tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28878092936424215192024-03-14T13:54:05.799+08:00A Party-Crashing Anglenotes on high art and pop culture by Vicente-Ignacio S. de VeyraJojo Soria de Veyrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10755588651423753783noreply@blogger.comBlogger31125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2887809293642421519.post-20457571189200909442014-07-01T14:04:00.000+08:002014-11-26T12:15:02.397+08:00Ang walang-katapusang gyera ng artists kontra artists<br />
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Nora Aunor</div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">(photo borrowed from <a href="http://entertainment.inquirer.net/145396/protests-over-new-national-artist-awardees-should-finally-lead-to-reforms" target="_blank">http://entertainment.inquirer.net/145396/protests-over-new-national-artist-awardees-should-finally-lead-to-reforms</a>)</span></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-GB">NARITO</span></b><span lang="EN-GB"> na naman tayo. Nakakalimang blog na ako sa buwisit na temang ito, ngunit nandito na naman ako.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"> Pa’no naman kasi, may listahan na namang inilabas para sa National Artist of the Philippines Award (na bibigyan ko rito ng acronym na NAOTPA) ang National Artist of the Philippines Award committee ng Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) at National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) at tila may gulo na naman. Sa mga pangalan na isinumite ng kumite (na inatasang gumawa ng listahan para sa award na ito), may isang nilaglag ang taga-aprubang Opisina ng Pangulo ng Republika ng Pilipinas. Nilaglag daw si Nora Aunor sa listahang isinumite.</span></div>
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May ibinigay raw na dahilan ang Malacañang sa paglaglag, subalit ayokong patulan ito (kahit pa man sumagi sa aking isipan na baka ayaw lang ng estado na mabigyan ng isang tax-funded na award ang isang minsan pa'y naging simbolo, ayon sa estado, ng tax evasion). May kumuwestiyon sa dahilan na ibinigay ng Malacañang, pero ayoko ring patulan ang pagkuwestiyong ito. May mga panukala rin sa ilang sektor na baguhin na ang rules sa pag-award, at isa na rito ang tungkol sa pagbawas ng kapangyarihan ng Pangulo sa mga listahang isusumite ng kumite. Kahit ang panukalang ito, di ko rin pinansin. Ano pa nga ba ang magagawa ng ordinaryong Pilipino na tulad ko kundi ang magbuntong-hininga na lamang.</div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"> Ang pinansin at pinatulan ko ay ang survey na pi-nost ng kaibigan ko sa Facebook na si Simkin de Pio, gallery owner. Sa post ni Ka Simkin sa Facebook group o community na ArtPhilippines, nanghingi siya ng boto ng mga miyembro ng grupo—mga artists, critics, art lovers, atbp. At ang virtual title ng post niya ay ito: ArtPh asks – The National Artist Awards: To Scrap or Not to Scrap, and Why?</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"> May tatlong pagpipilian sa post na ito ni Ka Simkin: 1) NO, I don’t think the National Artist Award should be scrapped, because…; 2) YES, I believe the National Artist Award should be scrapped, because…; at 3) MAYBE, who cares? It’s all politics and I reserve my right to abstain, because… Sa comment box, maraming nagbigay ng kani-kaniyang dahilan o di kaya ay disclaimer.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"> Halimbawa, ang Facebook friend kong si Jonathan Benitez, Palawan artist na bumoto ng YES to scrapping the award, ay nag-offer ng kanyang mungkahing ito: "We need more art education and promotion and art critics."</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"> Na-engganyo akong mag-comment sa post matapos kong bumoto rin ng “YES to scrapping the award,” hindi lamang dahil Facebook friend ko si Ka Simkin, ngunit dahil isa ako sa tatlong ti-nag ni Ka Jonathan sa tanong niyang ito: “Curious lang ako, sir Pandy Aviado, bay Simkin de Pio, at Jojo Soria de Veyra. Bakit bata pa na-declare si Arturo Luz as National Artist? (And some people) don’t have a clue about him.”</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"> Di ko sinagot ang tanong ni Ka Jonathan tungkol sa edad ng mga naparangalan sa mga nagdaang taon ng NAOTPA, at di rin ako nagbigay ng general backgrounder tungkol kay Luz na maaaring magsilbing depensa sa worthiness ng conferment dito. Si Ka Simkin na ang nagbigay sa mga kaibigan ni Ka Jonathan ng backgrounder na iyon. Ang sinagot ko kay Ka Jonathan ay ire lamang:</span></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-GB">ANG NASYONAL SA NASYONG ITO<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">“Yun talaga ang point, pareng Jonathan. Marami sa mga kababayan natin sa ating nasyon (as in ‘nasyonal’) ay walang clue tungkol sa mga nananalo o napararangalan. Maaaring ako ay may clue at maaaring saludo ako sa artist na napaunlakan, subalit dahil hindi ako statist kundi populist, hindi ko sasaluduhan ang prosesong statist o maka-state at hindi naman totoong maka-nation. Hindi isyu ang kung deserving ng honors o hindi ang isang naparangalan, ang isyu ay kung dapat bang mag-impose sa isang nasyon ang isang state ng ituturing nila (ng nasyon) bilang kanilang </span>‘nasyonal’ na artist. At dapat bang buwisan ang nasyon (kasama ang mga artists dito) para masuportahan ang tinuring na artists ng estado? Mapapansin mong ang mga bansa (o di kaya gobyerno) lang na may statist na persuasion ang may mga national artist conferments, Turkey halimbawa.”</div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"> Sabi naman ng well-recognized na artist na si sir Buds Convocar, “Kapag ganyan naman ang naging basehan, baka mas maraming maging NA awardee na comics illustrators kaysa sa mga painters at sculptors—di kaya?” At may mahalagang point ang rhetorical question na ito ni Ka Buds na seryosong concerned sa quirks ng populism. Totoo nga namang mas maraming tao ang nagagalingan sa drowing ng mga comics artists kaysa sa painting ng mga minimalists. Babalikan natin ang isyung yan.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"> Ang sunod namang tanong ni Ka Jonathan ay, “Ang Presidential Medal of Merit awardee ng US ba, walang monthly stipend, Jojo Soria de Veyra, Buds Convocar?”</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"> Sagot ko, “Di ko alam na may presidential medal of merit ang US, pre. Ang alam ko lang yung dating Medal for Merit na hindi naman para sa arts. Wala na yata yun.”</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"> At sa rhetorical concern ni Ka Buds, ito ang inoffer kong take: “Ang punto ko lang naman kasi, ang nasyon ay mayroon nang national artists (na naging national ayon sa kaniyang kultura at hindi ayon sa kultura ng minority elite) na hindi na kailangan pang bigyan ng capital letters para maging National Artists. Bakit ba kailangan maglaan ng tax money ang mga taga-estado para magbigay ng capital letters sa iilang artists na ‘nasyonal’ daw, nasyonal ayon sa kanilang pananaw sa konseptong ‘nasyon’ o di kaya ayon sa kanilang utopia ng kung ano dapat ang hugis ng kultura ng ating nasyon. Bilang isang demokratikong mamamayan at advocate ng democracy, hahayaan ko na ang pagiging multicultural ng ating nasyon, kaysa naman ipagpilitan ko sa inyo—kung ako na ang poderoso—ang mga kinagigiliwan kong artists na siyang maging Artists ng nag-iisa ang kultura nating Nasyon. Unang-una, ang Pilipinong ‘nasyon’ ay isang mito, isang myth.”</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"> Mas mabuti bang tawagin na lang nating Artist of the State Award ang NAOTPA, para klaro at di na magkagulo?</span></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-GB">ANG NASYON NG PRIBILEHIYO<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Maraming naging comments galing sa ibang members sa posted survey na ito ni Ka Simkin, both pro-NAOTPA and anti-NAOTPA. Ilalagay ko na lang dito ang aking mga naging sagot sa ilang mga mungkahi.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"> Halimbawa, sa<b> </b>mungkahing dapat alisin na ang pribilehiyo ng Pangulo na pumili ng awardees mula sa listahan na isinumite ng NAOTPA selection committee, gayunman ang pribilehiyo nitong gumawa ng sarili niyang listahan, ang masasabi ko ay ito: Kung dapat walang ganitong pribilehiyo ang Pangulo ng nasyon, sino dapat ang may ganitong pribilehiyo? Ang Unyon ng mga Artistang Pilipino sa People's Republic of the Philippines? isang konsehong binubuo ng mga matagumpay na artists na magdedesisyon din para sa milyun-milyong tastes at appreciation ng milyun-milyong elemento ng nasyon?</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"> Tuwing may mga pararangalan sa NAOTPA, nagkakagulo ang nasyon ng mga artists at art lovers at media dahil sa iisang katotohanan: ang nasyon natin ng milyun-milyong Pilipino ay may kaniya-kaniyang gustong magawaran ng NAOTPA, kung kaya’t madalas ay minumura na ng ilang bahagi ng ating multicultural na nasyon ang kumite na inatasang pumili dahil sa kaniyang mga pinili o hindi pinili, gayunman ang Pangulo na nag-apruba, di nag-apruba, o gumawa ng sarili niyang listahan. Ang point ay ito: ang bawat indibidwal sa ating nasyon ng milyun-milyon ay may peyborit artist. Ngunit sa nasyong ito, ng milyun-milyon, may kumite ng estado na may last sey at may hawak sa NAOTPA. Entonces, sa NAOTPA, ang kumite ang nasyon, hindi ang totoong nasyon ng milyun-milyon.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"> Sa Soviet Union noon, may Union of Soviet Writers na nagdedesisyon sa kung sino—officially—ang ituturing na magaling at mahusay at sino ang ituturing na pangit o walang kuwenta ang mga sinulat. Kasama si Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn do'n sa mga itinuring na pangit. Ito ba ang union na gusto nating itayo, o hayaang nakatayo, sa ating nasyon ng mga artists at art lovers?</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"> Ngunit may paraan naman daw para di maging hawak sa ilong ng estado ang kumite na itatayo, o nakatayo na. Para hindi ito maging beholden sa Pangulo o ruling party, may isusulat na bagong rules. But the fact is that any <i>state institution</i> always finds itself beholden to the <i>leader of the state</i>! And whenever and wherever it isn’t, it is only able to do so because of the presence of something else it can alternatively be beholden to, something other than the President, an opposition Congress, halimbawa.</span></div>
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Maaari ba tayong makapagtayo ng isang state arts council na walang “impure motives” na magpapatakbo ng NAOTPA? Again, impure motives, obvious or sublime, will always be present in <i>state sponsorship</i> of artists and art-making, for the simple reason that <i>the use of state funds for state favouritism</i> is already impure from the start.</div>
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<b><span lang="EN-GB">ANG NASYONALISTANG NASYON<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Sa<b> </b>isyu ng nasyonalismo naman na nasa likod daw ng NAOTPA at sa pagpapalakas daw ng mga simbolo sa adhikaing ito, isantabi na muna natin ang problema ng mismong ideyalismo ng nasyonalismo bilang adhikain ng puso sa kabuuan nito, ang problema nito halimbawa sa pagiging crude (kapag nasa ngalan ng local o indigenous) o pagiging threatening (kapag nangingibabaw ang isang ‘Filipino ang art ko, banyaga iyang sa iyo’ o ang isang </span>‘buy Filipino art only, down with imported art’ na tibok ng puso nito).</div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"> Iwanan muna natin ang epekto ng nasyonalismo sa trade economics at magfocus na lang tayo sa isang kategorya sa arts, sa visual arts, halimbawa. Maraming art contests ang may hangarin na tulad ng sa NAOTPA, ang palawigin ang sense of national pride and identity sa pamamagitan ng recognition para sa mga visual artists na nakagawa na ng kanilang di-matatawarang mga kontribusyon sa arts ng bansa. Hindi ko nga lang alam ngayon kung paano ito makatutulong sa pagbibigay sa ating mga kababayan ng ambisyong isulong ang kanilang mga sarili tungo sa dakilang landas ng ingenuity, social significance, at economic progress. Dahil kung tayo ay talagang seryoso sa hangaring ito, doon na ako ke pareng Jonathan sa sinabi niyang solusyon sa kakulangan ng ambisyon: “We need more art education and promotion and art critics.</span>”</div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"> Not necessarily professional art critics kundi art criticism exchange between artists and art lovers. Yun! Art criticism exchange. Hindi pag-aagawan ng medalya at trophy na may malabo o pantastikong pahalaga! Baka sa art education pa nga natin makita ang mga kakitiran sa mismong ideya ng </span>“nasyonalismo.”</div>
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<b><span lang="EN-GB">PAGLABU-LABO NG NASYON<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Isa pa, alam natin na ang estado ay hindi parati para sa nasyon, kaya minsan ninanais natin na ang nasyon ay maging ang estado.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"> Pero, ganun talaga. Di natin maaalis ang katotohanang may mga artists na hinihingi ang presensiya ng estado sa larangan ng sining, habang may mga artists naman na mas hiling ang di pakikialam ng estado sa larangang ito.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"> Ang ibang artists nag-i-struggle na hindi makialam ang estado sa artmaking nila o sa kanilang artform o genre. Ngunit may panig ng artists naman na nagdedemand ng pakikialam (o suporta) ng estado sa mga artists. Siguro nga hindi ganun ka-obvious ang lalim ng difference na ito dahil nakatira tayo sa isang democracy kuno. Siguro mas magiging obvious ang lalim ng difference na ito kung nakatira tayo sa isang diktadurya o komunistang bansa. O di kaya pag napakialaman na ng estado (o ng taxpaying nation, for that matter) ang art natin at di natin nagustuhan ang pakikialam.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"> Naroon ang “bipolarity</span>” na ito, ang duwalismong ito, sa kahit saang lugar na may state sponsorship sa art activity o di kaya artistic achievement. Ang National Endowment for the Arts ng Estados Unidos, halimbawa, ay nananatiling isang contentious na programa na pinaglalabanan ang control ng mga <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_conservatism" target="_blank">konserbatibo</a> at ng mga <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism_in_the_United_States" target="_blank">liberal</a> sa naturang bansa. At dahil kadalasa’y liberal ang arts sa Estados Unidos, di nakapagtataka na ang mga sigaw ng pagbuwag ng NEA ay nanggagaling sa mga konserbatibo.</div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"> Ngunit sa bansa natin, may isa pang duwalismong nangingibabaw maliban doon sa pagitan ng mga artistang maka-estado at artistang libertaryano. Sabi ni Ka Jonathan, “correct me if Im wrong, pero maraming National Artists na di kilala ng ordinaryong tao. Mas kilala si Justine Bieber at Mommy Dionesia (Pacquiao). Bakit kaya, ano ang problema?”</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"> Nung sinabi ni Ka Jonathan na kailangan ng bansa ang pagpapalawig ng arts education sa mga eskuwelahan at sa exchange ng mga artists at art lovers, nasagot na niya mismo ang sarili niyang rhetorical question na ito na kahawig nung tanong ni Ka Buds. Ang isyung ito ay tumatalakay sa duwalismo, o polarity, na namamagitan hindi lamang sa gitna ng mga maka-estado at libertaryano kundi rin sa gitna ng mga may nalalaman at walang masyadong alam. Pinalawig ko ng kaunti ang argumentong ito ni Ka Jonathan, para sa tenga ng iba, ng ganire:</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"> “Oo, Ka Jonathan, ang national artists ng masa at national artists ng elite ay nagpapakita lamang na hindi iisa ang nation natin. Makikita mo na walang ganung pagkakaiba, sa gitna ng mayaman at mahirap, sa mga bansang iisa ang kultura, at ito’y dahil sa pantay-pantay na edukasyon o oportunidad sa edukasyon. Tulad ng Japan, halimbawa.”</span></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-GB">ANG (DI-)PAGHUPA NG LABU-LABO</span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Bakit ba naisip ni Ka Simkin ang ganitong survey posting? Marahil dahil sa may naririnig na siya sa paligid na mga mungkahing i-abolish na nga ang NAOTPA.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"> Abolish? Bakit? Pa’no pa tayo magkakaroon ng great names sa dingding at kisame ng ating mga maka-sining na isipan kung itatapon na ito sa basurahan?</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"> Subalit, teka. Ang daming great names sa arts na hinahangaan natin, maging dito sa ating bansa o sa ibang bansa. Marami sa mga banyagang great names na hinahangaan natin ay walang "National Artist Award" sa kanilang bansa, at tila hindi nila kinailangan.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"> I say let us be men and women of artistic success, thanks to the national market, rather than men and women of artistic success, thanks to the State! Dahil hindi kaya na ang dahilan kung bakit nagbibigay ang state ng isang national award (actually isang state award) ay para mapag-isa niya ang isang nasyon na alam niya ay hindi nagkakaisa? Plastik, kung ganun.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"> State awards are a State’s affirmation of value. To a nation, folk singer-songwriter Gary Granada's efforts to infuse his personal and aesthetic values into the culture of his people, for example, might be the more noble, the more nationalistic product, no, <i>popularly</i> noble and nationalistic product as against the <i>exclusively</i> noble and only quasi-nationalistic product. Unless, of course, we define <span lang="EN-GB">“</span>noble” from the royalist perspective or metanarrative, which would be the perfect rationalization for the elitism in our nation’s supposedly “</span>national” arts.</div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"> At kung babalikan ko lang ang tinalakay nating goals o objectives ng mga ganitong award na may adhikaing pang-lipunan kuno, tingnan na lang natin ang Palanca contest. Nagkaroon ba ng literary culture ang buong Pilipinas dahil dito? Hindi. Dahil plastic ang mga ganitong paraan. Hindi tayo magkakaroon ng national pasalubong kung hindi ka magtatayo ng real-life doughnut shops sa bawat kanto at magbibigay ka lamang ng Best Doughnut Award para sa produktong hindi pa nakikita kung kaya’t di maapreciate ng tao. Hindi national bookstore ang National Bookstore kung wala itong virtual monopoly sa pagtitinda ng notebooks at tech pens at Grumbacher oils at binigyan lamang ng award kahit wala ito sa mga paborito nating malls. Sa ngayon, may dibisyon sa pagitan ng elite na nakakikilala sa mga artistang naparangalan at ng nasyon na walang kaalam-alam.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"> Magiging patuloy na huwad ang lahat ng bagay na itinuring nating “national” hanggat di natin natatanggap itong dibisyon at pagkakaiba.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"> Wala naman kasing masama sa division at difference kung hindi ito itatago, at i-aacknowledge na nariyan, at hindi ituturing na negatibo kundi positibo. Ang problema natin ay pag may nagsasabi, sa ngalan ng pagkakaisa, na ang gusto niyang si Chick Corea ay dapat papalakpakan din ng mga mahilig sa death metal o fliptop. Pag ang ganitong attitude ay nasa national scope, mas sakit sa ulo, dahil siguradong may aangal sa pandidikta.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"> Subalit, teka, sino ba ang nandidikta?</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"> May nagsasabi na kapag pribadong award body, ang mga desisyon nito tungkol sa award ay prerogatiba ng pribadong institusyon, hindi pandidikta. Matatawag mo lamang na pandidikta kung galing sa estado, sa simpleng dahilan na ang mga galaw at desisyon ng estado ay pinopondohan ng buwis ng tao at ang pagbayad ng buwis ay idinidikta sa tao bilang obligasyon nito.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"> So, hayaan na lang ba dapat na private institutions na lang ang magbigay ng art awards tulad ng Carnegie Art Award, o ng architecture prizes tulad ng Pritzker Architecture Prize? Dahil, oo nga naman, hindi magandang tingnan na ginagamit ang public fund para sa state patronage ng mga arts people. Ang Sweden nga na isang constitutional monarchy ay pinauubaya ang mga ganitong awards sa mga private institutions tulad ng Nobel. Bakit ba napaka-government-obsessed o state-reliant nating mga Pinoy, e alam naman nating divided tayo at multicultural at di magkakaisa sa iisang taste dictum, lalo na kung taste dictum galing sa Estado?</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"> At bakit nga naman kasi kailangan pa ng garbo tulad ng free hospitalization para sa awardees, e may kaya na naman ang karamihan ng nanalo at naparangalan? Samantala, ang majority ng Pilipino (at Pilipinong artists) na nagbabayad ng cultural tax ay di kaya magpaduktor. Ironic. Tila mas royalista pa tayo kaysa sa mga Swedish. . . .</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"> There are actually presently two competing powerbrokers in the arts—the State, on the one hand, and the private art industry, on the other. Some artists get patronage from both, others sa isa lang. Ako, bilang ordinaryong miyembro ng audience, nagbabayad ng ticket para ma-entertain ng private art industry, at nagbabayad ng ticket at nagbabayad din ng buwis para ma-entertain ng State art industry. Nga pala, bilang makata, nagbabayad din ako ng buwis para suportahan ang mga kapwa ko makata na ini-sponsor ng State.</span></div>
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Hindi kailangan ng NAOTPA para may tingalain tayong mga artista ng nasyon o bayan. Walang national artist award si Picasso o si Ezra Pound o si Sid Vicious. In fact, it has been a reliance on such plastic contrivances of national valuation that has led us to ignore what is really needed para tingalain ng nasyon o ng bayan ang mga kahanga-hangang gawa ng ating mga artista.</div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"> In fact, mayroong ebidensya na walang nagreresultang totoong pagtingala ang nasyon sa mga National Artists <i>dahil </i>naituring silang National Artists. Halimbawa, marami akong kilalang nakakikilala sa pangalan ni Jose Garcia Villa at pumapalakpak sa pangalan niya (proud sila na may isang Pilipinong nagtagumpay sa larangan ng pagtula na tulad ni Villa) kahit wala ni isang tula mula kay Villa pa silang nababasa. Ganun ang kulturang nabubuo ng isang plastik na pagiging maka-nasyon, o sa plastik na pagturing sa isang artista bilang artista kuno ng nasyon.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"> Maganda ang naidudulot ng NAOTPA sa mga naparangalan nito in terms of adulation. Ngunit ang tanong ko uli: maganda ba ang naidudulot nito sa “nasyon” na siyang salitang ginagamit sa titulong ito? Ang tanong ko uli: nauuwi ba ito sa pasilitasyon ng pagbabasa ng mga nobela ni F. Sionil Jose o hindi? Pumapalakpak ba ang nasyon sa pangalan ni Jose kahit wala pa itong nababasang nobela niya? Kung gayun, walang saysay ang investment na ito.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"> In contrast, walang National Artist of the Philippines Award si Granada. Ngunit kanino ang gawang mas kilala ng nasyon, ang sa kanya o ang mga nobela ni Jose? Sa tingin ko mas laganap ang pagkakilala sa ilang mga awitin ni Granada, bagamat hindi gano'n kalaganap dahil indie ang production niya, hindi major-record label produced and marketed, major-label distributed lang kung minsan. Sa case ni Jose, mababaw ang appreciation ng nasyon sa art ng nobela, kahit pa sa akademismo ng mga estudyante ng mga akademya. . . .</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://contents.pep.ph/images2/news/2806514d0.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://contents.pep.ph/images2/news/2806514d0.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
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<span lang="EN-GB"> So, mayroon kayang mas makahulugang investment ang estado kaysa sa mga gimmick tulad ng NAOTPA? Oo naman. Unang-una, nasa kaniya na ang kapangyarihan na humubog ng kurikulum sa edukasyon. Ituturo niya ba ang mga elemento ng arkitektura o ituturo lang niya ang mga pangalan ng mga dakilang arkitekto sa pamamagitan ng awards? Bilang taxpayer, doon na ako sa una.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"> In contrast, “In Japan,</span>” commented painter Marcel Antonio, “there's no confusion when someone is declared a Living National Treasure. The award carries with it a sense of protecting or preserving a techne that embodies what is essentially and quintessentially Japanese, in the same way nature is preserved from extinction. It is the technique of pottery, a way of doing things, an ethos that is glorified, <i>not</i> the individual artist himself/herself.”</div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"> At sino ba itong mga pinarangalang mga National Artists sa taong ito? Ano ang techne na ginoglorify sa pamamagitan ng paghirang sa kanila? Ano ang value ng mga techne na ito sa nasyon?</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"> Si Gat Cirilo Bautista ang isa sa mga pinarangalan ngayong taon. Isa rin siya sa iilang Pilipinong makata na maituturing kong may malaking impluwensiya sa sarili kong pagsulat ng tula, whether he’d like reading that pronouncement or not when he reads it. Sa valuation ko, isa na siyang national artist sa Jojo Soria de Veyra Nation. Sige, bibigyan ko pa ng capital letters ang “national” at ang “artist” title niya sa republika ko. Subalit, ito ang isyu ngayon: nung magpunta ako kanina sa palengke at bumili ng kalahating kilong manok, at ibinalita ko sa suki ko na nagawaran na nga ng National Artist of the Philippines Award si Gat Bautista, tanong ng suki ko: “ha? sino? Sino yun? Ano ba yang national artist reward na yan?” So much for national artists of nations.</span></div>
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Kung may hangad akong karangalan para sa mga idol ko sa poetry o sa painting o sa music o sa architecture, para sa akin ay mas malaki at makabuluhang karangalan ang makita ko ang mga pangalan nila na kasali sa mga kinover ng textbooks kaysa sa makita ko lang sila sa roster ng NAOTPA na di makikilala ng tao o di maiintindihan ng tao ang kanilang cultural at aesthetic value.</div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"> “Dito sa atin,” comment ng artist at gallery owner na si Ka Alfredo Liongoren, “dahil na- Hollywoodized ang kukuti natin, ginawa nating STAR ang mga may katangiang EHEMPLO NG LAHI, deviating attention away from their virtues for emulation and focused instead on their persons. We’ve cultivated a personality cult which has endorsement value for consumer products.”</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"> Tumpak. Parang ganun din yata sa industriya ng pulitika natin.</span></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-GB">ANG MANANALO SA LABU-LABO<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Ngayon, sa kalagitnaan ng mga comments sa post ni Ka Simkin, napansin ni Ka Simkin mismo ang mahigpit na labanan ng YES at NO votes.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"> Ang sabi ko, “Ka Simkin, I predict that the negative (NO to scrapping) vote will win. We have always been a socialist nation desirous of state interference. Until the day, of course, the state interferes with our art. Even then, baka hindi pa rin.</span>”</div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"> At doon naman sa mga bumoto ng MAYBE, di ako naniniwala na kulang sila sa pusong-pakikialam sa mga laban ng bayan. Di naman siguro. Paniniwala ko’y di lang nila na-re-realize na galing sa kanilang ipinagkait na buwis ang pinag-paparty ngayon ng isang winner na ipinambili nito ng Cristal. They must know that this is a major concern to them as far as their 20% income tax payment and movie-ticket cultural tax payment, not to mention 12% VAT payments, are concerned.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"> Now, the reason why I predicted a win for the NO-to-scrapping-the-NAOTPA vote is because matagal ko nang nakikita ito sa kahit saang probinsiya man ako magpunta. Ayoko sanang maniwala na damaged ang culture natin pag banyaga ang nagsasabi, subalit may damage akong nakikita sa sarili kong mga mata sa pananaw pa lang natin sa konsepto ng demokrasya. Sa aking mga nakikita, ang demokrasya sa marami nating kababayan ay “ang kalayaan kong magsalita na dapat wala sila.” Ibig sabihin, “dapat ako lang ang may kalayaang magsalita at mapakinggan, wala akong responsibilidad na makinig sa ibang nagsasalita.</span>” Marami sa ating mga kababayan ang may ganitong sakit.</div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"> Ganito rin tila ang anatomya sa paniniwala ng maraming artists na galit na galit sa gobyerno pag walang suporta itong ibinibigay sa propesyon ng sining o ng artista o sa taga-sining o artista na idols nila. Maliban sa wala silang pakialam sa pagkawalang-suporta rin ng gobyerno sa ibang malayang propesyon, halimbawa sa propesyon ng panadero o ng karpintero o ng accountant o ng welder, marami sa kanila ang naniniwalang mayroong obligasyon ang gobyerno sa kanilang practice. Ito lang ang problema: kapag pinauunlakan sila, sila'y nagiging masaya; subalit kapag iba ang napauunlakan, ipinahihiwatig nila na di nila maintindihan kung bakit iba ang napaunlakan. Ito ang problema sa likod ng walang-katapusang gyera ng artists kontra artists sa ating bansa.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"> Ito ang puno't dulo ng isyu kung bakit hindi dapat nakikialam ang estado/gobyerno (gamit ang buwis na pera galing sa lahat) sa propesyon ng ilang artista o sa pag-value o di pag-value sa kanila. Hindi ito dapat nakikialam sa propesyon nila, tulad ng hindi nito pakikialam sa propesyon ng mga nagluluto ng adobo sa carinderia ni Aling Nena at sa sabungan ni Mang Kepweng. . . .</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"> </span>“Hay,” sabi ko, sa aking pagbuntong-hininga. Gayunpaman, ako'y susunod sa prinsipyo ng demokrasya na nagsasabing ang boto ng nakararami ang masusunod. Kung gusto ng nakararami na bumoto sa pagkain ng tae habang nagrereklamo sa amoy nito sa bibig, wala akong magagawa kundi respetuhin ang kanilang piniling buhay, kahit pa sikreto kong pagtatawanan ang damage sa lohika ng pinili nilang buhay-gyera. [JSV]</div>
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<li style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">photo kay Cirilo Bautista hiram galing sa http://culturalcenter.gov.ph/press-room/2012-gawad-ccp-para-sa-sining-awardees-named/</span></li>
<li style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">photo kay Gary Granada hiram galing sa http://www.pep.ph/news/20768/gma-network-and-gary-granada-issue-new-statements-over-jingle-controversy </span></li>
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Jojo Soria de Veyrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10755588651423753783noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2887809293642421519.post-24893695782699785742014-04-03T22:45:00.000+08:002015-02-11T21:24:58.784+08:00WATCHING THE SEEDS GROW<br />
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<span lang="EN-GB">The Mustard Seed</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">New works by Marcel Antonio</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">April 3-6, 2014</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 20.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">1. Road to An Anti-Impersonal Symbology<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">MARCEL Antonio’s scenes have been viewed as
narrative. By some—including yours truly—, they’ve been approached as quasi-
and pseudo-narrative, more concerned with a certain enigma I’ve recently
described as a sort of “blue funk erotica”. I described this “blue funk
erotica” value <a href="http://partycrashingangle.blogspot.com/2010/07/blue-funked-silent-stories-expanding_26.html" target="_blank">here</a> and <a href="http://partycrashingangle.blogspot.com/2012/01/the-romantic-lie-desire-ennui-anxiety.html" target="_blank">here</a>.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"> In the present collection, however, I am
eager to acquiesce to others’ semiotics and confess that a more pronounced
symbolism in the artist has indeed come to the forefront. But, doubtful of
this, as I am doubtful of any critical certainty upon artistic intent, I
stepped on a doorstep critics have been told to be wary of, and that is the
doorstep of talking to the artist about his real intent of the moment. I
disobeyed the warning and knocked on the door.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"> But I wasn’t keen on asking the artist
about my readings’ correctness, only about his painting process. After all,
artists do discourse on their process in exhibition catalogues and
manifesto/thesis announcements during interviews. And, in certain snobbish
quarters, artists are deemed significant or otherwise by a process particular
to them or a group of them. Beatriz Milhazes’ imagery wouldn’t really be deemed
special if she didn’t have that value of a different process added to the
production of her imagery, would it? Argue with me if you like, but it has
always been process that defined the being of every significant movement in the
painting art. Action painting was but the bawdlerization of process itself, and
jazz underscored improvisation as the immediate process occurring inside the
structured product of a process of planning.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"> And so my conversation with Marcel Antonio
might give us a clearer picture of a thesis that has been so often waylaid by
traditional critical self-centeredness, that is, by the critic’s intent to
frame his reading as an exhibition by itself almost independent of the
“presumed dead” artist. That tradition is no more pronounced than in the
Philippines, where artists are seldom wont (or allowed) to announce themselves
as thesis authors on their exhibitions’ catalogues.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"> But, again, I did not knock on the artist’s
door to ask him about his art thesis but to ask him about his process which
should be his thesis, or at least should/could be a factor in a comprehensive
appreciation of any critical thesis on the artist’s thesis (really the artist’s
thesis as imagined by the critic’s thesis).</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"> And this, over coffee, was what I and the
artist came up with:</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">ANTONIO’S symbology (whether quasi- or
pseudo- or closed-text-) is not really “blueprinted” from the start. Like a
good painting, it starts as a traffic of pencil or charcoal or pastel marks
directly applied as ghostly presences to a trigonometry on canvas. We have a
formal composition involving figures in arranged spaces. The figures in turn
acquire gestures, facial expressions, glances towards positions in the compass,
poses, and so on, bent on acquiring a sort of dramatic dance that has yet no
meaning. The figures’ hands and glances and poses become pointing arrows that
provide pictorial motion. Yes, exactly—the concern is initially formal, with
the eyes of a character placed at, say, 8 o’clock directed towards 2 o’clock, a
figure at 3 o’clock pointing a finger to an object at 7 o’clock.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"> However, now, that’s simplifying the
initial process too much, because <i>simultaneous</i>
(not necessarily working together yet) to this formal beginning is the play
with free association (which may later have an impact on the titling stage).
Antonio may appropriate a dictionary of dreams or an online random sentence
generator or the Inspiro app (an idea generator) on his iPad, all for the
purpose of inspiring a drama springboard. A working title might be as kinky as
“KC Concepcion tips the avocado hat of Slavoj Zizek” or as lewd as “A nun tilts
a monk’s garden towards suburbia and Hollywood”. At this point, you may call
him a Surrealist. Who isn’t nowadays, anyway?</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"> But all this playing around with signifiers
to arrive at significance within a formal arrangement might impress some as too
plastic if one didn’t know the fact that some artists who work in this way are
really already planning their work during the process, if only by way of tapping
their subconscious’ prejudices for and against “things”. The play is as
necessary as art qua an affirmation of life. In this sense, it is in the
negation of play that one becomes purely plastic. And in Antonio’s case of
playing around with the contents of life, there is the artist’s definitely
far-from-plastic bias towards “the enigma stereotype” and bias against the
“happy” moment. In this sense, the artist does display a taste, mostly
subconscious, invoking his right to a marriage with the moods depicting ennui,
melancholia, de Chirico, Chagall, and so on. “Ayoko lang talaga ng smiling
face (I'm just not fond of smiling faces),” says the artist, flashing a smirk. You can’t be more organic than that.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"> This process, or process of processes,
would then work onwards and work together until it finally gets things to gel.
Gel, that is, color-wise, mood drama-wise, perhaps semantically, but primarily
towards the fulfilment of a visual logic that had worked through its highways
of visual premises and visual conclusions, with its visual conclusive finding
finally sparked by the luminescence of the four or so layers of paint that now
function as a glamorous glazed image.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"> But I’m lying. For, at this arrival, there
is the equally primary recognition of a power in the center, a drama at the
center (not necessarily in the physical middle), that has decided on the
peripherality of the peripheral and the graveness of the central gravity.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"> Add to this feeling of fulfilment lies the
bonus of recognizing the enigma of the recurring motif in relation to the other
pieces in the studio. The power of the center has occurred in each piece and in
the solar system of pieces around and in the galaxy of works that the artist
had churned out through the decades retained in his memory. The beauty of the
recurring motif has also arrived.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"> And so we come to the titling stage, as if
that wasn’t already working with the daily progress of the work, as it is the
case often with artists working in this manner. Books read are recognized,
movies seen are presences acknowledged, news events come into play, the working
title bolstered or felled. The title comes not as a conclusion to a contrived
process for closing an oeuvre but as a signature on a plate that has been
acknowledged to be personal. Anything less than or beyond the personal is not
yet done, the arrival must arrive at the personal. This is the satisfaction
that comes with the recognition of the old familiar recurring motif, which we
critics often desire to call the thesis element. The recurring motif becomes
proof of the personal.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"> It is now, at this point, that we can say
Antonio’s symbolism has happened, in the past as open ones in acknowledgment of
the values others may attach to the same picture, in the present as both
secretly personal and publicly public by virtue of the publicly-shared
referents of the chosen titles. The title itself has become a center.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"> Then again, it’s not as if the title wasn’t
already there progressing with the daily evolution of the work as it was
initiated by the traffic of pencil or charcoal or pastel marks directly applied
as ghostly presences to the trigonometry on canvas. So much for this talk about
process. [FIN]</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 20.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">2. Depot of Anti-Expressionist Symbolism<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">SOME Antonio followers might have seen that
2012 Antonio work titled <i>Poetry in Three
Tongues</i>. I call back this work to show how in the current show of mainly
2013 works it may represent Antonio’s transformation from an artist of a
previous Blue Funk Erotica to being one for a new BFE direction. In years
previous, Antonio’s BFE rested luxuriantly behind his quasi-narrative and
pseudo-narrative still stage plays as well as in his illustration of various
existing literary narratives that turned out to be more like BFE variations on
the original stories they purported to depict.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gWWyk7DC4vE/Uz1jAJnmtSI/AAAAAAAAAu8/UitNQamDjZw/s1600/710_419369_10150587664787929_556082928_9026963_931772085_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gWWyk7DC4vE/Uz1jAJnmtSI/AAAAAAAAAu8/UitNQamDjZw/s1600/710_419369_10150587664787929_556082928_9026963_931772085_n.jpg" height="306" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">monochrome photo of Antonio's <i>Poetry in Three Tongues</i>, 42 x 54", acrylic on canvas, 2012. From http://www.surrealismnow.com/totem/featuredartistpage.html</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-GB"> That 2012-13 transformation leads us to the
present collection of works, painted through the stretch of 2013, that
momentarily (or permanently) leaves the poststructuralist openness of the
artist’s older paintings to almost hype up that part in Antonio with a more
closed text (as against open text) symbolist intents.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> Where is this symbolism leading us toward? In
that 2012 work <i>Poetry in Three Tongues</i>,
Antonio provided us a hint—familiar images of concerns mundane (chess play),
deep (zoology study), and routine-economic (butchery work). As usual, Antonio’s
portrait faces here defied expression (and expressionism) and played up his
wont for that drama of thinking that in turn inspires viewers to inhabit a
similar world of contemplation.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> What
is the point of this contemplation? What should be the object of our
contemplation? Another 2012 piece I would like to go back to is <i>Aegri Somnia</i>, which was a more literal
erotica showing an undressing female’s back and backside (talk of facelessness
as dis-expression that also hurled at our faces an ass!). Around this erotic
central figure were: a clown/jester/harlequin on his way out carrying on his right
shoulder a young female with a likely-false sceptre and crown in her hands (she
had a mesmerized/drunken look, unworthy of a queen, directed at “the
cameraman”, and Antonio avoided showing teeth in her open mouth); a student or
intellectual sleeping beside his open book or journal; a gourmand studying a
slice of meat on his fork; a young female figure observing a butterfly. If you
had seen this piece, you would have noticed that action and expression,
respectively, were present only on the bird diving toward a river and on a
cannibal pig showing his teeth upon a roasted mate. This work’s drama was an
ennui- or tiredness-filled world for humans, horror of horrors, where dramatic
expressionism was the mere luxury of animals. And although anyone could have
structured Marxist readings of a worker-capitalist or subject-royalty or powerless-powerful
relationship into an Antonio scene like <i>Aegri
Somnia</i>, in the end they would find themselves in a mere depiction of a quiet or
hidden misery behind a contentedness both political and psychological. (If it’s
an aesthetic contentedness, it then offers political and psychological
symbolism independent of expressionism’s shock methodology).</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-GB"> The psychology around this relationship
gets clarified in some of the works in the present collection. In <b><i>The
Do-Nothing King</i></b>, the royalty-subject relationship is more explicitly
used to show a squawking, supposedly bird-brained bird-king (expression allowed
on a </span><i><span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">roi fainéant</span></i><span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">!</span><span lang="EN-GB">).
And although the singer-figure on the left is showing his teeth as he sings and
could be read as Antonio’s version of Munch’s <i>The Scream</i>, context frustrates (mocks?) expressionism as that figure’s
singing ultimately ends up on the senses as nothing more than a picture of
submission to a job’s requirement. Here is Antonio’s symbolist genius working
through a Lee Strasberg device, quietly method-acting through space without the
need to screech.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-GB">EXPRESSIONISM was inspired by 19<sup>th</sup>-century
symbolism and carried forward even into this period of the 21<sup>st</sup>
century the latter’s torch. But Antonio’s reservation towards expressionist
symbolism is not in any way similar to Stuckists’ claims to “authenticity”
versus Conceptualism.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 11pt;"> For instance, in what would otherwise be a
Buddhist-cum-Christian narrative piece, the show’s eponymously-titled <b><i>The
Mustard Seed</i></b>, we are presented a moustachioed man in a suit and tie
carrying an axe, one leg embraced (hindered) by a dwarf, as he approaches the
supposedly mustard tree. Lesbians kiss in the background, another male figure
on the right eats indifferent to what’s around him, and two blank-faced females
appear on the foreground. It’s all a product of an attitude that seeks not to
destroy an expressionist bent but merely to offer an alternative—the
alternative of disengagement. This modesty, compared to expressionist
self-hype of its direct engagement, is his own modest mustard seed to achieving an aesthetic heaven.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 11pt;"><br /></span></span></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-qvW7q3Nn18Y/Uz1lyfOn7_I/AAAAAAAAAvI/g5eMrm08PWM/s1600/Marcel+MA539+The+Mustard+seed+60x60+Oil+on+Canvas+2013.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-qvW7q3Nn18Y/Uz1lyfOn7_I/AAAAAAAAAvI/g5eMrm08PWM/s1600/Marcel+MA539+The+Mustard+seed+60x60+Oil+on+Canvas+2013.JPG" height="391" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The Mustard Seed</i>, 60 x 60", oil on canvas, 2013</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 11pt;"><br /></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-GB"><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> If
there’s any mockery in this show at all, it’s in the subtle mockery of
expressionism’s tantrums. As an option to these tantrums, Antonio offers
symbolism’s postmodern self-consciousness or self-semiotics. I was already
seeing it in 2012, as in an acrylic titled <i>The
Mirror Stage</i>, where Antonio portrayed a Lacanian self-remembering. In the
picture, a boy pondered himself on a girl’s looking-glass while the girl lying
on the ground contemplated her imaginary self while looking at “the painter’s
camera”. Defying the concept of self-contemplation as synonymous to narcissism
(you could see a pool of fishes in the background)—perhaps narcissism has more
in common with tantrums and complaining—, Antonio demonstrated that postmodern
self-consciousness is self-alienating instead of self-identifying, actually a
denial of identification even as it struggles with the truth of the surrounding
illusions. Or is this denial of identification verily a resultant of this very struggle
with the truth of those surrounding illusions? Ultimately, after the fact, all
those (de Chirico-esque) objects in Antonio’s compositions act as mirrors for
his characters’ self-conscious crises.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-GB"><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> In
a piece in the present show titled <b><i>A Love Encounter</i></b>, the lovers’ dance
and the accoutrements of courting likewise become mirrors for this
self-alienation. Animals are mirrors for contemplating the relationship between
self and those living others, going beyond anthropocentrism. Mulling over one’s
nudity becomes a meditation on one’s place in the existing interrelationships
in nature, on one’s humanity within the ecology. But lest we equate this
self-consciousness solely with intellectual reflection (zoology, perhaps), it
can also lead to the denial of the self through escaping intellection and
falling for the (albeit boring) freedom of socializing (card games, perhaps, or
hobbies like sewing).</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-GB"><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> And
so, coming full circle, we come to understand Antonio’s obsession with ennui in
the years past. It is not simply “boredom” the way the word would translate to
English, but the product of man’s estranged relationship with a challenging
world. It is in fact an almost-sad surrender to the mysterious Immensity. But while
some would illustrate alienation with the self-deprecating smile of humour or
self-effacement, Antonio illustrates it with features of reflection (science,
magic), contrivance (religion, myth-making, story-making), indifference (the
ennui we see), and subtle or silent (because fearsome of aloneness)
detestation. We see that last struggle in <b><i>Myths to Live By</i></b>, through the
psychology of a dancing couple in the foreground who may not really be into
their being a couple—is marriage one of the social myths Antonio would want to
include in his Joseph Campbellian list of myths? We don’t know.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-GB"><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> In <b><i>To Be
or Not to Be</i></b>, Antonio combines elements of cubism, the collage, and Pop
art to posit his characters in a psychology of awe, speechlessness, and
innocence/ignorance vis a vis a colourful world of consumer goods and decisions.
