smuggling the alternative, the underground, and the unconventional into commercial and mainstream platforms bore triumphs big and small. Through sleight of hand, Furball endures in unraveling how nonsequiturs still have something to say.

– MARIAH REODICA