The human perspective here becomes no more intelligent than a dog’s.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-GB"><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> Other
possible relationships (between man and objects as well as between man and
others) are explored further in a Kafkaesque composition titled <b><i>The
Test</i></b>. Antonio’s acting direction works well here in representing the
tension between two debating male friends, again subtly presented instead of
loudly.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-GB"><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> Another
subtle trick is used for <b><i>Untitled</i></b>, where a post-coital scene
of two young people sleeping as curling shapes on a beach is foregrounded by
the sea’s curves, a curling fish set within. Is the fish asleep (in harmony
with the couple) or not (contrasting with the couple)?</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-GB"><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> A
masterstroke of subtle symbology is <b><i>Life Is A Struggle Against Sleep</i></b>,
where Antonio’s bored actors struggling to kill time with their respective
chosen interests—as mere workers for or subjects to a giant hand of power—are
backgrounded by a de Chirico window to a metaphysical world, transporting thus
the ennui and acquiescence to other possible philosophical or even political
heights.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-GB"><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-3p7p-pq1EQA/Uz1nhVPkGUI/AAAAAAAAAvc/DFAMruOJis0/s1600/Marcel+MA541+Life+is+a+Struggle+Against+Sleep+2013.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-3p7p-pq1EQA/Uz1nhVPkGUI/AAAAAAAAAvc/DFAMruOJis0/s1600/Marcel+MA541+Life+is+a+Struggle+Against+Sleep+2013.JPG" height="310" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Life Is A Struggle Against Sleep</i>, 42 x 54", 2013</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span lang="EN-GB"><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-GB"><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b><i><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 11pt;"> The
Devil’s Backside</span></i></b><i><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span></i><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 11pt;">(a
word-play, perhaps, around the title of the del Toro horror flick <i>The Devil’s Backbone</i>) tames the terror
in the devil and night owl figures through a post-coital-ennui composition that’s
been a signature Antonio mannerism. Notice also the artist’s nice habit of
inhabiting many of his scenes with “workers,” in this case a brass-band
musician.</span></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> More workers inhabit <b><i>The Midnight Radio Hour</i></b>,
just as they do many of the pieces in this show. But in <i>Midnight Radio Hour</i>, the scene occurs in the bright of day, with
the modern-day urban inhabitants going about their business (is Antonio mocking
or emulating grade school social studies textbook </span></span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt;">illustrations?), expressionless, with one
asleep. Thus, even Diego Rivera’s Marxist expressionism gets a kicking in this
river of Antonio dramas.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-GB"><span lang="EN-GB"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> The
drama of roles is played on further in <b><i>The River Dreams of Angel Flores, Jr.</i></b>,
where we see the living head of the late Angel Flores, Jr. (aka Roberto Chabet)
floating on a dark river, his body left on a wheelchair at the bank. You could
say this is Antonio’s salute to last year’s passing of his dear professor and
godfather, acknowledging the aesthetic guru’s eternal presence in the
Philippine art world’s river of artmaking dreams; but doesn’t Antonio also here
regard the river as separate from his worldly concerns? And so Chabet’s
open-eyed intellectual leaning towards the abstract and the conceptual is
thrown into this collectively-emulated river, as if to say, “look at me, sir;
see me go back to the symbolist narratives and myths that you so left out in
your (equally mythological, by the way) ocean of preferences.”</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span lang="EN-GB"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 11pt;"> Indeed,
Antonio’s symbology does try to cover all the grounds of his personal
semiotics, from where he works like a free jazz artist who starts from A, goes on
to B and C and D and so on, and later goes back to A. This is what decides for
Antonio’s process of adding or replacing images to a composition. For instance,
in Antonio’s 2012 work </span></span></span></span><i style="font-size: 11pt;">Elective
Affinities</i><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> (not in this show), the artist’s philosophical bent started as a
visual pun on the egg in Magritte’s own </span><i style="font-size: 11pt;">Elective
Affinities</i><span style="font-size: 11pt;">, which latter piece was itself a pun around the title of a
Goethe novel on chemical affinity. In Antonio’s version, the egg was a bright
female thigh near the groin; the Goethean chemical incompatibility, meanwhile, was
dramatized by the painting’s male figure’s seeming rapture directed not at the
female figure but at another object of interest: a book. The Goethe theme went
to Magritte went to Antonio went to Goethe. Or was this Antonio’s self-critique
on possible incompatibilities within his own symbolist erotica occurring in
that surrealist space between his symbolist intent and his audience’s reading?</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> In
his new works, as in <b><i>Two Girls Reading a Book</i></b>,<b><i> </i></b>Antonio’s
self-critique on possible incompatibilities within his own symbolist erotica is
illustrated by the distances occurring between objects of intellection (e.g.
books) and the knowledge pursuer, between knowledge pursuer and the
disinterested, between what could be knowledge and what could be pop rumor, as
if that last portrays symbol reading itself. Indeed, in 2013-14, two girls (or
boys) reading a book, or reading a painting on a wall for that matter, has
entered the gallery of the mind way beyond where Picasso’s work with the same
title could go when it attacked our eyes in 1934.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b><i><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 11pt;"> The
Mystery of the Butterfly Wing</span></i></b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 11pt;">,
meanwhile, compartmentalizes individuals into profiles with props. That makes
that title quite apt, considering that in science that would precisely
translate to “the mystery of diversity”.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> Then,
Antonio takes this compartmentalization farther in <b><i>Untitled (with big fish)</i></b>,
where the partitions are more psychological than spatial. The cubist-collage
format as dream generates a social take on urban alienation.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-A-9-ez9lB8M/Uz1oa1U9eoI/AAAAAAAAAvk/i1jFt8UX83U/s1600/P1020972.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-A-9-ez9lB8M/Uz1oa1U9eoI/AAAAAAAAAvk/i1jFt8UX83U/s1600/P1020972.jpg" height="315" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Untitled (with big fish)</i>, 43 x 54", acrylic on canvas?, 2013</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> Finally,
in <b><i>Pandora</i></b>,
the psychological partitions turn into portrait images of self-immersion, this
despite the image in the background of a relational activity (a relational
activity which could in itself be a product of a self’s or the involved selves’
selfishness). Self-immersion as self-worship? We know better, of course; judging from all the Antonios we have
seen through the years, any self-immersion is really an immersion in the
distance between the self and something or someone else. Self-immersion as the
root of all evil? Perhaps.</span></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> Indeed,
with this collection’s dizzying array of intelligent significances, it is
already a cause for celebration that in spite of the commercial popularity of
the many sorts of Marcel Antonios peddled to the art market these past two-plus
decades, a popularity enough to content an artist towards luxuriating in the
routine of mass producing his success, the Antonio thesis has proved once again
that it will never ever be dead in its tracks. Year after year the BFE thesis
develops. Well, perhaps it has really only just begun. [FIN]</span></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></span></span></div>
Jojo Soria de Veyrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10755588651423753783noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2887809293642421519.post-44974044035427790292014-04-03T21:00:00.001+08:002015-02-11T15:31:34.607+08:00Marcel Antonio’s new dive into symbolism<br />
<a href="http://lifestyle.inquirer.net/155715/marcel-antonios-new-dive-into-symbolism-2" target="_blank">http://lifestyle.inquirer.net/155715/marcel-antonios-new-dive-into-symbolism-2</a><br />
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<br />Jojo Soria de Veyrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10755588651423753783noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2887809293642421519.post-24387940453125220802013-05-29T17:13:00.000+08:002015-02-11T15:52:10.189+08:00ANG HULING HALAKHAK<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://jeffvadillo.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/combo-7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://jeffvadillo.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/combo-7.jpg" height="185" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">photo of TV news anchor Jessica Soho and comedian Vice Ganda borrowed from </span>http://jeffvadillo.com/2013/05/vice-ganda-jessica-soho-who-will-get-the-last-laugh/</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">“Some men, under the notion of weeding out prejudice, eradicate virtue, honesty and religion.” </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">― Jonathan Swift</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; line-height: 18px;">UNA sa lahat, ganito.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;"><b>Joke:</b> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">"Ang hirap nga kung si Jessica Soho magbobold. Kailangan gang rape lagi."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; line-height: 18px;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #37404e;"><b>Apologia about joke:</b> </span><span class="text_exposed_show" style="color: #37404e; display: inline;">"Hindi ko po kailanman gugustuhing kutyain ang sinumang rape victim. Wala po akong intensyong masama, na gustuhing pagtawanan ang mga rape victims, alam ko pong seryoso ang rape. Kaya hindi ko po ginawang seryoso na pagtawanan ang rape victims. (?) Wala po akong intensyong masama. . . . pinalaki nang pinalaki nang pinalaki na ginawang isang national issue na nagsimula sa isang simpleng biro. . . . Kung hindi po ako nauunawaan, paumanhin po ako sa inyo. Sa mga nakaunawa nang mahusay sa mga biro ko, maraming-maraming salamat. . . . Hindi lahat ng jokes ay nakakatawa; depende yan sa kung paano mo tatanggapin."</span></span></span></span></div>
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<span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">HAYAAN niyo akong palakihin pa ng kaunti ang isyu. Tulad ng iba riyan, mahilig din akong magpalaki ng isyu, dahil pinalaki ako ng mga nag-alaga sa akin na ituring na malaki -- at maaaring palakihin pa -- ang lahat ng bagay, ang lahat ng detalye, ang lahat ng isyu sa mundo, kung kaya't kahit ang pulitika sa likod ng simpleng imported na arina na ginagamit sa ating inosenteng pambansang almusal ay pinakikialaman ko.</span></div>
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<span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Totoong maraming biro ang hindi sinasadya. Maraming biro ang may tanging hangarin na magpatawa lamang. Simpleng biro kung tawagin.</span></div>
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<span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Subalit ito ang itatanong ko. Gagawa ka ba ng jokes tungkol sa mga Palestino sa harap ng mga Palestino, o jokes tungkol sa korapsyon sa Vatican sa harap ng mga Obispo? Tunay na matatawa ang mga Nazis sa mga jokes mo tungkol sa mga Hudyo. Totoong matatawa ang mga macho sa mga jokes mo tungkol sa mga bakla. At malaki ang tsansang matawa ang mga bobo sa mga jokes mo tungkol sa pamilya ni Aling Nena: pilay ang panganay, mataba ang bunso, payat ang asawang may tuberculosis.</span></div>
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<span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Hindi mo kailangan mag-isip para magpatawa. Sabi nga ng satirist na si Jonathan Swift, kailangan mo lang ang iyong prejudice. Ang career ni Swift ay madalas na umikot sa virtue at kasalanan ng prejudice na tila kasama na ng human-ness.</span></div>
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<span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Maraming mga biro ng prejudice ang naririnig natin araw-araw galing sa mga tambay, o di kaya galing sa ating mga propesor: mga simpleng biro tungkol sa mga Bisaya, sa mga Kapampangan, sa mga Intsik, sa mga Bombay, sa mga pilay, sa mga bakla, sa mga relihiyoso, sa mga walang trabaho, sa mga Pilipino, atbp.</span></div>
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<span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Maraming biro ang maririnig galing sa mga matatanda, mga kabataan, galing sa mga relihiyoso, galing sa mga gago, galing sa mga matutuwid, galing sa mga bakla sa salon, galing sa mga barako sa beerhouse, galing sa mga kriminal, at galing sa mga santo, at ang lahat ng mga simpleng birong ito ay ayon sa kanilang prejudices.</span></div>
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<span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Uulitin ko lang po ang Swiftian axiom: ang nakakatawa at tawanan ay produkto ng ating prejudice.</span></div>
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<span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> At dahil ang bawat komedya ay galing sa isang prejudice, malamang na isang araw ay may aalma sa mga biro mo kung ito'y narinig ng target ng iyong prejudice.</span></div>
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<span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">HINDI ko minumungkahi na maging mas "malawak" o "sensitibo" pa ang ating mga komedyante, dahil hindi ko rin lubos maisip kung paano mangyayari iyon o paano gagawin ito. Inaalok ko lamang na sila'y maging mas mapagmatyag sa kanilang manonood. Ito ang sasabihin ko sa kanila:</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;"> Huwag gagawa ng biro tungkol sa mga Hudyo kung ika'y nasa Tel Aviv. Huwag magbibiro tungkol sa mga Bisaya kung ika'y nasa Cebu. Huwag magbiro tungkol sa mga walang edukasyon kung ika'y nasa basketball court ng squatter area sa Tondo. Huwag magbiro tungkol sa gang rape kung ika'y nasa ospital na may mga biktima ng gang rape. Huwag magbiro tungkol sa obesity sa Christimas Party ng . . . may obesity problems.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;"> Kung nasa Araneta Center ka naman, maging </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">mas</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;"> mapagmatyag! Dahil hindi ka nasa Christmas Party ng mga German neo-Nazis na okey ang mga jokes mo laban sa mga imigrante sa Germany, hindi ka nasa Christmas Party ng mga Obispo na okey ang mga jokes mo laban kay Risa Hontiveros. Nasa party ka na kung saan maraming uri ng tao ang nanonood!</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;"> Inaalok ko ito hindi dahil malambot ang puso ko sa lahat ng uri ng tao. Tulad ng lahat ng komedyante, may mga prejudices din ako.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;"> Inaalok ko ito dahil malambot ang puso ko mismo sa mga komedyante, dahil komedyante rin po ako -- mahilig akong magpatawa at gumawa ng jokes laban sa mga kinabubuwisetan kong tao at hayop.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;"> Ang mga may prejudice laban sa mga kinaiinisan ko ang tanging nakakaintindi sa jokes ko. Ang mga kinaiinisan ko, o yung mga nag-aakalang naiinis ako sa kanila dahil sa jokes ko, ay natural na di "nakakaintindi."</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;"> Naiintindihan ko ang trabaho ng mga nagpapatawa. Ang magpasaya.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;"> Marami nga naman tayong kinaiinisan sa mundo, madalas nga ay hindi natin alam na kinaiinisan natin sila. Lumalabas na lang iyan sa mga jokes at pasaring natin. Ang hangad lamang natin ay mapasaya ang mga Komunista sa kanilang mga kampo, halimbawa, o ang mga Protestante sa kanilang mga simabahan, o ang mga Ilokano sa kanilang rehiyon, o ang mga robber-rapists sa kanilang mga hideouts. Depende na lang yan sa kung sino ang kliyente natin sa ating propesyong pagpapatawa na tatanggap sa mga jokes natin.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;"> Ngunit naiintindihan ko rin ang trabaho ng mga galit. Ang magalit.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;"> Kaya ito lang, bilang panghuli. Inaalok kong huwag na huwag nating pagtatawanan ang mga galit na. Sinasabi ko ito hindi para takutin ang mga sarili natin sa sindak ng kanilang galit, kundi sa takot lamang na baka, sa bandang huli, hindi maging sa atin pa rin kundi sa kanila na ang huling halakhak. ###</span></div>
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<span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><b>ADDENDUM:</b><br /><br /><b>May 31, 2013</b>. Tinawag ang pansin natin sa isang segment ng sitcom na </span><i style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">Bubble Gang</i><span style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">, na ipinalabas noong taong 2010. Heto iyon: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=bv-3Qp644MQ" target="_blank">CLICK DITO</a>.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline;"><span style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></span></span><b style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">June 6, 2013</b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline;"><span style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">. Nagpahayag ng kanilang galit o pagkadismaya ang ilang mga taga-St. Scholastica's College dahil sa isang <i>Pugad Baboy </i>comic strip na may slur laban sa lesbians sa all-girls Catholic schools: <a href="http://www.interaksyon.com/article/63449/pugad-baboy-cartoonist-pol-medina-fired-by-pdi-smells-a-conspigracy" target="_blank">CLICK DITO</a>.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline;"><span style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></span></span><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><b>August 19, 2014</b>. Idineklarang persona non grata si komedyanteng Ramon Bautista sa Davao City matapos mabastos ang city government officials sa isang patawa nito</span><span style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CghVyDCKFwI#t=21" target="_blank">CLICK DITO</a>.</span></span><br />
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Jojo Soria de Veyrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10755588651423753783noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2887809293642421519.post-88673905893856282942013-03-07T12:05:00.000+08:002015-02-11T21:30:34.177+08:00A Social Liberal's Disclaimer on State Art Subsidy<br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">photo borrowed from http://www.philembassy.no/</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">(this 1,183-word mini-essay is adapted from one that I posted on my official website in the year 2001; the last four paragraphs that I added to that essay here derives from a conversation I had with Manila painter and gallery owner Simkin de Pio and veteran journalist and columnist Sylvia Mayuga this morning)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">IN SEVERAL blogs of mine (such as <a href="http://partycrashingangle.blogspot.com/1999/08/cause-oriented-ccp.html" target="_blank">here</a>, <a href="http://partycrashingangle.blogspot.com/2000/03/a-national-artist-award-proclamation.html" target="_blank">here</a>, and these <a href="http://jojosoriadeveyra.blogspot.com/search/label/art%20and%20the%20state" target="_blank">seven blog essays</a> with the label "art and the state"), I mainly carried my earlier belief that art should not be the business of government that shall have to use tax money for art's promotion. I went against the hidden rationales for such
institutions as the Cultural Center of the Philippines, the National Commission
for Culture and the Arts, and the concept of a National Artist of the Philippines title award. My main argument was that these all subsidize a lie, and promote a reflection of
an art not of the people these pretended to be for but merely of an elite
set of artists and art aficionados serving the aesthetics of the elite.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> Another aspect of those blogs implied a truism, such as that in
literature concerning the politics of publication. Within a clique-prone Philippine literati that leaves
no room for a totally dissenting standard of younger literary aesthetics, for example, the young---ordinarily counted as part of the nation---may either be marginalized or forced to conform.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> However, I now happen to have a different macro-view of
both these matters, despite my retaining certain facets of my old angle.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> My change of view on the first matter is not
borne of any interest in an endowment or grant from such an institution as the NCCA, the CCP,
a state university, or a government entity; nor has it been prompted by a meditation
on the possibility of being offered any such help which may come, say, in
the form of a
publishing grant.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> This change has simply been promoted by a realization. I've realized that
perhaps my initial reaction was due to a complex combination in me of 1) an
arguable populism and 2) a simple disgust at the overt patronage system I saw around me that seemed to advocate adherence to established aesthetics. The change came thus: a later self-assessment of my point of
view led me to realize that government </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">cannot avoid</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> engaging itself in
the promotion of what it deems to be the nation's art, or what it idealizes to be the nation's art, as what ought to be its art. It cannot.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> My realization
said to me: perhaps our individual protestations are more towards details of
a ruling clique's actions, actions which would involve sins of omission or
sins of wrong inclusion, and so on. For in the end one might not protest
too much if one's interest, selfish or partisan, is drafted into this same
system. For, certainly, all regimes </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">cannot ignore the authority of
controlling a nation's art collection and subsidies in the same way that it cannot
ignore the necessity of holding on to a Department of Education and its consultants</i><span style="font-family: inherit;">.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">FOR WHAT would happen indeed if we leave everything to the people (or a corporate
elite)? Especially among a people rendered helpless in clamoring for a
more socialized education, albeit from a government which has its hands tied to the
interests of creditors?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> All governments
must and do involve a modicum of elitism, if only---at best---to guard the
populist philosophy of serving the people. This, because the people, one might say,
and this is a lesson even the Communists have learned throughout their
insurgency, are not always likely to have the capacity to know what's good for them
(or even know who's truly on their side). Businessmen who practice the daily art of hype know very well that
people will try to learn what any hype advises them to know, and it is
only government that can apply the virtue of turning its elitist influence into a
pro-people program, as against corporate patronage the motives of which
may either be solely profit, coursed through subtle cultural propaganda, or tax rebates.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"> There will remain conflicts over a government's
sponsorship of certain art, mainly on what should be up there and what
shouldn't, who receives aid and who don't, and changes do occur through the dynamics of history. But no one can argue against the fact---I believe now---that all governments have a need for symbols and monuments, whether solidly manifest or invisible/intangible, and the art each regime promotes, bad or otherwise,
mediocre or great, shall be a reflection of its (sometimes fraudulent) populist vision.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">MY ONLY wish is that every regime's espoused art fully acknowledges and declares itself as part of </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">the regime's</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i> art </i>intended </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">for</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> the nation. The state ought to require this acknowledgement and/or declaration, as </span>government ought to be fully aware of what its appointed cultural and arts people are doing in the cultural and arts departments, with the same concentration it is putting on the education front. The cultural and arts departments of the state are, after all---whether the state admits it or not---, part of the state's propaganda machine for advancing its ideology (and aesthetic ideology, if any).</div>
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Conversely, critics must likewise accept the fact that there is always that direct correlation between the state-supported art products displayed and endorsed/awarded during an era and that era's regime's ideology (and aesthetic ideology) or lack thereof. Noting this, therefore, the context of a social realist's receiving an award during an oppressive neoliberal era would be entirely different from the context of the same occurrence during a socialist or social liberal government's era. With c<span style="font-family: inherit;">ritics aware of this relationship, whining is put aside and mere recording of the contexts becomes the only necessary order of the day.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> In a <i>Business World</i> article circulating in Facebook this morning regarding a supposed <a href="http://www.bworldonline.com/weekender/content.php?id=66217" target="_blank">golden age in Philippine art</a>, the issue about a necessary government support for art was likewise discussed. In the article, art critic and curator Patrick Flores was quoted as saying, "The legacy of art is to instill imagination. The government is not investing in art as a product, but (it is) investing in imagination. A population with imagination becomes more critical, not <i>sunud-sunuran lang</i> (not just mindlessly obedient). They are suspicious of convention, of norms. Art goes against norms. Of course this will not be immediate, but it can shape the world."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span>Patrick is of course wishing upon the state. My view is that we can't really whine against the state's intense or otherwise lackadaisical role in/with the arts, because the state will always do what it pleases as regards the cultural and arts departments under its wing, according to its ideology or lack thereof. Again, the role of the critic is to record this correlation between the state and its art programs (or lack thereof), not impose on it or protest against it (which imposition or protestation only amounts to whining from a lack of understanding of the regime's own philosophy or aesthetics). Thus, we cannot whine against a Gloria Arroyo - Carlo Caparas correlation, for instance, as what happened in Arroyo's last year in office. It is, instead, the critic's better option to record that correlation as apt to an Arroyo ideology. You can't criticize the correlation, for the simple reason that it's a correlation. You can't criticize data, simply because data is data. You can, however, criticize the ideology that produces that correlation. [END]</div>
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Jojo Soria de Veyrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10755588651423753783noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2887809293642421519.post-86355413066655907072013-02-26T22:06:00.000+08:002015-02-11T21:38:04.703+08:00A NATION’S 20/20 IMAGINATION<br />
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<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 115%;">“Real politics is to engage to resolve problems
within a collective with enthusiasm. It's not simply to delegate
problems to the professionals. Love is like politics in that it's not a
professional affair. There are no professionals in love, and none in real politics.”
– Alain Badiou</span><b><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-large; line-height: 115%;">“T</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: large;">he President’s Office” (curated by Antares Bartolome</span></span></span><span style="color: red; line-height: 18px;"><b>[1]</b></span><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: large;">)</span><span style="color: red;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;">o</span></span><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 18px;">ccurred</span><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 115%;"> at the U.P. Vargas Museum from January 8 until February 9 this year. It was purportedly part of “Blind Spots,” a working series exploring restricted spaces as
springboards “for imaginative construction.” So, presented with that goal, how did one—like a poet—show
off anticipated wit upon neither images of seen reality nor the concocted
images of surreal dreaming but upon merely hidden but ostensibly real spaces?
How did the imagination work around this latency?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"> <span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">But
the deeper question would be: what was the resultant of such an exercise?
With which did the imagination try to work? Detached humor? A more direct caustic
humor? Emotional sarcasm/satire? Empathy? Sympathy? Understanding? Paranoia?
Ignorance? Indifference? What? The artist could in fact have explored all these points
of flight with all the usual creative aplomb or fun were he using more
universal imagery, as, say, a child in a garage unseen by its mom trying to back
up the car. Exploiting such an emotional scene-situation for artistic concerns
and causes is commonplace, especially in the cinematic art of pounding our universalized,
normal hearts.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">It’s
a different story when art becomes political. The imagination may be allowed
all sorts of humor and colors of expression (the too-dark, the too-red, the
green with envy, the yellowed, even the too-heavenly-white), but simply cannot
suffer to be seen as shallow in its working with ignorance. This, especially in
a country currently under someone at the helm who has been counter-critiquing his
“matatalinong” (read: ignorant) critics, labeling them as mere workers in a
burgeoning criticism industry, working, that is, to keep the network or
readership ratings up or keeping opposition party elements in the sound bites
roster. In short, here is a president flaunting the substance of achievement while
quasi-exposing what he likes to call journalism’s possibly-corrupted refusal to
see the good. And, indeed, could the “fourth estate” proposal be a myth in our
corrupted or partisan times?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">In
this show’s case of handling a political motif, however, values other than a literal
criticality’s were placed on the table. Despite the mind-influence of the more
overtly political exhibition in the museum gallery’s adjoining wing (which
mused on the question of land use from progressivist art’s standpoint), or
despite the show’s wall notes claiming a portrayal of a “den of thieves,” in
the end “The President’s Office” put forward less the emotion or intellections of politics than the luxury of the imagination, in the end clarified what
installation art qua craft and art is all about. The individual concepts may indeed have been familiar, may have been established before by jokes from the drinking-binge
table or the radio station booth or the sitcom set, materializing as our "expectations, fantasies, and perceived relationships that overlay
our collective imaging of the seat of power." But the show’s PR-announced point—exploration rather
than expression—unwittingly or wittingly succeeded as elegant executions of
simple black jokes, expanding on the jokes by sheer subtlety of imagery rather
than an insistent expressionist righteousness.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> For
instance, with </span><i style="font-size: 11pt;">Soiree (Dahil sa Iyo)</i><span style="font-size: 11pt;">,
Alwin Reamillo’s offering of a possible Palace piano</span><span style="color: red; font-size: x-small;"><b>[2]</b></span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span></span></span><span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">(red, white and blue feet and the President’s
seal on the body’s side <span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">for</span>
this symbol of opulence) took on the acerbic but common view of the Presidential
office as one that’s often just playing our economy via the fiat of mere ear
training. But departing from the clichés of radio broadcasters who may know
little or nothing about fiscal policy, Reamillo donned the robe of the poet and looked for a rarer eloquence to deliver the same old message. Here, he literally filled the piano’s soundboard with a large amount of shredded bank notes (bought from
a community of garbage pickers in Gloria Arroyo’s province after watching a TV
report’s discovery of a Central Bank secret disposal in 2011). Then he glued a wooden
heart’s-anatomy chart <span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">(“wooden”
pun not intended?)</span> to the center of the grand piano’s top, almost
neutralizing the acerbic wit and projecting a serious note. Apart from the
playing-with-our-money context’s referencing a central space in Malacañang
called the Music Hall (</span><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">often used for important
meetings with selected members of the cabinet and for entertaining</span><span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">foreign
dignitaries/diplomats), the glued-on heart’s and title’s alluding to Imelda
Marcos’ favorite love song, “Dahil Sa Iyo,” the <s>P</s>20-<s>P</s>50 notes’
carrying the images of the Palace and Old Congress building, and the shreds’
simulation of a garbage dump or volcano (read: social volcano), t</span><span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">he formal contrast between the piano’s lacquer
gloss and the shredded bills’ matte truly affected glamour not only to the mind
but also to the senses, taming thus the politics somewhat without erasing it.
In the end, it was the elegance of the satire and our tempted senses’ reaction to
the presentation apart from the sardonic statement itself that became the
point. It didn’t matter now if the original criticism was correct.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> An
elegant caustic humor, meanwhile, showed in the collaborative work <i>The Stockholders </i>by Mity de la Peña/Jed
Nacabuan/Patch Qunito/J.P. Samson. This literal wall <span style="background-color: white;">piece factured </span>the common intelligentsia wisdom that says
Philippine political maturity is <i>rooted</i>
not in history but in cinema. Hastily painted portraits of past presidents and
presidential wannabes carried titles of movies (local and Hollywood) and were placed
at the tips of a painted tree’s roots. Meanwhile, right below this, Leo Abaya’s
<i>Rigodon</i> played with the check-patterned
floor tiles of the Palace and associated this with the chess game of politics
by illustrating a (pseudo) chess problem using floor stickers of chess-piece
shapes and photo-stickers of Philippine presidents’ faces as chess pieces (all
pawns) on the fake tiles. The idea of the artist as whining mimic or mocker of a chess composer would here have to be mentally contrasted with the idea of <i>that</i> imagined composer who often laughingly wins.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> To
address the issue of security amidst political conflict and ambition, Cian
Dayrit provided readymades-of-sorts titled <i>Trophy
Pelts</i>, involving cult-religious “bulletproof vests” placed in the gallery, thus
evoking the late dictator’s (and his wife’s) predisposition to fall for such
indigenous superstition as well as the present president’s adherence to ethnic
Chinese-Filipino feng shui beliefs. The title may likewise refer to the belief
in a throne/power as divine grace.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> But
it was Manolo Sicat’s furniture set, <i>Palamuti
ng May Sala, </i>that was able to produce a multilayered statement akin to
Reamillo’s. Albeit gleaming in white, the coffeetable made of steel bars
wrought into the word “Mabuhey” on its glassless top was unusable, as were the
benches made from pieces of discarded wood, with their backs looking a lot like
an architect’s model of slums. As foyer pieces that seemed to welcome Palace
visitors to a reality beyond the whitewash, this was one of the show’s works
that wore the loudest color of mockery.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> Looking
outside the gallery’s glass walls from where the lobby white furniture pieces
were, one could glean Buen Abrigo’s half-concealed puppet-looking armalite-toting
figures with woven bags for head masks positioned on some trees, <i>PP1017</i>. While suggestive of Palace security
sniper personnel, the woven-bags-for-masks called to mind the appearance of the local
informants of the Japanese-invasion era called the “makapili”. Were these
snipers supposed to be the same type of traitors, personnel deriving from a
social class who have nonetheless chosen to serve lords of another social class,
a ruling class?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> Another
amusing piece was Lisa Ito’s <i>Personal
Domain</i>, a wall map under glass emulating the appearance of official technical
maps or military maps. However, this emulation led to surprise (or did it?) as
it happened to be by a more personal presidential map where state nomenclature
gave way to filial historiography. For instance, an island was named “Asyenda
ni Lolo” while another was called “My Sanctuary.” Indeed, in Philippine politics
elitism is a perfect equivalent of British royalism.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> Kristine
Calayan’s <i>Made to Measure</i> featured
portal columns made of raw pi<span style="background-color: white;">ña
fiber and rice paper, classy but vulnerable. Behind this, Mark Justiniani’s 2-in1
piece, <i>Hole</i>/<i>Appointed</i>, was out</span>standing. For <i>Hole</i> Justiniani appropriated a part of
the gallery’s architecture for imagining Malacañang and the Presidential chair.
While a stainless Damocles sword hung above the chair in <i>Appointed</i>, beside it on the white floor was a manhole-shaped glass-covered
floor exit (for <i>Hole</i>). The hole revealed an aluminum ladder rung leading down to an unknown tunnel area, with rows of light
bulbs illuminating the way. It was an elegant piece of work that was terse but
sweet, with all the moods of sci-fi, spy cinema, and steampunk converging in
the brain’s own creative appreciation.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> Then,
coming out of a blackened wood gate (simulating precious mahogany) was the piece
by Salvador Alonday, <i>What stood there in
the doorway</i>,<i> </i>a sculpture of a
large sea turtle with a human head (in concrete and acrylic?), possibly referencing
folk parlance’s regard for the turtle-man as one who is slow and seldom comes
out of his house. For a large king turtle-man to be let out of its house and
beyond, out of its gate, is to hasten a political contextuality of what’s
impossible, or of wishful thinking, or otherwise of a shocking fulfillment
of what we think could never happen—the slow leader has come out of his comfort
zone to face his nation.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> Now,
what were a couple of paintings—two from Buen Calubayan’s <i>Landscape Eternal </i>series—doing in a show of installation art pieces,
unless they were to be read as installation art pieces themselves? An erstwhile
First Lady had the reputation of being a buyer and collector of expensive local
paintings and priceless foreign ones, modernist as well as of previous periods,
so: would she have bought these paintings of what looked like fallen bodies on a
tree-surrounded rally ground and of a blood-spattered open field? Would any
president’s wife or sister receive them? Should one, <i>there’s</i> a new paradigm.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> Noel
EL Farol’s bookshelf was one compound of context pieces, with each piece its own
lyric poem.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /> One
layer of thought would have perceived the shelf contents as mere representations of
presidential books/references. Another angle would have considered expression in
material execution: </span><i style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">Unfinished Business
(Series A) </i><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">and </span><i style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">(Series B) </i><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">were
constructions of discarded wood, thus books never touched again, never to be
touched again at all; </span><i style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">Spratly Islands’
Souvenir </i><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">was a glass case filled with white silica sand, a touristy memento
of what is otherwise a motif of geopolitical urgency; </span><i style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">Filipino Favorits </i><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">was another glass case containing rice and a water
vessel, another touristy treatment of an economic point of class conflict; </span><i style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">Target Appointees </i><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">was a dartboard signifying
a not-so-good marksmanship; while </span><i style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">Executive
Appointments</i><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">’ glass case containing toy guns could have been toying with the idea
of a shooting sportsman-president’s image of having appointed shooting range
mates. </span><i style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">Noli by JP </i><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">and </span><i style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">Fili by JP </i><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">were books of constructed
steel, presumably locked in, never to be read again, or otherwise mere
monuments to a now-faux nationalist cause. </span><i style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">Ang
Bagong Balita </i><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">was a copy of the Holy Bible cast in resin, unusable thus. </span><i style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">Filosofi</i><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">, a collage on found objects,
seemed to signify precisely that—political philosophy as a syncretist’s
collection of found objects, like slogans that can change like window curtains.
</span><i style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">Consti </i><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">was supposedly a printed copy
of the Constitution, or so said the engraving . . . on constructed steel—thus, again,
not needing to be opened for reference since it couldn’t be opened anyway. Sure, the
obvious social and political polemics of each of the Farol sub-pieces may
falter in an argument of facts, but that would miss the point. Again, the point
is the alienation of subjects of a land from the truth and facts behind a
Presidency, any Presidency. It occurred to the artist to come up with a concept
anthologizing mini-concepts, a mini-show by itself inside this anthology show—coming
up with </span><i style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">that</i><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"> was already a point for
applause.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"> Applause. Mideo Cruz inserted that audio player
into Farol’s shelf and played in a loop the applause of US Congressmen for
Corazon Aquino’s presence in their halls in 1986. He titled the sound recording
</span></span><i style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">Booby Trap</i><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">, to allude perhaps to the
presidential promise to pay all debts incurred by Ferdinand Marcos. Was the US
Congress applause the trap that Aquino couldn’t get out of later? Was the
applause and US Congress visit merely the crowning ceremony for a trap set up even
before Aquino’s US-supported campaign began? In which case, who was
booby-trapped, Aquino or her subjects? Consider the fact, also, that the recorded
applause did sound a lot like a rainstick flurry, an aural cheese to a rat trap
that would hurt.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> Finally,
there was Renan Ortiz’ <i><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">Sugod</span></i>, positing
Malacañang security in a tweaked survival video game called <i>Lusob (Attack/Invasion). </i>Often in a
video game one can choose to be either the protagonist or the antagonist. Was
the gun-wielder in the played loop a security man or a coup invader, then? Were
the men in barong Tagalog executives <i>of</i>
the Palace or were they attackers disguised in barong? Were they armed enemies or
were they civilians? Whatever (partisan) setting you would have chosen for your imagination
to play around in, the reality remains that the Presidency of a State
presupposes enemies and conflict. And corollary to that, the hidden fact
remains that the President of a given territory and race could also either be
that nation’s hero or its treasonous villain.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">Reamillo’s
Presidential wall seal encased in glass—and made up of shredded bank notes for border accoutrement and crab shells for the seal ground—laid the contextual axiom
for all:</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"> Stating
the obvious statement of this piece, titled </span><i style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">Sa gisa ng
Pangulo</i><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">, amounted to The President having gotten to his post via a lot of
hidden moolah and by the strength of his crab mentality. But could it also be
usable for a non-obvious signification?—alluding to achievement by a popularity
shredding the influence of moolah and by an ability to unite and trample on the
need for crabs in the bucket? Whichever type of President one is, this seal can
remain as <i>the</i> seal.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">And
whichever type of President the viewer may support, the pieces in this show could remain in memory to refer to either a forgotten past, a disappointing present, or a
long insufferable future. For their part, professional artists will continue to
reflect a blinded and divided nation’s 20/20 imagination while abetting, examining,
or merely suffering its ramifications. For art’s sake, yes, but also for
reflecting on the </span><i style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">polis</i><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">. After all, political
art is not just a professional affair. [END]</span></span></div>
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<li id="cite_note-Bartolome-0"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: red;"><b>[1]</b></span> son of activists Heber Bartolome (the folk rock singer-songwriter) and Maita Gomez (the late beauty queen)</span></li>
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<li id="cite_note-Reamillo-0"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: red;"><b>[2]</b></span> Reamillo’s
is not exactly a total outsider’s perspective. <span style="background-color: white;">The artist’s affinity with pianos (he
has used the image in a previous restoration project called Nicanor Abelardo Grand
Piano Project) stems from his family's involvement in maintaining all the
pianos in the presidential Palace. Though he hasn't been to Malacañang himself,
he often recalls the white piano his family built specially for the Marcoses. Imelda
Romualdez Marcos's piano tuner was an older first cousin, whose brother also
worked for Imelda’s brother and later Tacloban mayor Alfredo “Bejo” Romualdez.</span></span></li>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="background: white; color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;">PHOTOS BORROWED FROM VARGAS MUSEUM'S WEBSITE AND FACEBOOK PAGE. OTHER PHOTOS BY MARCEL ANTONIO.</span></span></div>
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Jojo Soria de Veyrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10755588651423753783noreply@blogger.com0Vargas Museum, Roxas Avenue, Quezon City, Philippines14.6532601 121.06680319999998-15.575116399999999 79.933990699999981 44.8816366 162.19961569999998tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2887809293642421519.post-62420842992616895682012-05-20T13:44:00.000+08:002015-02-11T21:39:27.778+08:00The Artist as Genetic Engineer<br />
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;">"Spectres of Mnemosyne"</span></div>
<span style="font-family: times new roman, times, serif;">June 4 - 24, 2012</span><br />
<span style="font-family: times new roman, times, serif;">Blanc Gallery</span><br />
<span style="font-family: times new roman, times, serif;">Unit 2-E Crown Tower, 107 HV dela Costa St., Salcedo Village, Makati City</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I</span>n his first exhibition in 2010 (read my review of that show <a href="http://partycrashingangle.blogspot.com/2010/10/sacrae-particulae-ex-nihilo-inspired.html" target="_blank">here</a>), Gromyko Semper was both iconoclast and aniconist in his parodying and mocking icons of religion (especially Roman Catholic) and (especially religious) history. But perhaps cognizant of the fact that a parody of any sort of iconography qua a socio-political act necessarily manufactures an alternative system of iconography (iconoclasm/aniconism as its own iconography), opening thus itself to a counter-visual criticism of its visual criticism, Semper now turns to explore iconoclasm’s other option—postmodernism’s self-questioning and self-flagellating embrace of semiotics’ Marxist denouncement of both icon- and iconoclastic-touting.</div>
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In his new works, Semper—in his usual woodcut-looking large drawings—takes off inspired by the art of Ukiyo-e and Albín Brunovský. (The drawings are teamed with responses in poetry by American poet William Nace, Jr. Nace’s postmodern poems likewise have a strongly Blakean flavour, heavily peppered with surrealism, Dada, contemporary music, and ironic mythologies urging a more eclectic Christianity—Nace is a former pastor. These literary poesies decidedly add extra layers of nuance to Semper’s drawings.)</div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">A</span>rmed with new visual takeoff points for composition, Semper came up with what he calls “spectres.” In turn, Semper is also now wont to quote Carl Jung (“Dreams are symbolic in order that they cannot be understood, in order that the wish, which is the source of the dream, may remain unknown.” – <i>Psychology of the Unconscious</i>), . . . when previously he would tend to deny Roland Barthes a chance, choosing instead to go for later Terry Eagleton, with a taste for what Umberto Eco calls the “closed text.” Semper’s more senior friend, the painter Marcel Antonio, had been a sounding board for the certainty/uncertainty of that early proclivity, and the art world now knows that Antonio’s art has always been an appropriation of narrative art’s habits (“manners”) for both their narrative (“closed”) and anti-narrative (“open”) values. Having said all of the above, then, one would find the title of Semper’s present show—in referencing ghosts of memory—as verily spot-on.</div>
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Now, looking at the artist’s “portraits of memory” in the show, we’d notice that the characters in these portraits derive from our collective (international) memory of fairy tales, legends, myths, fables and other cosmological sources, each a jumbled child of mnemonics born of this memory’s confused splicing of their sources’ genes, producing thus a new community with its own potential symbology and semiosis almost independent of their parents’ own. With these new creatures, then, Semper transforms the societal Mnemosyne of a universal myth to become a Mnemosyne of the private, almost self-indulgent, ego (the artist’s as well as the viewer’s own reading ego).</div>
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This drunk inward contemplation (and embrace) of memories comes in the manner of an occurrence wherein a hundred influences arrive upon it to such a level of simultaneity that one already forgets the specificity of those influences, rendering it thus impossible for the occurrence to properly acknowledge an influence for a specific/distinct virtue. In Semper’s new art, therefore, the public Mnemosyne is appropriated for the production of portraits of self-indulgence, a collection that ultimately spits on emblems and their fixed genes in favor of new visual species, with each creature wallowing in its own secret aspirations and desires, removed—if possible (as per Barthes’ wonderment)—from societal contexts. In the artist’s words describing these new-mnemonic creatures, “they are codices and syntaxes of my ideologies . . . they are what I am and what I am made of.”</div>
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Additionally, with this new exploration Semper creates a series of new private icons whose feet nonetheless rest on the ground (“I made them look like icons but I took off the halo they should have had”), like new ideal mongrels of merely self-absorbed, sometimes funny, musings (“I wanted them to be ‘fernal’, as opposed to infernal, that is to say of this world and part of it”). Portraits these are, therefore, not of our respective selves as physical figures of vanity for social consideration and awe but of our respective inner selves as “mnemosynes” of honesty.</div>
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Building thus these new alternative icons instead of scolding old ones, Semper engineers a new democracy of iconographies, which democracy and vouching for the private memory could be the better weapon against any iconography’s bigotry and consequent authoritarianism.</div>
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">— May 20, 2012</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://blanc.ph/museum/wp-content/gallery/spectres-of-mnemosyne/nietzche.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://blanc.ph/museum/wp-content/gallery/spectres-of-mnemosyne/nietzche.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small; text-align: left;">SPECTRE ACCORDING TO NIETZSCHE</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small; text-align: left;">18 x 12 inches</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small; text-align: left;">Ink on water color paper</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;">2012</span></span><br />
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<tr><td><a href="http://blanc.ph/museum/wp-content/gallery/spectres-of-mnemosyne/pleroma.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://blanc.ph/museum/wp-content/gallery/spectres-of-mnemosyne/pleroma.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12px; text-align: left;">SPECTRE OF PLEROMA</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12px; text-align: left;">18 x 12 inches</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12px; text-align: left;">Ink on water color paper</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12px;">2012</span></span><br />
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<tr><td><a href="http://blanc.ph/museum/wp-content/gallery/spectres-of-mnemosyne/orpheus.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://blanc.ph/museum/wp-content/gallery/spectres-of-mnemosyne/orpheus.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12px; text-align: left;">THE SPECTRE OF ORPHEUS</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12px; text-align: left;">18 x 12 inches</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12px; text-align: left;">Ink on water color paper</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12px; text-align: left;">2012</span></td></tr>
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Jojo Soria de Veyrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10755588651423753783noreply@blogger.com0Crown Tower, 107 H.V. Dela Costa, Makati City, Philippines14.5609361 121.0261187999999514.5604531 121.02549129999996 14.561419099999998 121.02674629999994tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2887809293642421519.post-1520986568132327242012-02-27T13:24:00.001+08:002015-02-11T21:51:19.118+08:00Irony in Numbers<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-YLkvgmcF4_M/T0rhVqezxRI/AAAAAAAAAYE/Owp8ILhgtNA/s1600/TUP_invites.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-YLkvgmcF4_M/T0rhVqezxRI/AAAAAAAAAYE/Owp8ILhgtNA/s1600/TUP_invites.jpg" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">The S</span><b><span style="line-height: 115%;">TUP</span></b><span style="line-height: 115%;">endous Show, February 23 to March 8,
2012 at Gallerie Anna, SM Mega Mall, is here being peddled as one hell of a,
well, “stupendous show” by eighteen select young and not-so-young painters whose
training derive from the College of Architecture and Fine Arts of the
Technological University of the Philippines (TUP).<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;">“Stupendous” may sound like a modifier
edging towards a hardsell approach to positioning an art exhibition, almost
puzzling by the fact that this show involves merely paintings and not gigantic
sculptures and fearsome installations. However, looking on and hard, could the point
of this show lie in that very title? For to tag a bunch of quiet paintings on quiet walls in a quiet gallery with that very adjective usually reserved for
extreme sports (or for hyped-up artists from the bigger universities) is an act
that does carry with it the juice of irony, even tongue-in-cheek parody.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;">And so, looking further at the
individual pieces, and expecting to find nothing stupendous, the irony I allege
seem to be truly present in the pieces. See here, for instances:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;">Alrashdi Mohammad’s </span><i style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;">Yellow Spot In
Nebulae</i><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;"> illustrates through its titling act a signification or valuation
method (for paintings, at least) that might proceed from mere updated allusions concerning
present-day realities, in this case present-day science. However, what is here achieved seems not so much a mimicry of science illustration as a parody of
painting itself, the way Franz Liszt might mock his own program music if he
were to say his themes are but mere afterthoughts upon the finished products of
the composition act.</span></div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DLjxDD6BjpM/T0rilEcF41I/AAAAAAAAAYM/yMwT6IJ8p7A/s1600/ALRASHDI+S.+MOHAMMAD+-+YELLOW+SPOT+IN+NEBULAE+-+Mixed+Media+on+Canvas+-+48+x+36+-+P44%252C000.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DLjxDD6BjpM/T0rilEcF41I/AAAAAAAAAYM/yMwT6IJ8p7A/s640/ALRASHDI+S.+MOHAMMAD+-+YELLOW+SPOT+IN+NEBULAE+-+Mixed+Media+on+Canvas+-+48+x+36+-+P44%252C000.jpg" height="640" width="483" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;"> Meanwhile, Arden Mopera’s title <i>Hitting Z Birds In One Stone</i> for an oil piece
on textured canvas may initially strike the viewer as mere forgivable bad
English, but yet, what really is the canvas but itself another wall of a big rock cave on which painters paint </span><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;">their hunting stories? And those stories become fossilized/embedded <i>in</i> the rock and not <i>with</i> the rock, the same way pigments (the metallic ones of which are from rocks) are fossilized <i>in</i> the
(textured) grounds and may even be pushing themselves further (via their oil) <i>into</i> the gesso-protected recesses of the
cords of the canvas weave.</span></span></div>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-8KnBv_sqXWk/T0rinXoFOAI/AAAAAAAAAYU/IPoTiz8VqmU/s1600/Arden+Mopera+-+Hitting+Z+Birds+in+1+Stone+-+Oil+on+Textured+Canvas+-+48+x+35+inch.+-+2012+-+GP+-++P50,000.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-8KnBv_sqXWk/T0rinXoFOAI/AAAAAAAAAYU/IPoTiz8VqmU/s400/Arden+Mopera+-+Hitting+Z+Birds+in+1+Stone+-+Oil+on+Textured+Canvas+-+48+x+35+inch.+-+2012+-+GP+-++P50,000.jpg" height="400" width="291" /></a></div>
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<img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HmUqmMHoxE8/T0ri_1fko6I/AAAAAAAAAYc/iy1rlmAMVL8/s400/Arden+Mopera+-+Warrior+-+Oil+on+Textures+on+Canvas+-+57.5+x+35inch.+-+Oil+on+Textured+Canvas+-+2012+-+GP-P70,000.jpg" height="400" style="font-family: inherit;" width="243" /></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;">Further, in </span><i style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;">Warrior</i><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;">, Mopera also seems to push forth a comment on portrait
subjects as could-be warriors, with umbrellas for shields, who might best be shielding
themselves from the visual interpretations of artists (and critics) who treat portraiture as
a kind of visual social-science-labeling medium.</span></div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-FRrD54FlHCM/T0rjBCC91JI/AAAAAAAAAYk/DVcCs2Tfb4E/s1600/Cesar+Villanueva+Delgado+-+Counting+the+Cost.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-FRrD54FlHCM/T0rjBCC91JI/AAAAAAAAAYk/DVcCs2Tfb4E/s640/Cesar+Villanueva+Delgado+-+Counting+the+Cost.jpg" height="640" width="515" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;">Now, could Cesar Delgado’s </span><i style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;">Counting
the Cost</i><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;">—despite some obvious or latent other statement—also</span><i style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;"> </i><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;">be a comment on portraiture, presenting
a disinterested subject that’s either ignoring, or unaware of, the painter and
his concerns?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;"> There are other works in this show that
manifest the ironies in painting today in more elliptical ways, elliptical for
being disguised within established traditions. Chriseo Sipat’s </span><i style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;">Toxic Zone</i><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;"> explores yet again the Pop
art poetry of treading the line between oil painting and poster art, while Demosthenes
Campos’ abstracts (</span><i style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;">Passage</i><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;"> and </span><i style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;">Trail</i><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;">) classically extend the mixed media painting
tradition of asking yet again where painting ends and where sculpture begins.</span></span></div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-CQlE-jBc6fA/T0rjC_M8KHI/AAAAAAAAAYo/gV1wLYXyWv0/s1600/Chris+Sipat+-+TOXIC+ZONE+-+Oil+on+Canvas+-+36+x+36inch.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-CQlE-jBc6fA/T0rjC_M8KHI/AAAAAAAAAYo/gV1wLYXyWv0/s400/Chris+Sipat+-+TOXIC+ZONE+-+Oil+on+Canvas+-+36+x+36inch.jpg" height="396" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Chriseo Sipat – “Toxic Zone” – 36”x36” – Oil on canvas</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Gs_YCC3Abiw/T0rjGtVuC4I/AAAAAAAAAY8/oNZFp8yLMNs/s1600/DEMOSTHENES+T.+CAMPOS+-+Trail+-+Mixed+Media+-+37+x+48inch.+2011+-+P60,000.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Gs_YCC3Abiw/T0rjGtVuC4I/AAAAAAAAAY8/oNZFp8yLMNs/s640/DEMOSTHENES+T.+CAMPOS+-+Trail+-+Mixed+Media+-+37+x+48inch.+2011+-+P60,000.jpg" height="640" width="491" /></a>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Demosthenes Campos – “Passage” – 34” x 48” – Mixed Media on
canvas</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-11blcBXhB2k/T0rjExmDDlI/AAAAAAAAAY0/UF2ARsLyloM/s1600/DEMOSTHENES+T+CAMPOS+-+Passage+-+Mixed+Media+-+34+x+48inch.+2011+-+P45,000.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-11blcBXhB2k/T0rjExmDDlI/AAAAAAAAAY0/UF2ARsLyloM/s640/DEMOSTHENES+T+CAMPOS+-+Passage+-+Mixed+Media+-+34+x+48inch.+2011+-+P45,000.jpg" height="640" width="452" /></a>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Demosthenes Campos – “Trail” – 37” x 48” – Mixed Media on
canvas</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;"> Then there are the likes of Joselito
Jandayan, who seems to be swinging to and fro between magazine-illustration-like 3D
drawing/modeling and the established visual poetic form commonly known as oil painting on
canvas. In </span><i style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;">The Liar and the Beast</i><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;">, is
Jandayan offering the argument that both the Expressionist and the Surrealist
traditions of figuration are no more fanciful than the current fiction of
extraterrestrial-beings-representation? In appropriating all of these
traditional imageries, is Jandayan both paying tribute to those traditions as
well as parodying/mocking them? Or is a tongue-in-cheek “alienization” of
figures (as against a Francis Bacon seriousness) in order here? If so, isn’t
that, qua attitude, by itself already a reality slap (in the Surrealist sense) on
painting’s and painting collectors’ all-too-serious regard for any figuration
of things blue and green and flesh-brown under the Sun?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;"> Lexygius Calip’s <i>Substance (Series 1-4)</i>, meanwhile, is a mixed media on paper series
that </span><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;">yet again represents the sculptural
potential of painting, almost as if to remind us and reiterate the painting or
drawing field’s kinship with the installation-art space.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-uHQUk-sv6vE/T0rjX0wPTKI/AAAAAAAAAZM/JX2lBRpLYI0/s1600/Lxygius+Calip+-+Substance+%232.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: start;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-uHQUk-sv6vE/T0rjX0wPTKI/AAAAAAAAAZM/JX2lBRpLYI0/s400/Lxygius+Calip+-+Substance+%232.jpg" height="400" width="307" /></a></span><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ks2J3CgA2S0/T0sFCPBS8GI/AAAAAAAAAZk/1gHZKue963s/s400/substance2.jpg" height="400" width="308" /><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;"> Finally, consider such approaches as
Sam Penaso’s nationalistic dark earth tones upon an ethnic-faced subject ironically
called “Annalyn”. This mugshot portrait, ladies and gentlemen, is not painted
in dye, but in plastic acrylic—a painting medium from the </span><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 21px;">1960s </span><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;">Pop decade of the plastic boom. How can you be more ironic and subtly sarcastic than that? And
what about a female name that combines the Latin “Anna” (19</span><sup style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;">th</sup><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;">-century
Hispanic </span><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;">Philippines) with the American “Lyn” (20</span><sup style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;">th</sup><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;">-century
Philippines)? How can you be more contextually expansive than that?</span></div>
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Jojo Soria de Veyrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10755588651423753783noreply@blogger.com0SM Megamall Bldg. A, Bank Dr, SM Megamall, Mandaluyong City, Philippines14.5854655 121.0569798999999914.583534 121.05446939999999 14.587397 121.05949039999999tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2887809293642421519.post-1914049164343809912012-01-25T13:14:00.000+08:002015-02-11T21:53:59.110+08:00The Romantic Lie: Desire, Ennui, Anxiety<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b><span style="line-height: 200%;">Marcel Antonio's new statement at the </span><st1:place style="line-height: 200%;" w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Yuchengco</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">Museum</st1:placetype></st1:place><span style="line-height: 200%;">, February 6-25, 2012</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">I</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">n July of 2010, I posted a
blog essay on the art of Marcel Antonio titled “</span><a href="http://partycrashingangle.blogspot.com/2010/07/blue-funked-silent-stories-expanding_26.html" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;" target="_blank">Blue Funk’d Stories: The Expanding Art of Marcel Antonio</a><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">” and coined the phrase-tag Blue Funk Erotica for Antonio’s art. I
described Blue Funk Erotica as 1) unsmiling faces-derived figurative drama
(primarily portraiture, then), 2) replete of appropriations or art-historical
quotes, 3) suggestive (but only suggestive) of a narrative, 4) quasi-rebellious
towards rigid allusions and painting titles’ guidance, 5) unpainterly </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 16px;">“</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">expressionist,</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">”</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> 6) of an in-a-trance mood as against a happy one, and 7)
conscriptive of the painting viewer as peeper. “This erotica should stay around
and keep us entranced,” I wrote, “being not so much one that
tickles the groin as the kind that promotes the understanding that every face,
gesture, object, color, and shape is a secret sex object and clandestine true
story waiting to be told.” But also debunking a previous simplistic tag on
Antonio’s art as “narrative expressionist,” I wrote: “In Antonio’s case,
his blue funkism's ‘de-expression’, or ‘dis-expression’ and narrative confusion
through the mannerisms of narrative imagery and titling, seems to be a produce
of a Russian Formalist narrative bent on ‘defamiliarizing’ images and shapes
towards a higher enigma. Thus his refusal to ‘express’.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; text-align: left;"> The abovementioned blog started a
dialogue between Antonio’s art as well as intent (of unintent) and my reading, culminating in a late-2011 production of a collection titled “The
Romantic Lie: Desire, Ennui, Anxiety” which shall be shown this coming February
at the Yuchengco Museum.</span></div>
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This title for Antonio’s new series
does not so much signal a change in his art’s direction as clarify where my reading is right and where it needs to be tweaked. For instance, while
I opt for a Barthesian “variety of narrative possibilities,” Antonio’s
pragmatic knowledge of his audience allows/welcomes two basic approaches to his
art.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://maspaborito.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/thewhiteribbon.jpg?w=300&h=230" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://maspaborito.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/thewhiteribbon.jpg?w=300&h=230" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; text-align: center;"><i>The White Ribbon</i></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> The one approach favors rigid
symbolist readings, especially as Antonio is himself attracted to the
“monumental” (Antonio’s term) figure common among utopian-art compositions (e.g., Wagnerian glorifications, classical idealism, Nazi art, Stalinist totalitarian
art, socialist realism, etc.) and advertising art imagery or the various idealizations of soft porn.</span></div>
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But, for the other approach, Antonio
acknowledges that I am right about his own efforts to
frustrate, so to speak, all symbolist and narrative approaches, via
experimentation with juxtapositions/relations and eclectic allusions. These
experimentation, appropriations, and art-history quotes result in a
dehumanized atmosphere, involving such stuff as machine aesthetics (steampunk, etc.) and the usual
facial expressions of ennui and boredom, all moving towards Antonio’s intended
postmodernist multiplicity of meanings. But the final result on each single
canvas is an invite to a pseudo-narrative half-aware of this pseudo-ness, welcoming
while parodying the various cultural and moral significations possible to
professional and popular semiotics.</span></div>
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<tr><td><a href="http://maspaborito.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/arspoetica42x54ma384.jpg?w=246&h=320" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://maspaborito.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/arspoetica42x54ma384.jpg?w=246&h=320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px;"><i>Ars Poetica</i></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> In this sense, Antonio’s art would be
self-described as anxious about the unknown, desirous of knowledge as a matter
of course but likewise celebrating the ennui of knowledge’s elusivity, even the
charm of that ennui itself alone. Ennui as both springboard and object of
desire, then, visually fulfilled or illustrated on an Antonio-esque drama
field.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> A final stamp to this anti-narrative
effort to “recover the sensation of life” (Victor Shklovsky) is the artist’s
devotion to the coloration of Diego Vel</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">á</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">zquez (recreator of the classics) or Chagall (dreamy Chagall) as
well as to the latent abstract geometrics beneath all his pseudo-narrative
stagings.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"> I shall join Antonio in this
exhibit with fourteen new poems in the exhibition catalog. Antonio also invited me to fill a curved wall he refused to use with my own paintings as the show's guest paintings. For which wall I did three shaped canvases, for a collaborative five-painting project with
Antonio as counter-instigated by me. [END]</span><br />
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</span>Jojo Soria de Veyrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10755588651423753783noreply@blogger.com0RCBC Plaza, Makati City, Philippines14.5607611 121.01653329999999-15.667615399999999 79.883720799999992 44.789137600000004 162.1493458tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2887809293642421519.post-28544736177284230552011-09-19T16:48:00.000+08:002015-02-11T12:38:09.524+08:00Miss Universes and "Universals"<br />
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<b>1. No such thing as a stupid question, only a stupid situation</b><br />
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FIRST things first. There's no such thing as a stupid question.</div>
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Even Lea Salonga's supposedly inane question to Miss Angola Leila Lopes (who'd go on to win the Miss Universe crown this year), dubbed by CNN.com feminist columnist Jessica Ravitz as "<a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2011/09/14/living/miss-universe-question/index.html" target="_blank">the dumbest question in the universe</a>," isn't actually all that dumb if you put everything in context. "If you could change one of your physical characteristics," Salonga asked Lopes, "which one would it be and why?" According to Ravitz, ". . . it's absurd to be dismayed that a question like this would be posed at a beauty pageant. In my worldview, the mere fact that pageants exist is absurd. And I'm not alone."</div>
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Well, I don't think she gets it. Context is everything, and, in this case, Salonga's question---actually all the questions were pre-written by the pageant committee and assigned each judge, <a href="http://www.gmanews.tv/story/232498/entertainment/lea-salongas-question-dumbest-in-the-universe" target="_blank">says Salonga</a>---was "a standard beauty contest query" that should only nudge us in our turn to ask about the motive behind the asking. Salonga hit the nail on the head when she wrote to CNN, "At the end of the day, it wasn't so much the question asked but the manner in which it was answered." After all, weren't all those questions asked during those Miss Universe pageants in the past designed to primarily test how a candidate might respond to future "stupid" questions that are going to be hurled her way in yacht parties she'll be attending as Miss Universe? Look at it this way, if you are to apply today for an account executive position at an ad agency, a position servicing that agency's stupid clients, and you wax philosophical during your interview about the world today as though you were Bell Hooks, I'm perfectly certain you wouldn't get the job. <i>Precisely </i>because no interviewer would probably have the mental wherewithal, in the first place, to ask questions about those areas of thought. Would anyone on those yacht parties hurl such questions as Bell Hooks might? Mm, maybe. Would there be people likely to ask the kind of questions Salonga just asked? Oh, I would assume---most definitely!</div>
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My Facebook friend JCA wrote, "But I guess the shallowness of the questions is telling of how the organizers view their contestants." That's almost a given, similar perhaps to how designers and fashion show organizers view their adolescent models. But, again, that truth would still have to be put in context. After all, what use is the Miss Universe contest and winners to, say, Mr. Donald Trump, in the first place? The most creative and most introspective mind potentially useful to a long life of struggles in the business world never does win the "apprentice of the year" prize in Trump's <i>The Apprentice</i> (U.S.), does s/he, the same way that the best singer does not necessarily have to win the <i>American Idol</i> of the year plum. At the Miss Universe, it's not really the questions and the answers to any question that matter, it's the delivery, as Salonga rightly observed. Otherwise, the Miss Universe Q&A portion would be traditionally done in an interrogation room with cameras and would invariably last the length of a <i>David Letterman Show</i> interview, complete with a band to break the boredom. That is, a faux pas of an answer here could always be clarified or retracted there. Nobel laureates, after all, don't give quick answers, do they? We do not measure their intelligence by the swiftness of their replies nor by an absence of an "uhhhm, well". And as for defensiveness, Hillary Clinton's has no place in the Miss Universe contest, yet she's universally counted as one hell of a charm.</div>
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To recap, the Miss Universe position is an account executive or account manager position. It's a low, starter's position in high society. There's no way Filipino ad industry stalwart Emily Abrera could now win a Miss Universe spot, is there? Again, I'm not saying that pretty-faced account executives can't possibly know anything about, say, Edward Said's postcolonial theories. I'm just saying they'd seldom be allowed to use that knowledge in their financial district jobs.</div>
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But, still, there's definitely room for improvement regarding JCA's concern, reiterated by her friend Lea: "If the Ms. U. organizers are the ones preparing the questions, aren't they also underestimating the intelligence of their judges?" Well, Lea, Donald Trump underestimates the intelligence of everyone in the whole universe. But, then again, you and JCA are actually right. So that presently it might be useful to suggest to the Miss Universe pageant owners that perhaps, next time, Miss Universe contestants can come onstage in office attire for the Q&A portion. Or, if still in their gowns and in a pose, maybe while holding a wineglass, so for these candidates to be able to feel a sort of corridor meeting or yacht party situation feel in their heads, within which role-playing they could just be led to display their real brains beyond being those by merely smiling, nervous candidates onstage who have to pass a stupid test while a klieg light burns. This role-playing segment might have an effect likewise on the question-writing staff. . . . Now, even if we are to adapt this role-playing sort of Q&A segment to an in-their-swimsuits situation, supposedly a more frightening experience, the candidates can still be rendered wet and in the process of drying themselves with towels while being asked their questions, if only so that our ideal resultant could be achieved. I can assure you, such role-playing---whether with gowns or swimsuits---would break the ice. Because any candidate necessarily placed in a situation of utter nervousness when confronted with a question needing a quick answer cannot predict how her posing in front of a lot of people in an uncomfortable gown or Speedo can affect her alertness. Even a female Einstein would be trembling in that situation, and would likely feel as though she were in a Guantanamo prison being played on by a bunch of US Marines. When the most intelligent candidate fails to come through that nervous field, she gets demerits and ultimately fails to grab the crown. The merely charming and merely most diplomatic wins.</div>
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<b>2. No such thing as an easy question, only easy situations</b></div>
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NOW let's go visit the question for Shamcey Supsup, who would become this 2011 contest's third runner-up: "Would you change your religious beliefs to marry the person that you love? Why or why not?"</div>
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Some were saying this was a tad more difficult than the one given to Miss Angola. But, if my backyard statistics is right, most said this was way too easy, the too-obvious answer being a quick no.</div>
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A <i>Philippine Star</i> write-up titled "<a href="http://www.philstar.com/Article.aspx?articleId=728053&publicationSubCategoryId=70" target="_blank">How they would have answered that question</a>" interviewed five former Filipina beauty queens. Interestingly, or not surprisingly, depending on where you're coming from, all gave that "obvious answer" in varying modes of articulateness.</div>
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But was it really an easy question deserving of an easy answer? I believe an easier compound question would have been something like: "would you change your political beliefs to marry the person that you love? Why or why not?" But even then, putting aside the submission element in it, any answer is actually correct. "No," if one's beliefs are deep and passionate and utterly personal, "yes" if one's politics is shallow or if one has the heart of a spy. Now, having written that, I wonder if we could apply the same formula to the question for Supsup. "No," if one's religious beliefs are deep and passionate and utterly personal, "yes" if one's religious beliefs are shallow (cafeteria or cultural) or if one has the worldly heart of a multi-cultural syncretist. As for the submission part, there are a lot of reasons why one would do that. A certain tribe might require a would-be spouse's religious conversion for him/her to gain access to a conjugal wealth which might include a chain of hotels or oil derricks. Uhm, Mr. X, would you change your religion in order to marry Paris Hilton? Not that easy a question now, is it?</div>
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<b>3. No such thing as one Universe, only universals</b></div>
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STILL on Supsup, my Facebook friend J- called his friends' attention to an ABS-CBN report which seemed to have been oddly written. <a href="http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/entertainment/09/14/11/shamcey-christian-says-boyfriend-changed-beliefs-her" target="_blank">The report</a> zoomed in on Supsup's admission that her boyfriend <i>had</i> actually changed his religion for her. She is a "Christian", she's supposed to have said, and her boyfriend was formerly "Catholic".</div>
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J- wrote: "Since when were Catholics not Christians? Don't get me wrong, I'm not a big Catholic but <i>we</i> were the first Christian church!"</div>
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I had to correct J-, of course, with my modest knowledge of Christian history, thusly: "Actually the first Christians were the Jewish Christians before there were even Gentile Christians. The Jewish Christians included the Corinthians, the Ebionites, the Elcesaites, the Essenes, and the Nazarene/Nazoraean sect. Then, the first post-Jesus Jerusalem church was established by James the Just (some say with Paul), the leader of the Jewish Christian Church (Catholics insist with Peter as the "Rock" and "Chief Shepherd"). Then, even before Peter and Paul could arrive in Rome, Eastern Christianity was already being established in Asia Minor in what would later branch out to become the Church of the East, the churches of Oriental Orthodoxy, the Assyrian Church of the East, the Eastern Catholic Churches, and the Saint Thomas Christians. Even the Early Church in the Roman Empire, the prototype of the Latin Church of Constantine I (that was itself proto-Catholic), cannot be said to have already been the Roman Catholic Church as we know it today. The Roman Catholic Church, as we know it today, actually started when it was established by the emperors Theodosius I, Gratian and Valentinian II in 380 AD, when Latin Church Christianity (instead of the other Christianities, like that one by a group that would later be called Gnostic Christianity) was declared as the empire's state religion. This was at the same time that Damasus I was the Pope (who reigned till 384), when the Roman aristocracy started to take over the Church at the start of the decline of the Roman Empire. Damasus commissioned the Vulgate translation of the Bible, the early Roman Catholic Bible, and called for the Council of Rome during tensions with Bishop Nectarius of Constantinople."</div>
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Notice that I always modified "Catholic" with the adjective "Roman". J- Facebook-liked my comment and thanked me.</div>
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J-'s friend A- joined me, saying: "Of course not. You're not the first Christian church."</div>
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Notice A-'s use of "church". She didn't write "yours is not the first . . ." but "you're not the . . ." Bear that in mind, because Christian authorities would repeatedly teach that the church is neither that building by the marketplace nor that institution with a flag but the people, the following of Jesus. That following can exist without a church building or a flag, and thus A-'s use of the word in her clause "you're not the first church" makes complete sense.</div>
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J-'s friend JC chimed in, refuting my and A-'s offers, saying: "The first Christian church was the Catholic Church. Other Christian churches were just offshoots and splinter groups. Isn't this true, Kuya J-?"</div>
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Another of J-'s friends, JBC, also joined us: "Regardless, all Christians believe in one Judeo-Christian God. Why do we have to argue about who came first when, at the end of the day, we all believe in the same divine entity?"</div>
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JC had to add this: "Sure, dissension happened. But the original is the original."</div>
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"Go ahead," I wrote. "If you think the Roman Catholic Church was established in 12 or 30 AD or thereabouts instead of in 380 AD by Theodosius, suit yourself, JC, I wouldn't be surprised. Nonetheless, JBC is right."</div>
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J- Facebook-liked this, but so did JC, adding: "Thank you!"</div>
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JC also Facebook-liked another comment from another of J-'s friends, Father V-, when the latter entered the conversation. Father V- wrote: "That's quite a splintered understanding of what the church is," referring to my splintered understanding. "When one associates the Church with a mere political faction, because Paul did this or Constantine did that, one cannot get the full picture of what the Catholic church is all about. This is seeing the church as a mere institution. But the Church is more than just a human society, and it's more than just a title. The Church, Catholic and apostolic, began when Christ brought it into the world, founding it upon his apostles, especially upon Peter. This is the Christian Church, which is only One, and which subsists in union with Peter and the successors of the apostles, who have kept the faith whole and entire despite the passage of time, despite the errors of the centuries."</div>
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This is true, too, at least for 2nd-century claims to universalism and for claims to continuity from the church of Jesus' Apostles, for even when Protestants use the word "catholic" (with a lower-case letter c), they also use it not to refer to the Catholic Church alone but broadly to the Christian Church (regardless of denominational affiliation) and all believers in Jesus Christ all over the world, across all ages. Therefore, put aside Father V-'s Roman Catholic "especially upon Peter" emphasis and Father V-'s institutional claim that the Christian Church as One subsists in union with Peter. Put aside all the Romanism, and you'll be able to imagine the idea of inclusivism in catholicism (even via Catholicism), wherein one can embrace even those who believe Mary Magdalen was Jesus' right hand instead of Peter (Gnostic Christians, for instance).</div>
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Now, JC loved what Father V- wrote, writing: "Yes, Father. Got it! We are the original."</div>
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Well, if universalism (or "catholicism") also means being inclusive and Father V- would nod his head in agreement, then obviously JC couldn't have gotten it.</div>
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I wrote, "@Father V-: Would that it were so," and I meant that the Catholic Church was not also---or was not firstly---a political entity with a divisive history and policy, "then the world would have been a much better place."</div>
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"JC and A-," wrote J-, now seeming to have changed his mind about his post, "being 'first' is beside the point, is it not? The decorous bearing of the matter is, we are a Christian church, too. Right? :)"</div>
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JC Facebook-liked this.</div>
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"Ok," he wrote, "the Catholic Church is a Christian church. Christians are followers of Christ. Catholics follow Christ and his teachings . . ." and so on. I thought that was that with JC.</div>
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Father V- came back: "By the term Catholic, meaning universal, we mean that Christians follow and believe all of the doctrines taught by Christ handed down to His Apostles by way of Scripture and tradition, teachings necessary for one to fully heed the call of Our Lord to holiness. In this sense, to be truly a follower of Christ, one needs to be catholic, universal."</div>
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JC and another A- (A2, let's call him) Facebook-liked this. Actually, there's almost nothing worth protesting against in this statement if only the Father wasn't confusing "Catholic" with "catholic" in his explanation, almost as if to hide a logical fallacy (the 'God is love, love is blind, therefore God is blind' kind of logical fallacy) to service a metanarrative.</div>
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I had to call A-'s reaction to this: "@A: By your comment above, I gather you're Protestant? If you are, then by Father V- you do not follow and believe all of the doctrines taught by Christ blah blah blah, you can't fully heed the call of our Lord. You are not a true follower of Christ. The only way by which you can be that is by becoming C/catholic, by becoming 'universal'."</div>
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Father V- promptly answered my satire with a confirmation: "Well, basically that's what being a disciple is, right? It basically means following everything that the Master did and said and taught. Otherwise, what kind of disciples are we? By the word 'Catholic' <i>(Father V-'s capitalization, not mine)</i> I'm referring to a reality, not a denomination. We don't call ourselves catholics <i>(Father V-'s lower case, not mine)</i> for nothing. The name Catholic stemmed from the fact that in the Reform worked by Luther his followers broke away from Christian teaching and praxis, selecting those that were in accord with their personal beliefs and ideals and rejecting those with which they were not in accord."</div>
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JC Facebook-liked this. Well, put aside the Father's confusing catholic with Catholic, as if catholicism or universalism is exclusive to Catholics. Lay aside the fact that Martin Luther was mainly questioning the papacy's corrupted adherence to the bright ideas concerning Purgatory and the selling of indulgences. Put aside the fact that Luther was only seeking reforms (thus Reformed) from within instead of from without, but kicked out instead by the corrupt Catholic hierarchy of his time. Put aside the fact that to imply in our time that Pope Leo X's indulgences salesmen were following Christian teaching and praxis is tantamount to qualifying and reiterating Pope Leo X's virtue on these same indulgences-selling during his time, and thus for our time. Put aside the fact that to call Pope Leo X's corruption as "within Christian praxis" could reintroduce a scandal. Put all those aside, . . . if only because Father V- was not yet finished with the Luther question.</div>
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He continued: ". . . this is far from the logic of discipleship; the disciple is bound to his master insofar as his master is concerned. Either he accepts his master totally, and all of his teaching and the practices that he has taught him, or he is no follower of his. This is perfectly logical, and this is more so true of Christianity. When the Lord came among us as man he showed us the Father; by His teaching and actions he instituted the norm by which his followers would be known . . . this was entrusted to his Apostles, who---because of their ministry in the Church of Christ---continue the presence of Christ on earth."</div>
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I see. From a self-contradictory explanation of catholicism as exclusive to Catholics (contradictory because while claiming he was not speaking of Catholicism as a denomination Father V- was at the same time equating catholicism with loyalty to Catholicism, in which case JC was right in Facebook-liking Father V-, for it would seem that Father V- does not include inclusivism as part of his "catholic" context), Father V- now moves to a second stage, that of equating Luther's hatred for Pope Leo X with a hatred for Jesus, as if Pope Leo X's sins and Jesus' virtue were/are one.</div>
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Father V- was not done.</div>
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He continued: "There is no need to be polemical here, by the way, Jojo Soria . . . what I'm trying to express is, that being a Christian necessarily means that you have to accept all of the teachings and commandments of the Lord, whether they are in accord with one's taste or not. This in Greek and in English amounts to being---what it means to be---"katholikos" or catholic. . . ."</div>
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"@Father V-:" I wrote, "If there's no need to be polemical, then why have you and I become polemical? Was it perhaps because there was a need for it? Where did that need come from? Could it be that the polemics just grew from nowhere? If it did, then do you mean that when I write I'm being needlessly polemical, but when you write you're not being polemical but yet <i>need to be</i> for my enlightenment? If that is your approach, I'd fully understand the consistency."</div>
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"Hahaha," my Facebook friend J2 butted in at this point. "Polemics," she wrote, "all but polemics."</div>
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I wasn't exactly sure whether J2 was referencing Father V-'s polemics, my polemics, both our polemics, or the entire humanity's polemics, so I just Facebook-liked what she wrote, since it looked polemical in itself. :)</div>
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"No," Father V- instantly wrote, "I'm just explaining things from my end. Honestly, I had no intention of being polemical. In fact, aside from the fact that I just wanted to share my view, I got interested in the topic, since expressing it here also enlightened things up for me. As a student of history I'm beginning to see that there's more than meets the eye with the term 'catholic', that its being fundamentally synonymous with 'Christian' was penned even long before the Reform; it goes way back to sources of the Christian faith."</div>
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I Facebook-liked this.</div>
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"Anyway," Father V- continued, "if it seems to you that we're being polemical to each other, then this won't serve us any good . . . aside from the fact that I was just trying to give reason to anyone who calls me, to give an account for the hope that is in me (cfr. 1Peter 3:15), I was beginning to see it as a stimulating conversation, both based on reason and on faith, which always need to go hand in hand in the search for the Truth that liberates. Anyway, frankly I got something from this. . . . Peace :-)"</div>
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I Facebook-liked this.</div>
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"<i>Pacem in terris</i>," I wrote, "as Pope John XXIII would have it. :)"</div>
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Father V- Facebook-liked this. JC didn't.</div>
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Well, not everyone among Roman Catholics ever liked what John XXIII and his Second Vatican Council tried to introduce ("to restore unity among all Christians, including seeking pardon for Catholic contributions to separation"; "to start a dialogue with the contemporary world"). Not everyone in the Church likes the idea of reconciling or breaking bread with Protestants and the Orthodox churches, much less with other religions which Pope Benedict XVI controversially is trying to realize today in spite of his conservatism. Pope Paul VI, who would continue John XXIII's mission, was another Vatican liberal, but not everyone heeded his apology for Pope Gregory's having turned Mary Magdalen into a prostitute via a simple sermon, if Catholics today are even aware that that apology and a series of revisions concerning Mary Magdalen ever happened. Not everyone in the Church liked John Paul I too, who didn't last long in the papacy. And John Paul II, who voted against a lot of tracts in John XXIII's Second Vatican Council, is probably the most loved Pope in the Roman church today, partly perhaps for his having continued facets of John XXIII's efforts, as in the area of trying to reconcile with the Jews and other Christian sects. Pope Benedict XVI, a close confidant of John Paul II, seems to want to continue John Paul II's efforts to extend just facets of the Second Vatican Council tracts---specifically that one seeking a dialogue with other religions. . . .</div>
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But if Popes could marry, if Pope Gregory VII hadn't required clerical celibacy, then John XXIII would probably have been the sort of Pope who wouldn't mind marrying a Protestant. And I don't think that would be because his religious beliefs were shallow or that he was a syncretist. He was, rather, the one most open to differences, the one with an open ear.</div>
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In short, he was the first to respect the various catholicisms (universalisms), in effect fulfilling the embrace of the catholic doctrine of inclusivism. He was the Vatican's Stephen Hawking, who might have theorized that there is no one universe, but universes which finally are all the same, wherein hypertravel through cosmic wormholes can be done. He was the Vatican's company merger guru.</div>
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NOW, what has all this got to do with Shamcey Supsup and her formerly-Catholic boyfriend?</div>
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Well, picture that scene again when Hollywood actress and contest-appointed judge Vivica A. Fox asked Supsup her question. Then, picture that moment when she answered the question. Now, put her boyfriend in her place, in a sort of scene from a Mr. Universe pageant, with him being asked the same question. His answer, of course, would be something like "I already did."</div>
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If Supsup can embrace her boyfriend's secular heroism or sacrifice at the same time that she would preach an adherence to religious loyalism among females, we could surmise that Supsup is either sexist and another religious bigot who considers other religions as crap (Roman Catholicism perhaps as anti-Christian instead of Christian for putting Church laws above Christ's laws, according to some denominations), or . . . she believes there is no one Universe but a bundle of valid universes that could access one another in mental hypertravels via physical wormholes of acceptance. Matter turns into anti-matter and becomes matter again in some other universe, then vice versa, all perfectly acceptable. Nothing is illusion anymore, everything is embraceable. So that by answering her question at the pageant with what she had or what she could come up with, she was also recognizing that stupid questions are really only stupid situations, that easy questions are really only easy situations, and that the Miss Universe is really just a construction of various beauty queen claims to various valid universals. Remember, the first requisite of beauty pageants is congeniality, not basketball-like adversity. Its objective heaven includes yacht parties. So, therefore, you just tell people what they'd want to hear and save them the trouble of religious faux-universalist noise.</div>
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That quick choice I can understand. Even Facebook-like. [END]</div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Photo of Shamcey Supsup borrowed from REUTERS/Nacho Doce as used at <a href="http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/213018/20110913/miss-philippines-2011-shamcey-supsup.htm" target="_blank">http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/213018/20110913/miss-philippines-2011-shamcey-supsup.htm</a></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><b>If you wish to comment on this article but the character-limited box below does not accept your comment, please chop your comments into a paragraph per posting. Sorry for the Blogger glitch still being fixed. Otherwise, message me via <a href="http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=639696704" target="_blank">http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=639696704</a></b></span></div>
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Jojo Soria de Veyrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10755588651423753783noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2887809293642421519.post-89253036492866602072011-09-14T14:57:00.000+08:002014-12-12T10:06:54.302+08:00Why Are We Writers Shallow?: A Voltairean Exploration<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">M</span>y friends' Facebook walls have been calling everybody's attention to F. Sionil Jose's quoting of a well-loved former senator in his latest column essay on Philstar.com titled "<a href="http://www.philstar.com/arts-and-culture/725822/why-we-are-shallow" target="_blank">Why we are shallow</a>". Okay, the essay has my attention, and now---having nothing better to do---I'd like to offer my own conjectures regarding what's behind all this rampant shallowness Jose is talking about.</div>
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But first things first. The idea of Filipino shallowness that visited the novelist-columnist came from a friend of his from another Asian country, an idea which initially floored him. Then, recently while watching a presentation of Asian dances with former Senator Leticia Ramos-Shahani, Jose observed that there was but grudging applause from the audience for the stylized movements of a stately Japanese dance while a near-standing ovation was accorded to the energetic jumping in the Filipino-cum-Vietnamese tinikling. Jose said anyone can learn the tinikling in 10 minutes, and Senator Shahani was supposed to have asked, "Why are we so shallow?"</div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">W</span>ell, let me see, we have been shallow for centuries.</div>
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It was probably one of the things the Japanese hated us for, the reason perhaps why they treated us and our women like the Chinese during World War II, because we couldn't understand their dances which they didn't have the time to elucidate on for our modest collective comprehension. Meanwhile, our long-standing enthusiasm for the tinikling only demonstrated this alleged shallowness, because---as Senator Shahani would know---we as audiences often approach the dance with merely the eye of tourists, laughing and clapping only at the dancers' meager feat of avoiding the bamboos. Senator Shahani, being a Sorbonne University Doctor in Philosophy in Comparative Literature, would know that there is more to the dance than what my favorite cooking television personality could drunkenly and metaphysically say about it in the Vietnam episode of <i>Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations</i> Season One. There is definitely something about the rich presence of thick bamboos in this feasting dance, as well as about the allusion to the <i>tikling</i> bird of the rallidae species and the <i>tikling</i> farm traps made of bamboo, the erotic and taxing accelerando rhythm in the fourth quarter of the dance, its relation to Philippine martial arts and tribal war dances, its possible role in Leyte among Bankaw's people prior to the Bankaw Revolt. However, we are not all trained to be dance historians, much less as semioticians, to ever get---or want---anything more than the fun we're already getting from the tinikling at face value. In fact, we didn't all have that privilege of getting to know anything about our own dances, much less the Odori, and so we remain shallow.</div>
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As Jose's foreign friend would say, this shallowness is manifest even in our major papers. I'd read the <i>Philippine Star</i>, for instance, and what would I get? Apart from F. Sionil Jose's column, there's practically nothing to read in there except the comic strips, the classifieds for preferably female applicants, and the boring crosswords and sudokus. It's a total waste of recycled paper. Another <i>Star</i> columnist, the poet and novelist Alfred Yuson, was probably wryly acknowledging this shallowness in his newspaper after he was indirectly asked for his opinion about Jose's column and assumptions: "Shallow shallow me. Shallow me wherever you may be... tra-la-la...," he said.</div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">O</span>ur universities and colleges are all to blame for this epidemic of shallowness.</div>
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Instead of putting much emphasis on the culture of Late Antiquity, they spend too much time teaching our preppies everything about the binary structures of HTTP cookies used to hack the CIA headquarters or eBay with, or the way Florence Nightingale would assist a doctor performing a burn debridement or escharotomy, which all totally mean nothing to either Heraclius or Phocas. Look at the Hindus, for instance, even while often high on bhang lassi their continuity with their past would be retained through the centuries, so that even today you can see sacred cows still plowing their own dung on the cobblestones of Jaisalmer Fort. And the Buddhists of Thailand---who up to today can perform sacrifices of not dirtying one's soul with the mud of modern economics, relying solely for their food on the age-old charity of a modern-day profiteer with a store. So why, oh why, don't our universities and colleges bring back all that Greek that up to now is being studied in Greece, or all that Latin that up to now is still being studied at Pontificio Seminario Vaticano, for God's sake?</div>
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The classics teach us wisdom. The Web teaches us nothing but wiki-knowledges about protons and <i>American Idol</i> winners. Thus the arrogance of TV personalities who have been fed these wiki-knowledges by their scriptwriters, mistaking these bits for wisdom. The classics' wisdom lead us to Western culture and all its metanarratives of superiority over tribal wisdom, which we---if we could only immerse ourselves in these holy waters---could in fact use to build our own counter-reifications.</div>
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This failure of ours to appropriate the wisdom of Western culture has in fact led us to a level of ignorant arrogance, a broadcaster's type of arrogance, that is unable to see the role each of us is playing in the system, be it the system of government or the system of citizenship. All we can do now, therefore, is lean on the luxury of slogans and abstractions and sweeping views that are averse to the devils in the details. Thus the vicious cycle of crab-criticalities that are, being crab-criticalities, by themselves averse to criticalities. We thus end up hurling invectives at each other, calling each other stupid and ignorant and shallow, while each is without a desire for the hard task of discoursing further on rococo details of qualifying truth (the way either Michelangelo or Michel Foucault would feel happy about) regarding the fisherman's son's inability to comprehend the basics of TESDA's electrician's course or his ability to call Mike Enriquez's confused conservative or progressivist politics crap.</div>
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We have chosen to be Westernized and yet not Westernized enough. Our embrace of democracy fails Karl Popper's dictum of owning likewise the responsibility of accepting "obsolescence" when it comes in an open society. We hold on to our animist faith concerning the divinity of our persons assigned seats of authority, be it as government authorities or culture authorities, and own nothing but a confirmation bias in favor of our ability to call anyone and everyone shallow. Western culture, if only we studied it well, would have taught us the rigors of rationalism, so that instead of sweeping conclusions regarding ourselves we could slowly tackle each man's behavior the way Spinoza tackled God, as an individual expression in a dynamic equation. Because of this inability, we have been reduced to behave like writers pretending to be sociologists, with nothing but the rhetoric of fallacies that we mistake for social science. We are thus rendered shallow---unable to see who we are, those mere writers, and the limits to what we can do.</div>
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And if only we had Romanized ourselves well, the way South Korea has Americanized itself well, we would have armed ourselves with the capacity to hurl crockery at the quackery of Restorationist and evangelical voices on TV. If we had been Romanized enough, we would see---beyond Latin-American liberation theology---the superiority of Vatican to these discards of Calvinism and the Great Awakening. Look at South Korea, its perfect Americanization has shaped the prosperity theology of the Yoido Full Gospel Church. Meanwhile, our Catholicism is not as strong as the death threats of an Opus Dei follower on the artist Mideo Cruz in our supposedly open-ended society.</div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">T</span>hus, we are rendered shallow.</div>
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And so we fail to see the shallowness of media as product of the subconscious plan of the local Illuminati to keep the status quo, wherein education remains the privilege of the post-Gomburza children of former caciques and public education is the shame hurled on the laps of Jesus' working class.</div>
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We are rendered shallow. We can't use our pens to expose the real identities of the jokers on morning radio who are on a secret mission to destroy the seeds of social liberalism in the service of network-owning bosses with holding companies with interests in the fuits of conservative elitism.</div>
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We are now eternally shallow. We can only choose to ignore the fact that all that entertainment fodder is what goes on in the drawing boards of corporate profiteering and, in surrender, we proceed to ourselves write shallow exegeses about our own shallowness, contributing in effect to the perpetuation of such profit-motivated mass dumbing.</div>
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We: you, with me, are forever shallow. So we can only spit on our neighbors who can't understand our essays in English. We are totally shallow. We can only complain about their Tagalog-based intellectual incapacities deriving from our missionary and patronizing teaching-in-English failures. We are shallow. We can only ignore the fact that we are not Belgium divided into a French-speaking territory and a Dutch-speaking territory but Belgium divided into several languages inside our every territory and spot. We are shallow. We can only close our ears to the fact that linguistic differences are often also class differences. We are shallow. We can only close our eyes to the reality that the lower class aspires to become the middle class and upper class, and the upper middle class and upper class aspire to become Americans and Europeans.</div>
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We are, safe to say now, shallow, and so choose not to write about the cost of sending our kids to schools that teach how to read, about the price of books, the language of books, the stupid marketing and distribution of books, the inaccessibility of books, the technological variations on the concept book.</div>
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We are shallow. We continue to debate on the virtue of books, hoping to find enlightenment for everyone, while the sidewalk downstairs aims for the depths of our garbage, deeply hoping to find bread. [END]</div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><b>UPDATE:</b>On September 26, 2011, Jose uploaded a new Philstar.com column piece titled "A reply to you out there who disagree with me": <a href="http://www.philstar.com/Article.aspx?articleId=730857&publicationSubCategoryId=79A" target="_blank">click here</a> to read.</span></div>
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Jojo Soria de Veyrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10755588651423753783noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2887809293642421519.post-75943494039855397452011-08-22T12:41:00.000+08:002014-11-25T08:22:29.460+08:00Moving On, In Hindsight, and Predicting the Future of Art<div style="text-align: center;">
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<b><b>1. Moving forward, ano ba dapat ang artist?</b></b></div>
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IN TV host and social critic Lourd de Veyra's show on AksyonTV called <i>Word of the Lourd</i>, the host tackled the recent brouhaha over an installation art displayed at the Cultural Center of the Philippines, a brouhaha instigated by the media and taken up mainly by devotees of the Roman Catholic faith. My distant cousin Lourd, whom I constantly applaud with much aplomb on this his show, implied a preference for "moving on," however, which caught my questioning attention. He intimated that the country has bigger problems to tackle than this, this being an issue in art, that field far removed from the concerns of mainstream society. Here's that video:</div>
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I do not mean to judge or make assumptions about my cousin's stance or stand on the issue itself, pero "Let's move on" ang operative formula na ina-apply ng marami nating kababayan sa mga isyung hindi natin nareresolba/mareresolba o di kaya ayaw nating resolbahin.</div>
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Sinasabi ko ito dahil, sa isang perspektibo, may mga facet ng isyu akong nakikita kung saan puwede kang mag-apply ng resolusyon. Hindi rin ako sang-ayon na nagkakamali ang media tuwing tinutuligsa o tsinitsismis nito ang "maliliit" na bagay na hindi pinapansin ng masa, dahil ang mga journalists, tulad ng mga tsismoso, ay may kani-kanyang political agenda o socio-educational mission base sa kanilang mga kultura at bias, at ang mga agenda o misyon o bias na ito ay makikita mo kahit sa maliliit na bagay na yaon.</div>
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Off the bat, isipin natin ang isang facet nitong malaki o maliit na isyu na 'to. Ang tanong: ang exhibition bang ito ay magiging malaking isyu ng journalismo at intelligentsia tungkol sa estado kung ito ay hindi state-sponsored art o kung hindi man ay art na dinisplay sa isang state-sponsored venue, ang CCP? Kung ito'y dinisplay sa Ayala Museum, mag-rarally lamang ang mga deboto laban sa artist, sa curator, at sa mga Ayalas, di ba, at ang mga Ayalas at Zobels lamang ang magiging isyu. Wala nang pagreresign-in na mga otoridad ng CCP.</div>
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Sang-ayon ako na maraming malalaking problema ang naungkat ng exhibition. Pero isa rin do'n ang problema ng attitude ng estado towards institutionalized religion. Isa rin do'n ang problema ng pagdedesisyun nito sa kung saan dapat tinatapon ang pera ng bayan at sa kung saan hindi dapat. Panahon na na ang isang liberal na gobyerno ay magsabi na ang pera ng estado ay hindi dapat nakikialam sa paggawa ng art, sa dahilang ito'y nag-aaksaya lamang ng pera ng bayan sa pinaborang artists. Panahon na rin na ang artist ay hindi maging artist na boses ng estado o isang rehimen/administrasyon kundi artist ng sarili niyang pagkatao bilang indibidwal o miyembro ng isang niche ng lipunan.</div>
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As a corollary argument, kung censorship din lang ang pag-uusapan, may karapatang i-censor ng estado ang anumang art na pinagawa ng pera nito. Even after the fact of the artmaking.</div>
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OO NGA. Bumisita si dating First Lady Imelda Marcos, ang asawa ng dating diktador na si Ferdinand Marcos, sa CCP exhibition, at ang ngayo'y isa nang Representative ng House of Representatives ay naglabas ng kanyang pagkamuhi sa nasabing installation project.</div>
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Pero, in relation to Imelda's oft-quoted slogan "the true, the good and the beautiful," coming as it seems from the perspective of a royalist ideology, tingnan naman natin ang sarili nating mga konsepto ng truth, goodness at beauty from our own respective contending ideologies. I-iimpose din ba natin ang atin sa bayan? Sasabihin din ba natin sa tao na magbayad sila ng buwis para masustentuhan nila ang mga art at artists na may bersyon ng ating truth, ng ating goodness, ng ating beauty ayon sa ating ideology? Kung oo ang sagot natin, ano ngayon ang pinagkaiba natin kay Imelda?</div>
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Bilang isang social liberal at isa ring kritiko ng ilang Roman Catholic policies at doctrines, dapat akong magdiwang sa tapang ng artist na si Mideo Cruz at ng mga art sponsors niya (curator, etc.). Subalit ayokong gawin ang ginagawa sa akin ng mga kalaban ko sa argumento (mula sa fundamentalismo ng institutionalized religion)---ang magdiwang tuwing nasasagot ako habang nakasandal sa poder ng ideloyohiya o teyolohiya na kumakalinga sa kanila kahit alam kong dapat wala ang poder na iyon sa likod nila habang tumatakbo ang demokratikong argumentasyon. In short, wala silang threats na "patawarin ka sana ng Diyos" o "gabaan ka sana" na maririnig sa akin mula sa aking secular na punto de vista. At bakit ko nasabi ito? Dahil sa side naman ni Cruz, poder ng state art ang sinasandalan niya, at---sa pag-aming may karapatang masaktan ang relihiyon---ayokong sumandal sa poder ng sekyularismong iyon na kasalukuyang pinamamahalaan ng isang diumano'y social liberal na gobyerno. Dahil forever bang pag-aagawan ng mga ideologies o theologies ang CCP at National Commission for Culture and the Arts? O, in the US' case, forever bang pag-aagawan ang National Endowment for the Arts ng mga liberals, religious conservatives at Tea Party-ites? Ano kaya kung itumba na lang natin ang mga pinag-aagawan na 'to? Kung tayo, bilang mga social liberals (o Christian o atheist progressivists man) ay nakikiagaw kay Imelda, ang stalwart ng Philippijne royalist ideology, wala tayong pinagkaiba sa kanya. Pare-pareho tayong gustong magdikta ng ating malamang estetiko sa buong bansa.</div>
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Dahil bagamat ako ay isang social liberal, alam ko rin na ang liberals ay hindi ang buong bayan. Kung ang ating asta ngayon ay, "kaming mga liberal ang hari ngayon, hawak namin ang CCP ngayon, kami ang masusunod, art namin ang masusunod," aba, huwag tayong magrereklamo kung sa mga darating na taon na si Bongbong Marcos naman ang presidente, ay sabihin niyang "o, mga royalist na naman ang may hawak ng CCP ha, art naman namin ang masusunod. Back off kayo." (This is assuming, of course, that Bongbong Marcos won't surprise us with a future sudden reconfiguration of his person from being a defender of his father's record to being a real champion of the masses and the country's coffers' integrity and strength, should that be possible.)</div>
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"Raise the banner of liberalism in order to attack it, advance on fanaticism, and ask people to become Pilosopong Tasyo. LOL," the novelist and activist Ninotchka Rosca joked on Facebook.</div>
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I'm okay with that. The eternal struggle of raising self-critiquing banners is no big deal for me. But even hundreds of years of war with un-self-critical fanatics might also be fine with me. A state of civil war might be acceptable to me, if that's what would wake us up to the virtue of democratic tolerance. Still and all, while debate is still possible, even if I were the lucky type who often gets my way, I'd probably still be against state sponsorship of the arts and the arts profession, for state sponsorship is at the very heart of the Mideo Cruz piece. On this issue, at least, I'm one with Newt Gingrich. LOL.</div>
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But yet, also be aware that many US Republicans don't exactly want the NEA abolished. They just want it governed by conservatives who would put up evangelical art. If they can have it their way, they won't want to get rid of state sponsorship of the arts and the arts profession. They won't be one with Newt Gingrich.<br />
At sa debate tungkol sa piece ni Cruz, sa bandang akin lang naman, kung may poder man ang secularism na gusto kong sandalan sa anumang argumento tungkol dito, ito ay hindi sa pagdikta nito ng <i>sekyularismo bilang haven ng panginginsulto sa relihiyon</i> kundi sa pagdikta nito ng <i>prinsipyo ng demokrasya na nagbibigay ng kalayaan kanino man na manginsulto kanino man</i>. </div>
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<b>2. In hindsight, what is art, who is it for, at ano ang matalinong art?</b><br />
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STRANGE THAT in novelist F. Sionil Jose's philSTAR.com column titled <i>Hindsight</i>, he would have had the opportunity to get a "perfect view in hindsight" (two weeks after the controversial CCP exhibition opened) and yet came up with nothing original, nothing different from what the protesters against the exhibition had to say (were continuing to say). In short, it was as if Jose was out with it merely to announce on which side he was, and taking the case of the protesters instead of the exhibition's supporters' side (or the supporters-of-the-exhibition's-rights' side), at least in the query area of whether the exhibited installation art was art or not. He clearly voiced his support for the protesters through the title of his column article, "<a href="http://www.philstar.com/arts-and-culture/716412/ccp-jesus-christ-exhibit-it-aint-art" target="_blank">The CCP Jesus Christ exhibit: It ain't art</a>".</div>
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Ahem. Okey. Mga kaibigan, naalala ko tuloy.</div>
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Isang araw kasi noon, nagpatugtog ang kaibigan kong FM radio deejay ng Pearl Jam grunge sa radyo nila, kaya tanong ng station manager niya, "ba't yan ang pinapatugtog mo? Mawawalan tayo ng listeners nyan." What did my friend do? Did what was expected of him, played the '70s folk-rock band America's "A Horse with No Name" followed by James Taylor's "Your Smiling Face." "Yan ang rock," sabi ng station manager. Pagdating ng dapithapon, nag-inuman kami ng kaibigan ko at buong gabi naming tinalakay ang definition ng rock music. Napunta kami sa new wave music, kung saan chinallenge ang idea ng pagka-rock nang walang electric guitar, at sa kung saan-saang dako pa ng genre-fication. Kinaumagahan, nung ako'y magising sa aking hangover, isa lang ang na-realize ko. May isang milyong definition ng rock music. Pero nakatulog lang uli ako, at doon naman sa dako ng aking paglalakbay habang tulog, napaniginipan ko si Prof. John Lennon na minumura ang estudyanteng si Kurt Cobain. Sabi niya, "ano ba yang pinaggagagawa mo, Cobain? Pakinggan mo ang 'Woman' ko. Ganyan gumawa ng kanta, okey?" . . . Uhm, pa'no ba alisin ang hangover? Uminom na uli ng isa pang bote pagkatapos sumuka? Parang ganon nga yata. Uh, you were saying?</div>
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Where was I? Ano bang argument pa ang sasabihin ko sana? Oh, yes. Sabi ng isang Facebook friend of a friend, "Unfortunately, the intolerant side won't even let you finish a sentence by instantly pushing the usual 'shut up', 'bobo', 'bastos', or, worse, the 'gaba-an' threat as well as death threats." Tuloy ng kaibigan ng kaibigan ko, "It baffles me how anyone can just throw the word 'bobo' around when you need several intelligence tests to accurately come up with a conclusion. Even then you need to establish if these tests are culture-fair pa, and then there's EQ vs IQ . . . "</div>
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Where was I? Oh, yes. Sa bus nung isang gabi, sumakay ang isang barkada ng mga estudyanteng high school. Ang lalakas ng boses! Sabi ng isa, "si ma'am yun." "Gago, hindi si ma'am yun," sabi naman nung isa. "Si ma'am yun, bobo." "Ulol, kitang-kita ko ng mga mata ko, gago ka ba?" "Tarantado ka," sabi ng isa, sabay batok sa kaibigan habang sila'y nagtatawanan, "hindi ako gago, 'no. Alam ko ang hitsura ni ma'am, tanga ka pala e." . . . Mahabang kuwento 'to, pero sa madaling salita, dumating din sila sa kanilang paroroonan, silang maiingay na mga gago, at wala namang nagalisan o nasabunutan ng buhok. Buti pa ang mga high school, sabi ko sa sarili ko, pag gumagamit ng mga salita galing sa social science, walang intolerance. Lahat ng "bobo," "gago" at "tanga" ay kaibigan.</div>
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But, to be fair, Jose never used the word "stupid." Instead, he only used the words "immature," "juvenile," "ridiculous," and phrases like "lack imagination," "don't think hard enough," among other implied hellfire of judgmental language.</div>
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Hanggang dito na lang ba ang usaping ito? Sa side ni Jose o ng kanyang kinikilingan ay ang truth o artistic truth, at ang kabilang side ay ang kabobohan? The name of the Truth, the Good, the Beautiful . . . Amin?</div>
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Ang sinasabi pa ni Jose, ang artwork installation art daw dito sa exhibition in question ay copied art, lacking in imagination or originality. A gimmick, then! And should go back to the drawing board.</div>
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Where was I? Oh, yes. Isang gabi, nag-daydream ako na isa akong critic na kelangan me sulatin. Di ko alam saan ako magsisimula. Ah, biglang sabi ng epiphany area ng aking utak, may titirahin akong mga derivative art. Ewan ko kung ano ang nangyari, pero napunta ang panaginip ko sa pinagsasasakmal ko ang isang derivative art sa di ko alam na dahilan. Oo, hindi ko alam ang dahilan. Hindi ko alam. Ang alam ko lang, wala akong sinabi sa sangkaterbang iba pang derivative art, o sa sarili kong derivative art. Para akong tambay sa kanto na may nakursunadahang iisa lamang, at di ko alam ang dahilan.</div>
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Now, it may be that no one's awaiting my opinion on this, but let me just clarify to those who have stumbled into this that, in contrast to Mr. Jose's unclarified position, I'm neither on the side of the Church of Caiaphas (which is what I've come to call the Catholic Church authorities' recent temple of corrupt behavior under Gloria Arroyo's previous government) nor on the side of the sons of Christian aniconism. I'm just a man on a bus petting a historical hangover.</div>
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PARDON MY attempts at wit. <i>Wit</i> is a 1995 play and 2001 movie about cancer.</div>
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I mean, God forbid the <i>Gabâ</i> (instant or imminent bad karma). Or death threats. And so I say to you, to Christians like myself (cafeteria Christian though I am) there ought to be no death, no darkness, no end to the Christian perspective. And yet we put out with holy water the fire we stoke for Joans of Arc? Nakaka-puzzle ang death threats (o ang mga tipong death sentences ng Opus Dei sa mga nobela ni Dan Brown hahaha), dahil dapat hindi parusa ang sickness o death sa Christian philosophy. Ito kaya ay patunay lamang na maraming Christian gurus kuno ang walang pakialam sa mga turo ng kanilang libro at hero?</div>
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"Sana gaba-an kayo," sigaw ng mga deboto, gayung sabi ng kanilang hero, "love your enemies." Tama nga naman si Hero. Di ba't ang iprinopose niya noong thesis ay ang anti-thesis sa Ancient Roman philosophy of Might? Sabi ni Hero, hindi Might for Might, kundi Love ang magpapatumba sa kaharian ng Tiyuhin ni Caligula.</div>
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Pero tila mali ang metaphor natin dahil lalabas dito na ang iilang iconoclasm ngayon ay gawa ng mga pagano at "Romano" ng ating panahon. Di ba't si Hero mismo ay ang iconoclast ng Judaismo ng kanyang panahon? "Wala akong pakialam sa sinasamba nyong Templo ng kabuktutan," tila sabi niya noon, "itutumba ko yan at papalitan ko sa loob ng tatlong araw."</div>
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Dapat na nga yatang tumbahin ang CCP ng "Caiaphas-approved art lamang ang puwede at ipapako sa krus ng media ang susuway." Itayo muli ang "templo ng tao at ng puso" na hindi gawa ni Imelda kundi ng bawat simpleng bato sa kanto! At dapat hindi ang The Rock ang punong-kritiko!</div>
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PARDON MY attempts at wit. Dahil sasabihin lang ng mga deboto, aha! ang witty sa sineng <i>Wit</i> ni Mike Nichols ay namatay sa cancer, buti nga. <i>Gabâ</i>. Ang isa pang friend of a friend na nag-witty mimic sa exhibition art na pinag-uusapan natin dito ay biglang na-ospital dahil sa isang pamamaga sa mukha. Isang supporter ng exhibiting artist in question ang isinugod sa ospital ang anak. Well, let me say this. Lahat ng tao---may sabihin man laban sa Simbahan o wala---ay nagkakasakit o namamatay. Kaya nagtataka ako kung bakit itunuturing na <i>Gabâ</i> ang sickness at death, lalong-lalo na ng mga deboto na dapat ay unang nakaaalala sa mga turo ng kanilang martir na <i>nagpakamatay</i> sa mga pahina ng Bagong Testamento.</div>
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Should this attitude towards <i>Gabâ</i> or retribution among the Church's faithful to be viewed as a koan cum puzzling paradox, Christianity's history being replete---as I said---with a constant involving the burning of its own people whom it would later pronounce as its saints? Jesus of Nazareth himself, let me repeat, was an iconoclast at Caiaphas' Church.</div>
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PARDON THE depth of my subtext. My bad. History makes bad ad copy. Unless, of course, its strategy is to provoke questions. And my friend, the veteran journalist-activist Sylvia Mayuga, says there's good news about the CCP. That "things are changing as we speak; issues are being clarified, starting with ourselves." Well, remains to be seen in what direction of defining goodness it has chosen to move towards. For, putting aside my usual contention against the state's role in supporting art-making activities beyond museums and libraries maintenance, I could cite an example of an ill-advised direction.</div>
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A friend of Mayuga's echoed and reiterated lines of argument coming from those whose moral standpoint have been offended by the art in question.</div>
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"Freedom is not absolute . . . carries with it a sense of responsibility," says one recurring line. This is true, and that is the reason why we have laws, statesmen, legislators and lawyers on the one hand and warlords and assassins on the other. The "one hand" as well as "the other" provide society with the parameters, the "one hand" with the letter and/or wisdom of the law and the state, the "other hand" with violent/death threats and/or their quick implementation.</div>
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And, true, the artist must have a sense of responsibility. But firstly a responsibility to himself and his cause, be it the cause of evangelical art, Marian art, punk art, bad art, or whatever. Restraint must be, but in fact is, part and parcel of the process of art-making itself wherein decisions of what to include and what not to include are a constant. But the question now is: who should nudge an artist's propensity to allow excess or shyness, himself or the state? Who shall have the post of The Measurer of excess or non-excess? Him? Me? You? Your mother? F. Sionil Jose? The Pope? The majority? The minority? The individual? Those are the questions.</div>
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"Junk art is no art," true. Unless your art is "junk art" (subgenre of "found art"), which---after the conscious self-labeling or admission of the label---might qualify an art genre category assignation unto itself, and thus to be read according to this genre's elements and terms. It escapes Jose that in the same way the sonnet is its own art enjoyed differently from the way one enjoys the art of the epic poem, so installation art is its own niche art and language different from the artistic language of craft-driven photorealist painting. So, abstract expressionism and minimalist art are their own painting genres with concerns and ironies different from the concerns and ironies of a, say, religious hyper-realist work. This, in the same way that noise rock is an artistic musical genre with elements and a thesis separate from and independent of the standards and thesis of easy-listening Bing Crosby. So, therefore, the question now is: Who shall be appointed to the post of being the measurer of "artful"-ness and "artless"-ness among the different arts and their approaches to the enjoyable, their artistic languages, their theme treatment concerns, their ironies, their elements that comprise their language, their standards? Critics? Artists themselves, as their own best critics? Me? You? Your mother? F. Sionil Jose of PEN International? The Pope? Catholics? The Opus Dei? Protestants? Gnostics? Agnostics? Aniconists? Engineers? Psychiatrists? Haute cuisine chefs? Manicurists? Those are the questions.</div>
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"Ethos" and "merit" were words waved by Mayuga's friend. But these concepts shall forever be debated on the surface of the earth as well as in the bunkers, and liberals and conservatives (in society and in art) shall forever be at each other's throat over these. Bearing this in mind, one can now go out into the day and clearly decide on his responsibilities---responsibilities to his faith, to his politics, or to his art.</div>
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Well, okay, some others would say responsibility to the state, to the majority, or to his death-threatened family, but I would leave that to the bearer of his own mind who, in the end, will have to make up his own mind, . . . whether he decides on his responsibilities at the point of a gun or the point of resolving an artistic or thematic point.</div>
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I HAVE always been of the belief that free society has encumbered the individual with responsibilities that go with his freedom. The individual has to exercise his sense of measure in his quest for survival within the laissez-faire traffic of thoughts and decisions and actions in the social environment consisting too of others' freedoms. And so, in this society, responsibility <i>readily </i>resides in the individual. However, the state, for as long as it subscribes to the tenets of democracy that seek to protect the freedom of the individual, would have enacted laws that affirm as well as protect the equal freedoms of each one. Thus, freedom of expression, thus freedom of religion, and so on and so forth. Ideally in a free society, a society such as what the United States' laws and many European countries' laws seek to maintain, the state only interferes when an exercise of one's freedom hinders another's. For instance, one may deem it his right to cross any part of the highway at any time of the day, which may in turn hinder vehicle owners' right to a free-flowing highway devoid of potential human roadkill. The state would, and often does, interfere in such simple problematiques. However, when one spits on the name of a religion or a religious practice without hindering that religion from exercising its freedom to exist, it should be a no-brainer that the state cannot and must not interfere. Thus, the UK did not find it difficult to say that Salman Rushdie, who many Moslems deemed insulting, had the right to insult, even as the state did not share his "insult" (many mosques are allowed to exist in England).</div>
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And so, now, we go to a suggestion to put up authority bodies akin to the Union of Soviet Writers passing judgment on the oppressive works of the Alexander Solzhenitsyns of our place and time. Regulation of artistic practice is being peddled as an attractive notion. Does this notion negate the ideal of a free society? I believe it does.</div>
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True, when I agreed above that individual freedom does have its responsibilities, I did not only mean to allude to such Karl Popperian dictums on an open society as the individual's duty to be aggressive with his opinions while always on the ready to accept his obsolescence, I also meant to allude to the individual's sense of measure, restraint, and other social considerations. This sense may include such choices as civility, giving the other space to save face, avoiding provoking emotional limits, and so on. But in no way was I implying that I'd be in on the idea of forming authority bodies to police individual freedom. Thus my question, "who will decide for the individual, your mother?"</div>
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The Union of Soviet Writers was one such "collegial body" as those being suggested for the Philippine democratic environment. It was appointed by the Soviet state to police individual writers. But it was perfectly understandable for the Soviet Union to come up with that, because the then-Union's concept of democracy was not intended for the individual but only for the collective. I, as a poet and fiction writer and blogging critic as well as a citizen of this republic, spit on the idea of any Philippine collective or committee deciding for the individual. Certainly we have fellow artists and fellow citizens as well as critics and self-appointed critics on blogs who have been given by the state their own freedom to denounce and malign an artist, but the denounced artist's own rights cannot be trampled on by their own respective freedoms.</div>
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OH YES, certainly there is that other option in a free society that is also mentioned as an ultimate course of action for those who've been offended by the CCP exhibition. Yes, indeed, there is always that option for legislators to turn the state into freer atmospheres or less free atmospheres.</div>
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In the United States, for instance, some Republicans have been demanding that the state sponsor evangelical prayers in public schools as well as the putting up of statues of stalwart evangelical leaders of the pioneering era in public school campuses. That is certainly going in the direction of more freedom for evangelical devotees at the expense of Moslems, Catholics, Jews, Lutherans, and so on, who are themselves paying their taxes to the state. Do states do this kind of stuff at all? Yes, they do this all the time. And that is why there is always a see-saw of leaderships in the history of democracies, also because of citizens' demand for either more freedom or less freedom for others as time progresses or regresses. In our own state and time, for instance, we do not allow the freedom of the pornographer to exercise pornography, at least on paper. We do not recognize homosexuals' right of access to civil marriage. But at the same time, we have other freedoms that other democratic states don't have. Hundreds of barangay governments allow dog owners to turn our streets into canine toilets. Local peanut butter manufacturers are not policed by aflatoxin level guidelines. Philippine companies are allowed to discriminate against jobseekers by reason of their sex, religion or age.</div>
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And so it is up to us as a nation of citizens, either by plurality voting perhaps or by the power of reason and mutual respect as per the decision of our representative democracy, to decide whether we want more freedom or less freedom in certain areas of our social existence and co-existences. Many do demand more "order," as some of those anti-CCP exhibition guys would put it, while many others also demand more freedom, recognizing perhaps that there is (or can be) order in the plurality of voices in our land. While some of the latter would allow that they might consider the requirements of civility in criticality, others are firm in their conviction that even such exercises as radical aniconism, iconoclasm and even downright artistic insults in the practice of an art have a place in an ideal democracy.</div>
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Again, it is up to us as free individuals cum collectives of a free nation and open society to decide now whether we wish to diminish or expand our neighbor's roster of freedoms. And ponder, likewise, the consequences of any reduction or regulation both on them <i>and</i> ourselves.</div>
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NOW, CERTAINLY I could not avoid mentioning above the notion of violence and death threats resorted to as options by certain individuals in our society. For the very reason that THESE WERE RESORTED TO in the case of Mideo Cruz by certain apologists, I believe, of the Roman Catholic Church. Some say these threats were an Opus Dei crusade's signature, others say these were merely prank calls by Cruz's personal enemies. Whatever they were, they were there.<br />
And to assume---in Cruz's defense---that these external dynamics (death threats, and so on) are not part of the art is precisely to go back to the New Criticism belief in the integrity of the artwork ("what pertains only to the artwork") independent of the social space the artwork inhabits or invades. Remember that this social space ultimately owns the artwork as per this space's interpreters' majority take on the art. And while this independence of the art object is also called forth---by those denouncing Cruz's art---for a judgment of the artist qua artist, as if to claim they are merely judging the art as art (its integral elements) so to qualify its failure as art, those guys also clearly contradict themselves by calling in such writings as a George Steiner essay on literature, society and the inhuman or such lines as those from Albert Camus on moderation and excess, calling these good discourses on the "reach of literature" and "(by extension, art)". Incidentally, if I remember my Camusian and Sartreian existentialism correctly, wasn't it a philosophy that tried to throw responsibility back to the individual away from the state and moral authorities? Wasn't Camus' <i>The Fall</i> a portrait of one such moral authority in the process of questioning his own morality?</div>
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"WHAT'S THE bottomline?" the friend of my friend asked. "If we're to establish limitations on art and its expression, why? Is it at all possible to simplify matters into pros and cons/cost-and-benefit analyses? Are our fears and concerns about not putting limits on expression valid or not?"</div>
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"May cons siyempre, pare," sabi ko. "If you're pro-X, you're bound to hear extreme pronouncements against your stand from anti-X and pro-Y folks. But the pros of an open society outnumber the cons. No one will stop you from putting out your own pronouncements against the stand of the anti-X and pro-Y. Most important of all, while it is hard to listen to the outbursts of a position in conflict with yours, it is far harder to live in a place where we keep each other from talking."</div>
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Let me put up this proposal, I continued. What if we follow our other friend's suggestion and start applying that on Facebook, wherein a committee will have to review all opinions bordering on insults before one can press the Enter key. You want to try that experiment? Okey ako ro'n. But we should all be ready with the consequences. There will be a struggle to occupy seats in that committee, and God knows where it might all lead. Northern Ireland? Constantinople once again?</div>
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"What I don't get here is why these lawmakers are putting more stock in prosecuting someone who supposedly 'hurt' sensibilities, totally overlooking the fact that somebody else actually threatened his life, destroyed property, and attempted to commit arson---what if the CCP burned to a crisp because of what he did? So it's perfectly understandable for people to threaten someone's life, maybe even take his life and burn his property if 'sensibilities' are offended?"</div>
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Yan ang problema sa batas na yan na nagsasabing di mo puwedeng insultuhin ang anumang relihiyon, habang binibigyan natin ang relihiyon ng karapatan na insultuhin ang sinumang indibidwal, sabi ko. Ang isa pang problema dyan, wala akong alam na legislator na hindi beholden sa relihiyon at sa hatak ng boto ng institutionalized religion. Kung meron man, iilan ang sasama sa kanya sa pagpanukala na ibasura ang may kiling na batas na ito?</div>
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<b>3. Art from now on, ano ba?</b><br />
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WE ARE all Barthes.</div>
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But first, my friend the painter Marcel Antonio is right, the artist has the responsibility to manage the contextualities and impending contexts of his art, even---or specially---when the artist intends a free contextualization of his imagery vis a vis a plural or potentially antagonistic society. We might recall the machinations of absurdist plays, which---while they pronounced the absurdity of existence---yet were structured in such a way as to communicate those absurdities, in essence negating absurdness by packaging absurdities in consumer-friendly tetra paks within the library of orderly categorizations. Some absurdists were aware of that contradiction.</div>
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Yet Mideo Cruz is also right in saying he can't control the audience, taking---I'd like to think---after Roland Barthes' extremist (?) assumption that each man reads a thing differently or that a man can read a thing in various different ways at various different times. Still, Marcel might still ask Mideo, "did you intend to control the audience in the first place?"</div>
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I know where Marcel is coming from. We might take as an example the marketing of CDs or movies. A US version of a rock star's album would be tweaked to include another song in exchange for a removed song for its UK release. A band would refuse to play a popular song of theirs in certain areas of the world for reasons sometimes only privy to their managers and promoters. A Filipino movie that premiered in LA might be retitled and resubtitled for Cannes. In short, artists or their managers do manage contexts or impending contexts. Even Mitsubishi decided to do away with the name Pajero on one of their vehicles for Spain's market, understanding that in Spain "pajero" is the slang term for a wanker.</div>
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Still, Mideo by Barthes would be right, for managers are sometimes surprised when their tweakings result in more controversy rather than the pacific atmosphere their engineering minds expected to find.</div>
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So, what does this Mideo Cruz affair finally give us as a final context?</div>
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Let us consider the absence of the old New Criticism approach to the artwork as integral to itself removed from the authority of the artist. Think, for example, what might have happened had Cruz died of dengue after putting up his art project without anybody except CCP authorities knowing about this "departure." Certainly we would still be screaming for the artist's explanation, placing that absence in the context of the art, say, as manifestation of fear and guilt. Later, we may become aware of the artist's demise. We would then find ourselves recontextualizing the art with that outside "old/new" reality attached: with, say, the artist's "death as <i>gabâ</i>" context, for one.</div>
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Yet others might crop up, shouting celebratory slogans, declaring Cruz a hero of aniconism or even an inspiration to the ire of Islamic terrorists (who may not read the Qur'an but) who dismiss all Christian icons as imageries of the infidel. Cruz would not be there to announce his distance from any such causes.</div>
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Could Cruz's constant refusal to answer intent part and parcel of his art? Is he feigning ignorance in order to test the extent of the Filipino audience's ability to weigh things? Is he being a pollster-artist? We don't know.</div>
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Whatever the artistic intent, what does this affair finally give us as its final context as it evolves in the culture and zeitgeist of our land, amidst our people's minds today?</div>
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To me and my humble semiotics, it is finally a test on our democracy. It goes beyond mere questions of taste that say, "punk rock is just noise and Bing Crosby's is real music" or "this is bad art and Marian art is the pinot noir of Philippine artistic achievements." It asks, furthermore, questions on the role of icons in Philippine Christian worship, the role this worship plays in Philippine state laws, and the state of Philippine politics today in relation to religious hegemonies. That is to me the final achievement of Cruz's work. It could be that he didn't intend that, but like you and me, who in this debate had been interested in what the artist wanted to say?</div>
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We are all Barthes.</div>
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NOW, WAY before Barthes was born (1915) there was Marcel's namesake, Marcel Duchamp. A urinal is supposedly a non-art, mundane boring item. Put that in a gallery, however, and it becomes poetry ("Fountain", 1917).</div>
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Barthes proposed that the mind has its own galleries. Like Duchamp, we can pick any bad art or ugly art or tramp art and turn that into brilliant art according to the reading of our mental galleries' considerations.</div>
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I wouldn't, for example, be surprised if Barthes announced this imagery above as illustrative of the Catholic Church's crucifixion of the penis on top of the Christ (albeit the penis is now hard as wood) in the Church's present campaign for abstention and against masturbation. The Christ, meanwhile, while used as cross is simultaneously miscast as behind all this penile crucifixion.</div>
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Nor be surprised if Barthes is to invoke a feminist take on the image as representing institutionalized Christianity as that phallic, male-centric movement for gender mainstreaming. Which, incidentally, was what Cruz---in an online magaizne interview---actually said was what that artpiece was all about.</div>
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But Barthes is his own Barthes, separate from the Barthes in the artist. Many of my fellow Catholic friends are a different collective-Barthes altogether, with their own take on things. Thus their declarations of wanting to take over the state and barricade the bill of rights for their rewriting, towards the reification of their metanarrative.</div>
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WHILE WE'RE on Barthes, I'd like to call attention to his <i>The Pleasure of the Text</i>, wherein he made an effort to demonstrate a way by which reading can escape both the clutches of the vicious Left and the bourgeois Right. His vehicle of choice? Hedonism. Further, in <i>A Lover's Discourse</i>, he sought to come up with rhetoric that would veer away from socially-dictated meanings. He would essentially fail in both of these efforts, however, in the same way that Mideo Cruz (assuming he's also on this same path) failed to extricate himself from social contexts in a punk-like hedonistic immersion in supposedly "socially freed" image-making.</div>
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Still, the point is not so much in the success or failure of the effort. It is in the effort, which by itself presupposes the existence of social dictators of meaning from which one seeks to escape. The furor over the effort only braced the point of that hegemony's existence.</div>
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A FRIEND of several friends commented, "I'm getting tired of this whole Brouhaha! Couldn't people just get a life?"</div>
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To which I said, "I wish the continuing furor over the art project (yet for exhibition elsewhere) by some Catholics and media personnel would listen to you and leave art alone to exercise its freedom to blaspheme anything and anyone. But, no, they had to help art get a boost and a new life in the popular stream by being its talent manager and designing this 'scandal'. They could've just ignored the artpieces and enjoyed Mompo wine with pesto bread and Parmiggiano-Reggiano cheese, after which they might have had all the time to have siesta before the next Day of Obligation mass to be attended by the mayor's daughters." They could have flaunted forgiveness instead of anger and hatred.</div>
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Another friend of a friend of a friend, meanwhile, said, "The artist is mad at Christianity. There's a sure sign that it's in his system."</div>
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To which I offered, "I cannot speak for the artist but I can speak for my own reading of the artworks, as only I could and perhaps should for those interested. For there is such a thing as 'aniconism in Christianity', in contrast to aniconisms elsewhere, which therefore makes it not an extra-Christian attitude but one which had been at work <i>within</i> Christianity. Its manifestations is most remembered in Early Christianity before 325 AD, in the Byzantine iconoclasms of the 8th and 9th centuries (730-787 AD and 814-842 AD), in 16th cenutry Calvinism, and in 16th and 17th century Puritanism, but is definitely present in our century most notably in Christian Fundamentalism. It might be more apt to say the artwork is 'mad at Christian imagery, especially Catholic imagery'."</div>
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Now, assuming this reading of mine (one of a few other readings I could muster) jives with the artist's own intent, what now?</div>
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It's about time artists wake up to the reality bite of The Death of the Author, if they haven't already. That death can be for real, without being literal. Because art from now on, in a more compartmentalized world, shall be that struggle between the artist's silence outside of his art and the collective audience's noise within their own metanarratives upon art.</div>
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<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">F. Sionil Jose photo borrowed from <a href="http://www.philstar.com/arts-and-culture/716412/ccp-jesus-christ-exhibit-it-aint-art" target="_blank">http://www.philstar.com/Article.aspx?articleId=716740&publicationSubCategoryId=79</a></span></li>
<li style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Art installation fragment photo borrowed from <a href="http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=2351116256560&set=a.1142395559298.22078.1209724241&type=1" target="_blank">http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=2351116256560&set=a.1142395559298.22078.1209724241&type=1</a> </span></li>
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Jojo Soria de Veyrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10755588651423753783noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2887809293642421519.post-12589949044801729382010-10-24T18:45:00.011+08:002015-02-11T22:01:37.456+08:00Sacrae Particulae Ex Nihilo: The Inspired Visions of Gromyko Semper<div style="text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span">G</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span">oing across a gallery full of Gromyko Semper ink/watercolor paintings and drawings (with his few oils) can be likened to listening to early Uriah Heep or some such old progressive rock music with all that typical fantastic abandon and iconoclastic humor. But, for now, we can’t be sure if Semper is merely an intelligent humorist, a happy/hermetic fantasist or a serious iconoclast.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit; text-align: justify;"> In his first major solo show after so many group shows, Semper falls for the title <i>The Minotaur’s Recompense</i> (opening October 23, 6pm, at the Kulay-Diwa Gallery of Philippine Contemporary Art, </span><st1:place st="on" style="font-family: inherit; text-align: justify;"><st1:placename st="on"><span class="Apple-style-span">Parañaque</span></st1:placename><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span><st1:placetype st="on"><span class="Apple-style-span">City</span></st1:placetype></st1:place><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit; text-align: justify;">). Sure, the show title is a tribute to </span><i style="font-family: inherit; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span">The Soothsayer’s Recompense </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit; text-align: justify;">by Giorgio de Chirico, one of the stalwarts of proto-Surrealism. But the title betrays a Semperian love/hate relationship with mythology which is precisely what the anatomy of iconoclasm consists of. For iconoclasm, whether in imagery or the literary field, is actually a mission to supplant an existing religious hegemony for the facility of presenting alternative cosmic attachments. And so iconoclasm, while being a war effort, is also a display of </span><i style="font-family: inherit; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span">that</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit; text-align: justify;"> love/hate relationship with mythology. So, bearing that in mind, Semper—as a young Filipino exemplar in </span>“<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit; text-align: justify;">neosurrealism</span>”<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit; text-align: justify;"> or visionary art—cannot be simplified as a mere parody artist with an abominable patience for imagery details but is in fact a religious mythologist himself. For, never forget, visionary art is its own mythology already. Like the old dada art and original surrealism, the new surrealism is an old/new drugs that worships a Zen koan-like heaven, really a simple absinthe-afternoon heaven of complex juxtapositions.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /><b style="text-align: center;"><b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Ml0Njebn-iU/TMQa0rdBEaI/AAAAAAAAAWI/e8ObomhcJrQ/s1600/The_minotaurs_recompense.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Ml0Njebn-iU/TMQa0rdBEaI/AAAAAAAAAWI/e8ObomhcJrQ/s400/The_minotaurs_recompense.jpg" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5531575734637760930" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 300px; margin: 0px auto 10px; width: 400px;" /></a></span></span></i></b></b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-weight: normal;">The Minotaur's Recompense</span></span></i></span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />Semper As Per Iconoclasm</span></b></span></i></span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">We’re not talking about the iconoclasm of destruction, of course, but the one more suited to our time and the artist’s profession—and that’s the type that appropriates, twists, and finally destroys the icon by emulating the snake that eats another snake to make that eaten snake this living renewed snake outside.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> Semper’s pieces aren’t lovely as someone</span></span>’s <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">hare’s portrait, that’s obvious, but are snake-like in their charm. They actually appropriate religious and other humanist mythologies via their iconographic imagery and instantly parody (or generously twist) these. And the way Semper parodies ‘em all! He actually enters the art of iconography, goes through the religiosity of ceremonious patience in creating details, as if he were one of those craftsmen called by the mughal to decorate the Taj tiles or by the Jesuits to </span><st1:place st="on" style="font-family: inherit;"><st1:placename st="on">Mexicanize</st1:placename> <st1:placename st="on">Santa Maria</st1:placename> <st1:placename st="on">Tonantzintla</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">Church</st1:placetype></st1:place><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">’s ceiling.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"> And this is precisely where a Semper can go beyond being merely charming and become quite a delight. Because you religiously go through the details with the artist, examine with him each Breughelian serpentization of a scepter, each demonization of an immaculate virgin to expose her false demigoddess-ness in a gallery collective of false demigod-ness. And here is our signal to ask: Is Semper’s imagery a product of some heavy metal pseudo-Satanism or of a serious Hieronymus Bosch-ness (were Bosch a Reformationist)?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"> The answer to this question will vary, of course, from gallery visitor to another, from critic to critic. For each Semper piece is a potential conversation piece, provoking conversations which can snake their way into historical alluding, quoting, complicit denigrating as well as faithful defending. And that can only be so because in all their Albrecht Durer-like complexity, Semper’s detailed ink composites are in effect war sermons of disgust with the human history of religious iconographic lies and semi-lies.</span></div>
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Baroque Sempernoza<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="Apple-style-span">But forget for the moment that Semper was the first Filipino to be invited to participate in Keith Wigdor’s (and the International Surrealist Movement in the 21</span><sup><span class="Apple-style-span">st</span></sup><span class="Apple-style-span"> Century’s) international Surrealism Now exhibit in Coimbra, Portugal. Or that before he went there in May of this year he co-edited with Héctor Pineda the book </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Imagine the Imagination: New Visions of Surrealism, </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span">published in </span><st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on"><span class="Apple-style-span">Poland</span></st1:country-region></st1:place><span class="Apple-style-span"> in 2009 by nEgoist Sp.z.o.o., with him writing the Introduction to the book. And of course he was one of the artists included in that anthology, joining a select 100 international surrealist/visionary artists, famous and unknown, working in the genre today.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"> Now the question might be asked: why would anyone in this religious country given to baroque Marian art be attracted to invest in a Semper of a seemingly new Filipino Enlightenment? Why would local galleries even be enthused to have him? Well, perhaps that’s the point. If Jose Saramago wasn’t Portuguese, his literary iconoclasm wouldn’t mean anything, would it? Yet, in the Catholic city of Lisboa, Saramago’s “anti-Christian” books had been commercial successes, the earlier one helped perhaps by his exile, the latter helped by the media focus on the Nobel Laureate’s newfound notoriety.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"> A Catholic country is the perfect, nay the logical, market/audience for new anti-religious or anti-humanist iconoclasm. Sempers can actually decorate a restaurant’s corners, emitting both decorative values as well as intelligent informed symbologies among dining historians, semioticians, and some such group of Filipino intellectuals.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"> So,…I mentioned heavy metal sensibilities (sans the airbrush) as well as intellectual freethinking ones. But beyond those circles and the esthetic formalist, is there another audience for Semper’s Voltairean titles? Oh yes, of course—there’s the J.R.R. Tolkien fan, the literary fan of archaic myths, as well as the ardent admirer of craftsmen’s patience. And, lastly, the investor in difficult craft who may care little for the fact that not all complex craftsmanship is intelligent art.</span></div>
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<b style="font-family: inherit;">Semper Fidelis</b></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">That’s our signal. Now let’s examine Semper’s intelligence beyond the craft.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"> In his fidelity to details as well as to the exactitude of his titles, all in the hope perhaps of arriving at Umberto Eco’s “closed text” level for a more universal reading, Semper’s pieces are not simple book-illustration material however. While <i>Our Lady of Perpetual Abandon</i> is classic transparent parody, for instance, <i>Eulogy to Melancholy (Whose Tormentors Appear Before Pleroma)</i></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> is a semiotic field that could allude to as many significances as one can muster—one of which could allude to Napoleonic self-crownings sanctioned by divine authority. <i>Paracelsus Preparing the Sacrae Particulae Ex Nihilo</i>, meanwhile, could be an homage to the Renaissance alchemist’s magic, as if Paracelsus is one of surrealist/visionary art’s inspirers. And while <i>Hecate, Anubis, Consus</i> may be deemed a subtle bow to Hieronymus Bosch panel paintings qua literary narrative-cum-satire, only this time using Roman gods instead of Christian ones, <i>The Hermetic Fool</i> might be read as both a sneer and a tribute portrait. And while <i>The Vessel of Balaam</i> goes beyond parody to wax loud mockery, <i>Circe’s Ventriloquy</i> skips loud parody to subtly portray a heroine/villain as a good/evil motherly lady with leprous hands.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> So, there you are. It</span>’s not as though the sacrae particulae of Semper-headedness came ex nihilo. And that intentionality is precisely what separates this new surrealism from good ol’ automatist surrealism. [V]</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Ml0Njebn-iU/TMQUj23YBoI/AAAAAAAAAVY/6FGMKostcRo/s1600/a_eulogy.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Ml0Njebn-iU/TMQUj23YBoI/AAAAAAAAAVY/6FGMKostcRo/s400/a_eulogy.jpg" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5531568848573564546" style="display: block; height: 400px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 300px;" /></a></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span"><i>Hecate, Anubis, Consus </i></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><i>(Novus Ordo Mundi: Bestiality)</i></span></span></b></span></div>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Ml0Njebn-iU/TMQXnaR3DaI/AAAAAAAAAV4/RalFUpr5Wqs/s1600/the_vessel.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Ml0Njebn-iU/TMQXnaR3DaI/AAAAAAAAAV4/RalFUpr5Wqs/s400/the_vessel.jpg" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5531572208154381730" style="display: block; height: 400px; margin: 0px auto 10px; width: 300px;" /></a></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;"><b><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">My personal take on Gromyko Semper’s </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The Minotaur’s Recompense:</span></i></b></b></span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;"><b><b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Ml0Njebn-iU/TMQa0rdBEaI/AAAAAAAAAWI/e8ObomhcJrQ/s1600/The_minotaurs_recompense.jpg"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; color: black;"></span></a><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Ml0Njebn-iU/TMQPmae_c7I/AAAAAAAAAVI/CMOcMXxcQ1A/s1600/The+minotaur%27s+Recompense.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Ml0Njebn-iU/TMQPmae_c7I/AAAAAAAAAVI/CMOcMXxcQ1A/s400/The+minotaur%27s+Recompense.jpg" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5531563394936566706" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 300px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a></span></span></i></b></b></span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;"><b><b><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;">I</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">t is easy to dismiss Gromyko Semper's </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The Minotaur's Recompense</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> as just another craftsman's artisanal ink rendering of an archaic literary or political myth. A second look, however, would remind one of Picasso's variations on the Minotaur as symbol of the pampered figure of a civilization (in his earlier etchings) as well as the expressionless witness of civilizations' carnages (as in his </span></span><st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Guernica</span></span></i></st1:place></st1:city><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> mural).</span></span></b></b></b></span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> For his own Minotaur painting, Semper uses a title that would allude more to Giorgio de Chirico's </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The Soothsayer's Recompense</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, which was essentially a painting about Ariadne left by Theseus in the Minotaur's Labyrinth.</span></span></b></span><br />
<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Consider the possibility that de Chirico's painting is as political as </span></span><st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><i>Guernica</i></span></span></st1:place></st1:city><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> and was probably an allusion (prophetic, too, having been painted in 1913) to men's wars (World War I started in 1914) where women's sacrifices get the recompense of the loot. After being left by Theseus on the </span></span><st1:place st="on"><st1:placetype st="on"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">island</span></span></st1:placetype><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> of </span></span><st1:placename st="on"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Naxos</span></span></st1:placename></st1:place><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> in the slain Minotaur’s Labyrinth, Ariadne marries the god of feasts and luxury, Dionysus. Dionysus and the new lair were therefore Ariadne’s recompense for aiding Theseus in the latter's quest to murder the Minotaur. In de Chirico's painting, it would seem that Theseus boarded a train (in the background) for, say, </span></span><st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Germany</span></span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> and left Ariadne for Dionysus to pick up.</span></span></b><br />
<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> In Semper's version, however, it's the Minotaur who is compensated. But here the puzzle begins. Visually the ink painting is already quite a puzzle, literally puzzling as well as referentially. Referentially, is the figure above the lying Minotaur the figure of Theseus, or is it the Minotaur's own double? Are Theseus and the Minotaur one? Did Theseus, in this painting, end up as the Minotaur's lover? Is the figure above holding a weapon or a lollipop? If that's not Theseus, is it Dionysus? Is it Ariadne, who in this gay-baiting suspicious question may be deemed as "really a man"?</span></span></b><br />
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Contextually, a symbolic question would be: if in Semper's mythology it's the Minotaur who won, and his recompense becomes Theseus or Dionysus or Ariadne, what political allusion—if any—is Semper pushing? If the Minotaur is as much a symbol of an evil ruler luxuriant in his Labyrinth as of religiosity (as in </span></span><st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Guernica</span></span></i></st1:place></st1:city><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, worshipped by the figure of a genuflecting woman), who is Semper referencing? Your guess is as good as mine, but one thing for sure: this is no baroque interpretation of religious figures but a rococo playfulness which could be a product of either a savage artistic irreverence or serious iconoclastic anger. Take a hint from the Sun in the background, who either has his tongue or a whistle dangling from his mouth.</span></span></b><br />
<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> This is no simple illustration. For it would seem that Semper is open to a further twisting of this, his own twisting upon Picasso’s and de Chirico’s twisting of a perpetually twistable theme. [END]</span></span></b></div>
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Jojo Soria de Veyrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10755588651423753783noreply@blogger.com0Parañaque City, Philippines14.4793095 121.0198229000000114.355653 120.85914790000001 14.602965999999999 121.1804979tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2887809293642421519.post-7709052816658435552010-09-01T17:53:00.009+08:002015-02-11T22:04:15.813+08:00In The Age of Hotel Minstrels<span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-style: italic;">For inspiration<br />I open windows<br />Like magazines<br />I must construct<br />The ballad<br />Of the Esplanade<br />And end up<br />Being the minstrel<br />Of my hotel<br /><br />But there’s no<br />Poetry in hotels<br />Even though<br />They’re Grand Hotels<br />Or Esplanades<br /><br />There’s poetry<br />In hibiscus<br />In the hummingbird<br />In the traitor<br />In the elevator<br /><br />…<br /><br />Who knows what<br />If some day<br />The elevator<br />Would bring<br />Your love<br />Up here<br /><br /><br />—from the “Balada do Hotel Esplanada” segment (translated from the<br /> Portuguese by Thomas Colchie) of</span> Mémorias sentimentais do João Miramar<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;"> by Oswald de Andrade</span><br />
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EMIR RODRIGUEZ MONEGAL called Manuel Bandeira the John the Baptist of Brazilian modernism and Oswald de Andrade its Messiah. One could also say Mario de Andrade and Oswald were its Peter and Paul; but no relation to Mario, it was Oswald who spurred Brazilian modernism on into the forefront, to form a wave that also brought to shore such icons of Brazilian literature as Cassiano Ricardo, Jorge de Lima, Carlos Drummond de Andrade and João Guimarães Rosa. But, soon, Oswald felt something inside him, deep in his soul, hurting from the changes in his country’s government. So, while Bandeira, Mario de Andrade and Drummond de Andrade stormed forward into the limits of modernist aggression and consequent chest-beating like Pope Damasuses during a burgeoning religious enterprise with the aristocracy, Oswald took a different turn of his head towards the plight of the masses. He felt the sublime there instead of in the modernist here, producing as a consequence the landmark “modernist but anti-modernist” novel <i>Serafim Ponte Grande</i>. Sadly, he later forgot about the necessities of transferring the sublime in his heart onto his Marxist lectures, so that he became boring with social-realist novels and essays stale as entries on library index cards.<br />
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YESTERDAY ON FACEBOOK I saw the painter Marcel Antonio, an expressionist rebel favoring the restraint and melancholic introspection of Raphael, joking around with the budding new artist he—Antonio—is pushing, Gromyko Semper. They were partying over a 2007 Semper montage and parrying semiotic non-significances.<br />
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For significance seems to be a non-joke to Semper. On several Facebook discussions, he comes on like an Oswald de Andrade who has dismissed the emptiness of modernist (and even postmodernist) jargon in favor of a more heartfelt theater of intended visual critiques with his art. Like Oswald, Semper seems often to insist on the primacy of his intentions over and above the mirror-gazing habits of modernist and postmodernist classifiers and self-classifiers more interested in their High Art than in a higher Mission.<br />
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Antonio, meanwhile, regards the modernist field as an open seedbed for never-ending semiosis, where all levels of meaning can be hunted to please the Mick Jagger-inspired wealthy pop culture that can’t get no satisfaction, aware though he is of Semper’s Derridean hunger for primitive “sublimation”.<br />
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I felt I had to crash this party. <br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Ml0Njebn-iU/TH4f-YpemEI/AAAAAAAAAUg/KmJzAKHdtbk/s1600/semper01.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Ml0Njebn-iU/TH4f-YpemEI/AAAAAAAAAUg/KmJzAKHdtbk/s1600/semper01.jpg" height="265" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5511878150576838722" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;" width="400" /></a><br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">GROMYKO SEMPER:</span> circa 2007<br />
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<span style="font-weight: bold;">Marcel Antonio:</span> “Society is dead,” says Sartre. An abundance of desituationisms concerning Lacanian otherness may be discovered. Thus, if sub-capitalist transitivity holds, the works of Gromyko are modernistic. A number of materialisms concerning a mythopoetical totality exist.<br />
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Therefore, the characteristic theme of the works of Gromyko is the role of the artist as reader. Parry states that we have to choose between socialist realism and cultural narrative. But Derrida promotes the use of pre-semanticist sublimation to deconstruct privilege. :D<br />
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<span style="font-weight: bold;">GS:</span> i dont deny the “modernistic flesh of my works”. however, just as a wolf can dress in lambs’ clothes so can i “deconstruct” imagery, albeit only to symbolically infuse it from its detachments to its purpose, thereby metaphysically reconstructing it to serve its purpose … and i do not like derrida's obscurantism; in fact, the semi-dadaist contextualities of his works are opposite the alternative “modernism” i choose to offer. . . .<br />
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<span style="font-weight: bold;">MA:</span> Lighten up, dude. Why so serious?<br />
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You actually believed there was something sensible in that gibberish nonsense I wrote above? That came from my Ipad, an application called Pomo, a random postmodern ek-ek generator, hahaha! :D<br />
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<span style="font-weight: bold;">GS:</span> gotcha, i was also using a new program called the anti-postmodern generator generator to be able to respond … hahahahahaha<br />
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<span style="font-weight: bold;">MA:</span> Hey, Jo! Come out, come out, wherever you are, let's have a funny discussion on this one … :D<br />
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Myko, not really kidding; I thought that was a good rebuttal on your part. :D<br />
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<span style="font-weight: bold;">GS:</span> oh, i forgot that the anti-ek-ek postmodern generator generator is actually implanted in me, so i guess i have to accept the compliments. :-)<br />
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<span style="font-weight: bold;">MA:</span> Hahaha! :D<br />
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<span style="font-weight: bold;">GS:</span> there you go, a lively laugh from mr. antonio … i will be uploading the drawing I was telling you about later this noon, by the way. :-)<br />
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<span style="font-weight: bold;">MA:</span> Dapat lang. Now go play with yourself, I mean, your thoughts. Wala pa si pareng Jo to humor us with Art's gratuitous complexities! :D<br />
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<span style="font-style: italic;">(At this point, I was already sharpening my keyboard, ready to crash the virtual terrazzo)</span><br />
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<span style="font-weight: bold;">Me:</span> Hey there, you two.<br />
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All right, here's my take on it. But first, my prosaic attitude that favors verbosity says: it is possible to take meanings from academic jargon and bring ‘em out into the world and the streets and such blogs as mine that pretends to talk to the nouveau riche, even if only through the not-so-popular language of Harper's or Tik-Tik's horoscope page in English. So, here goes my verbose celebration of modernist jargon:<br />
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Despite your claims, I think that work above is mere Pop art, even though by “mere” I mean “wow”. That’s Jim Morrison leaning on the models of DKNY, CK or Penshoppe, right? Heaving towards Peter Saul’s belief in the failure of expressionism to shock but laughing about it, and towards Catholic iconography taunting Greek Orthodoxy for more Byzantine iconoclasm. And that last via a Gutenbergian woodcut or lithograph. <br />
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So, Pop art! Especially since it’s a montage.<br />
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But wait! Pop art was actually anti-modernist, a vision to ride the most modernist imagery and use it for poetry, kinda like Tarantino using a pre-murder and murder genre sequence to write an ode to both the hamburger and God.<br />
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In short, wow.<br />
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<span style="font-weight: bold;">GS:</span> with classification schema informed on me by talking books out of a not-so-harry-potterish second-hand library of mine, pop/popular art is a gratuitous glorification of societal commercialism/the modern way of idealized life/the american life/mercantile pro-capitalist artisans’ artifacts elevated into a status of art by its warholian assholes. . . . so deriving from this academic jargon one could easily conclude that the piece above by gromyko, which is myself, . . . I wonder, for it does not even tend to glorify any cultural modernism … with irony as weapon for sarcastic conglomeration, the above work attacks societal conditions, relating both sexual perversion and religion into the sphere of human folly via a metaphysical theatre … and pop art is pro modernist, my friend, since it just reconfigures photorealistic imagery into a fatalistic sterile end, in contrast with the symbolic/visionary art spheres of the past generations … but I’ll take the wow first and also the hamburger, to feed my ego and stomach. :-)<br />
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<span style="font-weight: bold;">MA:</span> Jo: ‘Pop art was actually anti-modernist, a vision to ride the most modernist imagery and use it for poetry’.<br />
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Myko: ‘… pop art is pro-modernist … since it just reconfigures photorealistic imagery into a fatalistic sterile end, in contrast to the symbolic/visionary art spheres of the past generations’.<br />
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You know what the wise fool said ‘bout jokes being said in half jest?<br />
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:D<br />
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<span style="font-weight: bold;">Me:</span> Well, classification is not exclusive to students of modernism and art historiography, everyone’s a slave of classification. In fact the use of words is the taking advantage of the magic of classification.<br />
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It is not so much the words that are to blame for any misunderstanding or under-understanding of their referencing, it is very much the reader of the words that would be at fault. For instance, the word “poverty” would be nothing more than a stale representation of a human condition, that one who has experienced it would have an emotional (one could say full) understanding of the reference, an understanding which would fall short on one who has merely learned the concept from stories told to him by his Dad over cappuccino in the Riviera. And so, a description of artistic activities and intents as either modernist or anti-modernist would have to be approached the same way the word “poverty” is approached.<br />
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Now, my understanding of the Warholian intent was one of mimicry or parody of the “commercial glorification” of industrial objects, an intent I can relate to emotionally, being a child of the age of consumerism and the star system, or, as Oswald de Andrade would put it—the age of hotels. It is the age as well of mass-produced irony. In the books <i>Pop Art: A Continuing History</i> (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1990) and <i>Gardner’s Art Through the Ages</i> (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1980), the authors intimate how Pop confiscates materials from their mass context and isolates them Duchamp-like, combining these imagery furthermore with other objects (say, in Jasper Johns fashion, a Catholic lithograph from the 19th century), all for the purpose of gallery contemplation. Richard Hamilton’s and Roy Lichtenstein's Pop art were another thing altogether, appropriating the stale imprint for poetic or theatrical ends, like yours. Their works, too, by themselves, were acts that peddled irony, sarcasm, and social criticality. And so Pop art, at least by Lichtenstein and Hamilton (and I'd include Peter Saul), was both modernist (for veering away from traditional representation) and anti-modernist (for making sure the art didn't celebrate itself). Warhol’s case was more complex, it was ultra-modernist for making itself as much the subject (bigger than Art itself) as the subjecter; but we might remember that Warhol, too, wanted this I’m-newer-than-you modernist chest-beating to be likewise a corollary subject of his ironies, which would then make him anti-modernist. In fact, that claim—to being a king of parody—makes him a post-modernist, which is just another way of saying “a modernist who parodies his own modernism”. And, so, even Warhol’s classification-crazy and art history-quoting ego was anti-modernist.<br />
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Still and all, whatever we say here and no matter what the intentions are, the emotions of the artist and the art are either present or absent according to how the reader approaches the words describing those emotions, classified like the words “hatred”, “anger”, “ennui” and so on, which we can either relate to or not.<br />
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So my conclusion is this: all works of art are therefore anti-modernist when they are felt, simply bibliotically classified as mere chest-beaters when they're not. The structuralists and post-structuralists were right, it is always up to the reader of the text more than to the text itself, for the text-maker produceth nothing without the text-reader/feeler, in the same way that a knife does not really wound when it drives into a dead corpse.<br />
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Thankfully, your work above, Mr. Semper, under whatever category an encyclopedia would place it, wounds. And that is what I meant by waking up to it with the wound-rhyming word wow.<br />
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<span style="font-weight: bold;">GS:</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">(retreating somewhat from his Oswald de Andrade-like disgust, tired perhaps)</span> my dear poet de veyra, marcel opened my fourth eye to this interpretative passivity, and i like to say thank you for clarifying it ever more … i enjoyed the slapping of words. . . .<br />
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<span style="font-weight: bold;">MA:</span> Elegant, Jo, and—as always—things are in their proper logical place. <br />
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<span style="font-style: italic;">(He pauses, then poses, pretending to be a teacher with a monocle, Dali-fashion, propping up a backboard and some colored chalks)</span><br />
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Oh yes, I think Myko gets your drift, sir. For instance, Myko paints an apple and perhaps intended to himself that the image shall symbolize something, say the universal idea of Temptation; but Jojo reads the image otherwise, being the viewer and the final arbiter of the image <span style="font-style: italic;">(he writes the word “final” on the board, so hard that the chalk breaks)</span>, and so he comes to the conclusion that the globby marks of marvelous reddish pigment playing on the surface of the canvas(text) and not Myko’s intented meaning(author), is making an impression of looking like a nourishing fruit, but isn't really. So Jojo begins to question the choice of red, and the manner of the strokes, and the exclusion/inclusion of “other” pictorial elements in relation to the flatness of the canvas. He does not entirely dismiss Myko’s self-serving title “Temptation”, but begins to question even the title’s significance to what is already present, or absent, in the work and in the genealogy of painting in general.<br />
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In other words, a misreading on Jojo’s part, but certainly not a false one <span style="font-style: italic;">(he writes the word “not” on the board, making a chalk-screech sound and a chalk-breaking one)</span>. Once Myko’s apple painting, which he originally intended to symbolize a central or universal idea of Temptation, leaves the safety of his studio, the painter’s intent dies (Barthes’ famous “death of the author” adage) and the painting ceases to be his idea alone; it is now in fact at the mercy of and opening itself to differing interpretations from both his clamoring fans and disdainful critics. :D<br />
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Magritte has already demonstrated this ages-old structuralist idea with his <i>Ceci n’est pas une pipe</i> painting. ‘Nuff said. :D<br />
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BUT IN FACT MA digresses to a truism---one that we suspect Myko already knows---and is likely just shy about it, refusing thus to go back to his Pomo opener: “Thus, if sub-capitalist transitivity holds, the works of Gromyko are modernistic.”<br />
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MA is shy about it and allows me to finish for him, thusly:<br />
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“Derrida promotes the use of pre-semanticist sublimation to deconstruct privilege”: Marxist for questioning privilege, but not so for promoting the sublime. Well, that’s interesting because Oswald could have used the Derridean lesson. For in promoting everything Marxist and anti-bourgeois while throwing everything materialistically modern and anti-bourgeois, Oswald lost the bourgeois necessity of art, the sublime luxury of visions operating like absinthe. Thus he became boring.<br />
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GS is wary of that state. Even while knowing his works will be peddled by his sponsor MA for display at Valle Verde parties, banks’ foyers, and hotel promenades, he insists that he shall parry the Warholian image easily classifiable as an index card entry.<br />
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MA and I are here to comfort the guy. The reader’s problem is to know the richness within words such as “poverty”, I say, while the artist’s duty is merely to pursue becoming a minstrel of the hotels, bringing love up their elevators, regardless of what happens to his windows being peddled like magazines. [END]<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small; font-weight: bold;">Gromyko Semper</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Paracyclopean Mother and child in an interior inspired by Metsu</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Acrylic, oil, tempera and ink on canvas, 2010, 24"x30"</span><br />
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Jojo Soria de Veyrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10755588651423753783noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2887809293642421519.post-25690543268266185072010-08-19T10:28:00.000+08:002014-12-12T10:19:36.926+08:00Golf, a synecdoche of the land reform problematic<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">THAT tiny picture up there is a shot of the Hacienda Luisita Golf and Country Club, of course, but let's begin our story with a smaller symbol: Jun Lozada. Jun Lozada was hero of the year in 2008, hero qua symbol of penitence and reversed loyalty. He became the new Saint Paul the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines refused to champion during the Senate hearing on the NBN-ZTE scandal (which Gloria Arroyo's Department of Justice and appointed Ombudsman seemed to have wanted to turn into a hearing on Lozada's heresy in their turf instead). Luckily, the Jesuits of Ateneo de Manila University (or Ateneo de Manila, which is most likely its correct appellation) and the La Sallians of De La Salle University were there to protect Lozada's newfound saintliness.</span></div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Ml0Njebn-iU/TGymU3Jc27I/AAAAAAAAATI/0mNLeZfmu2g/s1600/jun_lozada2.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Ml0Njebn-iU/TGymU3Jc27I/AAAAAAAAATI/0mNLeZfmu2g/s200/jun_lozada2.jpg" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5506959321698458546" style="float: right; height: 200px; margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; text-align: left; width: 134px;" /></a><span style="font-size: medium;"> One thing we are forgetting, however, is the other Jun Lozada, the Jun Lozada who loved to play golf and live the high life. We saw in the bright camera lights Jun Lozada the truth-teller, the one who couldn't tell a lie, the dude who loved Jose Rizal. Today, we lay aside the fact that he was a penitent precisely because he used to be one of the privileged guys, raking in funds here and there for perks unbeknownst to you and me. He played golf and ate expensive "hamborjer" at that Wack Wack Golf and Country Club for the ones with wang-wanged SUVs. To dismiss this Lozadian facet is to dismiss Saint Paul's past and merely look at the saint as that brave expansionist for the Jesus club. To dismiss such facets is to forget to share Paul's and Lozada's repudiation of their respective pasts. To dismiss those is to dismiss that other significance.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">NOW, I've seen great golfers and golf teachers talk on TV and I must say I have nothing but great admiration for their lot and the sport as a sport, especially for the men and women who've played those entertaining historic games on the sports cable channels. I've seen a Travel Channel take on the Scottish hills, on the origin of the sport, and can understand the game's relationship with the landscape (the Scottish landscape).</span></div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Ml0Njebn-iU/TGyrhsclfeI/AAAAAAAAATQ/tUm0OY9--Qc/s1600/Karl_Marx.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Ml0Njebn-iU/TGyrhsclfeI/AAAAAAAAATQ/tUm0OY9--Qc/s200/Karl_Marx.jpg" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5506965039722364386" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 200px; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; text-align: left; width: 170px;" /></a><span style="font-size: medium;"> However, there is something that Karl Marx taught everybody, and I mean everybody (in the same manner Che Guevara's One Latin-Am-ism or Guevarism taught everybody something, including the Interpol). I don't just mean the Marxist virtue of having a social security system or Government Service Insurance System or the Marxist entertainment to be derived from looking at the politics behind the production of an artwork. The Marxist lesson I'm talking about proclaims that in everything is politics, or, conversely stated, that there's politics in everything.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: medium;"> And so, golf as a necessarily political presence in our pop culture must likewise be read as having a symbolic/semiotic value, and I mean a value within our polity (as against an intrinsic value independent of its surround which, in Marxist criticism, is a deny-er's cop-out). It is by this prompting that I must say golf as such, as a necessary semiotic signifier, deserves a second serious look beyond the analyses of ESPN. Never mind that Golf is often denigrated to mean "game off limits to females", since, apart from being untrue, there are today arguably more female golf athletes representing Asian women in the major circuit than there are men. Jennifer Rosales and Dorothy Delasin are familiar Filipina names in the LPGA, whereas a Filipino has yet to achieve a PGA championship.</span><br />
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Ml0Njebn-iU/TGyrzUtb01I/AAAAAAAAATY/MFCtvpgGstY/s1600/darius_rucker_hootie1.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Ml0Njebn-iU/TGyrzUtb01I/AAAAAAAAATY/MFCtvpgGstY/s200/darius_rucker_hootie1.jpg" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5506965342588228434" style="cursor: pointer; float: right; height: 142px; margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; text-align: left; width: 200px;" /></a><span style="font-size: medium;"> And never mind that in subcultural rock music society golf is frowned upon as a Republican game, nearly throwing eggs at Hootie and the Blowfish in the '90s and only forgiving the elderly Neil Young for being elderly.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: medium;"> I'd like to encourage an independent assessment of the game's context today, in the Philippine setting, an assessment that is ideally non-partisan. And though I know there's been some opposition to golf in many countries including non-tropical ones like France and Japan and Scandinavia, I'd still be happy with having a look at how golf may represent a semiotic something, as it were, in the Philippine body politic worthy of our opposition to it as citizens living in the armpit regions.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> First, one of the basic complaints against the golfing sport derives from environmental activism, concerning water supply usage for the hectares of must-be-green-grass. And although this has always been promptly countered by many an articulate golf course owner by referring investigating reporters to a well or mini-reservoir built within the course for its own use, still the water table supply must be spread democratically, and so on and so forth, and that's not even mentioning yet---say the activists---the "organic" dye that goes into the already Strontium 80-laden grass that can't be meant for cows, with the elements in the mixture, too, going into the soil composition as well as the atmosphere, and so on and so forth, oh, I must stop.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> I must stop. I must stop, for I'd much rather have beef against the implication of land usage for golfing purposes per se. It is certainly an implication that completes itself vis a vis the contradictory policies of Philippine governance:</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">WE are a country rightly or wrongly running a land reform policy, for one, and a human settlements department in government, secondly, tasked to address the squatters and the migration-of-the-homeless problematique. And here we are, flaunting the idea that wide tracts of land, as long as their owners don't declare them as agricultural land, can either delay these properties' usefulness for some future industrial leasing, or otherwise use now for the golfing elite minority's pleasure under the guise of tourism or shoring up the real estate boom. Some will say that by this picture alone golf becomes a symbol of one side of a governance contradiction. For while land reform and the human settlement program are progressivist in intent, tourism and industrialization are a different set of priorities altogether. But I say, we must not stop there; we must move on, to conjecture upon the anatomy of that contradiction as a possible monster produce of sheer Hypocrisy.</span></div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Ml0Njebn-iU/TGyeIXE-wII/AAAAAAAAASY/v0JlN5LR4vg/s1600/ferdinand-marcos.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Ml0Njebn-iU/TGyeIXE-wII/AAAAAAAAASY/v0JlN5LR4vg/s200/ferdinand-marcos.jpg" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5506950310838321282" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 200px; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; text-align: left; width: 145px;" /></a><span style="font-size: medium;"> In the Marcos era, much government talk was disseminated against the presence of idle lands, a campaign of course which turned a blind eye to Marcos' fronts and Marcos' Kilusang Bagong Lipunan Party's members and their own teeming tracts of idle property. Hypocrisy in this country does not merely find symbolic amplification in sports, say, the golfing sport. No. For Hypocrisy </span><i style="font-size: large;">is</i><span style="font-size: medium;"> the sport.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Farm estates in the United States are owned by private individuals or private companies instead of Hacienda Luisita-style "corporate" systems with former tenants for new incorporators, and maybe because hypocrisy is not a tradition in American agriculture. On the other hand, we've heard about the many problems posed against Philippine land reform, or Japanese land reform for that matter.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> For example, one claim has it that national agricultural objectives have not been achieved hand in hand with the Philippine land reform plan. The contending argument, on the other hand, goes that agricultural output was never the program's objective to begin with, the umbrella objective being political instead of economic. For surely, if the program is being moved by an economic thrust, then we'd have a problem with the alleged reality that many farmers are not necessarily guaranteed of a better life with land reform, which is a euphemistic way of expressing the dread of an opposite resultant. Unless perhaps the farmer converts his land to more profitable industrial leasing, in which case the land reform program qua agrarian reform would have to be deemed as having lost its purpose, success may yet prove to be elusive. Or would the program really lose its "redistributionary" objective this way? As long as one practices "charity" in his feudalistic heart, it shouldn't matter now what the recipient of one's goodness does with his new property.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> Others argue that land reform as a philosophical direction must be consistent and extend itself as a philosophy into factories and the services industry, for---after all---many families have had several of its generations serving under some same manufacturing dynasty, an ad agency's janitorial division for that matter under some same agency owner's family.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> Should the land reform philosophy extend stock options into this area of what could be a new labor-friendly national GDP?</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">BUT this is not a piece aiming to instigate a resurgence of debates on the land reform program and philosophy, lest I be mistaken for somebody sounding apologias for the landed. This is, rather (and I hope you'd believe me), a light examination of and/or rumination on the enveloping philosophy 1) of our republic itself and 2) around its regard for land ownership and that ownership's responsibilities, whether involving reformed land or not.</span></div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Ml0Njebn-iU/TGyhIPVN36I/AAAAAAAAASg/cS4tbN0yURQ/s1600/lucio_tan2.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Ml0Njebn-iU/TGyhIPVN36I/AAAAAAAAASg/cS4tbN0yURQ/s200/lucio_tan2.jpg" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5506953607293820834" style="cursor: pointer; float: right; height: 200px; margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; text-align: left; width: 123px;" /></a><span style="font-size: medium;"> An individual who owns a thousand hectares of farmland must subdivide it to tenants who have the option---helped by tax money---to buy the little pieces, so they can have their own little grape plantations. Well and good, at least for the utopia. But an individual who owns a thousand hectares of land not used for the production of pectin-rich vegetables can actually still exploit his area as he pleases before the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program catches up with him, and I am reminded of Lucio Tan's long-idle hectares in Quezon City beside homeless squatters.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Agricultural farms up for land division/distribution. Golf courses. Agricultural production programs. Idle lands. Put two and two together and you have a picture of contradictions, perhaps deriving from a hypocritical lying elite culture, perhaps from a country's non-philosopher-kingship devoid of an integral wisdom that may serve as soul for the never-ending pornography of naked slogans. This non-philosophy has churned a religion of evasiveness, and its gods have been playing golf.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">HOWEVER, I would like to say that perhaps the Filipino habit of throwing in the towel might someday swerve to more proactive attitudes of Davidian defiance, especially now that a purportedly social liberal government has been installed.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> Let me start with the "moderate" form of such a defiance. I could, for example, beyond wallowing in disgust, propose a sublimating potential for the golf sport in the tropical setting. I have in mind, for instance, a possible "progressivist" value for golf as a social item, one that will address instead of ignore its Philippine setting wherein a democracy is struggling to empower itself over a long-established plutocracy. I could start with the proposition, and perhaps a new millionaire can be created by my suggestion, that standards for golf course bunkers, roughs and other hazards can be upgraded to include forest trees, ponds containing edible fish, with the fairway areas occupying less acreage than the rocks and weeds, with even a fruit grove or corn area to be placed in, on, and around them. I'm talking about what modern parlance might dub as "extreme golf". Unacceptable, perhaps, to the traditionally conservative crowd that make up golf country club memberships, but then there are always industry companies like Virgin or Pixar or Apple willing to take up the slack of contentment and tried-and-tested business formulas. The new golf course of the future can now begin to look like this forest photo here.</span></div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Ml0Njebn-iU/TGy0_M-HGVI/AAAAAAAAATg/uqXaSrxzEo4/s1600/forest.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Ml0Njebn-iU/TGy0_M-HGVI/AAAAAAAAATg/uqXaSrxzEo4/s200/forest.jpg" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5506975442273769810" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 200px; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; text-align: left; width: 153px;" /></a><span style="font-size: medium;"> This new, one might say liberal or progressivist, type of golf might not mind venturing into earth-friendlier and necessarily people-friendlier redesigns of things we've come to accept, inclusive of pricing. Following the examples of Henry Sy, et al., and I don't mean their relationship-with-labor records, "extreme golf" investors can profit from membership volume instead of from a conservative neoliberal marketing of exclusivity. It's about time we cease to behave like fearful loyal subjects to a fearless royal class; let's liberate golf as though this were France in 1799!</span><br />
<span style="font-size: medium;"> After all, the world has changed. And if we are to learn anything from this new phase---in the same manner that we've learned that centrist governments only tame, while fooling, a people, and that rightist governments that play conservative golf actually merely promote contesting communist and Muslim insurgencies---, it is that the latest world order demands a rehash of our concepts of a Promiseland, one less inspired by trickle-down economics perhaps, lest we wake up one day to find all our neighbors acting like terrorists with clubs, shouting defiance towards our golf clubs.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> But here's the disclaimer. Given our tame general populace's outlook which has long learned courage to fight only the little neighborly fights among themselves, the above grim down-with-Marie-Antoinette's-head picture is pretty unlikely. Golf courses will continue to blossom, agricultural tracts converted under our noses to industrial estates or resorts and subdivisions, and the hypocrisy will give way to a new comfortable utopia of Imeldific investing by the nouveau Imeldas. Fine utopia. Or should I say outbreak of rampant myopia?</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> And the masses that will suffer will never know what hurt them, and they'll continue to murder themselves with petty bickerings, unable to protest against those beyond their education's comprehension. Even as many say we've always had a socialist tendency as a people, always expecting government to take care of us and blaming government for our ills, yet our magnificent elite shall continue, yet again, to flaunt a self-centeredness that recognizes the reality of the tamed "socialism" of our people that has been amply uneducated by our educational policies, unable therefore to find the art of war. But this is risky. How long will our children be safe from the surprises of sudden terrorist or criminal recruitment? Might we already have sown the seeds of such a subculture? Are we continuing to farm such a field of seeds? When wealthy Chinese-Filipinos and Spanish mestizos and new Malay-brown billionaires display their privileged delight in a golf course, dismissing Jun Lozada's example of repudiation, will a small-minded waiter who has had the all-too-common racist impression that Chinoys are an anti-labor Kuomintang lot, all millionaires myopic as East India Company, . . . will he plant the ire of a neo-Nazi in his spirit? Would his racism be checked by Chinoys' and mestizos' better presence in Rotary Club medical missions, say, for free breast cancer checkups on municipal grounds?</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> Golf. It's going to be a game off limits to Filipinos. And by Filipinos I mean to include the homeless and the squatters and the communists. As well as the political opportunists/climbers. As well as the ordinary men and women of the village or town or city who drink the communal water, slosh in the global-rain puddles, try to understand the word "freedom" in an ever-decreasing ground space for their fenced-out habitation.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> Game off limits to Filipinos. That's what we're playing. And there are still 18 holes to play before trophy day, in case we reach it in this Philippine open.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">SO, . . . yeah, well, one could say all the above simply amounts to inciting to rebellion instead of some simple semiotics and free political-cum-social-cum-cultural analysis, but I believe we all must address such issues as this regarding an exclusive sport one day, the same way we are addressing the exclusive private wangwang today, for it also somehow represents the latest glaring conflict of philosophies between today's two contending parties: the ruling Liberal with its supposed new Aquino social liberalism and the rest being one with their supposed conservatism or pseudo-liberalism or pseudo-progressivism. The new liberals' philosophy, it seems, is aimed at calling for a defeat of the things that sow the seeds of terrorism and rebellion and that plant such trees as Jose Maria Sison and Nur Misuari, and is aimed further at the thought that toppling rebellious trees is not enough (not enough, for given the rich soil for seeds, many similar trees will always be ready to replace toppled ones). Given our elite that has learned---from the time of our Spaniard conquerors on to the time of our turn-of-the-century American invaders, our Tojo masters, as well as the eras of the Aguinaldo and Marcos and Erap and Gloria movements---to test the limits of the average Filipino's patience, the new liberalism's order would be easier said than done in our "local geopolitical" reality.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> It behooves us, then, to play on with this game of g-o-l-f, which will eventually gloriously bring us to wherever it will when it does. Gloriously, I say, because it would be beyond the lip service of doomsayers like me.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> So, okay, then. Let's go back to business. What's your handicap? ♦</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><b>Author's note:</b> </span><i>This essay is adapted from a 2004 column I wrote for the now-defunct provincial e-zine </i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Bananacue Republic.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><b>Readings related to golf and the Philippines I'd recommend:</b></span></div>
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<li style="text-align: left;"><a href="http://archive.deccanherald.com/Deccanherald/jan232005/fp4.asp" target="_blank"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">"He used golf to carry messages undermining the Marcos regime"</span></a></li>
<li style="text-align: left;"><a href="http://www.dgmoen.net/video_trans/040.html" target="_blank"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">"The Golf War: A Story of Land, Golf and Revolution in the Philippines"</span></a></li>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><b>Photos borrowed from:</b></span></div>
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<li style="text-align: left;"><a href="http://www.thefilipino.com/golfcoursesinthephilippines/" target="_blank"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">http://www.thefilipino.com/golfcoursesinthephilippines/</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"> - Hacienda Luisita Golf and Country Club</span></li>
<li style="text-align: left;"><a href="http://coconuter.blogspot.com/2008/02/scandal-tainted-nbnzte-deal.html" target="_blank"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">http://coconuter.blogspot.com/2008/02/scandal-tainted-nbnzte-deal.html</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"> - Jun Lozada</span></li>
<li style="text-align: left;"><a href="http://www.york.ac.uk/depts/poli/current/ug/modules/marx.html" target="_blank"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">http://www.york.ac.uk/depts/poli/current/ug/modules/marx.html</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"> - Karl Marx</span></li>
<li style="text-align: left;"><a href="http://www.hootiegolf.com/news.asp" target="_blank"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">http://www.hootiegolf.com/news.asp</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"> - Darius Rucker of Hootie and the Blowfish playing golf</span></li>
<li style="text-align: left;"><a href="http://blogs.knoxnews.com/pineda/2009/09/living-under-martial-law-part.html" target="_blank"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">http://blogs.knoxnews.com/pineda/2009/09/living-under-martial-law-part.html</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"> - Ferdinand Marcos</span></li>
<li style="text-align: left;"><a href="http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=733434&page=20" target="_blank"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=733434&page=20</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"> - Lucio Tan</span></li>
<li style="text-align: left;"><a href="http://thenextreporter.com/jg/philippine-election-2010-results-benigno-noynoy-aquino-iii-leads-presidential-race-wide-margin/086496/" target="_blank"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">http://thenextreporter.com/jg/philippine-election-2010-results-benigno-noynoy-aquino-iii-leads-presidential-race-wide-margin/086496/</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"> - Noynoy Aquino</span></li>
<li style="text-align: left;"><a href="http://www.dnrec.delaware.gov/OpenSpaces/Pages/ForestPreservation.aspx" target="_blank"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">http://www.dnrec.delaware.gov/OpenSpaces/Pages/ForestPreservation.aspx</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"> - forest</span></li>
<li style="text-align: left;"><a href="http://timeslikethis-wrigley.blogspot.com/2009/06/squatters-in-philippines.html" target="_blank"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">http://timeslikethis-wrigley.blogspot.com/2009/06/squatters-in-philippines.html</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"> - squatters in the Philippines</span></li>
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Jojo Soria de Veyrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10755588651423753783noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2887809293642421519.post-83986725070000455342010-07-26T19:10:00.033+08:002015-02-11T22:08:24.266+08:00Blue Funk'd Silent Stories: The Expanding Art of Marcel Antonio<div style="text-align: center;">
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I FIRST saw it in a Marcel Antonio work in 1999, a Chagallian red painting titled <st1:place st="on"><i><st1:placetype st="on">Garden</st1:placetype> of <st1:placename st="on">Desire</st1:placename></i></st1:place> portraying a female figure in the center being subtly surprised by a kiss from a vague other female figure. Chagallian composition would stay with Antonio to the present, either as a means of liquefying a color composition when things become so Picassoesque-ly rigid or to confuse gravity when gravity gets in the way of proper visual “storytelling”. Early Picasso, who in turn was influenced by the colors of Velazquez, seems likewise a major influence. Antonio employs all his influences’ devices for his recurrently and often horizontal rectangular stage or silver screen dramas.</div>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Ml0Njebn-iU/TE1uRbSaWtI/AAAAAAAAAO0/fDfN021nHxE/s1600/Garden.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Ml0Njebn-iU/TE1uRbSaWtI/AAAAAAAAAO0/fDfN021nHxE/s400/Garden.jpg" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5498171965751057106" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 318px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a><st1:place st="on"><st1:placetype st="on"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Garden</span></i></st1:placetype><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"> of </span><st1:placename st="on"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Desire</span></st1:placename></i></st1:place><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">, 1999. Oil on canvas, 24 x 30</span></div>
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These face-derived figurative dramas do quote hand gestures from classical painting, even while they may still be deemed contemporary expressionist oeuvres. And Antonio decorates his scenes with all the props and accoutrement of scenography, quoting—in the 1980s fashion of appropriation—sources ranging from de Chirico to Carravaggio for this, his theater of subtle “expressionism”.</div>
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But how expressionist is Antonio? He had, indeed, been lumped with the young Filipino expressionist wave of the 1990s which included the likes of Elmer Borlongan. But while some in this bunch went in the direction of Picasso’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Guernica</i> or Munch’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Scream</i> or expressionist social realism, Antonio chose (consciously or unconsciously) the restrained trance eroticism of his unsmiling “expressionist” faces as carriers of his compositional puzzles-cum-evocations.</div>
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By eroticism I do not mean the kind that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">evokes</i> but the kind that seems (and only seems) to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">threaten to evoke</i>. Meaning, an erotica that’s interactive: not so much author-induced as communally agreed on, like private jokes. Recurrently, classicist nude figures with reading-inviting faces also do not so much narrate a literal going-on as suggest a narrative, in spite of literature-inspired titles that challenge his compositions’ independence from rigid allusions. Thankfully, always the compositions win over the titles, with the works daily gaining independence from the painter’s guidance-by-titling.</div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Protest Against Indulgence</b></b></div>
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There have been paintings like 1999’s <i>The Chinese Chamber</i> that allows a Rembrandtian drama to unfold in more expressive ways, but even there Antonio avoids throwing caution to the wind, coming up instead with something like quiet J-horror.</div>
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<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">The Chinese Chamber</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">, 1999. Oil on canvas, 24 x 36</span></div>
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Also in 1999, Antonio experimented with portrait figures with abstracted or vague bodies and relatively-distinct faces, as in a work called <i>Scissors</i>. With the drama here turning Japanese, my reading on Antonio’s dramaturgy as concerned more with his models’ facial portraits (as actors acting out the painter’s play) than with their gestures was underlined and confirmed. Even his nudes, being nudes that should be calling attention to the body, were more evocative of sleep, pushing thus the eye/face to take the lead role, at least in effect. Think “mood” acknowledged as eroticism’s prime carrier without which the literal body is mere meat. And as a way of paraphrasing this primacy of the figure’s face, Antonio transferred this early facial focus to a cat in <i>Cultured Cat</i>.</div>
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<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Scissors</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">, 1999</span><br />
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<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Sleep</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">, 1999. Oil on canvas</span><br />
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<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Cultured Cat</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">, early 2000. Conte crayon, charcoal, pastel</span></div>
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But by July of 2000, an Antonio show called “Langue et Parole” was already incorporating his father’s cubism into his actors. Now supported by a growing following, the figures on his now-larger canvases multiplied, manufacturing a drama of selves and canvases as synchronous collectives, introducing in turn an Antonio-esque kind of populism within a trance that departed from the folk happiness of his mother’s (Norma Belleza’s) marketplace colorist treatments.</div>
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I was, however, more interested in the evolution provided by an earlier-by-a-month show at the Drawing Room, which featured a painting that graced the invite card to the show. A line drawing of a woman drenched in white, foregrounding a blue wall, not only highlighted a signature Antonio blue-funked face but introduced method acting into his portraiture. In this painting, the woman looks to be in the process of undressing, specifically of removing her right boot. Antonio’s blue-funked camera obsessed with the mysteries of the face was now focusing on the entire body’s stage show.</div>
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And so props entered the acting process, not merely as decors beside the figures as in the previous year but, this time, as the figures’ fetish instruments either held or faced: candles, knives, mirrors, flower vases, paper, etc. The facial drama had conscripted not just the body but objects as well.</div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Ml0Njebn-iU/TE-GHM8CJeI/AAAAAAAAAQM/dPLkDf2QlNk/s1600/Maiden_with_Flowers.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Ml0Njebn-iU/TE-GHM8CJeI/AAAAAAAAAQM/dPLkDf2QlNk/s400/Maiden_with_Flowers.jpg" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5498761128332895714" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 320px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Maiden with Flowers</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">, early 2000. Oil on canvas.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Ml0Njebn-iU/TE-G1MMTATI/AAAAAAAAAQU/94MxVASvj9I/s1600/girl_with_cards.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Ml0Njebn-iU/TE-G1MMTATI/AAAAAAAAAQU/94MxVASvj9I/s400/girl_with_cards.jpg" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5498761918406656306" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 400px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center; width: 330px;" /></a><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Girl with Cards</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">, early 2000. Oil on canvas.</span></span></div>
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Years later, circa 2004-05, Antonio was still churning out the same dramas, this time via fetish paintings with de Chirico-inspired imagery. His figures became more contoured, further reminiscent of either early Picasso or 1940s commercial art. But in some of these works, the figures looked distant, more aware of events in their minds than of objects around them. In one painting that featured none of this pensiveness but a male-female couple happily playing cards, the issue of viewer-and-actor non-mutual engrossment was introduced, with the viewer engrossed in the contours of the central female’s body as well as her red hair's ribbon while she, in her turn, was engrossed in her cards. A three-of-hearts card faced the painting viewer falling in love with this woman-figure, but she for her part was more interested in her ongoing venture to win at cards, unhindered even by the lady passing by the couple’s window in the background.</div>
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In 2008, Antonio’s show—which the poet Alfred Yuson wrote about under the heading “Painter As Narrator”—went back to cubism, more colorful this time, as if to place his rectangular dramatic theater within the restraining confines of cubistic rigor. Call this his narrative art paying homage to his father’s (Angelito Antonio’s), as well as Cesar Legaspi’s, type of Picabia-looking Filipino cubism.</div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The Final Trimmings</b></b></div>
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Then came that 2009 exhibit called <span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“Sturm und Drang</span>.”</div>
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Still the same old blue-funked trance painting that Antonio fans expected, you might say, but the figures in the horizontal or vertical collectives suddenly possessed enhanced characters as individuals (that is to say, each figure or figure-compound seemed to want to audition for the painting composition’s star role).</div>
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The painter, talking to this party-crasher, did admit that these “stage plays” were still culled from his wont to quote classical as well as contemporary literature, but admitting further that his mannerist interpretations seemed to also tickle his fans, to which the gallery kowtowed. But I was not to be taken in by conventional appreciation and had to admit in my turn that here was Antonio stunning me with a slow emergence from a restraining chrysalis. Not towards Munch or the violence of de Kooning, of course, but to a narrative painting field where narration merely becomes a further excuse, this time with the excuse proposing an earthquake-shattered stage through a confusedly multi-leveled floor space, and that confusion echoed as well by indistinct wall spaces. Confused, I say, not in a cubist way of fragmenting cognition but in a neo-surreal manner intent on suggesting the storm of inner minds.</div>
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So the blue funk had expanded its wings from melancholia into that other meaning of blue funk: confusion. It had found beauty in confusion, as did Chagall, not so much to tell a story, as we said (again, despite the titles and some of his fans’ clamor for further book illustration), as to distribute the influence of his blue-funkism. This influence had traveled from the face to the body to the trimmings of characterization and to spatial management, on to the expansion of moods.</div>
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Sure, not all of Antonio’s pieces would fit into this category of ennui and melancholia, and those other pieces would be hailed by some collectors (those hailing this review and perspective) as anomalies to possess. But in what to me are his best works from the recent collection at the “Sturm und Drang” as well as the July 2010 Glorietta ArtSpace show, pieces like <i>Café Ennui</i>, <i>All That Matters</i>, <i>Centuries</i> and <i>I’m The Mad Man’s Mire Drug</i>, likewise the three excursions into Pop art—<i>Soda Pop</i>, <i>Shadows</i> and <i>Steam</i>—, are vehicles enough for me to herald the increasing influence on many a wall of Antonio’s expanding trance erotica. This erotica should stay around and keep us entranced, being not so much one that tickles the groin as a kind that promotes the understanding that every face, gesture, object, color, and shape is a secret sex object and clandestine true story waiting to be told, regardless of whether that erotic telling even includes death (as would a Nobuyoshi Araki).</div>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Ml0Njebn-iU/TE-LEaj0qGI/AAAAAAAAAQc/MMpAAHFnLWI/s1600/arts2.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Ml0Njebn-iU/TE-LEaj0qGI/AAAAAAAAAQc/MMpAAHFnLWI/s400/arts2.jpg" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5498766578007976034" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 188px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center; width: 250px;" /></a><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Cafe Ennui</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">, 2009. Oil on canvas.</span><br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Ml0Njebn-iU/TE-Le4c6_QI/AAAAAAAAAQk/6ZlWym3i2yk/s1600/shadows.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Ml0Njebn-iU/TE-Le4c6_QI/AAAAAAAAAQk/6ZlWym3i2yk/s400/shadows.jpg" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5498767032708693250" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 300px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Shadows</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">, 2009. Oil on canvas.</span><br />
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But to reduce Antonio’s art as pure content narrative serviced by a formal acumen is to deny the strength of formal inspirations that lead artists to their content management. Thus my refusal to box him with narrative art; and campaigning, instead, for boxing him in with those who’ve moved towards anti-narration. In Antonio’s case, his blue funkism's “de-expression”, or “dis-expression” and narrative confusion through the mannerisms of illogical narrative imagery and titling, seems to be a produce of a Russian Formalist narrative bent of “defamiliarizing” images and shapes towards a higher enigma. Thus his refusal to “express”.</div>
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To paraphrase, if the formal part of Antonio is looking for ways to defamiliarize, that is to say, to make mysterious the familiar and mundane by mathematically arranging images to thus achieve their respective interesting positions on the plane, the facial-content part of his imagery meanwhile achieves that defamiliarization of the known literary or everyday or celebrity image by opening the faces up to a variety of narrative possibilities via an “expressionist absence”, as it were. That seems to be Antonio’s way of deconstructing narrative art to arrive at his own sort of narrative or pseudo-narrative, delivered by way of silences instead of via the noise of his titles’ text. ###</div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">An untitled 2010 painting featuring this a</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">uthor, blogger-friend Lila Shahani, author and activist Sylvia Mayuga, preacher and freelance editor Mac </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">McCarty</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">, London-based art legend David Medalla and two other friends.</span></span></div>
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Jojo Soria de Veyrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10755588651423753783noreply@blogger.com1Makati City, Philippines14.554729 121.0244451999999514.49292 120.94410769999995 14.616538 121.10478269999994tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2887809293642421519.post-21661926591619503222009-09-22T17:11:00.000+08:002015-02-11T22:11:34.509+08:00Gloria Arroyo, Underappreciated Patron of the Arts<br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #cc9933;"><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">1. The Underappreciated</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />GLORIA ARROYO IS an underappreciated, no: a mal-appreciated, individual. Her role in the evolution of good Philippine governance has yet to be recorded by future historians, who might then be able to likewise acknowledge her contributions to that evolution in the Filipino's unconscious psyche</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 15.8333px;">.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"> But this mal-appreciation is understandable. This is the reason why there is such a course in schools called History, and that academic course presumes that History's lessons are not learned by its characters' contemporaries but by those contemporaries' great grand-offspring inhabiting future time. In short, the History course is vicarious experiencing which, by virtue of its being vicarious, elicits learning; it may even be deemed the opposite of true experiencing, and, by virtue of this, elicits objectivity. Totally understandable, therefore, that no one learns from Current History. So, to repeat: vicarious experiencing through past History is the key to learning, and it is therefore our great-great-grandchildren who can be expected to evolve after having learned from all that we experience today. To repeat, we can hardly be expected to learn anything big from unfolding current history; thus, our mal-appreciation of Gloria Arroyo's actions. (But make no mistake about it. Even future generations won't have their learning on a silver platter. They would have to expose themselves, in </span><st1:street st="on" style="font-family: inherit;"><st1:address st="on">Sesame Street</st1:address></st1:street><span style="font-family: inherit;">-like fashion, over and over and over to the lessons of past History for these to sink in.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"> Now, having said this, just for the hell of it and for those who might want a glimpse of what the lessons of the future might look like, simply from my modest ability to create a form of sci-fi with the gift of an aging imagination, permit me the indulgence of guiding you through this Star Trek to the archipelago's future learning. My sci-fi reader, I offer that the future will look back (perhaps through online books and videos) and say: Hey, look, look at those moves by Gloria Arroyo in 2009, A.D., made for the benefit of Philippine arts, moves that totally couldn't be understood or appreciated by Arroyo's countrymen during her time. She was, after all, a revolutionary mind. In what way? Let me count the ways.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"> Here is that glimpse.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">IN 2009, GLORIA Arroyo </span><a href="http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/168769/news/nation/palace-defends-carlo-j-s-inclusion-in-national-artist-award" style="font-family: inherit;" target="_blank">insisted on the proclamation</a><span style="font-family: inherit;"> of that instant-film maker Carlo Caparas and that theater organizer Cecile Guidote-Alvarez as the new National Artists of the Philippines Archipelago, a move that, we've no doubt in our minds, was made by her to teach artistic circles at that time a very good lesson—a lesson we certainly cannot expect the Sesame Street of Philippine arts to have seen until it was repeated a thousand more times to the present; the lesson being, for us now in 2099, that if Bienvenido Lumbera or F. Sionil Jose or any other stalwart blessed by the national coffers can have the right to dictate their opinion of who the national artist for the Philippine archipelago should be, then anybody with a right to the national coffers, the President no less, can have his/her say on who the people should gobble up and emulate as their national artist. We harp on that today. They could not harp on that in the past, and allowed the </span><st1:street st="on" style="font-family: inherit;">Sesame Street</st1:street><span style="font-family: inherit;"> of history to teach their great grandchildren its lessons more subtly and more patiently. After all, even Congress hearings on the issue of protesting the proclamation, attended by all sorts of historicist fellows from all sorts of persuasions, dared not question what they were fighting over; they could only question who was fighting for whom. And as for the claim that Caparas was not worthy of the award, was not that the very point of the hard lesson? If any clique can claim to be right about who they think is worthy of the award, then by a simple stretch of that logic we'll get the logic of getting a Caparas. Brilliant Arroyo.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"> Almost simultaneous to the initiation of this lesson in 2009 A.D., Gloria Arroyo also had a luxuriant P1 million dinner, with frustrated culinary artists and national Congressional gourmands, in colonial <st1:state st="on"><st1:state st="on">New York</st1:state></st1:state> and <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">Washington</st1:city></st1:place> <st1:state st="on"><st1:state st="on">DC</st1:state></st1:state></st1:city></st1:place>; it was a dinner which hungry and not-so-hungry and not-hungry-at-all Filipino artistic circles interminably protested against on social networking websites and blog sites. Little did they recognize that this was exactly what they themselves wanted. Gourmand luxury! <i>She</i> was the president, after all, and so if a national grantee of an individual could even have the right to dispose of a P2 million annual budget on his research-grant-hungry person care of the cultural tax collection from the people and his competitors, then why not a president, rightly entitled to a million-peso dinner, being a president and not a mere artisan of state-guided or state-approved art?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"> A bit later on, the government of Gloria Arroyo, through the Cultural Center of the Philippines, accorded the former First Lady Imelda Romualdez Marcos<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15.8333px;">—</span>wife of the then-already-deceased, previously-exiled dictator Ferdinand Marcos<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15.8333px;">—</span>a tribute evening entitled "Genesis: Seven Arts, One Imelda," as if to teach the artistic culture by implying: "Look," the tribute seemed to say, "if any of you can dictate who to honor among your friends, certainly I, the president of the republic, can dictate too who to honor among my friends." And who can argue with that? Oh, some did argue with that, saying their dictates were "collective," having passed through a Commission of artistic dictators, er, connoisseurs. Total crap. But no one could harp on Arroyo's lesson on that crap then, and history simply allowed <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Darwin</st1:place></st1:city></st1:place></st1:city>'s <st1:street st="on"><st1:address st="on"><st1:street st="on"><st1:address st="on">Sesame Street</st1:address></st1:street></st1:address></st1:street> of slow, historical evolution to have its way and say on the matter in our education in the future, our education today.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"> So, today, let us not forget what happened a few days later after the brouhaha. You see, the activist National Artist Lumbera had been one of those quite vocal about the perceived scandal Ms. Arroyo wrought on the National Artist of the Philippines title award with the film maker's and theater organizer's instant proclamation. One morning, Lumbera's housemaids called the guards of their high-end village to accost suspicious persons <a href="http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/breakingnews/metro/view/20090917-225641/Marines-spy-of-National-Artist-released" target="_blank">hovering about the front of the Lumbera house</a>, persons who turned out to be members of the Philippine Marines. The military personnel were caught, but they had their alibi, alibi that . . . but the artistic community would not have any of it. <i>If</i> their suspicions were right, that Lumbera was being made to fear for his life and was therefore expected to cease all activism, then there again was a precious lesson that the government was generously trying to teach the art community. Anyone of you who dares oppose an authority's choice, the lesson seemed to say, will be harassed, just as anyone among the citizenry who dares oppose an art authority's choice, whether that authority comes from the CCP or the National Commission for Culture and the Arts or the art establishment or the small arts society's majority, is promptly harassed by the art authorities' cliques either by ugly rumors, media-coursed black propaganda, collective dressing-down or simple threats of isolation. But, no, that lesson wasn't to sink in on that season of scrambling for arts grants on Pinoy Sesame Seeds Street.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"> A day later, what more happened? Gloria Arroyo appointed an accountant to man the helm of the country<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15.8333px;">'</span>s Cultural Center. The arts community, quite naturally, went berserk. But they couldn't appreciate the logic of it. Gloria Arroyo was teaching the <st1:street st="on"><st1:address st="on"><st1:street st="on"><st1:address st="on">Sesame Street</st1:address></st1:street></st1:address></st1:street> of artists in the archipelago a very important lesson: a lesson about funds. The existence of an artist's haven dangling subsidies and stipends means that there will continue to be parasites looking out for these grants falling down from the haven's tall walls. Sure, Ms. Arroyo could have appointed a ballerina to be the new president of the CCP, or a brilliant lighting designer, but what would <i>they</i> do? They would usually just end up calling their friends to get hold of this or that grant that the institution is releasing. By appointing an accountant, Gloria Arroyo wanted the archipelago to learn this: when you wait for droppings called grants, you're waiting not just on the blessings of your patron in office, like a respectable-looking waiter waiting for tips, you're actually a fly waiting for tax money to land in front of you <i>as</i> your pie piece. Apart from ad execs and marketing men, accountants are the very people who constantly talk about pie charts and pieces of the pie. You see the significance of the metaphor Arroyo gave them? But who could have seen all this in the moment of real experiencing in the year 2009?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"> Look, in 2009, they couldn't even see the lessons during their lifetime of certain happy occurrences. That very year, the charm and grandeur of the CCP's "Daloy" event, an exhibition and party celebrating 40 years of artistic patronage by the institution, was praised by all, friends and foe of the current CCP clique alike. A masterful <a href="http://www.philstar.com/columns/506967/past-and-future-present" target="_blank">historical documentation-of-sorts of that event</a> was written by newspaper columnist Sylvia Mayuga. "Its red carpets are frayed where they once sank luxuriously underfoot," she hauntingly wrote. "I found some windows stuck when I tried opening them for fresh air in long hours once spent here on a theater project." But it was a party. Filipinos loved to party in 2009, and to them all parties were great. It was therefore no surprise, being a true experiencing of unfolding history (and within an enjoyable party at that), for <i>Daloy</i> not to be accepted as a demonstration of where the CCP was better at—at the recording of past and continuing culture. The lesson to be derived was: if the CCP is to transform its function from being a haven for artists (hungry or well-to-do) hankering after grants to being a repository of past and continuing culture, in short a true cultural center and not a state arts center, it might go through centuries without any major opposition.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">WE COULD GO on and on. But since it’s history, and we already know that a lesson was not learned until ninety years later, let us just get down to the present, here in 2099, and listen to an interview on a CNN-like station in New York hosted by a Winnie Monsod-like program host named Lila Shahani III, Oxford University PhD, as she interviews an alien who has been identified as one of many rebel leaders in the ongoing war to take hold of the CCP in the Philippine archipelago.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><st1:city st="on"> CNN-like NY Studio</st1:city> is catering to the Filipino expat community in <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">New York City,</st1:place></st1:city> and presently the program's interviewee is that above-mentioned rebel leader who, we found out, is also currently headquartered in <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">the city</st1:place></st1:state>. However, CNN-like NY has agreed, for security reasons, to hide the real identity of the rebel, knowing that a civil war has just erupted in real time in the archipelago between a hundred artistic cliques, each with a standard bearer for a National Artist of the Philippines title and a proposal for a year of CCP state sponsorship, each fighting the other therefore in one of the bloodiest battles in the Southeast Asian region. We'll just call our rebel guest "The Greenman," since anyway that's what Philippine legends and gossip call him, and in fact that's the name he used as author of nine poetry books, and he loves rainforests along with the color green and green forest jokes (known in New York as blue humor).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"> Oh, and what are those lessons again that we learned from Gloria Arroyo that we should be thankful to her for? The lessons enumerated in Part 1, Big Bird brain, along with the fact that everyone recognizes now that this ongoing war is a result of our not heeding Arroyo's parables! Lessons learned the hard way were they, if you will. Some mutual tough feeling there, too; for, after all, these were lessons Arroyo herself had a hard time teaching us, lessons which she could only communicate by holding a big mirror up to reflect the corruption in the arts at the time. Unfortunately, the art cliques looked at this mirror but could only see Gloria Arroyo behind it. They totally could not see that she was also there to act as their reflection.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"> We might also remember that the host of our CNN-like show is the great-great-granddaughter of a former Filipino lady senator who once fought for the retention of the CCP, even as her fellow senator—one Heherson Alvarez, husband of a later National Artist of the Philippines title awardee named Cecile Guidote-Alvarez—preferred to see the edifice disabled (perhaps in deference to the stalwart opposition senator murdered at the Benigno Aquino Jr. International Airport, then known as the Ninoy Aquino International Airport, who loved to tag the dictator</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 15.8333px;">'</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">s wife as a persona with an "edifice complex"). Senator Shahani won the argument, if only to liberate CCP from Imelda's arts and thus institutionalize a new CCP ostensibly embracing the arts of the people. Whether that ideal was achieved (or is even achievable) is the crux of this interview with The Greenman in this year of Shiva 2099.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"> Here is that interview, which—although it starts off with the National Artist of the Philippines title award issue—actually mainly circles around a debate on what the CCP should be about:</span></div>
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<b style="font-family: inherit;"> Lila Shahani III:</b><span style="font-family: inherit;"> Good afternoon, Mr. Greenman.</span><br />
<b style="font-family: inherit;"> Greenman:</b><span style="font-family: inherit;"> Good afternoon.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b face="georgia"> LSIII:</b> I watched you on Barcelona TV and one of the callers, the Filipino consul-general named Eddie de Vega IV, was asking you a question, and you were interrupted by commercials followed by breaking news, so naturally I couldn't catch your answer. Let me just repeat that question. He was saying, and I'll just read it here: “I was wondering why it was questionable to name composer Ernani Cuenco or actor Fernando Poe Jr. as National Artists. Anyone who could compose such a song as 'Gaano Kita Kamahal', and anyone who makes successful epic films that encourage the Filipino to appreciate their historical past (and <i>preserves</i> copies of those films he made), is a fine artist to me." And, you know, before you answer, let me just say that I think the issue with Ernani Cuenco was that he didn't really have a significant body of work (although the same could be said of Alejandro Roces, etc.). FPJr, on the other hand, always played the same stoic hero of the masses' proto-stereotype but was never really (in my humble opinion, at least) more than a B-grade actor. So I don't think it was their nationalism being questioned as much as the artistic form they worked in (or maybe at least in terms of how other artists in those respective genres were generally assessed). I agree: they both played a big part in forging our sense of nationhood, and I say this as a half-Filipino, but I guess the point is that the National Artist title awards should also be about artistic craft.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"> <b>G:</b> <i>(to the audience) </i>Hey guys, what’s up! Great to be here. <i>(to the host) </i>Uhm, okay. I say let's subsidize artists, but let's subsidize everyone else too! Let’s subsidize solar-powered-jeepney drivers, and actors, and magicians, and Facebook bloggers, so everyone pays their taxes and gets something in return too. And I think National Artists should be chosen by a national referendum, under an autonomous Commission on Referenda. I don't think a committee comprising solely of Eddie de Vega IV and Lila Shahani III should risk logging horns with the largish official committee members of the Arts Commission of the People's Republic of the Philippine Archipelago who have decided a long time ago to dictate to us who they think should be our National Artists, whatever the hell that means. But, you know what, I think I want to take back everything I wrote in my earlier manifestos already. I think now that all Filipino artists are National Artists since they are all Filipinos and therefore all <i>of</i> the Nation. <i>Mabuhay ang mga National Artists!</i> <i>(the audience responds with ‘Mabuhay!’s) </i>Oh, and I'm an Ernani Cuenco fan, by the way.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"> <b face="georgia">LSIII:</b> <i>(laughs) Sira ka talaga, e</i>! You don't even bother to answer Mr. de Vega IV's question. <i>Ba't hindi mo </i>type<i> yung dalawa</i> as National Artists? I'm a fan of Nora Aunor but don't think she should have been a National Artist, so whether you're a fan of Cuenco or not is neither here nor there. And what's wrong with subsidizing production (as opposed to achievement)? Wouldn't having cheaper books and materials make your life easier? It sure would help me out, since I'm a voracious reader.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b face="georgia"> G:</b> First of all, yeah, <i>oo nga, oo nga, </i>sorry, Mr. de Vega. <i>Pero </i>sorry <i>di ko type si </i>FPJ except <i>sa </i>Aguila. I'll answer your question later. First, Lil, <i>dapat talaga walang </i>National Artist. <i>Kahit sarili nating </i>favorites <i>wala tayong gustong gawing </i>Number One<i> natin, di ba? Lahat ng </i>favorites<i> natin gusto natin </i>number one<i> sila lahat, di ba? </i>I say, subsidize production in reverse, that is, by giving the production mode tax breaks; that way <i>mas </i>egalitarian, <i>hindi </i>special people<i> lang ang meron. . . . O di kaya, para masaya at wala nang away, idadaan sa </i>wrestling<i> o sabong. Ang may nanalong manok, siya ang </i>National Artist. At least<i> pag ganun alam natin ang Diyos ang nag-</i>decide by the divine mystery of sortition. . . . And now, Lil, and Eddie in Barcelona, to answer your question, I have no beef at all with Cuenco or Poe Jr. or Caparas and all their followers through the decades who have established churches in their name. I was just reporting/recording/reminding every one involved in this ongoing war in Luzon right now of those protests in 2009, because I think those protests are at the root of this Luzon war now in 2099. In all this, I was just looking at things as an outsider, one without a religious affiliation or clique. <i>Wala akong pinapaburan na kandidato </i>for the National Artist of the Philippines award in the near future, from whatever school of thought. I'm not saying the Caparasites or the Poeics or the Cuencoenes should win next year. In fact, <i>hindi ako pabor sa </i>National Artist of the Philippines title <i>dahil ayokong i-</i>impose<i> ng </i>state<i> o ng isang </i>commission <i>ang mga gusto nito para sa akin, </i>and vice versa if<i> nasa akin ang </i>power. The issue is, <i>bakit ba tayo mahilig mag-</i>power trip over the underrepesented, <i>sa </i>politics<i> man o sa</i> arts?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"> <b face="georgia">LSIII:</b> <i>Tama! </i>Finally, a serious answer. Agreed! <i>(laughs) Ay, pero ayaw ko ng sabong, ha. Ikaw naman, dadagdagan mo pa ng</i> animal abuse! Pero, actually,<i> mas marami nama'ng pera ang</i> economic elite <i>natin kaysa sa gobyerno, </i>so <i>dapat sila nalang ang mag-</i>fund <i>ng mga</i> private awards. Like Lila Acheson Wallace in the <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">US</st1:place></st1:country-region></st1:place></st1:country-region> or the Rockefellers. <i>Ayan o, sina </i>Henry Sy IV, Lucio Tan V, and Jaime Zobel XIII!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b> G:</b> <i>Tama ka. O </i>artists<i> mismo.</i> Actually<i> nga, magaling na</i> exercise <i>ng</i> imagination <i>sa isang </i>artist <i>ang wala siyang resources, di ba? Bakit ako, </i>poet with eight books <i>na rin kahit wala naman akong perang pang-publish ng</i> <s>P</s>65,000/500 copies na book? Resourcefulness should be a part of the art,<i> matagal nang itinuro ng </i>Marxist criticism<i> iyon, </i>the politics in/of artistic production.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b face="georgia"> LSIII:</b> <i>Ba't ikaw ang magbabayad ng </i><s>P</s>65,000? <i>Dapat yung </i>publisher<i> mo, di ba?</i> Pero ang point mo, in short, walang patrons. Ako naman: let the market do its work, but we can help to make it more equitable. <i>Parang</i> welfare economics <i>ni </i>Amartya Sen. Did you know that Sen's wife is an expert on Adam Smith at <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">Cambridge</st1:city></st1:place>? And he, Sen, definitely believes that the market should be allowed to operate, though we need to directly address its inequities. We need competition, so artists strive to have a competitive advantage: that can only breed excellence, Mr. Greenman. Awards would be a kind of incentive, given that writers these days have so few readers; it's really not that much to ask ... a few carrots, that's all. But I agree that they/we all need to strive to be more resourceful. Hey, guess what, the Filipino consul-general at <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on"><st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">Barcelona</st1:city></st1:place></st1:place></st1:city>, Mr. Eddie de Vega IV, is on the line. He was watching our show, Mr. Greenman. Let’s have him, let’s have him join in. Hello, Mr. de Vega</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>E</b></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>DDIE DE VEGA IV</b> <i>(phone audio)</i>: Hello, Lila, yes. You know, I agree with Mr. Greenman that resourcefulness and surviving under the most difficult conditions could elevate the artist's inspiration. A lot of the greatest artists in the world at one time or another lived in relative poverty (Schubert, Balzac, etc.).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b> EdV IV:</b> I think I shall listen now to my recording of Puccini's <i>La Boheme</i>. Or perhaps the modern version, <i>Rent </i>the musical—wonderful depiction of the artist's life. That was all, really. Just wanted you to know I'm a fan of your show.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b> LSIII:</b> Oh, thank you, Consul General, thank you. B'bye, have a good one. Hmm, <i>La Boheme</i>. . . . Okay, where were we? <s>P</s>65,000, Greenman. Why you, why not the publisher?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b face="georgia"> The Greenman:</b> Ah! <i>Sa</i> National Book Store of the Republic of the Philippine Archipelago, <i>ilan ang</i> poetry books <i>na </i>published<i> ng </i>publisher itself, <i>ilan ang</i> co-publishing ventures? Statistical question. We might not get an honest answer, unless we're talking to friends in the industry. Co-publishing ventures are: you pay for the printing, publishers distribute. It's universally referred to as self-publishing, via a vanity press. Same with indie recordings. <i>Mas matindi nga ang sa </i>recordings, <i>kaya mga</i> bands <i>ngayong sikat sa Pilipinas ay mayayaman</i> (middle to upper-middle class)<i>. </i>EMI would demand <i>meron ka ring pang-</i>marketing. <i>Sila, </i>distribution <i>lang.</i> Magkano mag-advertise sa isang billboard? <s>P</s>65,000/week sa main avenues. Marxist criticism on artistic production, you say? Well, <i>k</i><i>ahit</i> Marxists <i>sa</i> University of the Philippine Archipelago <i>ayaw i-</i>discuss<i> 'yan e.</i> Now, I agree that artists and patrons and the market should all be part of the equation. Government, nil <i>dapat</i>, zilch <i>dapat</i>, <i>dun na lang sila sa </i>museums <i>at</i> education.<i> Dun na lang ang </i>controversy <i>sa kung sino dapat ang nasa </i>lobby <i>ng</i> film museum,<i> halimbawa, si</i> Caparas <i>ba o si</i> Lino Brocka. At least <i>malalaman natin sa </i>ticket sales<i> ng</i> museum <i>kung sino ang trip ng</i> citizenry. And Puccini's <i>La Boheme</i>? <i>Panalo, Mang</i> Eddie, sir!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b> LS III:</b> Look, guys, Mr. Greenman, our audience, all I'm saying is: what if you have a brilliant young girl in <st1:place st="on">Palawan</st1:place> who's gifted in music? But her parents can't afford to buy her the violin she so desperately wants. <i>Ikaw, </i>Mr. Greenman: you can nurture your talents because writing is the cheapest art form, after all. <i>E, paano na ang mga</i> filmmakers <i>at lalo na ang mga </i>musicians who have to start young? <i>Paano kung </i>type <i>niya si </i>Jacqueline du Pré <i>at ang </i>cello? <i>Sino ang mag-babayad?</i> All I'm saying is that, in such contexts, artists could use some help from the government. Maybe you and I will just have to agree to differ on this, Greenman—okay <i>lang</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b> Greenman:</b> <i>Kaya nga, </i>the culture of government-subsidized art practically produces such mis-alignments. If art is left to the private individual struggling for her/himself, s/he will not have been trained in the art s/he couldn't afford or the art that has not been in her/his neighborhood in the first place. <i>Ang</i> culture<i> natin ngayon, magdadala tayo ng </i>ballet performances <i>sa mga </i>rural barrios, <i>tapos pag nagustuhan ng mga anak ng magsasaka at wala silang pambili ng pang-</i>pirouette<i> na sapatos, patay na. Tsinelas nga di makabili e. Ayoko ng mga tatay na tinuturuan ang mga anak nilang mag-</i>appreciate <i>ng</i> violin, <i>tapos pag nagkagustong mag-</i>violin,<i> di maibili. Ang</i> culture<i> kasi natin pilit. Pinipilit maging </i>cultured <i>sa mga bagay na di natural sa atin, </i>when we should be nurturing the art na nasa neighborhood natin. If it's a neighborhood of violins, great. <i>Pero kung rondalla, wag nating piliting magkaroon ng </i>cello. <i>Tapos manghihingi tayo ng </i>funding <i>sa mga kapitbahay natin? Kung magbibigay, okey. Kung hindi, pa'no? </i>By law? . . . Now, literature. Literature for publication is one of the more expensive arts in the <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Philippines</st1:place></st1:country-region></st1:place></st1:country-region>, since most writers get published through co-publishing ventures better known elsewhere in the planet as self-publishing ventures, as I said earlier, the funding for which do not even return to the writers in terms of royalties or sales profit, at least in our parts. In that sense, <i>pangmayaman ang </i>writing, unless <i>mayaman ka sa </i>connections<i> </i>among Readers <i>o </i>Editors <i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">sa </span>publishing houses</i>, readers and editors whose bosses may finance a couple of non-profitable books a year. <i>Walang</i> cheap <i>na</i> art. . . . So, anyone can say his art is underfinanced. <i>Kanino ba ang hindi? </i>On the other hand, all art can be cheap if you do art that is natural to you. <i>Ang pangit kasi sa atin, meron tayong tinutukoy na</i> high art, so jeepney sticker art<i> ayaw natin i-</i>sponsor<i> o ayaw i-</i>cover <i>ng </i>media<i> ang isang magaling dito</i> the way NYC covered <i>magaling na </i>graffiti artists in the 1980s. Colonial<i> pa rin kasi ang sukat natin sa</i> all right <i>na </i>art as against <i>sa hindi </i>all right. . . . By the way, regarding Amartya Sen's wife <i>nga pala, </i>the economics of liberals <i>naman</i> (say, New Keynesian) are not necessarily anti-market,<i> di ba? Kahit nga si</i> Paul Krugman <i>dinifend ang </i>oil speculation,<i> di ba?</i> Necessary components <i>yun. Ang point lang ng</i> liberals like Krugman, <i>i-</i>regulate<i> ang dapat i-</i>regulate. Even Milton Friedman often agreed on this. <i>Kahit sa</i> politics <i>ganun din,</i> a liberal is not necessarily left-leaning in all issues. So, okay <i>sa mag-asawa magkaibang</i> poles, <i>parang</i> Shriver-Schwarzenneger. <i>Si </i>Ninoy, <i>halimbawa, </i>socialist, probably progressivist; <i>si </i>Cory, anti-Freedom from Debt Coalition, likely conservative-liberal or liberal-conservative. . . . And speaking of conservatives and liberals, many will look at my advocacy of a State-less arts as a conservative position, depriving socialist artists of support. But I see it as a liberal one. In fact, it is the State-infiltrated arts that are related to the nobleman- and scribe-supported arts of the monarchic period.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b> LS III:</b> Okay. . . . But now I want to put you to task on something you said earlier. Huh? I'm sorry? Oh. Yeah, our director is saying we should hear first from our audience. Okay, audience, what do you have to say? Your own views on this ongoing war in the archipelago. Oh, yes, what's your name, ma'am?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b> Therese Yason:</b> I'm Therese Yason.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b> LS III:</b> Therese Yason, go ahead.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b> TY:</b> I think <i>dapat</i> subsidizing the nurturing of creative, independent thought and action in our citizens, no matter what field we are in … we are so sold out on educating our kids to land them a job that we forget that one of our greatest strengths is the ability to think out of the box. Not talking about arts and crafts alone, which seems to be what a lot of us are doing for the export industry, but finding a different way to solve a problem. Too long have we been in a tenant/employee mindset, it's about time we nurture in all of us the confidence to make tangible our creativity (not only in the arts) and have government backing in terms of tech and education, not just funding.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b> LS III:</b> Very good, very good. Okay, we'll pause for a commercial, and when we come back, I think I want to pin you down on that indigenous thing you just suggested, Mr. Greenman. We'll be back.</span></div>
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<b style="font-family: inherit;">LSIII:</b><span style="font-family: inherit;"> ALL RIGHT, we’re back. Therese. Therese, you were saying during our commercial break, something you wanted to emphasize?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b> TY:</b> I was just trying to emphasize that subsidies should go to nurturing creative and independent thought in <i>all fields</i>. For too long, education in our country has focused on educating workers and followers and not on nurturing the out-of-the-box thinking which is innate in most of us. One of our country's greatest strengths is the innate ability of our people to improvise and innovate. Creativity is in our bloodline, be it in the arts or sciences. Creativity is in finding a different way to solve a problem—where else can you find a spoon improvised to fix a broken taxi door handle because the driver cannot afford to buy a new handle? If there is any funding to be granted, why not put it in educating our people to uplift their aesthetic sensibilities? Put it in providing technology or increasing the tech skills of people who need to make tangible their unusual ideas. While it is a bit fulfilling to have someone say that your body of work is great and here is an award to tell everyone that you did a great job, at the end of the day only the artist or the scientist or the businessman or the teacher can say if he was able to do what he had to do and whether he finds fulfillment in it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b> LSIII <i>(also clapping)</i>:</b> All right, all right! Hmm. Thank you, Therese. . . . Now, I want to go back to what The Greenman was saying here a while ago, and this is what I want to say: Great points, Greenman. But during our long commercial break I had a chat with Therese and then I went outdoors to our terrace here in the studio to enjoy the end of this gorgeous <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on"><st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">New York</st1:place></st1:state></st1:place></st1:state> summer. But I had this entire body of thought that came to me. Greenman, yes, point very well-taken about indigenous instruments, etc. That's true. But we don't want to be nativist or essentialist about identity either, do we? After all, this is a postmodernist (post- postmodernist <i>na nga kung minsan</i>) era, so that young girl in <st1:place st="on"><st1:place st="on">Palawan</st1:place></st1:place> should ideally have several options. Of course, it would be preferable if we’re to choose an ethnic instrument, but what if she really has a natural talent for something that's not readily available in her neighborhood? You know, much as Indians are loath to admit it, there are some outstanding Koreans and other non-Indians who are real virtuosos in classical Indian dance, for example. <i>Yung mga</i> dancer,<i> tinatawanan sa </i><st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on"><st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on">Korea</st1:country-region></st1:place></st1:place></st1:country-region> for this "strange" career choice, but they're actually really good. <i>'Di ba ito na ang </i>cultural logic of late capitalism, to follow Jameson—that it spreads outside national borders—that, by its very nature, art in the 21st century could have transnational qualities? But, okay, I absolutely take your point that all art can be cheap if you do what is most natural to you. But I don't agree that popular art is not recognized by the art establishment—respecting artists working on pop art forms is practically standard fare in the museum/academic world in <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on"><st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">New York</st1:place></st1:state></st1:place></st1:state>, for instance. Graffiti, language in <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">New York City</st1:place></st1:city></st1:place></st1:city> menus, hip hop—all of this has become rich fodder for cultural studies. <i>Sa </i>CCP<i> din.</i> My grandmother did a lot of shows on things like Kenkoy comics, pahiyas, etc., etc. But, as I said above, we don't want artists to artificially glorify the "ethnic" either—we just want them to do what is most natural to them. So, to follow Sen, providing the functional context (i.e., in Marxist parlance, the material base) where they can have the freedom to choose would be my definition of the ideal. And when I said writing was the cheapest form, I meant in terms of creating, as in: all one needs is a room of one's own (and a second-hand PC, of course). . . . As for publishing at home in the Philippines, I couldn't agree with you more, and it really is unfortunate. But, I'm frankly still trying to get a sense of where you stand on the market. And I definitely agree with Krugman. And, hahaha—<i>oo nga, 'no?</i> I forgot that Cory was anti-Freedom from Debt Coalition. And Therese, I couldn't agree with you more—that's also how I look at it. But <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on"><i><st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">sana</st1:city></st1:place></i></st1:place></st1:city> you took a picture of that spoon!</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cc9933; font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">4. The Over-coddled and the Under-attended</span></div>
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<b style="font-family: inherit;">G:</b><span style="font-family: inherit;"> NO, NO, Lil, I wasn't talking in terms of the ethnic or the indigenous, but in terms of what's natural to the surround. The violin is natural to Austrians, that's why you hear it on Viennese radio in the same playlist with The Scorpions or Nina Hagen. The ballet is natural to </span><st1:city st="on" style="font-family: inherit;"><st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Moscow,</st1:place></st1:city></st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-family: inherit;"> so some taxi drivers dance it at night. The violin is also becoming natural to that town where the Bolipata brothers came from, thanks to their efforts. </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">Me mura namang </i><span style="font-family: inherit;">violins, </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">e.</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> I was referring to the habit of condescension, as when we say, okay: tomorrow we're going to dedicate a day to the popular novel, we'll invite authors of some popular novels (whisper: although we know they don't really deserve the honor). The fact that academic institutions still put those divisions between the popular and the high reeks of the truth, that some art are being subsidized to survive (thus, by interference). Some art are over-coddled. This all seems a digression but really part and parcel of the culture of nationalizing or saving or feeling responsible towards some art. But all unnatural.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"> <b>LS III:</b> Oh, I see now. But then we agree!<i> (himala!)</i> We both believe in the market doing its work, but I'm more Keynesian than you and I follow Sen. <i>Tama ba?</i><b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b> G:</b> Yes, we do. And that we only disagree not like I'm a Democratic guest on Republican-leaning Fox News, but am here only talking like I'm Hillary Clinton on pro-Obama but friendlier CNN in early 2008—that in itself is a happy <i>himala!</i> <i>(laughs) . . . </i>Now, Lil, though we both derive from the economics of liberals instead of from economic liberalism, when it comes to the arts, however, you could say I'm more Jeffrey Sachs than anything. Give everyone shock therapy. Then again, Keynes and Sen too actually as when I say the state should put more effort in nurturing not just museums but freedoms and equality in education so that capabilities do not anymore recognize such arts as the high for the upper-middle-class Ingleseros or Englog speakers and the low for the lower-middle-class Tagalogeros or Taglish speakers. I say, let's put the money instead in the under-attended facilities: museums, libraries. My art utopia involves a Shakespeare friendly to both the Queen and the masses, a Neruda for both the farmers and the senators. It seems nobody's interested in attaining that in the Philippine archipelago, everybody's happy with having expensive Montessori-method schools that sing an English Philippine national anthem hovering above public schools geared towards, say, caregiving careers for its Taglish-speaking pupils getting second-rate, poor English instruction. Not that a caregiving career should be looked at as godawful, but that it is seen as a sacrifice and heroism instead of as a mission is already telling.</span></div>
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<b style="font-family: inherit;"> LS III:</b><span style="font-family: inherit;"> But doesn't "nurturing not just museums but freedoms and equality in education" precisely involve state subsidies? If not, what </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">do</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> they involve? </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">Yung</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> high/low, English/Tagalog, </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">ibang usapan iyan.</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> No quarrel with you there about dismantling such hierarchies. What I'm saying (and concentrate and don't digress, please!) is: how does the state make art and education more equitable if not by subsidizing production, as I've been saying? How else would they do it? By the way, what </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">naman</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> is your beef with museums? As someone whose grandmother used to work in the </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">Museo ng Kalinangang Pilipino</i><span style="font-family: inherit;">, I know that there are creative, cutting-edge museums (though not necessarily there in </span><st1:city st="on" style="font-family: inherit;"><st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Manila</st1:place></st1:city></st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-family: inherit;">, mind you) all over the world; not all of them are ossified and necrophilic, you know. So why shouldn't they be competitive as well?</span><br />
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<b style="font-family: inherit;"> G:</b><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">That's</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> what I was saying, Lil. The state </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">should</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> concentrate on museums and education, not the arts. The galleries deal with the painting and sculpture arts directly, museums only bear witness. And that's where the state can come in, to design them as an extension of public education. Education, including state universities' "interfering" in the arts, could/should be the job of the state. But arts patronage shouldn’t and never should be. In short, let's allow the people to choose which art they'll celebrate, </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">then</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> the state can teach the fact of certain public recognition to succeeding generations through the museums. Museums are a part of a people's education, and if the state can pour all its arts money into museums and education instead, then so, so much the better.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><b style="font-family: inherit;">LS III:</b><span style="font-family: inherit;"> Okay, so, actually our only disagreement is that you believe that only museums and libraries should receive state funding, while the arts should not. My approach is more focused on </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">process</i><span style="font-family: inherit;">: that is, help them while they're producing the novel, video, rap song, kulintang piece, etc., much like academic grants. But we both agree: no state awards for the arts. Private patrons and the market should assess that. </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">Tama ba?</i><br />
<i style="font-family: inherit;"><i style="font-family: inherit;"> </i><b style="font-family: inherit;">G:</b><span style="font-family: inherit;"> That's right, we only disagree on the grants. The National Endowment for the Arts is a usual stage for infighting within the arts community in the </span><st1:country-region st="on" style="font-family: inherit;">United States</st1:country-region><span style="font-family: inherit;"> but, since not so centralized when it comes to approvals . . .</span></i><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><b style="font-family: inherit;">LSIII:</b><span style="font-family: inherit;"> I'm not sure about that . . .</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><b style="font-family: inherit;">G:</b><span style="font-family: inherit;"> . . . we don't hear about these here except when a Mapplethorpe-like situation appears. Let's just refer to the local grumbling by Philippine artists about National Commission for Culture and the Arts grants, maybe, and CCP ones.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><b style="font-family: inherit;">LS III:</b><span style="font-family: inherit;"> Ok, fair enough.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><b style="font-family: inherit;">G:</b><span style="font-family: inherit;"> In that sense, </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">pareho kami ng partido ni </i><span style="font-family: inherit;">Ms. Yason </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">pagdating sa </i><span style="font-family: inherit;">education and arts education. </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">Sa mga na-</i><span style="font-family: inherit;">educate </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">na sa</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> arts, </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">walang</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> grants from the state, </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">sila na ang bahala sa buhay nila para matuto rin naman ng</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> resourcefulness </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">at pagpapahalaga sa pera ng tao. Ibang tao naman, </i><span style="font-family: inherit;">please. </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">Baka me nangangailangan ng </i><span style="font-family: inherit;">micro-financing </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">dyan para mang-</i><span style="font-family: inherit;">shine</span><i style="font-family: inherit;"> ng sapatos,</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> and so on. </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">Sayang ang pera sa </i><span style="font-family: inherit;">grants</span><i style="font-family: inherit;"> e, at nawawala ang</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> fair competition among artists.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><b style="font-family: inherit;">LS III:</b><span style="font-family: inherit;"> But aren't you limiting artistic production to the economic elite and the truly resourceful, like you, then, Greenman? Social Darwinism </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">naman iyan! E, paano na kung may</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> disability </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">ang</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> artist o depressed (therefore </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">walang</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> drive) </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">pero talagang magaling naman? </i><span style="font-family: inherit;">I mean, could Jean-Dominique Bauby (who wrote </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">The Diving Bell and the Butterfly</i><span style="font-family: inherit;">) have written his book if </span><st1:country-region st="on" style="font-family: inherit;"><st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">France</st1:place></st1:country-region></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="font-family: inherit;"> didn't have socialized medicine and his medical expenses/needs hadn't been taken care of?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><b style="font-family: inherit;">G:</b><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">Sa </i><span style="font-family: inherit;">healthcare, Lil, I'm a socialist. </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">Sa</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> arts, I'm a Reaganite.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><b style="font-family: inherit;">LS III:</b><span style="font-family: inherit;"> Well, thank goodness for that! At least they won't die of disease or disability. They'll just be a little constipated when it comes to making art, hahaha.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">(laughter)</i><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><b style="font-family: inherit;">G:</b><span style="font-family: inherit;"> My logic is really simple, Lil. If we're to socialize artistic production, then let's socialize all production, </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">sabi nga ni</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> Therese. Why should subsidies be limited to the arts profession? Why not subsidize the baking profession too, or the solar-powered-jeepney driving profession, and so on and so forth? Why are we letting other professionals struggle by their own selves while we pamper artists as if they were the favored angels of the compassionate state? No wonder we have Caparasites and Alvarezenes in the arts world, even late in this century. We're spoiling artists with the hope that we'll have Manny Pacquiao IVs in that industry. Good gracious, the private sector seems to have done a better job at it. The Puyat family in billiards and bowling vs. the Philippine Sports Commission on Philippine athletes in the 1990s and early 2000s? No comparison. Indie cinema became agog with brilliance during that period, thanks to private sector alternative producers who went against the grain of the major production house belief that digital film was crap. Private sector art creates revolutions. State-guided art, subsidized art, creates conventional minds. Actually, independent art produces lots of edible fruits, Lil, an artist could go on a diarrhea of ideas </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">(giggles from the audience). </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">State art won't inspire an artist to do that. The artist's craft might improve, but his ideation will be lazy. Take Solzhenitsyn's word for it.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">(continuing giggles in the audience)</i><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><b style="font-family: inherit;">LSIII:</b><span style="font-family: inherit;"> Constipation, diarrhea, what's next?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">(laughter)</i><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><b style="font-family: inherit;">G:</b><span style="font-family: inherit;"> Wait, are we going on a commercial break? I gotta go poo.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">(laughter)</i><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><b style="font-family: inherit;">LSIII:</b><span style="font-family: inherit;"> Hahahahaha! But excellent points, excellent points. Maybe you're right—I dunno. Let me think about this some more before I respond. But you said something beautiful there a while back, and your "simple logic" ("If we're to socialize artistic production, then let's socialize all production") does make sense. That would read more like Keynes rather than Reagan or von Hayek or, of all people, Jeffrey Sachs. But what do you make of the Cannes Film Festival—state-endorsed </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">iyan, di ba</i><span style="font-family: inherit;">?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><b style="font-family: inherit;">G:</b><span style="font-family: inherit;"> Uhm, Reagan was steeped in von Hayek through Milton Friedman as much as Thatcher was. And Jeffrey Sachs, wasn't he also one of those guys Reagan sent to </span><st1:country-region st="on" style="font-family: inherit;">Chile</st1:country-region><span style="font-family: inherit;"> to help solve the country's and Pinochet's economic problems? Surprising, though, that Friedman didn't turn out to be the conservative blind fanatic that other Reaganites turned out to be. Maybe it was the Nobel laureate thing in him, holding his composure, making him objective forever. Ideally, at least, because Camilo Jose Cela couldn't do it. </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">(laughs) </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">And </span><st1:city st="on" style="font-family: inherit;">Cannes</st1:city><span style="font-family: inherit;">, in relation to the French or in relation to the Filipinos who want to win there? Those are two long and very different discussions.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><b style="font-family: inherit;">LS III:</b><span style="font-family: inherit;"> Sachs to </span><st1:country-region st="on" style="font-family: inherit;"><st1:country-region st="on">Chile</st1:country-region></st1:country-region><span style="font-family: inherit;">, you mean </span><st1:country-region st="on" style="font-family: inherit;"><st1:place st="on"><st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on">Bolivia</st1:country-region></st1:place></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="font-family: inherit;">, don't you?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><b style="font-family: inherit;">G:</b><span style="font-family: inherit;"> Sorry, my mistake. </span><st1:country-region st="on" style="font-family: inherit;">Bolivia</st1:country-region><span style="font-family: inherit;">, yes, and </span><st1:country-region st="on" style="font-family: inherit;">Poland</st1:country-region><span style="font-family: inherit;"> and </span><st1:country-region st="on" style="font-family: inherit;">Russia</st1:country-region><span style="font-family: inherit;"> later for Gorbachev, but drawing inspiration from von Hayek's and Friedman's work in </span><st1:country-region st="on" style="font-family: inherit;">Chile</st1:country-region><span style="font-family: inherit;"> for Pinochet. Sachs' shock therapy tried to do Friedman one better, I think.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><b style="font-family: inherit;">LS III:</b><span style="font-family: inherit;"> Well, once an erstwhile free-market prophet, Sachs had since transformed himself into an anti-poverty activist and occasional charity collector. I don't necessarily disagree with the latter, but there had obviously been some paradigm shifts he hadn't taken the time to announce to the rest of our people then. . . . But, look, </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">ang ibig ko lang sabihin sa </i><st1:city st="on" style="font-family: inherit;"><st1:place st="on"><st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">Cannes</st1:city></st1:place></st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-family: inherit;"> is that it has done a great job of supporting the indie film makers/producers and actors you appreciate ("indie," though arguably mainstream in themselves, at least since the early 21</span><sup style="font-family: inherit;">st</sup><span style="font-family: inherit;"> century, somewhat like organic food). But </span><st1:city st="on" style="font-family: inherit;"><st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Cannes</st1:place></st1:city></st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-family: inherit;">, unlike, say, Sundance, is very much subsidized by the French government. So </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">paano iyan?</i><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><b style="font-family: inherit;">G:</b><span style="font-family: inherit;"> Yes, yes, Sachs evolved from his old neo-liberalism and that’s what I meant when I said he never became blind to the growing evidence contesting his old theories. Friedman died in '06 or '07. I got confused. You ought to be familiar with Sachs' later work, Lil, your grandmother Lila Shahani, your namesake, was also a UN worker, and Sachs did a lot of work with the UN and got a lot of flak from his former free-market economics buddies.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><b style="font-family: inherit;">LSIII:</b><span style="font-family: inherit;"> W-w-w-w-w-wait. </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">Ano ba, hindi mo na naman sinagot ang tanong ko tungkol sa <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on"><st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Cannes</st1:place></st1:city></st1:city></st1:place>!</i></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>THE GREENMAN:</b> OKAY. Let me answer your good question now. The reason why I continue to criticize the present crop of anti-Caparas and -Alvarez schools of thought is because I want them to see the anatomy of the setup that they have been criticizing—they're a part of it. Meaning that in the <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Philippines</st1:place></st1:country-region></st1:place></st1:country-region>, art support is politicized, always. So, I say, if state art support is agreeable to the people and no one's complaining, by all means, let the state use/waste our money the way it wants since we're all agreed on the idea that the state is doing a good job with it and we're generally happy with the artists being promoted/supported. Such is the case with <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Cannes</st1:place></st1:city></st1:place></st1:city>, among the French, as far as I'm aware. There are other factors: <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Cannes</st1:place></st1:city></st1:place></st1:city> is not a grant-giving body, strictly speaking, so it doesn't breed jealousies; it's international; etc. In short, the tourism and cultural cum political cum semi-commercial project that is <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Cannes</st1:place></st1:city></st1:place></st1:city> is seen by the French people as one with a worthy purpose that's working. When it ceases to work, it shall have to be examined by the people themselves or by the French media. It's the same with dictatorial governments; while the leadership is going great, the dictatorship remains okay. When Napoleon starts to go crazy or beyond some people's understanding, his dictatorship has to be blamed for itself as a system, in much the same way that democracies go through overhauls. So, while the French are happy with <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on"><st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">Cannes</st1:city></st1:place></st1:place></st1:city> (and there are a lot of reasons why they are), it'll be a long time before we hear anyone holler "stop using French money for international cinema!"</span></div>
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<b style="font-family: inherit;"> Lila Shahani III:</b><span style="font-family: inherit;"> Yes, but this disproves your point, doesn't it? The issue at hand is not whether or not the Filipino people approved or disapproved of CCP/NCCA-endorsed awards, nor is it about whether the French approved of </span><st1:city st="on" style="font-family: inherit;">Cannes</st1:city><span style="font-family: inherit;">. What we're discussing is state-funded art and art institutions. Oh yes, "indie cinema is agog with brilliance. Thanks to private sector producers who went against the grain of the belief that digital film was crap. Private sector art creates revolutions. State-guided art creates conventional minds." I agree with you absolutely. My point is, though: not always. Perhaps it's an academic tendency not to be comfortable with blanket generalizations. I'm willing to concede to your point a while back; are you capable of conceding to any of mine? . . . And, let me finish. </span><st1:city st="on" style="font-family: inherit;">Cannes </st1:city><span style="font-family: inherit;">is actually funded by both the French government </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">and </i><span style="font-family: inherit;">private sponsors. Public-private partnerships, </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">kung baga,</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> which was incidentally the favored hybrid of the day, particularly by the UN, as my grandma once explained. It's even incorporated into the policies of corporations practicing Corporate Social Responsibility. So, I would argue that not all institutions fall under the stark dichotomies you've just delineated and that there are a number of institutions that actually fall in between. So perhaps the argument could benefit from a little nuance, don't you think?</span></div>
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<b style="font-family: inherit;"> Greenman:</b><span style="font-family: inherit;"> No, Lil, the issue is a system that's evil. But a system that's evil does not necessarily produce evil. The state's baby-ing of artists does not always produce conventional minds: you said so yourself. My point is, corollary to my earlier manifestoes, an evil system is </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">likely</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> to produce "evil" products. If not now, sooner or later it will. Napoleon or Franco doing okay today won't be the same song tomorrow. Once people start to question, the evil system will begin to show its teeth. So, do I think the French government's spending its people's money in </span><st1:city st="on" style="font-family: inherit;">Cannes</st1:city><span style="font-family: inherit;"> evil? Maybe not, as I’ve said. Maybe the tourism aspect, the commercial profit-making aspect, the international relations aspect, etc., of it benefit the French people. When those aspects fail, then the people will begin to question it: what's in it for us? That's the question inherent in grants, and thankfully </span><st1:city st="on" style="font-family: inherit;">Cannes</st1:city><span style="font-family: inherit;"> is not a grants thing, it was in fact put up for an internationalist political reason. My thesis was: using the people's money for a few is evil. Grants are evil. Using people's money for everyone is good. </span><st1:city st="on" style="font-family: inherit;">Cannes</st1:city><span style="font-family: inherit;"> is good while it is good. When it ceases to be good, it will already be evil. Simply because the people's money always, </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">always,</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> have to be rationalized as beneficial to everyone. So what's the basic system that's evil? Holding on to the people's money already threatens an onset of evil—it’s like holding one of the rings in </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">Lord of the Rings</i><span style="font-family: inherit;">. The leader's responsibility is to keep that treasury from turning into an evil thing. Grants are inherently evil because they're selective; </span><st1:city st="on" style="font-family: inherit;">Cannes</st1:city><span style="font-family: inherit;"> is not yet that because it can qualify its present existence as not that and as beneficial to all French, or at least the French intellectual elite primarily, while the peasants are not complaining. That's what I'm saying. Okay? Grants are inherently evil, let me repeat, </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">because</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> they're selective. Now, is it possible for a year of grants to be regarded as good, by my standards? Yes, if the people sees those grants as having also benefited them. If they feel happy that a grant was given to Sam Milby and Angel Locsin or some other pop cinema couple of the day (which Filipinos love to call "love teams") and they feel themselves to have benefited in turn, then the evil system hath produced good, if not perhaps in aesthetic critical terms, at least in terms of the pragmatic use of the peoples' money not for a few but for the majority.</span></div>
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<b style="font-family: inherit;"> LS III:</b><span style="font-family: inherit;"> Your language is alarmingly Manichean, Greenman: what's with all the "good" and "evil" stuff? And your definition of what constitutes both good and evil depends on popular perception, which we both know can be a very problematic arbiter. Your argument for why grants are not good is fairly sound but your response to why certain exceptions happen to work is less theoretically rigorous. </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">Ano'ng klase'ng sagot iyan?</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> Well, </span><st1:city st="on" style="font-family: inherit;">Cannes</st1:city><span style="font-family: inherit;"> is successful because the French like it and, once they don't, </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">e di hindi na.</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> But, okay: </span><st1:city st="on" style="font-family: inherit;">Cannes</st1:city><span style="font-family: inherit;"> doesn't do grants. But there are all kinds of grants, as you know. I realize your objection has to do with how grants provide welfare to cultural elitists, even as they subject the market to distortions. But what about grants focused on art education, for example? Maybe you'll say that they are still selective, but are you against government subsidies for art education in general? </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">Kasi di ba</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> type </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">mo'ng i-</i><span style="font-family: inherit;">fund </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">ang </i><span style="font-family: inherit;">museums and libraries and education? So, what happens when the last converge with the arts, as they invariably do? Contemporary art museums, museum education, etc., etc.? As for subsidies, don't forget: back in the mid-'80s, the Internet itself (which is arguably responsible for the globalization of culture as a whole) was the sole province of universities and government institutions, which were in turn instrumental in bringing about its rapid development. So, are you more opposed to grants for individual artists than art subsidies in general? If you advocate throwing out the entire kit and caboodle, you might wanna re-think your position on museums and education, because that would be inconsistent, no?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b> G:</b> You got it right. Imagine all the budget for the CCP and NCCA, along with the private donations, going to the National Library of the Philippines instead, and the National Museum of the Philippines, and—yes—maybe I can consider artist-in-residency chairs in state universities. Museums and libraries and education, that's part of the socialization setup. Arts grants (exhibit grants, etc., as against education grants) defeat the socialization process and create new parasitic "elites," instead. Or . . . imagine the CCP becoming more of a culture center than an artist-care center. Imagine NCCA becoming more of a documentation and library and museum commission than a host for artistic parasites. Not do away with the money, but use it wisely for the benefit of the nation's collected Culture, not the benefit of select Artists. Not dismiss all the employees at the CCP and the NCCA, but redefine their work and mission. The CCP not dismantled or left to rot, but overhauled, to do a proper function. . . . Now, it's a long philosophical argument, though, about the intrinsically good and the intrinsically evil. In everyday terms, it's really just about how you use something. Of course, I'm not espousing Pragmatism (what the people say is good is good). I'm coming from a basic principle or belief which may not necessarily be popular: egalitarianism. In this case, egalitarianism in the management of appropriations, in budget management. Egalitarianism is the basic judge. If not egalitarian, bad. If egalitarian, good. Now, coming from that principle, "evil" motivations (say, corporate profit motives over national interest) can be manipulated to become good when managed by the egalitarian principle through regulation. So what may be perceived as evil can suddenly turn out good because its use was transformed. <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Cannes</st1:place></st1:city></st1:place></st1:city>, therefore, while managed well for an egalitarian principle, stays good. An arts grants system, on the other hand, can never be managed to be egalitarian. Impossible, because unlike in a museum where you can manage representations from, say, all ethnic groups, artists really only represent themselves, their art, their individual theses, and you can't subsidize <i>all </i>artists.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b> LSIII:</b> But if "NCCA (becomes) more of a documentation, library and museum commission than a host for artistic parasites," then it will merely be a repository for <i>past</i> artistic expression and a few contemporary productions. Well, okay, as you say, artists should be able to subsidize themselves. And if they can't, well then they can't—that's your argument. So you want the playing field to be egalitarian, which is fair enough. My only concern is that it's not a <i>tabula rasa</i> outside the grants process either; in other words, the <i>world itself</i> is not egalitarian. The point of grants originally was precisely to render it more so. With your argument, it will always be easier for members of the upper classes to produce art than for everybody else, for whom the costs of production will remain prohibitive, pitted against the costs of survival in a Third World country itself. So the meta-question is: how to make society itself more egalitarian? This brings me back full circle to Amartya Sen, whose position I favor. Unfortunately, that's all we have time for today, Greenman, but it's been a most interesting discussion indeed. We shall have to have another session to flesh this out further. Thank you again for such insightful contributions. <i>At maraming salamat din sa inyong lahat. Mabuhay si</i> Greenman <i>at ang mga artistang Pinoy!</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b> G:</b> W-w-w-wait, Lil, do we still have a minute? Can I just answer you there briefly?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b> LSIII:</b> One minute. <i>One</i> minute.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b> G:</b> Okay. What if you had seven children, and you keep on asking everyone of them to contribute to the dinner table but you always give your favorite son a couple more slices, always? Is that egalitarian? That's how grants look to me. If you're gonna help your artist son because he's an artist, why not help your astronomer daughter because she's an astronomer, and so on and so forth. Why not help your other son, he's an artist too, isn't he? If we really want to have subsidized professions, very well, let's convert this country into a quasi-communist state. Everyone, and I mean <i>everyone</i>, is subsidized. Thank you for inviting me. It was a pleasure.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b> LSIII:</b> Well, Greenman, . . . oh, what? <i>Oh</i>, oh yes, we have a viewer's question! I almost forgot that segment <i>(shakes head, audience laughing). </i>Okay, just one more minute. We have another minute? Great. Greenman, an email sender from <st1:place st="on"><st1:placename st="on"><st1:place st="on"><st1:placename st="on">Parañaque</st1:placename></st1:place> <st1:placetype st="on"><st1:placetype st="on">City</st1:placetype></st1:placetype></st1:placename></st1:place> is asking, "you said Gloria Arroyo was underappreciated. You've covered a lot of ground but I still don't see how Gloria Arroyo fits in all of this. I still don't see how she was ever underappreciated? What has she contributed?" You have 30 seconds, Greenman.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b> G:</b> Well, I was simply saying everything that Gloria Arroyo did was for us to pick up from, to do the necessary reforms. And no one seems to see those actions of hers as signals for necessary reformation. We complain but don't want to do anything about the root of the actions, which is the same as the root of our complaints. <i>(shrugs)</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b> LSIII:</b> The Greenman, ladies and gentlemen. Good night, everyone. Don't forget, tomorrow our guest will be the actress Kristina Aquino III. Good night!</span></div>
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<i style="font-size: x-small;">(ACKNOWLEDGMENT: The conversation above actually took place on Facebook between Lila Shahani [a UN consultant and doctoral candidate at <st1:city st="on"><st1:city st="on">Oxford University</st1:city></st1:city>], Ms. Shahani's friends [Atty. Eddie de Vega, Consul General of the Philippine Consulate in <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Barcelona</st1:place></st1:city></st1:place></st1:city>, and Therese Yason, artist and art teacher], and a real Greenman.)</i></div>
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<li style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: xx-small;"><b>Photo of Gloria Arroyo borrowed from</b> <a href="http://www.forbes.com/lists/2007/11/biz-07women_Gloria-Arroyo_1YDI.html" target="_blank">http://www.forbes.com/lists/2007/11/biz-07women_Gloria-Arroyo_1YDI.html</a> </span></li>
<li style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: xx-small;"><b>Photo of Franz Schubert painting borrowed from</b> <em><span style="font-style: normal;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Schubert" target="_blank">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Schubert</a></span></em></span></li>
<li style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: xx-small;"><b>Violin photo borrowed from </b><a href="http://www.freewebs.com/violinduets/Violin1.jpg" target="_blank">http://www.freewebs.com/violinduets/Violin1.jpg</a></span></li>
<li style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: xx-small;"><b>Philippine National Library photo from</b> <b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Library_of_the_Philippines" target="_blank">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Library_of_the_Philippines</a></span></b></span></li>
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Jojo Soria de Veyrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10755588651423753783noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2887809293642421519.post-71327367816026493512009-09-11T22:49:00.000+08:002014-12-02T16:16:54.556+08:00Hefty sum for some and a shake-off feast: a talk show with three artists as Imelda reappears at the CCP<br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="font-size: x-large;">“M</span>embers of a militant teachers’ organization criticized on Wednesday [Sept. 2] the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP)’s planned gala tribute for former First Lady Imelda Marcos, saying it is an ‘utter disrespect’ for the Filipino pe</span>ople,” reported GMANews.tv last Tuesday [Sept. 8], and said “the Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) vowed to stage a protest rally on Friday [Sept. 11] during the invitational gala event in honor of Marcos, the founding chairperson of the CCP.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"> Update Sept. 11: </span>“Flamboyant former first lady Imelda Marcos arrives at the government-run Cultural Center of the Philippines for a special ‘gala tribute’, held in her honour, in Manila on September 11, 2009 despite angry protests that the event should not go ahead.”—<a href="http://leflaneur.tumblr.com/post/187644216/flamboyant-former-first-lady-imelda-marcos-arrives" target="_blank">Tumblr.com</a></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"> And as a way of reminding ourselves, we might be interested in re-reading novelist F. Sionil Jose’s letter to the CCP in August of 2008, explaining his reason for walking out of the “necrological services” [see Wikipedia entry on ‘Philippine English’ on the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippine_English#Vocabulary_and_usage" target="_blank">meaning of that phrase</a>, eulogy actually] for composer and conductor Lucrecia Kasilag—<a href="http://www.pinoypress.net/2008/08/31/imelda-marcoss-presence-too-much-for-f-sionil-jose/" target="_blank">click here</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">W</span>ell, . . . you know, modesty aside, I can only say it a hundred times. My blog post of last Thursday [Sept. 3] regarding the “<a href="http://partycrashingangle.blogspot.com/2009/09/five-fruits-of-national-art-tree.html" target="_blank">five fruits of the nationalization of art</a>” had blabbered so much already about these normal consequences, and cannot say anything more. As did other earlier blog posts here with the ‘<a href="http://partycrashingangle.blogspot.com/search/label/art%20and%20the%20state" target="_blank">art and the state</a>’ label that have whispered quite enough warnings about more inanities to come at/from the CCP, the National Commission for Culture and the Arts, or whatever else state institution for the arts, be it in the near or far future. What can I say? The CCP, the NCCA, and the nationalization of art by government and its willing subjects, <i>is</i> Imelda Marcos. Has always been, always will be. And even if this country by dint of a miracle (a nightmarish one, some say) is to fall into the hands of the Communists, wouldn’t the CCP and the NCCA then simply be tasting the other end of the same banana? Except that this time it’ll all be about social realism, away from the dictates of the present ruling parties’ standards of good and tolerable art. What can I say? I can only be tremendously honored by that guest appearance of my earlier blog on this subject which appeared in its entirety in a major online column.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"> To bore you for a second, let me just narrate a bit of what happened. When Philstar Online critic-columnist Sylvia Mayuga read my blog essay of last week titled “<a href="http://partycrashingangle.blogspot.com/2009/09/five-fruits-of-national-art-tree.html" target="_blank">Five fruits of the National Art tree</a>,” she thought of making way in her online column so that that blog of mine can appear there, in her Only One World column (at philstar.com) as a guest column. She intimated to me this thought one day [afternoon of Sept. 3] and quickly notified me of its being “a go” the very next day [Sept. 4]. The streamlined version that finally appeared on Philstar.com can still be read <a href="http://www.philstar.com/columns/502474/five-fruits-national-arts-tree" target="_blank">here</a>. Again, it was already quite an honor for me even just to be asked. And even before this guest appearance, in the preceding week, Ms. Mayuga had already generously featured my name—embarrassed and elated—in the concluding paragraphs of her column essay “<a href="http://www.philstar.com/columns/500447/new-morning-inang-bayan" target="_blank">New Morning for Inang Bayan</a>” in a supposed exchange between “two young minds” contemplating the issues, the other mind being that of an Oxford University doctoral student of postcolonial literature and former CCP employee and member of the Gawad CCP committee, a mental warrior named Lila Shahani. (Ms. Mayuga also provided a link at her column to another blog of mine that she mentioned in this latter column, “<a href="http://partycrashingangle.blogspot.com/2009/08/two-fruits-one-tree-or-why-there-is-no.html" target="_blank">Two fruits, one tree [or, why there is no such thing as a national artist]</a>,” and an attached interview with Ms. Shahani).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"> Now, after those two Mayuga-column guestings, and after getting wind of a lot of comments supposedly addressed my way but not delivered this way (many not posted, in fact)—comments that were either in agreement or partial agreement or total disagreement with the essay, or even critical of the necessity of the essay in the heat of the moment of awaiting the results of a fight at the Supreme Court—I thought that I have written enough about the subject with those <a href="http://partycrashingangle.blogspot.com/search/label/National%20Artist" target="_blank">blog essays on the National Artist issue</a> in this site (again, with the ‘National Artist’ “label”; in blog jargon, a “label” means “a subject or theme keyword assigned by the blogger to a set of articles or postings”). Yet, as I sense this will not just be another fleeting issue for the blogosphere chatter but something that might have to stay with us for a long, long time, to perhaps remind us to return to it again and again in the form of other Carlo Caparases and Cecile Guidote-Alvarezes and Imeldas, I thought I may give the issue concerning the inherent evil of a nationalized artistic culture just one more exposure . . . as I here make way in my turn (S. Mayuga-fashion) for the guest appearance of three Facebook friends of mine, each from a distinct representation in the visual arts, to have their say on the issue as moderated by me.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"> One of our guests is <b>Bob Bernardo A. Nuestro</b>, a visual artist who—along with other independent artists—proudly runs a gallery called Artist-Run Independent Art Space and is the head of the painting department of the Philippine Women’s University School of Fine Arts. Our second guest is <b>Ronald Achacoso</b>, a quite articulate and subtle painter whose stark intelligent works often show at the West Gallery aside from Mag:net Gallery; Ronald was one of the Thirteen Artists Award grantees chosen by the CCP in the year 2000. Our third guest is <b>Dulz Cuna</b>, a restlessly independent painter from the Visayas, art events organizer, and humanities professor at the University of the Philippines in the Visayas, Tacloban campus.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"> So, without further ado, let’s go to our guests. Welcome, guests.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit;">JSV:<i> Bob, Ronald, Dulz. Could you tell us of any experiences you've had regarding state sponsorship of your art, if any, whether through the CCP or the NCCA or any other government institution?<o:p></o:p></i></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b> Bob Bernardo A. Nuestro:</b> I have no experience with state sponsorship because I’m not comfortable with having to deal with these institutions, although I have some friends there. That is why my gallery is called Artist-Run Independent Art Space [ARIAS]: we are independent, we never ask support from the NCCA.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b> Ronald Achacoso:</b> I received a modest grant in 1988 to do a large-scale painting at the CCP. I enjoyed that project. I had the energy then to do very ambitious works and I thought Judy Sibayan, who was Officer-In-Charge at the time, did a good job following up and corresponding with the artists. I was nominated a couple of times for the Thirteen Artists Award and finally received it in 2000. Very political, and I was the token representative at the time of the “unanointed” crowd. I filled up the walls with drawing exercises on paper—cost almost next to nothing—and I think it was an issue of sorts: people were ribbing me about what I did with the money. I think if they give you a cash award it should really be up to you what you want to do with it. <i>Pero yung parang bibigyan ka ng award, tapos you have to prove you deserve it? Ano yon?</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b> Dulz Cuna:</b> As an artist and cultural worker, the main feeling I get is the <i>alipin saguiguilid</i> (slave in the corner) effect. They use me to get this and that, research on this and that, paint this and that—honestly, I get the preemption that I am some Indio Cinderella and my sovereign rights are in the coffers of a wicked Stepmother. I remember a long time ago, when I helped out in CCP’s Museo ng Kalinganan by bringing their Outreach people to the Orasyon tattoos in Olegario Larrazabal’s warlord fiefdom, an island called Gayad, the barangay started teaming up with folk religious cults and <i>mambabarangs</i> (black magic/witchcraft practitioners) that I feared for my dear mental life torn between the sacred and the profane. . . . Some articles and data were gathered (which I could not include in my paper, for it was sacredly and gingerly possessed by the Museo) and bagged, to my dismay, because it was “guests first,” you know what I mean? Well, when the Museo opened I saw my name in a 10 pt.-font typeface in the Acknowledgements section, among many others in a brochure, as boon. . . . Another one. When the NCCA launched “Sambayan” (National Arts Month), my fellow visual artists and I individually made long paintings for our (<st1:place st="on">Leyte</st1:place>) provincial stage. . . . Ms. Guidote-Alvarez (director of the NCCA) was impressed by them and she “borrowed” the nice ones and brought them to <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Manila</st1:place></st1:city>. When we asked the provincial government later where the other painting banners were, they told us Ms. Alvarez did not return them. . . . There are many other experiences where I felt the <i>alipin</i> syndrome, if I enumerate them all I warn this reply won't be short and sweet. . . .<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit;"> JSV: <i>Well, do you think private sponsorship is better?<o:p></o:p></i></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b> BBAN:</b> It’s better. Private sponsorship is more businesslike and professional; you must really have good ideas for the sponsor and, of course, for the artists themselves.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b> RA:</b> Not in a position to say, really; depends on who’s giving it and for what purpose, I guess.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b> DC:</b> I can’t judge yet. This <i>alipin</i> syndrome with the government system that stocks me with projects that I missed the Metrobank, AAP, Shell etc. art contests, robbing me of time and eligible age for joining . . . and now there’s the Philip Morris Philippine Art Awards Competition . . . I’ve got to . . . I’ve got to.</span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit;"> JSV: <i>But don’t you think everyone who got a grant deserved it, or at least one you know who got one?<o:p></o:p></i></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b> BBAN:</b> No, I don’t believe they deserve it; it’s all from the same <i>kami-kami, tayo-tayo, <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><i>connect-connect</i> thing. Except for a few, maybe. Maybe?</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b> RA:</b> Obviously not. I said I would join the funeral march for the National Artist of the Philippines title award if the most vociferous awardee were inside the coffin himself. I kind of like the idea that Carlo Caparas’ winning is there to agitate. Anyway, the National Artist award is a relic of a fascistic regime that has seen better days and I sincerely believe we should lay this award to rest, Caparas or no Caparas. Essentially the same thing with the other minor awards. <i>Masyado tayong pang-award </i>mentality.</span></div>
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<b> JSV: <i>Dulz? Don’t you think everyone who got a grant deserved it?</i><o:p></o:p></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b> DC:</b> No!</span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit;"> JSV: <i>So, what do you have to say about the CCP?<o:p></o:p></i></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b> BBAN:</b> The same. CCP is politically manipulated. Even the succession is blurred, not published. Politics in art is natural; it is part of some people’s survival tactics to eke out a living.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b> RA:</b> CCP is a mausoleum more than anything. It even looks like one. It failed to fulfill its role and it needs the artists to validate it instead of the other way around. It’s a non-entity. In the ’80s it still retained some prestige, but the signs of erosion and decay were already there.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b> DC:</b> Launder the Imeldific diaspora that seems to be seeping out of the Center stealthily!</span></div>
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<b> JSV: <i>And the NCCA?</i><o:p></o:p></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b> BBAN:</b> The same. They are all just easily manipulated by active professional parasite artists into giving the latter government money.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b> RA:</b> I know nothing about it. I’ve met some people who get to show here and there because of it, they seem to be nice and all that but not very intelligent.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b> DC:</b> Don’t handle Artist or Culture awards. Be sentinels in the ramparts instead and leave us to be Rapunzels swinging by our hair in our Ivory Towers like in a mad Cirque de Soleil!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b> JSV: <i>So, how </i>do<i> you get funding for your art?</i><o:p></o:p></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b> BBAN:</b> I get funding from my collectors from our gallery, they are all private citizens but always have a concern for the development of art.</span></div>
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<b> JSV: <i>How ‘bout you, Ronald?</i><o:p></o:p></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b> RA:</b> Now that’s a big problem.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b> DC:</b> The <i>parian</i> or <i>tabo</i> (tiangge) system with my fellow visual artists (from the VIVA, MAWF, TIVA, KANSIAGU collectives); we paint, sell, and put aside funds for materials . . . or write friends abroad, sell online, market, mountebank, etc. . . .</span></div>
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<b> JSV: <i>Do you feel comfortable about your fellow artists getting funding from the government while you don’t?</i><o:p></o:p></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b> BBAN:</b> I do not feel comfortable with that, with those professional applicants for all available grants and residencies, because their body of works can’t settle on real art statements. Instead, they live their artistic lives like parasites. Some suck out government funding for, say, critiquing the government! With this last type, it is all part <i>daw </i><i>kuno</i> of post-modernist discourses, which is actually creating false myth-making and just manipulating the thick-skinned government funding agencies like the NCCA to give them money. Getting funding from the government is OK if the artist is really creating significant work, but in my twenty years in the art scene I have not seen any significant exhibition funded by the NCCA. Or maybe I am not aware of any.</span></div>
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<b> JSV: <i>Ronald?</i><o:p></o:p></b></div>
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit; font-weight: normal;"><b> DC:</b> <i>(shrugs)</i></span></b></div>
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"></span> JSV: <i>What about you, Dulz, were you comfortable with your getting funding from the government, fully aware that some of your peers didn’t?</i><o:p></o:p></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b> DC:</b> Nope. That DARN LIQUIDATION scares the itch mites off our pores! And the Commission on Audit rushes after us with a Beeeeg Steeeek!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b> JSV: <i>Would you say you’re against it, then, this government funding for the arts?</i><o:p></o:p></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b> BBAN:</b> I am against the government’s funding of exhibiting artists or professional artists. I’d be okay with funding for students, those who really study art. I am the head of the painting department of the PWU SFAD. . . . I believe institutions like schools of fine arts should be the ones funded, along with students considered as marginalized.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b> RA:</b> Can’t really say I’m against it but <i>really</i> think I could use their money.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b> DC:</b> Not really; we like the allocation part. But I remember the time when we had the fluvial festival regatta contests in Tacloban—the “<i>Layag</i> (Sail) Painting Contest” had a cash prize of <s>P</s>5,000, while the <i>banqueros</i> racing with the sails had <s>P</s>20,000 to boot. When we questioned the disparity, the government organizers said: “But you are just <i>painting</i>! They have to <i>row</i> the boat!” Ergo, there should be an intrinsic system for grants and allocations.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b> JSV: <i>Bob, you</i></b><b><i>’</i></b><b><i>ve never had any state-supported art made, but don’t you sometimes wish you had?</i><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b> BBAN:</b> I wish I had but it must be more businesslike. It’s like commissioning, for—say—public art or socially-concerned works.</span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit;"> JSV: <i>Ronald, wouldn’t you want to have another shot at state-supported art? As you said, you could really use their money.<o:p></o:p></i></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b> RA:</b> Some people have the talent or tenacity to avail of these things. I’m not one of them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit;"> JSV: <i>Dulz, you wouldn’t mind, would you?<o:p></o:p></i></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b> DC:</b> Yeah, well, we were jealous when our good friend Nemiranda of Angono, Rizal had landmark edifices made in Tacloban and was paid a hefty million sum. We felt slighted ’cause we have good sculptors in our group, so why <i>naman</i> didn’t our local government support us and instead gave the award to an out-of-towner? No offense meant to Ka Nemi, <i>blinow-out naman kami, hehehe</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b style="font-family: inherit;"> JSV: <i>To shake you off, huh.</i></b><span style="font-family: inherit;"> [FIN]</span><br />
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Jojo Soria de Veyrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10755588651423753783noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2887809293642421519.post-25013238165754643662009-09-03T17:21:00.000+08:002015-02-11T22:13:42.159+08:00Five fruits of the National Art tree<div style="text-align: left;">
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-M9M9r7avdeI/UUA9UmT4-8I/AAAAAAAAAeg/mNgDuoMxtZ8/s1600/29637641a.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-M9M9r7avdeI/UUA9UmT4-8I/AAAAAAAAAeg/mNgDuoMxtZ8/s640/29637641a.jpg" height="400" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">from left to right: Cinemalaya Foundation founder Nestor O. Jardin, National Artist for Theater Design Salvador Bernal, CCP Chair Emily Abrera, National Artist for Literature F. Sionil Jose, National Artist for Literature Bienvenido Lumbera, in a press conference regarding their questioning the decision of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to add four new National Artist awardees without consulting the selection committee. (Photo from http://www.pep.ph/news/22724/CCP:-Malaca%C3%B1ang-bypassed-rules-of-the-selection-process-for-National-Artists/1/2)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-large;">T</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">HE tug of war between those who want Gloria Arroyo to retract her insertion of the names of Carlo Caparas and Cecile Guidote-Alvarez into the year</span></span>'<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">s National Artist of the Philippines status roster, on the one hand, and those who want to defend the President's prerogative through either legal terms or a rare aesthetic liberalism, on the other, continues. </span><span class="apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">"I'm happy that it's in the court," Alvarez told the press. "There will be no more shouting in the streets. We can have a civilized discussion."</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"> Really? I predict that come the day of the awarding ceremony, a few will yet reel, others be shaking their heads, and some be in a self-congratulatory mood. I shall merely ask the question again: where does this really end?</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit; font-weight: bold;">1. Battles</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I do not just mean <i>this one</i> about Caparas and Alvarez, but the whole shebang of battling it out for an aesthetic hegemony and political accommodation which has long been here, only not as loudly annoying in the past as now: there were the less raucous protestation by some quarters over composer Ernani Cuenco's recognition by Joseph Estrada's government, the questioning eyebrows over Fernando Poe Jr.'s conferment, the rumors spread about town regarding Virgilio Almario's, weird glances towards Ben Cabrera's, and a few more. Who is to say these guys don't deserve the elephantine Recognition? Who is to say they do? I declare that, like the first EDSA (or EdlSA) revolution that birthed a thousand EdlSA-like mini-rallies all over the country that always spring up every time a mayor is asked to vacate his seat, the Caparas and Guidote-Alvarez affair will henceforth birth an annual parade of protests from the Cultural Center of the Philippines to the National Commission for Culture and the Arts over the coming years' (decades') new National Artist recognitions. And why is that? Because everybody still agrees it's not the "system" that's rotten, at present it's only Gloria Arroyo and Carlo Caparas and Cecile Guidote-Alvarez who stink in the minds of their opposition; in fact, almost everyone agrees, with a constant nod toward each other, Catholic Church mass-fashion, that the National Artist award is holy.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"> In her Philstar.com column of last Saturday, "<a href="http://www.philstar.com/columns/500447/new-morning-inang-bayan" target="_blank">New Morning for Inang Bayan</a>," Sylvia Mayuga wrote: "Only 15 days had passed since this fighting spirit went to court for arbitration of this controversy weighted to the side of the Muse."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> I'm wondering, though, if the Muse is aware that the defendant in court is her own son (Caparas), daughter (Alvarez), and spouse (Arroyo). When the Muse allowed herself to marry and remarry and remarry, again and again, always at the disposal of any government for a husband (even while Eastern Europe's artists were celebrating their divorce from the clutches of their respective governments' domestic violence), this Philippine Muse virtually allowed herself to be tied to a monster system she would forever have to contend with. It's not going to stop at Caparas and Alvarez, as it did not at Ernani Cuenco or Fernando Poe Jr., as it did not when whispers crawled the gutters over Virgilio Almario's "canonization." Again, who is to say they don't or do deserve the honor? There will always be this battle, because the Muse told her children to scramble for their father's (the government's) blessing. And I'm not just talking about the government at Malacañang, but the government of cultural institutions whereby the process of nationalizing art has forever been celebrated in this country as every artistic child's ideal reference. But I wouldn't blame the children. Nor would I blame the approached or welcomed spouse. I'd blame the Muse. The Muse in us all.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"> Or Muses, if you will. From the Philippines on to Europe and on until we reach the US's National Endowment for the Arts, the same combats over judgments, marginalization, mis-appreciations, the deserving and the undeserving, unworthy authority, and so on, within this system of state art patronage, rankle on like an irritating global itch no one wants to finally cure.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit; font-weight: bold;">2. Dependence</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The Muses. It's all over the country. Everywhere you go in the archipelago, in every province, the classic complaint goes like this: our government here is not supportive of the arts. We heard the same complaint hurled against then Cory Aquino's press secretary Teddy Boy Locsin when he expressed the taboo declaration: "culture is not a priority." We hurled the same pail of tears at President Fidel Ramos, whose government echoed Locsin's plea.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"> I say </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">we</i><span style="font-family: inherit;">, and why not?</span>—<span style="font-family: inherit;">almost every one of us in the arts is guilty of having benefited at one time or another from this system. I say </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">we</i><span style="font-family: inherit;">, because it is not seldom that we are all led by our artistic hunger to approach anyone and anything dangling the possibility of sponsorship that would boost our careers. And whether you've failed a thousand times to get that grant </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">or</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> won a thousand times at getting that funding, the fact remains that we are all affected. Grant winners and funding application losers both marched to the NCCA to protest the new "scandalous affair" or expressed disgust on their respective Facebook Walls. Isn't it about time, though, we examine whether this cycle of dependence is really what we want, this mode of measuring art and achievements or this route of guaranteeing production really what we prefer?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"> I'm surely going to be despised by a lot of my peers for sticking to my belief that the state should have no business interfering in the arts. The arts are exchanges among artists and audiences. When government favors certain voices, that is to say, favors them with grants using public money, that's tantamount to asking another voice (say, an unfavored one) to contribute via taxation to the fund for the government-favored voices who are actually his government-favored competitors. I say, why not allow the arts to be handled by the individual and by the private sector and free the state from the headache of choosing artists to favor? Why not leave the state alone, so it can focus on the running of museums and education and social services? If government is to put a stake in the arts, should it not only be for education purposes? Doesn't it look legitimate when universities handle the arts instead of Commission bureaucrats, if only because in the universities it’s often for education purposes?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"> When government interferes in education it does so in cognizance of its duty to equality. When it interferes in the people's various arts, it does so out of an ignorance of its people's variety. As to who among my friends enjoy having to pay a cultural tax every time he/she buys a movie ticket, with the awareness that this collection might be used to fund the art or literature of his/her peers whose art make him/her puke, I do not know. What I know is I might not mind contributing materials to <i>some</i>, and only some, of the artists being presently funded by the government, but that the government would dictate me to do so (through the tax system) does not make me feel happy about my contribution. Why does my contribution have to be regulated? I will go visit my friend artists and lend them loans anytime I want, not because government tells me to. It's quite ironic. While <st1:country-region st="on">Poland </st1:country-region>and the rest of <st1:place st="on">Eastern Europe</st1:place> fought to liberate its artists from the hold of the state, here we are as a nation with even communist-hating elements of the educated or financial elite asking government to put its hands deeper into the arts pot. The National Artist title controversy of 2009 is the monster everybody in the arts helped create. And this controversy will not be the last, until we face the fact that there will always be this battle for who gets the blessing of government and of art authorities with government appointments. I asked in <a href="http://partycrashingangle.blogspot.com/2009/08/politicians-artists-of-philippines-vs.html" target="_blank">one of my blogs</a> in <a href="http://partycrashingangle.blogspot.com/search/label/National%20Artist" target="_blank">my blog series on the National Artist award</a>, why are we so into the nationalization of the arts that Lino Brocka so hated?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"> And why is it that it's the arts profession alone that's getting this favor? Why not, say, the baking profession? Imagine this to be the case among bakers, for example. The bakers would rally around a town plaza with placards saying "Give More Support to Baking!" "Support the Baking Culture!" And each one of the bakers approaches a journalist and testifies to this lack of the government's support for baking. Not support in terms of flour price regulation/subsidies, but in terms of flour-making grants or for the awarding of the National Baker of the Philippines title. Would Dunkin' Donuts and Country Style enjoy watching bakers from Mister Donut go home with the favor, knowing that they (DD and CS) contributed modest or hefty sums into that baking subsidy fund? Why can't the bakeshops and the bakers just compete without a public option? This is not healthcare, for god's sake, it's baking! And what is true for baking or skateboard manufacturing or the party event business should be true for painting, for filmmaking, or for making those cute little poems too!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit; font-weight: bold;">3. Stultification</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I had a discussion again on this issue with Lila Shahani, an Oxford University doctoral candidate working on postcolonial writing in English, who recently became one of my Facebook friends and a main character in my blog of last week titled "</span><a href="http://partycrashingangle.blogspot.com/2009/08/two-fruits-one-tree-or-why-there-is-no.html" style="font-family: inherit;" target="_blank">Two fruits, one tree (or, why there is no such thing as a national artist)</a><span style="font-family: inherit;">"</span>—<span style="font-family: inherit;">also a part of my series of blogs about the National Artist title award. Ms. Shahani agrees I should present my following query to each and every artist in this artistic nation: "I think the larger question</span>—<span style="font-family: inherit;">should government be funding the arts and, if so, in what manner?</span>—<span style="font-family: inherit;">begs serious attention." But then, she also lays down on the table her own take and queries: "You apparently think that government shouldn't interfere, period. I feel that it should be involved in terms of funding indigenous or larger ethnic and regional communities so they can </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">produce </i><span style="font-family: inherit;">the art more easily (venues, workshops, materials, etc). Should there be academic/cultural canon-makers, however? I'd have to think about that some more. Where it might appear, at first blush, that this encourages creativity, it might in fact be the case that too much of it can actually stultify the very creativity it hopes to engender."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"> Too much of it, not enough of it, stultify it will. The nationalization of art produces acceptable art, safe art, pretty art, nationalistic art, protest art that doth not protest too much towards the government that maketh it eat</span>—<span style="font-family: inherit;">certainly not art that questions the standards and clichés of those in "authority," certainly not art that explores virgin forests of beauty that have long been regarded as ugly by those who have to approve your funding, certainly not art that defies the codes of prettiness, not art that defies convention or conventional "fashionable rebellion," not art that questions long-established definitions of nationhood and good citizenry. And the reason for that is simple: guided art is un-free art.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"> So, am I saying that much of the art sponsored by government funds have been mediocre? No. Some of them may even be revolutionary. But that would be because their revolutions got approval; in short, approved revolutions. What about those who didn't get their revolutions approved? What happens to their revolutions? How many have been sponsored that turned out to be mediocre, how many turned out to be great? How many got hefty grants for forgettable performances? Critics in their various fields of specialty can answer those questions and tell us whether government funding has really wrought out champions. How many revolutionary (or simply innovative) art got disapproved? Why? And even assuming that critics of the future will all agree that the CCP under, say, former advertising-industry stalwart Emily Abrera was a grand phase in CCP's history, what is to stop the institution from degenerating into a less grand epoch under new management?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit; font-weight: bold;">4. Death of the Individual</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Creativity is anywhere and everywhere. Apart from artists supporting themselves, not all of whom are well-to-do, how many times do we witness support for artists given by private individuals and foundations? And, lacking that support, how many times have we heard the phrase "aesthetics of poverty" passed around in areas where a lack of funds for expensive oil paint exists and creativity is still running wild? Why should government dip its powerful hands in the free exchange as if it wants to put up a propaganda TV station to compete with the private networks, yet operated via those networks' large tax contributions?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"> The nurture of achievements? Artistic achievement can neither be a property of the state nor the claim of the state. Many experiences in communist countries have shown us a thousand times the futility of achieving high artistic standards under the state's guidance defining what is the highest art, unless the art products in their pedestals are read in the context of irony. The National Endowment for the Arts in the <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">US</st1:place></st1:country-region>, with its more advanced guidelines for approval in terms of communal representation or democratic accommodation, is still constantly pestered by questions of too much interference by the boards (and I'm not just talking about the Robert Mapplethorpe affair). Artistic achievement is finally by the individual and for critics to debate on, and many an individual artistic genius proved to have better achieved their stature <i>through</i> the minimal interference of somebody else's guidance. To say that it is worthwhile for the government to spend twenty million pesos for twelve artists with the hope that the investment will catch one genius is baloney. Artists become lesser geniuses with their patron's interference and become visceral geniuses when they have a falling out with their patrons. Or, as in the case of Ludwig van Beethoven, when they don't care much for what their patrons demand and seek to surprise them instead with what these patrons didn't expect.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit; font-weight: bold;">5. Brainwashed Art</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Who will be mother to the arts if government opts out? This has been the classic blackmail verse flaunted by those who have come to believe that if government opts out of arts-funding, the arts will die. But even such frightened dependence can be inspired by a lot of branding they can see around them. Booker or Man Booker, Pulitzer, Nobel, Palanca, Ayala, among other names</span>—<span style="font-family: inherit;">these are private efforts that can boast of better patronage than their counterparts in government. And if you don't agree with the various institutions' standards of the good and the beautiful, fine, it's their money, not yours. A government arts commission, in contrast, would tell you to go to hell if you can't agree with their standards <i>but still ask you to pay your cultural taxes so they can continue to operate</i>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"> Who will be mother to the arts if government opts out? Ask that to the artists from the provinces who do not have access to public funding, who never had access to such public funding. Ask that to the urban artists who scoff at the approval demands and inane requirements by the committees lording it over artists' theses as masters of the acceptable.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"> "</span><st1:country-region st="on" style="font-family: inherit;">France</st1:country-region><span style="font-family: inherit;"> is pretty heavily centralized this way and there hasn't been as much new blood as, say, </span><st1:country-region st="on" style="font-family: inherit;">England</st1:country-region><span style="font-family: inherit;"> or the </span><st1:country-region st="on" style="font-family: inherit;">US</st1:country-region><span style="font-family: inherit;">," says Shahani. That is a critical opinion. But my friend brings out an example of long dependence that has not adapted well to the globalized valuation of respect for the market. As with the US National Endowment for the Arts, long been a topic for contention in the US, as with the Philippine cycle of cliques' battling it out for a hold on the CCP or the NCCA, as with France's proclivity for subsidies, artists</span>—<span style="font-family: inherit;">for a long time now alienated from the popular artists of the middle to latter 20th-century</span>—<span style="font-family: inherit;">have come to distrust the market. Artists have called the market, or the popular audience, stupid. They have called the market uneducated. And so, as if to wound it with vengeance, indirectly want to tax it for their nurture and survival so they can ram their respective weirdness on the masses' uncomprehending throats.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"> "But leaving artistic recognition to the invisible hand of the market," as Ms. Shahani points out, "might not necessarily be a bad thing (as long as production itself has been subsidized) since it will generate competition and creativity, which is exactly what we want and need. This might in fact be more effective in the long run than having artists wait for</span>—<span style="font-family: inherit;">and conform to</span>—<span style="font-family: inherit;">government dole-outs."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit; font-weight: bold;">The Pith</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">This is all understandable, really. Many a book have been written about how art veered too far away from the popular audience. And although there are still, say, the Juzo Itamis and the Quentin Tarantinos in "art cinema" or "film festival cinema" who have found ways of addressing both the needs of professors and those of ordinary <i>sarariman</i> (salary men), all in one product, the bulk of the artist population still prefers to talk to their fellow artists. Or to the art societies' embedded critics. Or to the well-heeled patrons of the art.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"> Which is just fine, really. I do that, too. My poetry and fiction in English are mostly not for the masses. Not yet, anyway, and maybe never will be. But we, artists, shouldn't tax the people so we can concoct forever our esoteric kind of stuff. Who will be mother to the arts if government opts out? Well, no one! And I mean no one should baby artists, and certainly not the state. An artist should work his butt off and fund himself. He should be able to see that when he begins to do that, he would not just have learned how to work, he would have learned how to think and compete. And what if our artists cannot start to do that? I'd say no number of Caparases and Alvarezes will ever wake us to the real problem: artists' scrambling for, and consequent embarrassing dependence on, blessings from the State.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"> I ask, why should your art as one artist be subsidized by a hundred of your peers and a thousand of your uncomprehending neighbors? Isn't that by itself no less shameful than what we're presently protesting against as political patronage? [FIN]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;">Author's note: <i>This author wishes to acknowledge Sylvia Mayuga for the guest display of this blog essay on her Philstar.com column, appearing there as a </i><a href="http://www.philstar.com/columns/502474/five-fruits-national-arts-tree" target="_blank"><i>wonderfully-streamlined version of the blog</i></a><i> care of Mayuga's own experienced hands. I am tremendously honored.</i></span></div>
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Jojo Soria de Veyrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10755588651423753783noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2887809293642421519.post-85731971175321302012009-08-28T16:01:00.000+08:002015-02-17T15:45:20.714+08:00Two fruits, one tree (or, why there is no such thing as a national artist)<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">photo from http://pinoyweekly.org/new/2013/03/sining-ng-paglikha-ng-kasaysayan/</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">T</span>hrough our friendly exchange of comments on Sylvia Mayuga</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">’</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="apple-style-span">s Facebook wall regarding the ongoing National Artist of the Philippines title award debacle, Lila Shahani, a doctoral candidate at Oxford University (London) working on her postcolonial literature in English degree and who used to work for the Cultural Center of the Philippines and the Gawad CCP committee, observed a “somewhat promiscuous and occasionally rather putrid need to constantly canonize in the Philippines.” She went on to propose a national art completed through a process “more natural, more organic, where the cultural minutiae comes alive on its own.</span>” Still, the hanging question was, Why this eternal craze for “canonization” and official recognition by a nation?</span></span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Well, apart from the lack of an audience for many artists which might require forcing such an audience by legal declaration, my other quick explanation to that hanging query is this: we are not a nation. We have never been, and we just might never be. You see, a long time ago a colonizer declared the people of this archipelago </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">“of ours” </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">as one nation of “Filipinos”; then that colonizer left and we were likewise left with the vague duty of continuing the realization of that declaration. However, there are many factors keeping us from realizing that mission—regional, regionalist and religious divisions are just some of these. But I would like to focus on two very important factors, two basic ones responsible for the constant and unflagging division in our nation and which I believe are at the root of such cultural issues as this surrounding the recent National Artist of the Philippines title debacle—viz., language and education. (Let’s lay aside for the moment the issue of politics governing National Artist selection, as I am more concerned in this essay with the masses’ unconcern).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> Okay. Now, some will say we are divided into two nations, the rich Filipinos’ nation and the poor Filipinos’ nation. That is also true. But that view can be tricky in the art of explaining the economics behind it, so I’d rather trace things to the more obvious dividing tool: language. (As I write this, for instance, I’m fully aware of my readership, and that readership does not include my neighbors in our barangay).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> In the Spanish era we were introduced to feudalism, and within that feudal system was entrenched a wedge that would forever keep the poor from reaching the landlord’s sons’ and daughters’ level. That tool was language. Spanish became the mode of instruction in the academies, and—since society operated under a feudal system—the academies would mostly be affordable only to the landed gentry or the merchant class, seldom to working class elements or the peasantry who could only rely on the charity of private or public scholarships. The learned </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">from</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> Spanish, therefore, could thus only become more learned </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">by</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> Spanish. Those denied access to the language from childhood might be able to keep up a bit, but only up to a point (the same way that what we now regard as OFW English can only function for certain functions but not in the </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">alta sociedad</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> ballroom functions, unless you are Manny Pacquiao’s mom).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> Now, when the Americans came and went, that systemic bent of wedging a divide between the poor (Tagalog-speakers) and the rich (now English-speakers) was not removed. Sure, there were efforts to come up with a language we could call our own, which my great grand-uncle Jaime de Veyra was party to. Declared as the national language, Tagalog (which would later be academicized to be known as Filipino) had a nationalist rationale-cum-agenda; but it did not seem to be aware of its potential in ultimately removing the poor-rich wedge tool, the language divide. The nationalists spoke Tagalog in public functions, but kept their snobbery by English’s way with the rest of the upper class in their daily exclusivist conversations concerning keeping up with the white Joneses. The national language mission was designed for nation-making, </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">never</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> for nation-uniting. And the problem with that was, the nation got to be </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">made</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> by the new landed gentry and the new merchant class who were being educated by Thomasite standards.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> Since language and education are like the left and right arms of every citizen that makes coping with daily life a whole lot easier, that wedge in Philippine society </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">separating the left arm and the right arm to make life more difficult </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">necessarily manifested itself in all facets of society’s operations, including that activity called the arts. And so the poor Filipino nation generally listened to radio soap operas and pop music and watched cinema entertainment in Tagalog, while the rich Filipino nation primarily listened to radio news and music in both Tagalog and English and watched English soap operas on TV and English movie-theater movies. Sure, rich entrepreneurs made Tagalog literary masterpieces for the masses, but that doesn’t mean </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">they</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> preferred these to their self-Americanization or self-Europeanization ideals.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> It was logical therefore to see a two-pronged development of the arts. The Tagalogeros’ arts included, among others, still life and Last Supper paintings on plywood or </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">katsa</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> (low-grade cotton canvas) made by </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">maglalako </i><span style="font-family: inherit;">painters (painter-vendors) who intended these for dining room display. Their art, similarly colonial as their upper-class masters’, also included American jet fighter jeepney sticker art, and such other manifestations of colonial idolatry. The Ingleseros’ arts, meanwhile, included—among others—painting inspired by the painting concerns of the moment in New York/Berlin/London/etc., emulations of Italian industrial design, and so on. The former became prisoners in their own country and were only able to do so much artistically, while the latter generally became prisoners of their old and continuing colonialist ideals—but that is a different issue.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> Thus, today, by virtue of that language divide that entrenched an educational divide that in turn created artistic divides, we continue to face the problem of addressing the concepts of what a national art is, who a national artist is, when a national art or artist is, and how national is a national artist.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> Politicians would find it easy to give out answers since their usual concern with the arts is political. Artists seem to have a more difficult time with it, since they would be more genuinely concerned with defining what is art and what is national.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-large;">N</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">ow, I forget who it was who wrote in the </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">’</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">80s, in the American magazine <i>The Saturday </i><i>Review</i>, something like this: “every time I see an I Love <st1:state st="on">New York</st1:state> sticker, I know <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">New York</st1:place></st1:state> is in decline.” Something like that. Well, every time <i>I</i> see a symbol of canonization, like a National Artist award for someone, I know it</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">’</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">s ultimately a symbol of desperation.</span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="apple-style-span"> Desperation, I say, because we (consciously or subconsciously) know we have not yet realized the old proposal to be a nation and have thus remained constantly divided—not just regionally but regionalistically, religiously, linguistically, economically. The compounded result of which is finding ourselves </span><span class="textexposedshow">eternally crazy about such exercises of false nationhood as following a rigid performance of the national anthem (as against the <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">US</st1:place></st1:country-region></span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">’</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="textexposedshow"> allowing much leeway in the performance of its own). We have acquired thus a hunger for perfect symbols: a national hero, a national flower, a national fruit, a national fist, a national <i>pasalubong,</i> a national book store, whatever national else. Subconsciously, we know that we really don</span>’<span class="textexposedshow">t represent anything collectively. Culturally, <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Sudan</st1:place></st1:country-region>’s infighters seem better off, for they know they are fighting for specific ethnic rights and also ownership of specific oil territories. We, on the other hand, celebrate our symbols the way we celebrate our religious days and icons—blindly most of the time, wishfully at best. Rizal the fighter for autonomy or independence is loved on Rizal Day even as we continue to embrace the dictates of the economists of foreign creditors, which is the same behavior we display every time we congratulate ourselves for a nice mass (on a Sunday or Saturday), even as we</span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">’</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">ve come to love the things Jesus of Nazareth used to hate.</span><br />
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Blindly, therefore, unfazed do we march forward<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">—</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">albeit in a haze—toward what could bring us true nationhood. Nationalizing anything and everything has become our desperate and self-assuring habit. I find it easy to say that by simply trying to be a nation and trying blindly, we will </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">never</i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"> attain our objective. For nationhood, you see, cannot be constructed by imposing wishful thinking on a people within a territory via momentary spurts of sloganeering and songs of “magkaisa tayong mga Pilipino” every time there’s a news-friendly event requiring commonality, or every time we come up with a utopia of obedience under the rubric of a “Strong Republic.” Nationhood takes a lot more effort than that. Some even had to build a nation through a war cause. Or a peace cause. There was always a uniform direction within the internal divide.</span><br />
But that’s on the one hand. On the other hand, there is the Karl Popperian idea of a democratic society that proposes to create a nation by constant democratic exchanges, internal economic exchanges, and pluralism. What these exchanges demand is the achievement not of uniformity for the sake of nation-building but plurality and variety for the sake of<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">“free society”-building. This demands an atmosphere akin to a town fair with competing booths, the thesis being that unifying by way of </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">unifying</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> breaks a nation, while enhancing differences under the parameters of opinionated aggression as well as the “acceptance of one</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">’s o</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">bsolescence” (Popper) creates the necessary physical human unity consisting precisely of more exchanges and the consequent nurturing of a continuing mutual respect. We do not have that in our idea of democracy. Our idea of democracy remains: to have the freedom to speak and not to own the responsibility to listen—but this, too, is another issue.</span><br />
Suffice to say that our nation is not made up of a <i style="font-family: inherit;">demos</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> of a people, which should be one and the same thing; instead we have educated lords lording it over the </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">demos</i><span style="font-family: inherit;">, creating two peoples. Thus we continue to nationalize anything and everything to embark on this subconscious mission to hide the truth; it has become our reflex action and attitude towards every frustrating event that occurs in our midst. Instead of decentralizing culture to create that town fair atmosphere, we announce on the speakers that everyone in the town fair should wear blue and red shirts and jeans. We do not just crave for a nation, we try to design a nation, and we take it upon ourselves to act on that duty. The problem is, even with an obedient people we cannot acknowledge the fact that we cannot even give them orders if they are speaking a different language.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="textexposedshow"> The process of elitist nation-making can be quite funny, too—it shows us how nation-shapers can become parodies of themselves. And that is not just in our archipelago where things are not even funny anymore. The American Grammy Awards, for instance, has a system wherein peers can nominate only those artists who have reached a certain number of sales in the market; this is similar to the </span><span class="apple-style-span">Hall of Fame awards system wherein mayors and governors and sports investors take the ritual photo op on the day of conferment, not realizing they actually waited decades before they could say, “oh okay, he's still not forgotten, maybe we can give him the award now.” Who the hell needs that conferment in the first place when the people already gave it to the man/woman centuries ago? What the hell is a Grammy nod all about if what is required is a market nod first? Now, of course there are honors</span><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><span class="textexposedshow">that really honor, and these are usually the awards that do not pretend to derive from somewhere else. But the rest are crap, and these are usually the awards that pretend to have been conferred by an Academy when in fact it had indirectly been conferred by the people firstly, or these are the ones that pretend to have been conferred by the nation, or by the city, or by the barangay, when in fact an institution took it upon itself to speak for the nation/city/barangay. The National Artist title award is that latter type of carabao dung. And the sad part of it is it not only pretends to be an award <i>by</i> the nation for an “artist of the nation,” sans a definition of who a nation is composed of, it even wastes the people</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">’</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">s tax money—<i>the only thing truly of the people and by the people</i> in that award. And from now on, the filmmakers of our land will pay their cultural taxes to pay for C-movie filmmaker Carlo Caparas’ monthly stipend, the new controversial awardee.</span><br />
Consider, however, that Carlo Caparas—a product of profit-based movie marketing for the masses created by rich movie producers—is not an “academic” artist, and perhaps also why a lot of arts people were astounded by the conferment. Now, Caparas may be a bad artist, but that says something else again: the world of academic artists and the world of an educated politician like Gloria Arroyo cannot seem to meet on the same plain. Why is this? Perhaps Gloria Arroyo does not really believe Caparas to be worthy of the award; she has been so wily a politician, as many of us have been wont to say. If so, then it would make perfect sense that Gloria Arroyo chose to confer the award on somebody who in her opinion might be her people’s champ able to go against the elite artists’ preferred refined champ.</div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">“W</span>hat is this constant need to deify, whether it</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">’</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">s the Gawad CCP or National Artist award?” asked Lila Shahani.</span><br />
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<span class="textexposedshow"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> Apart from the Gawad CCP and National Artist awards, which are national efforts, let me digress to the Palanca Awards, which is a private effort. Some would aver that it would be unfair of me to touch this last as it is not of the same bunch—but they </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">are </i><span style="font-family: inherit;">of the same bunch. First, though, the disclaimer. Palanca’s sin is not a grave one, for it only pretends to be an “award” even as it is really a contest prize for contest applicants with three judges sitting for each category instead of a committee like, say, the Swedish Academy for the conferment of one award. It only pretends to be like the National Critics Circle awards (an honor honest about its being a circle’s honoring someone) even as it is actually the </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">American Idol</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> of Philippine literature. And Philippine writers play along—for the money, or for the credentials (since the literati have already attached themselves to it as an institution). A writer-friend says some of these Palanca-participating writers would even adjust their writing styles for whoever is going to sit as a major judge in a year’s contest (it’s a small community, you can’t keep a secret), but that’s another matter and I cannot name names.</span></span></span><br />
But at least the Palanca doesn’t pretend very much to be of and for a nation. It acknowledges that it is of and for writers and is only an opportunity medium for . . . actually I think for the propagation of the easy transfer of styles of patronage.<br />
I do not, however, think the Palanca to be entirely useless. I would only rather that it was a publishing and distribution grant so readers can access/check its winners. In short, so it can be a part of a potential literary market and potentially of the nation.<br />
<span class="textexposedshow"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"> Let me discourse further on Palanca</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">’</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">s role in my arguments here later. First, Lila Shahani points out that international publishers like Random House seem more interested in ethnic voices than in national voices, in an Australian aborigine writer than in an Australian writer, at least presently. And that is really because book publishers are moved by the forces of market tastes and market availability and marketability and market niches. They are moved by such principles as positioning, product image, product identity. They know what they are looking for.</span></span></span><br />
<span class="textexposedshow"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"> <span class="textexposedshow"><span class="textexposedshow">“</span></span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">If you want to make it in the Philippine market,</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">”</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> Ms. Shahani opines from experience to provide a contrast, </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">“</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">it is useful to celebrate some aspect of our national identity. So would a Filipino version of Aravind Adiga’s </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">White Tiger</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> make it back home [Shahani is writing from India], with all its criticisms of India? Unlikely. Instead, even if one is not necessarily formally gifted, as long as one celebrates the pastoral, the indigenous or the national, one is bound to be awarded eventually. Isn’t this as dubious as the criteria for multicultural writing internationally?</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">”</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> In my two earlier blog essays here under the National Artist label, this was what I referred to as a propensity to institutionalize—through the National Commission for Culture and the Arts and the CCP—safe art.</span></span></span><br />
<span class="textexposedshow"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">And this is precisely how Filipino movements for idealizations operate, however various the approaches are by the different NCCA directors or CCP chairmen. And if we are to go back to the Palanca, which is governed more by the standards of its sitting judges from a previous or newly-established generation of writers than by any government interest, it sadly still turns out to be another form of convention propagation, or conventional innovation, and all because judges would not be inclined to interest a market, or a people, or a readership. Its judges would be mostly concerned with their aesthetic idealizations for an imagined market, an imagined people, and the small readership who may or may not love those idealizations since the judges and writers would have no way of knowing since Philippine literature is often for free. Almost nobody in my barangay has probably even read a poem or story by a Palanca winner. And if you say not all barangays are like my barangay, I would bet you my whole year’s salary if you can give me a barangay with even at least 20% of its population having read a book by a Filipino creative writer apart from the required </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">Noli Me Tangere</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> and </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">El Filibusterismo <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">in college</span></i><span style="font-family: inherit;">. I </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">know</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> this is not </span><st1:country-region st="on" style="font-family: inherit;">Czechoslovakia</st1:country-region><span style="font-family: inherit;">, and I know that neither is this </span><st1:country-region st="on" style="font-family: inherit;"><st1:place st="on">Russia</st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="font-family: inherit;"> with taxi drivers reading Russian novels in Russian by Russian writers.</span></span></span><br />
So, what am I saying? Am I preaching nation-making by proposing a mono-lingual utopia?</div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-large;">I</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">n the early post-Marcos decades, there have been efforts to democratize the elite arts. The CCP even toured ballet performances to the provinces in the late </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">’</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">80s through its outreach program. It was the institution’s way of hoping that if you bring a thing to the people, the people would eat that thing. If you give them caviar, they’d go “ooh.” Well, that seemed to be the prayer, at least. The CCP’s nationalizers were understandably offended when they didn’t get those bravos, or got offended more when they got a “mas masarap pa ang bagoong dyan e” sort of response to their West-inspired art.</span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"> But, get this. This approach was not exclusive to the elitist in the arts who thought like Imelda Marcos in saying, the way to erase an elite is to make an elite element out of everyone. No, even the Marxists in the academic world did come up with their own designs for nation-making. They said people should have access to our books, and so our writers should start writing in the people’s language, Filipino. The problem was, and still is, this: language doesn’t seem to operate merely through words, it also takes its personality from the education it got (and the jobs and wages that this education got it), and from the access to a bookstore that went along with its being able to find that meager job thanks to the meager education it got. Sure you can tell a people and their language, “hey, pare, mare, hindi ito sonnet, ito ay isang soneto,” but that, ladies and gentleman, would not change the politics around the art commodity</span>—coining a new local word for an alien object would not readily assimilate that object into the accepted culture of the larger society nor guarantee its acceptance after having been understood. In short, you may change the politics <i>within</i> an art, the language and its contents, but that would not change the elitist aura of all Philippine art that do not derive from the barangays or the people themselves <i>and</i> their education (the education afforded them by a poorly-accorded privilege).<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="textexposedshow"><span class="textexposedshow"> Ms. Shahani also shared this observation: <span class="textexposedshow"><span class="textexposedshow">“</span></span></span></span></span>the ones we seem to idealize (in this context I have more experience with Gawad CCP) are the ones with fairly obvious and identifiable nationalist references.” That would be emulating or aping the Pulitzer, but at least the Pulitzer is clear on that in all its press releases, and the Pulitzer had had material that involved American characters in foreign lands (Saul Bellow’s <i>Henderson the Rain King </i>almost won). Still and all, nationalism as a rationale for a Gawad is still merely tinkering with the content of the message, not fixing the real root of the absence of a nation-audience. “Unless you’re in awe of the greats, you’re in trouble, it seems,” Lila adds, and to me that’s a signal frustration with our collective fear for the “nationalist greats,” nationalist greats who are however unperturbed by the threat of the nationally uneducated (or unperturbed at least by our money-wasting in all this arts funding).<br />
So, in the end, what am I preaching? Well, if I am to preach here at all, I shall do it by referencing my admiration for what the novelist and short story writer Jose Dalisay wrote somewhere, sometime ago, to the effect of confessing that he <i>is</i> a bourgeois writer writing <i>in</i> a bourgeois way <i>on</i> non-bourgeois themes <i>for</i> a bourgeois audience. He didn’t put it that way, really; I did. But that’s basically what he was saying and basically what he has been doing. Now, if only the national arts committees of this god-forsaken nation could muster the same boldness to acknowledge its standing in the nation and stop pretending to be of <i>the</i> nation, then maybe we can begin the job of really making this nation one.<br />
Until that time comes, I will continue to refuse to call any Filipino artist—including myself—a national artist or an artist of the nation. There can be no such animal in this jungle. [END]</div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;">After reading the above blog essay, Sylvia Mayuga emailed me an article that shall be a part of her new anthology to be published by the Ateneo de Manila University Press. The article is actually a review of the book <i>A Country of Our Own</i> by California-based Cebuano writer David Martinez, a poet who---it turns out---seems to carry the same belief as mine concerning the mythology of our nationhood, though he develops his piece in a more researched though perhaps less sanguine way to produce his "tour de force" on the issue (Ms. Mayuga's phrase). Mabuhay sab ka, bay.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;"> But it gets better. Sylvia wrote "<a href="http://www.philstar.com/columns/500447/new-morning-inang-bayan" target="_blank">New Morning for Inang Bayan</a>," extolling the positive coming off a negative event, including this blog---along with an interview with Ms. Shahani---in the limelight of her prose as she rose to her finale. That was quite embarrassing and an honor.</span></div>
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Jojo Soria de Veyrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10755588651423753783noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2887809293642421519.post-82046466795856784092009-08-20T15:56:00.000+08:002015-02-11T14:49:44.875+08:00The aesthetics of the economics of vanity<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">butt vanity photo borrowed http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/celebrity-style/us-mum-spends-15k-on-injections-to-get-bootylicious-backside/story-fn9076o9-1226395624468</td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">I</span>t is not as exclusive as many think it is. And I'm referring to what many assail as the vanity of tummy tucks, butt implants, liposuction, and what-not. For steep as the price of any of these operations may be, vanity is universal, and its many aesthetic variants would betray just as many pricing levels in the market. In fact, vanity <i>is</i> the market.</div>
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I write this as my way of recording my recent debate with my neighbor's aunt at her diner in front of our barangay market when I went there this morning to buy a rare cup of barako coffee and enviable thick Visayan latik on suman for breakfast. My mother-in-law wakes up so early in the morning and I wake up so late and my wife leaves for the office for the usual rush hour along with the kids, so I'm left with the delightful experience of having special suman with latik syrup for breakfast. But this morning, a debate with my neighbor's aunt ensued when she started to scream all over the place over the issue of a lady on her TV screen, a lady who was saying Vicki Belo's clinic botched her buttock augmentation which endangered her life at a later stage when the silicone started to decay and harbor all sorts of microbial pirates inside her ass of a colony, or something to that effect. But, oh no, my neighbor's aunt was not concerned with the legalese favoring the butt-reshape customer and "victim," nor was she fuming at those who "do not follow the doctor's post-operation instructions," as some of my other neighbors in the diner cockily put it. My neighbor's aunt was merely feeling victorious, or---all right---simply glad, that an apostle of vanity had been punished by the anti-aesthetics god(s) of modesty that she says she devoutly worships.</div>
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Reader, note that it is not my wont to argue with my neighbor's aunt, modest and behaved boy that I am. However, I have to confess I could not contain myself in my coffee cup meditation this morning and went outside my private circle in an outburst of fecund wordplay in defense of vanity itself. Not because I felt I was one of those whose vain pain she might later mock, I was still in my cheap flip-flops and am pretty past my high school days of wearing a look-at-me KISS-band makeup, but because I felt my economic philosophy was being trampled on, my belief and aesthetic religion insulted to the edge of the moon.</div>
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How vanity is't in her, mesaid, when livest it yet in all---I said, in mock archaic English. "Ha? Ano yun?" she asked. "Unsa'y imong ingon, dodong? (What are you saying, kid?)" went she further, my neighbor's aunt from the modest island of Bohol.</div>
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And, to my surprise, she listened. She listened, shocked perhaps that this good son-in-law of her neighbor mahjong mate who had up till now only listened and listened well to all her rantings against everything pro-labor, this boy who seemed to agree (if she only knew) with everything she said in defense of Gloria (Arroyo) not the U2 song, this son-in-law of her friend who would just say nothing but flash a series of smiles towards her articulateness, . . . shocking that he would now turn the tables and do the podium work in defense of his, <i>his</i> . . . "philosophy"---but she listened. "Philosophy gradweyt diay ka, dong? Unsa man, nganong wa kag mag-law? (You're a philosophy graduate, then, kid? Then why didn't you take up law?)"</div>
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And though I forgot if I told her "no, I was never officially a philosophy student, I don't even finish the books I read," I remember that this was what I told her, to the amusement of my other neighbors in the diner (the butcher, the baker, and the candy stick vendor):</div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">"'N</span>ang (Mother)," I said, "all of us, <i>all</i> of us, without exception, plot our lives in the name of vanity. Perhaps not all in the nurture of their facial beauty, perhaps not all in the maintenance of youthful hubris, but all in the service of vanity, nonetheless.</div>
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"You, for one," I said. "As much as I. We all, sinners that we all are as our parish pastor's wont to say, we all are children of vanity as we are of god [I believe she read god with a capital G]. Me, embarrassingly fortyish, I yet sport my long greying hair as if to spite the regal Romanness of Rome in favor of the long-haired Druids, old as I am who should be saluting the conventions of the short-haired and conventional now. And you, you in your modest 'duster' (sundress), you also take <i>pride</i> in such modesty and allow the <i>arrogance</i> of conventionality to dictate on those who sway from the barangay's ways, don't you, Aling Britney? And your name, your name itself is an identity which you subconsciously wear like a logo, don't you?"</div>
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"Aba, aba, aba, ang galing mo palang magsalita a, dapat pala tumakbo ka sa susunod na barangay eleksyon, no. Sus, ninduta uy; hayaan mo, kakausapin ko si Kapitan, baka puwede kang . . ."</div>
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I said I'd be back to my telework now, presently, and will just bring back her coffee mug later, and she said all right but I should consider really running for the barangay council.</div>
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So, what was it I really wanted to say?---</div>
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Well, I wanted to enumerate as many aesthetic variations of vanity. Sure, there are the usual vanities of art, of architecture, of cookery, of musical taste, of car and garage design, of lawns, of cycling jerseys, of religion, of politics, of engineering, of science, of a language and its poetry. . . . But there are also the more latent aesthetic vanities, aside from the vanity of modesty (simplicity's arrogant utopia against rococo tastes) and the vain righteousness of village mob wisdom. For one, there's the vanity of the view that our lives are what we make them. There's even the classic vanity of those who have long loved the status of wearing the stamp of poverty on their shoulders, with nary an absence of pride, wearing poverty like a unionist's tag on one's branded social-realist shirt. And being one of those who have concluded that, in this country, where there's smoke there's fire's one of the stupidest things you'd ever hear, I sat content with the Thoreau-bred thought that where there's a society there shall always be vanity.</div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">A</span>nd so, what now? How do we escape it, then? If we cannot escape it, must we then just embrace it, make a religion out of it, in Moses' absence?</div>
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I thought about this question and, vainly, came up with this conclusion:</div>
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Our problem with vanity now should not be so much with the difficulty (nay, the impossibility) of escaping it. Our problem with vanity has always been that we have constantly been told to escape it. The problem is we have been told it is bad to be vain. And yet those very same people who say so have the vanity to dictate on us what is vain and what is not. To get a liposuction is vain. But him getting a gas-guzzler of a gigantic truck for to pick his daughter from school is not, because anyway he just drives in his Jockey-branded undershirt.</div>
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It's about time we chuck all this bullshit about what's vain and what's not. In the end, it all boils down to the same old Marxist issue of powers who label and non-powers who get labeled (and by powers I do not mean just the rich, for the stupid mob is just as much a force to reckon with as any landlord's army of goons). But lest I be mistaken again for a Communist (predisposed as everyone is in this country to do so) by my adherence to Marxist critical views, allow me once again the vanity of aggression in saying this: the examination of who said something and to whom it was said benefits not just a party, not any <i>one</i> party, including a Communist party, but an entire market of sellers and buyers!</div>
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Telling our people that it is okay to be vain will do nothing less than get us moving forward. Telling our people that they should not apologize for their way of life will move nothing less than money that should be moved to stimulate an economy. It'll move our rotting butts off to the marketplace to make us buy lunch break lipo, a gourmet doughnut over a vainly simple glazed one, a sports car perhaps or a medium-sized Anton del Castillo more expensive than a Pajero, or a new fancy church in a new fancy spot. What is wrong with that, as long as it's your money? Here's my big what-is-wrong-with-that? If to do one of those is to do wrong, then everything in life is wrong. If doing one of those is bad, then everything in life is bad.</div>
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(Sure, there's the argument that too much consumption is bad for the environment, but even that presupposes the vanity of humankind [anthropocentrism] thinking itself superior to dinosaurs and must therefore not go.)</div>
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I finished my coffee. Having sat in front of my computer monitor for so long and said to myself all that I needed to say to deflate my chest, I vainly walked over to my neighbor's aunt and asked her, in quirky Cebuano, "Manang, you take <i>pride</i> in your coffee, right" She nodded, puzzled. I said, with syllabic emphases, "you're so vain kaayo, uy, but I'm so <i>proud</i> of you." I handed her the empty cup.</div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">T</span>he marketplace in front of the diner went on its busy and merry way, exchanging money and judgments and all sorts of harassment in that mini-divine comedy of a day. But divine---however you put it---in celebration of selves' lives, all in the name of pure vanity.</div>
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Jojo Soria de Veyrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10755588651423753783noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2887809293642421519.post-25471690860976791542009-08-17T15:03:00.000+08:002015-02-11T14:12:01.109+08:00Honesty in the Lie of Entertainment<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">photo of Revillame from http://showbizandstyle.inquirer.net/entertainment/entertainment/view/20090805-218904/Willie-Revillame-apologizes-for-Cory-remark</td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">S</span>O MANY people are once again lambasting entertainment TV host Willie Revillame for carrying on with his fun-for-the-masses crappy noontime show <i>Wowowee</i>, not because they now finally agree with the band Itchyworms’ series of songs satirizing such profitable variety show shit; no, they are finally coming out to curse all of Revillame’s expensive houses because, horrors, he, Revillame, carried on with his noontime fun while Corazon Aquino’s funeral cortège (updates from which were intermittently being broadcast on TV) was on its way to an eternal memorialization in the planet’s history books as one of the most visited and watched cortège curious inhabitants of this planet ever saw. Revillame has already apologized, and the Aquino family has accepted the apology, him and TV host Kris Aquino being channel-mates and all, but—alas!—Revillame’s critics won’t have any of it. They want Revillame’s head on a plate, they want ABS-CBN to remove his name from its payroll, they want the authorities to run after his expensive cars and homes, minimize his mini-mall, they want to see him impoverished and finally slighted by his alleged “Guest Relations Officers” (“girlfriends regularly overlapping,” one envious/righteous wit of a gossip, whose name escapes me presently, once said).</div>
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All the above mass anger is understandable anger if we’ve loved Corazon Aquino or the cause she had represented and represented us in. But, you see, this is also understandable behavior among those who merely want to exploit the anger and use Revillame’s (deservedly) maligned image as a scapegoat for their own guilt.</div>
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I dare defend Willie Revillame the entertainer, though I have nothing but deep hatred for TV shows that kowtow to the poor’s beggary principles, feeding on their feudal patronage of TV hosts as well as mayors and presidents who throw away crumbs as the version of socialization self-righteously deemed better than real socialization itself. Hate those shows, I do, those TV shows and those political ones, for their alibi that it’s better to throw crumbs to a few lucky ones while the government or management behind them awaits the coming of a comprehensive miraculous change in their souls. Somehow I liken it all to a charity foundation built for the possibility of hefty tax rebates, or to carrying runny-nosed homeless babies for political photo ops to upgrade an image. The end for all those is always huge but latent profits. . . . But now, for fear of being labeled a communist (as is our wont), I’ll say I hate it/those not because I hate profit itself but because I smell dishonesty in the concept, see a faked desire to help a beggar with a 1,000 pesos while seeing a reluctance in its ability to donate to a cancer ward with a 1,000,000 of the same currency.</div>
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But this is not where I would like to waste my blog space and my readers’ time on. It is somewhere else I would want to pooh-pooh convention. I would rather piss my reader off with my defense of Mr. Revillame than incense or bore him/her with my corny dialectics on the virtues of true Christianity or real (moderate) socialism.</div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">I</span> DARE defend Mr. Revillame for the simple reason that on that very day the nation saw him as verily crass and unprincipled, I saw nothing but honesty and integrity. While hundreds of Aquino-the-oppositionist haters displayed tears on TV as if to exploit the cameras for the nursing of their profiles as human souls, I saw Revillame as the one—the only one—devoid of hypocrisy.</div>
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I do not mean to infer that in truth and in fact Revillame has not a gram of sympathy for Corazon Aquino as a person and as a cause, or has none of that for her family, or—worse, as others would have it—no sympathy for any dead person, oh no. I only mean that Revillame struck me that day as the very personality that he has always been, one who has no qualms about being a selfish child forever while also one who finds it not so hard to apologize like a self-conserving child an hour or day or week later, one—in fact—who would repeatedly preach about the virtue of childishness himself (correct me if my memory serves me wrong). Revillame did not change himself for the occasion, and the reason is simple: he does not know how to. Or, to be even more generous to the man, he probably by nature prefers not to.</div>
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Many say Revillame is evil. I would beg you to pardon my disagreement, for I’d say you likely fail to see that his goodness lies in his honesty, inclusive though that may be of his honesty about his dishonesties. He constantly confesses his crassness, his business motives, his women, and so on and so forth, even his recurring evil. It’s a virtue so rare among us who delight in our own latent daily crassness and unfair price hikes who would later face the mirror to convince our own shaved masks that “you’re good.”</div>
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Contrast Revillame now, then, with those who sent flowers to Aquino’s vigil, wore black or white (or beige) or yellow to chat with those at the vigil, and made offered sound bites for TV or radio microphones extolling Aquino’s virtue, doing thus while <span style="font-style: italic;">deep down</span> were thanking the god Mammon for extracting yet another leader of street rallies, or—days or hours or minutes later—would go back to the very acts and thoughts against which Aquino could only want to live more to fight, armed with words of defiance and dedication her enemies had hitherto been giggling at.</div>
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<span style="font-size: 29px;">I</span> SEE not much of a political person in Willie Revillame. When he talked to the TV host Cito Beltran on the latter’s now-defunct talk show on ABS-CBN News Channel when the former had his falling out with ABS-CBN bosses before <i>Wowowee</i> was realized, he (Revillame) did not hide his selfish profit motives, almost bragging about how much of a business genius and conceptualizer he was and is. On that show, I saw Revillame as a guest on Bloomberg Television serious about making money, not someone pretending to be a “man of the masses” on Fox News. The man is a hungry businessman, no lying about that. If he is a deceptive persona, I’d say he is no more a liar than the bulk of advertising produced for TV.</div>
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Revillame is a child. A grandchild at his grandpa’s wake might be missing his grandpa, but he would still be harassing his sister playing jacks in front of the funerary band playing grandpa’s favorite Glenn Miller marches, still be carousing with his kid gang-mates even as his grandpa’s cadaver parches. But that child, <span style="font-style: italic;">that child</span> is not ever going to be a falsity. Nor a fakery. Nor a visiting figure of hypocrisy. A child cannot falsify his child-ness, cannot fake his childishness, can’t pretend to be a child. Often a child pretends to be an old man, and what we do is laugh at him and he laughs back in response to our giggling. Stupid, yes, but the child knows. He knows he is not an old man. He knows, too, that he’s bad at faking. Often he finds out he’s not good at lying.</div>
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In contrast, again, the hypocrite and the fake will—during a night at a wake or during the duration of a funeral parade—believe, while the wake or parade or funeral ceremony lasts, that he/she has loved the dead. And he/she wouldn’t want to believe—or wouldn’t want people to believe—that he/she hadn’t.</div>
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<span style="font-size: 29px;">T</span>HE ANGER against Willie Revillame (while curiously forgiving ABS-CBN itself, as always) continues. This is understandable if we had loved Corazon Aquino or one of the causes she passionately represented us in. But, you see, this is also understandable behavior for those who merely want to exploit the anger and use Revillame’s image as a stand-in for their own momentary shame. [END]</div>
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Jojo Soria de Veyrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10755588651423753783noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2887809293642421519.post-3542379046522502162009-08-08T06:27:00.000+08:002015-03-25T09:55:18.697+08:00Politicians’ Artists of the Philippines vs. Artists’ Artists of the Philippines<div style="text-align: left;">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Y</span>esterday </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333;">at the rally </span><span style="color: #333333;">at the National Commission for Culture and the Arts office </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333;">protesting the National Artist of the Philippines title awards given to C-movie filmmaker Carlo Caparas and theater organizer Cecile Guidote-Alvarez</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333;">, National Artists and sundry joined Imee Marcos and Irene Marcos-Araneta in condemning the “presidential prerogative” exercised by the <st1:place st="on"><st1:placename st="on">Malacañang </st1:placename><st1:placetype st="on">Palace </st1:placetype></st1:place>in picking this year</span><span style="color: #333333;">’s awardees.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333;"> Somehow I thought something was wrong here. F. Sionil Jose and Bienvenido Lumbera, among others, voiced concern over the sacrilege. The award was now tainted, they said. It was not honorable anymore. Their argument was simple: the Palace shouldn’t be deciding on things like these, that was the consensus, if only because the Palace was wrong in picking two artists the protesters thought didn’t even deserve to be called artists.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333;"> Here’s what I thought. I thought this has already happened before and will happen again. What happened before was a not-too-loud controversy over then-President Joseph Estrada</span><span style="color: #333333;">’</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333;">s conferring the same title on the songwriter Ernani Cuenco for the year 2000. Artists wrote emails to each other to solicit protestations against this award for Cuenco, an Estrada friend.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333;"> I remember writing a post on this subject at Flips, a mailing list for mainly Filipino-American writers. And what I wrote was basically the same opinion I carry now (see this mailing list post, which I uploaded as <a href="http://partycrashingangle.blogspot.com/2000/03/a-national-artist-award-proclamation.html" target="_blank">a blog post here</a> in 2000, with the necessary adaptation and updates).</span></div>
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<span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: #333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">A</span>nd so it happens again. And it will happen again. All because we can never agree on who should be declared a National Artist and why, in the same way that professors in a multicultural university in the <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">United States</st1:place></st1:country-region> find it hard to agree on which authors can be featured in their school’s curriculum. In our case, artists as a supra-collective will have their standards, politicians (ruling and not) their own. The worldly will have their opinions, the lumpen majority their searched words. The fine arts student will be very articulate, debating a take by a bus-driver fan of a popular art’s hyped-up stalwart.</span></span></div>
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<span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: #333333;"> Kumukulo na ba ang dugo niyo? Sige, mag-Tagalog na tayo.</span></span></div>
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<span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: #333333;"> Ang National Artist of the Philippines title award na tinayo ni Ferdinand Marcos noong 1972 ay isa lamang sa ilang manipestasyon ng pag-na-nationalize ng anumang gobyerno at ng mga </span></span><span style="color: #333333;">“</span><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: #333333;">authorized</span><span style="color: #333333;">” </span><span style="color: #333333;">na tao sa sining. Tulad ng NCCA at Cultural Center of the Philippines, ito ay nag-iimpluwensya sa sining mismo na gumawa ng safe art, ng </span><span style="color: #333333;">“</span><span style="color: #333333;">sipsip</span><span style="color: #333333;">”</span><span style="color: #333333;"> (sucking-up) art, at di paggawa ng mga <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Orapronobis (Fight for Us)</i> o anumang hindi magugustuhan ng nasa kapangyarihan</span></span><span class="textexposedshow"><span style="color: #333333;">. Ang rehimen ng ruling class na nag-iimpluwensiya sa ruling party ay mag-iimbita ng mga protest art kung ito ay laban lamang sa mga nakalipas na rehimen o di kaya'y pumoprotesta sa mga kalaban niya ngayon.</span></span></div>
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<a href="http://fil.wikipilipinas.org/images/6/67/Fight-for-Justice.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://fil.wikipilipinas.org/images/6/67/Fight-for-Justice.jpg" height="320" width="187" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">photo from http://fil.wikipilipinas.org/index.php?title=Orapronobis</span></div>
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<span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: #333333;"> Oo, mga pare</span><span style="color: #333333;">’</span><span style="color: #333333;">t mare, ang pagtalaga ng national art taliwas sa tunay na sining ng mga tao (na ayaw nating amining di natin nabibigyan ng sapat na edukasyon at tayo lamang sa mga maririwasang pamilya ang nakakaintindi sa mga National Artists na ito), at ang mismong pag-nationalize ng art, ay maihahalintulad natin sa pag-nationalize ng isang TV station. Paano kaya kung sabihin ni Gloria Arroyo na mula ngayon ay kakaibiganin na niya ang mga may-ari ng ABS-CBN at gagawaran niya ang ABS-CBN News Channel ng official tag na National Channel of the <st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on">Philippines</st1:country-region></st1:place>? . . .</span></span></div>
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<span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: #333333;"> Bakit ba gustong-gusto nating magkaroon ng National Artists gayung meron naman tayo, o at least kaming mga karaniwang tao sa barangay? Meron tayong/kaming sariling national artists, di ba? Bakit ba gusto nating bumalik sa mga siglong ang artist ay nangangailangan ng patron na nasa kapangyarihan? Oo, kung tayo sa barangay ang hahayaang pumili ng taong ipagtatayo natin ng bantayog bilang simbolo ng ating sining, oo siguro at malamang si Caparas pa rin ang pipiliin natin. Ngunit kung yun man ang mangyari, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">tayo</i> ang pumili. Walang magsasabing hindi iyon ang repleksyon ng ating kaalaman. . . .</span></span></div>
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<span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: #333333;"> Unless mag-agree naman ang mga nagbabasa nito na mula ngayon ay mga artists na lang dapat ang boboto kung sino ang dapat maging National Artist. Wow. Kung iyon nga ang mangyari, ako naman ang tatayo at mag-ra-rally at magpapapadyak sa pagsabing: Alisin niyo ang salitang </span></span><span style="color: #333333;">“</span><span style="color: #333333;">National.</span><span style="color: #333333;">”</span><span style="color: #333333;"> Palitan niyo ng </span><span style="color: #333333;">“</span><span style="color: #333333;">Artists</span><span style="color: #333333;">”</span><span style="color: #333333;"> para maging Artists’ Artist of the <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Philippines</st1:place></st1:country-region>. At mag-contribution na lang ang mga artists para sa perpetual stipend ng mga National Artists na ito at nang hindi na manggaling pa ang gastusin sa coffers ng republika, ng nasyon</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;">.</span></div>
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<span class="apple-style-span"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;"> Ito</span><span style="color: #333333;">’</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;">y hanggang matanggap natin ang katotohanan na, kung susuriin, ang karamihan sa mga itinuring nating National Artists ng ating bayan ay sa totoo</span><span style="color: #333333;">’</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;">y Artists of the State (or </span><span style="color: #333333;">“</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;">of the Regime</span><span style="color: #333333;">”</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;">). At walang masama rito kung bibigyan ng angkop na titulong gayon. Dahil magkaiba po ang Estado at ang Nasyon, lalo na sa kulturang inukit ng representative democracy. At bagamat ang isang Estado sa ilalim ng isang representative democracy ay gawa at inatasan ng kanyang Nasyon na magpasya para sa lahat, malimit ding ang isang Nasyon sa loob ng isang Estadong ganito ay may kulturang di maintindihan ng kanyang elitistang Estado (na pinapatakbo ng mga elite) na paulit-ulit na ibinoto ng naloloko niyang walang-kamalay-malay na iba-ang-kulturang Nasyon.</span><span style="color: #333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;"><span class="textexposedshow"><span style="color: #333333;"> [END]</span></span></span></span></span></div>
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Jojo Soria de Veyrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10755588651423753783noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2887809293642421519.post-71917607837007101122009-08-07T15:53:00.000+08:002015-03-25T12:06:03.952+08:00Kanino ba ang isang nasyon ng mga walang alam sa art? (Whose is a nation of fools about art?)<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">photo from http://bulatlat.com/main/2009/08/11/national-artist-fiasco-%E2%80%98defiles%E2%80%99-culture-%E2%80%93-critics/</span></div>
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<b>1. Hindi ke Imelda, hindi ke Mikey, na mga walang alam</b></div>
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HABANG sinusulat ko ito, in-progress na ang rally sa Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) o National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) kontra sa pagdeklara kina Carlo Caparas, na isang direktor ng mga tasteless na “massacre films” lang naman daw, at NCCA director Cecile Guidote-Alvarez, na nag-organize lang naman daw ng Philippine Educational Theater Association (na nagpatalsik din naman daw sa kanya) at ng mga safe art para sa sponsorship ng NCCA.</div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">photo inserted 2013, borrowed from </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">http://www.pep.ph/news/39909/supreme-court-clarifies-stand-on-nullification-of-national-artist-awards-says-caparas-et-al-may-still-seek-title</span></div>
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Tama. Dapat talaga ang nasyon ang pumipili ng nasyon-al artist nila, hindi si Imelda Marcos (na nagpatayo ng CCP) na hindi alam ang gusto ng tao, hindi rin ang aktor na si Mikey Arroyo na walang alam kundi ang gusto ng kanyang mga tao. Kaya nung sinulat ng kolumnistang si Conrado de Quiros na <a href="http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/columns/view/20090804-218642/Monuments" target="_blank">siya'y tila natawa</a> noong ideklara ni Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo ang national days of mourning para kay Cory Aquino---dahil hindi raw kailangan ng deklarasyon ng Malakanyang para magluksa ang bayan sa pagkamatay ng kanilang minahal---naisip kong ganun din dapat ang ating lohika pagdating sa mga paboritong artist ng ating nasyon (inanunsyo ang pagkapanalo ni Caparas at Alvarez isang araw lang bago namatay si Aquino): dapat walang dekla-deklarasyon. Ang artist na nasyonal ay nasyonal na artist, period.</div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">One of Caparas' "massacre films" [photo from </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://www.facebook.com/108377235916862/photos/a.124042927683626.32695.108377235916862/124043224350263/?type=3&theater]</span></div>
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Parang Grammy Award sa Amerika, nakakatawa. Although hindi aaminin ng NARAS, hindi ka qualified sa isang Grammy plum kung di ka umabot sa certain number of records sold, lalo kung di ka pop-market friendly. Kung ganun, ibig sabihin ihohonor ka ng peers mo kung hinonor ka na ng tao. Ba’t pa kailangang ihonor ka ng peers? Ngunit buti pa ang Grammy me primary sa tao bago umabot sa parlyamento ng mga taga-recording industry. Ang masaklap nga lang para sa mga ayaw ke Caparas, dito---kung saan ang magandang edukasyon sa arts ay binibigay sa mayayaman lamang---ay talagang si Caparas ang siyang magugustuhan ng tao kumpara sa mga Brillante Mendoza dyan sa sulok kung magbobotohan ang tao. Kung ganun, ibig ba sabihin ang Malakanyang ay nagpakamasa na rin sa pagpili ke Caparas?</div>
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Kung ganun, sana sinagad na ng Palasyo. Sa theater, halimbawa, ang popular sa tao na si . . . Imelda. Di ba? Di hamak na mas magaling siyang artista kesa ke . . . she could easily shed a tear after an "I . . am . . . sorry," even though we never heard her say anything like that. In short, sa pag-arte siya'y kumbinsing; kumbaga, gustong-gusto ng madla at maaaring manalo uli sa Leyte kung gugustuhing tumakbo. National artist ka ng masa, madam! Isantabi mo na yang delicadesa at tanggapin mo, kahit ang asawa mo ang nagsimula ng lahat ng 'to! Ikaw rin for architecture, for giving us the leaning tower called the Manila Film Center that the nation never got to use!! (Sino pa ba ang mga mahilig magmanipula sa kung ano dapat ang hitsura ng sining at kultura natin, sino? Awardan natin!)</div>
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<b>2. Ang artist ng mga walang alam sa aming barangay</b></div>
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YEHEY! Sabi ng iba, mamamatay na raw ang National Artist of the Philippines title awards! Salamat naman! Dagdag lang sa gastos ng taxpayer yang stipend sa mga artist na yan na hindi naman namin kilala dito sa aming barangay!</div>
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Nasa kalsada ako kanina and made a sort of barangay survey and, guess what, Caparas won hands down as the artist of the people of our barangay's street over Brillante Mendoza, Lav Diaz, Jeffrey Jeturian (<i>Kubrador</i>), Raya Martin (<i>Independencia</i>; <i>Manila</i>), Raymond Red (<i>Sakay</i>), even over the veteran directors Maryo J. de los Reyes (<i>Magnifico</i>) and Carlos Siguion-Reyna (<i>Ang Lalaki sa Buhay ni Selya</i>; <i>Ligaya ang Itawag Mo Sa Akin</i>). Caparas is an artist of the people, thus of the nation, no doubt about that, in the same way that Jinggoy Estrada would be the preferred statesman to this nation over somebody like the late Raul Roco. This nation may not be the nation the intelligentsia would rather see, but let's face it---this is the monster we helped create. By standing by and allowing our 20th-century governments to design an elitist education system so that we can enjoy our neighbors' stare of envy when the elite school's bus stops in front of our gates, we helped create that culture wherein Mikey Arroyo's movies would be the nation's preferred entry pick for the Cannes Film Festival. Compare this to the German public's regard for Werner Herzog or Japan's for Jūzō Itami and others. . . . But having said that, I'm signing up in the petition to withdraw Caparas’ award. How come?</div>
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Perhaps because waiting for the perfect would make me an enemy of the good. And a lot of the artists marching presently are good artists. And Caparas movies are ba-a-a-a-a-a-d.</div>
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<b>3. We’re paying for their stipend, di niyo ba alam?</b></div>
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BUT for the long term, I declare that this National Artist crap is really crap because a waste of tax money. It's either we hear a National Artist conferment on somebody the nation of academics loves but whom the lumpen nation has never even heard of, or on a maker of grindhouse films for double features back-to-back with '60s soft porn films for a dingy moviehouse under a Manila Light Rail Transit System structure for a nation of fools, or on an NCCA-based promoter of safe art.</div>
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But then again, ladies and gentlemen, can't we agree that SAFE ART IS THE NATIONAL ART?? Mabuhay ang national safe-art artists we all deserve!!</div>
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Then again, a National Artist cannot be declared, didn't we argue that already? Again, a national artist just is, period. Jaroslav Seifert became Czechoslovakia's national poet without anybody declaring him so. Pablo Neruda to Chileans and even Argentinians, same.</div>
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Also, a multicultural nation cannot have a national artist, let alone a National Artist, but only niche artists. Why do we even have this illusion that we are a nation? Blog writers and their readers debating on Facebook is more of a nation now than the passengers on the Manila Metro Rail Transit System on a rush hour morning. National Artists, my ass. National Artists, my ass on a moviehouse toilet bowl full of phlegm and janitors' feces!</div>
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<b>4. Kanino ba ang nasyon? Hindi niyo alam?</b></div>
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MY favorite artists need not be national artists. Why should Gloria Arroyo's favorite filmmaker and safe art organizer be our favorites, too? Is she a Queen Elizabeth conferring her blessings on her Shakespeare? Many would not even call her their president.</div>
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Jojo Soria de Veyrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10755588651423753783noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2887809293642421519.post-6690115843169401422004-12-15T13:20:00.000+08:002015-03-19T06:04:09.382+08:00A Lessened Hobbesian View on Our Inferiors<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">photo borrowed from </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">http://www.covershut.com/Television-Covers/43317-Mr-Bean-The-Animated-Series-Grin-And-Bean-It-Disc.html</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I DO NOT
know why the Mr. Bean animated series on cable TV’s The Disney Channel is
popular with kids. Maybe it’s because cartoon drawings function like doll or
mascot figures, referencing reality distortedly and thus not realistically,
which makes cartooning the more honest portrayal of The Real qua progressing problematique in our continuing learning. Cartoon people likely come on not like office work problems, but more like crossword or sudoku puzzles we definitely need.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> Mr. Bean is an evil but fumbling character with the face of a
stereotypical retardate. That personality combine (evil/funny) is probably what makes
him amiable instead of despicable, enhanced of course by a recurring atmosphere
that declares the "saner world" to be no less evil and corrupt than Bean's funny person.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> Now, if by Thomas Hobbes we can admit that man is by nature an evil
animal only struggling to be virtuous (for one realized reason or another,
which reasons still couldn’t make him selfless), then in the light of a world
requiring bits of evil in order to survive Mr. Bean must be to adults a symbol
of relative goodness in spite of his evil, if only because a face of sheer innocence or ignorance or
retardation or stupidity might be considered exempt from the Hobbesian jungle-smart premise. Yes, Mr. Bean not the merely laughable but the ultimately amiable---amiable because how we wish we could be as innocent as he in both our rancorous mistakes and our cunning!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> Or is it the spirit of comic animation as an aesthetic that allows us to forgive evil, being a spirit where evil can get away with it because it, this evil, has become an animation or exaggeration of a hated object, that is to say, has been made demented or stupid or impossible?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> Christian authorities mostly stand by this declaration of innocent sinfulness, as being forgivable, in contrast with</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> the knowledgeable's sinfulness as being unpardonable . Apart from that, what are animated beings but beings inferior to our presently perfect real-human selves?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">BUT there are moments when we become "inferior" to ourselves, and to others watching us in those moments we become manifestations of saintliness. Perhaps God is an aesthete, then, for after watching way too many movies I’ve come to the
conclusion that man is in his most saintly and beautiful state during those hours of
extreme vulnerability, whether these span a few hours or---as in the
case of the realistic character Robinson Crusoe---a few years. God should win at least a billion best
director awards for giving us these images of saintliness and beauty based on true stories.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">photo borrowed from </span><span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">http://www.boaterexam.com/blog/2011/05/real-castaways.aspx</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> In the movie <i>Cast Away</i> (where the businesslike among us might notice only the production value of putting some all-star cast away for a while in making this one-actor blockbuster of a movie), the hero played by actor Tom Hanks is amiable from the start, even
while at his most cranky-boss frame of mind. It seems like this modern-day
Robinson Crusoe wasn’t exactly unaware of his crankiness as a put-on, consciously allowing underlings to make fun of him so he could get a desired result of projecting amiability on his person and extracting efficiency in others due to this combined amiability and fearsomeness they read in their boss.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> Hanks' amiability is of course enhanced a hundredfold by his later isolation in an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. And it’s not just
because we love to see people put in spots that weaken them but also because we
kind of miss those spots in our lives. In present-day drabness amidst routine,
the enjoyment of watching such movies as </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">Cast Away</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> are both a celebration
of our good fortunes within our lives’ drabness as well as a vicarious adventure
for our repressed-yuppie </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">Survivor</i><span style="font-family: inherit;">-ish desires to be put on the spot.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">photo from </span><span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">http://www.lindsaybrothers.com/blog/survivor/survivor_thin/</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"> It’s the same double-edged and contradictory enjoyment that
we get from action heroes in deadly self-assigned missions. It’s the same
double-bladed knife that cuts our hearts while reading stories about heroes or anti-heroes who
have gone through an oppressive treatment from a majority in a village, city, or country.
It shouldn’t be a mystery therefore to find ourselves, every now and then,
rooting for the underdog. Our rooting for a likely winner, in contrast, is
often due to either our having perceived or witnessed or known some oppression
upon this person’s person from somewhere in his story, otherwise to a tensive
vulnerability through this likely winner’s limits-testing tragic vanity.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> Politicians have an all-too-conscious feel for this PR
reality concerning the public’s attraction to the pained. So that when a most
hated political opponent dies, they offer their possible presences or
sympathies lest the suddenly-softened public steer away from the surviving politicians'
hardened souls.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> Gossips also suddenly feel both triumphant </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">and</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> sympathetic and afraid when a subject of their hateful judgments begins to cry.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> Many women even possess a backhanded sexism towards their
own/selves with the recurrent expression of pride in their being tagged "the
weaker sex". For instance, in the Philippines, where women can freely wear
mini skirts and can run for president, many Filipinas still believe that Real
Men don’t fight with their wives but merely allow them to be the
emotional and articulate ones. As if a woman’s outbursts are to be equated with
a child’s tantrums, best left relatively unattended or reacted to not.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> That said, we can now perhaps conclude that humans
are quasi-masochistic beings in the sense that they would have to imagine themselves pained in order to qualify for love solicitations. For they know that they, qua subjects to others' eyes, become truer persons in the tension of possible
death or during cinematic moments of slow passing away into obsolescence in life.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">THE
REASON why we can easily fall for the gibber of actors in real life is because we’ve seen
them play most vulnerable and oppressed characters in fiction or fictionalized cinema that have endeared them to
us. To the public eye, too, artists and poets---once introduced as so---are often seen as likeable soft personae,
despite the swagger or tough look that some of them might display. Rock stars became stars because they dramatized themselves as vulnerable gods forever on the brink of destruction.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> A national hero is a mere emblem of some political mythology
that we generally can’t </span>really relate to emotionally nor <span style="font-family: inherit;">consign significance to as individuals, until we see a movie about the
hero’s mistakes and demoralization. Then he becomes a true hero to us, almost a
friend.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> This reaction doesn’t stop at our impressions upon others. It also
extends to our regard for our respective selves. Although many find it hard to
admit this truism, still it is not hard to remember that the moments where we
have been most proud of ourselves were those wherein we faced a truth,
admitted a mistake, or had to wear modesty (with a smile) like a torn suit.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> Races-wise, small Asians may prove themselves equal in political or military virility to superpowers’ braggadocio and
bullying when they begin to feel comfortable about their difference to the Others, with their shorter
penis or body height, thence taking strides forward in the aftermath of this humble acceptance. It</span>’<span style="font-family: inherit;">s like the realization that not everybody has to be a tall power forward in a basketball team; one can be a great shooting guard shooting from outside and from underneath.</span> <span style="font-family: inherit;">The Japanese, prime examples of Shintoist-Buddhist courage within
humility and selflessness, demonstrate/d this pride well, at one time even extending it to arrogance within a different kind of mythical and nationalist humility.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> In the case of the social oppression of the individual, he, the individual, usually begins to take
strides in a process of freely moving on when he finally concedes to the
impossibility of enlightening a majority that is always wrong (or always right
for the wrong reasons), proceeding thence to take care of himself and cease and
desist from trying to help a public that refuses to be helped.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> Stories of a weakened existence, of tension threatening
annihilation, or of an Achilles</span>’<span style="font-family: inherit;"> heel that took a step towards love, . . .
these are human signals that make heroes real, enemies friends, the earlier-despised </span>Malèna in the year-2000<span style="font-family: inherit;"> Italian film suddenly adored. Never mind if it’s sometimes too late an acknowledgment,
because it couldn’t really be otherwise.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> Given all the above, it is perhaps safe to say that the ideal
human being would be that one who sincerely acknowledges, or is forced to acknowledge, these human characteristics of
constant vulnerability and weakness, acknowledging them even while struggling to control the self’s righteousness
or even its recurring greed. Christians call this being reminded of a higher God even while
pursuing Mammon.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> Now, just today, Fernando Poe Jr. died. Before his demise he
was declared, by his opponents of course, as a symbol of the Filipino
supposedly good, however flawed, but all too willing to forgive all those who
stood for greed, larceny, and hedonism, allowing himself be surrounded by these
unrepentant male and female whores that comprised his disciples and puppeteers.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> The party of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo did indeed voice out the thoughts of that above paragraph at their political sorties in
recent history, in the heat of the last election's campaign and after, never mind if they were wont to put aside their own questionable
dealings and shortcomings in governance and power.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> Macapagal-Arroyo, however, recognizes that today Poe will presently be
the people’s good man, having been weakened by Death and been Christianized
completely. So the former called him a good man, and so on and so forth, never
mind her party’s likely guffaws at the thought of Poe’s wife Susan Roces’
being touted by the opposition as Poe’s possible successor.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">This recognition is
understandable. After all, politicians also understand that in the eyes of God and humanity we are all Mr. Beans. We are all, both the generally evil and the generally good, sooner or later exposed as but fumbling characters in funny lives, amiable as learning tools and as reminders of ourselves. That inevitability is what will make us to others amiable instead of despicable, on earth as in heaven; that amiability will further be enhanced of
course by the cynical atmosphere of a sane world of governance replete with godly ambitions, evil, corruption working us, influencing us. At least while Hobbes' truth remains, God should win at least a trillion best writer-director awards for creating such affable characters, however true the fact is that these characters have at one time or another been friendly to self-appointed gods, those enemies of the poor and oppressed humans, or otherwise been too saintly and iconic for popular appreciation</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: inherit;">. These characters can't be other than our friendly dolls, being our educational clones.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">When the day comes, even the godlike Gloria Arroyo will be an affable Mr. Bean cartoon character. Even if only for a day, as the day's Sesame Street-word of a TV special. [END]</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">photo from </span><span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">http://maspnational.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/gma.jpg</span></span></div>
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Jojo Soria de Veyrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10755588651423753783noreply@blogger.com0