Ang walang-katapusang gyera ng artists kontra artists

Nora Aunor

(photo borrowed from http://entertainment.inquirer.net/145396/protests-over-new-national-artist-awardees-should-finally-lead-to-reforms)

NARITO na naman tayo. Nakakalimang blog na ako sa buwisit na temang ito, ngunit nandito na naman ako.

     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.

     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.

     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?

     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.

     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."

     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.”

     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:

ANG NASYONAL SA NASYONG ITO

“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 ‘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.”

     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.

     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?”

     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.”

     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.”

     Mas mabuti bang tawagin na lang nating Artist of the State Award ang NAOTPA, para klaro at di na magkagulo?

ANG NASYON NG PRIBILEHIYO

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.

     Halimbawa, sa 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?

     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.

     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?

     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 state institution always finds itself beholden to the leader of the state! 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.

     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 state sponsorship of artists and art-making, for the simple reason that the use of state funds for state favouritism is already impure from the start.

ANG NASYONALISTANG NASYON

Sa 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 ‘buy Filipino art only, down with imported art’ na tibok ng puso nito).

     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.”

     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 “nasyonalismo.”

PAGLABU-LABO NG NASYON

Isa pa, alam natin na ang estado ay hindi parati para sa nasyon, kaya minsan ninanais natin na ang nasyon ay maging ang estado.

     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.

     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.

     Naroon ang “bipolarity” 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 konserbatibo at ng mga liberal 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.

     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?”

     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:

     “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.”

ANG (DI-)PAGHUPA NG LABU-LABO

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.

     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?

     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.

     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.

     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, popularly noble and nationalistic product as against the exclusively noble and only quasi-nationalistic product. Unless, of course, we define “noble” from the royalist perspective or metanarrative, which would be the perfect rationalization for the elitism in our nation’s supposedly “national” arts.

     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.

     Magiging patuloy na huwad ang lahat ng bagay na itinuring nating “national” hanggat di natin natatanggap itong dibisyon at pagkakaiba.

     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.

     Subalit, teka, sino ba ang nandidikta?

     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.

     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?

     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. . . .

     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.

     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.

     In fact, mayroong ebidensya na walang nagreresultang totoong pagtingala ang nasyon sa mga National Artists dahil 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.

     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.

     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. . . .

Gary Granada

     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.

     In contrast, “In Japan,” 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, not the individual artist himself/herself.”

     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?

     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.

     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.

     “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.”

     Tumpak. Parang ganun din yata sa industriya ng pulitika natin.

ANG MANANALO SA LABU-LABO

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.

     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.”

     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.

     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.” Marami sa ating mga kababayan ang may ganitong sakit.

     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.

     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. . . .

     “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]

     

• photo kay Cirilo Bautista hiram galing sa http://culturalcenter.gov.ph/press-room/2012-gawad-ccp-para-sa-sining-awardees-named/
• photo kay Gary Granada hiram galing sa http://www.pep.ph/news/20768/gma-network-and-gary-granada-issue-new-statements-over-jingle-controversy 

A Social Liberal's Disclaimer on State Art Subsidy

photo borrowed from http://www.philembassy.no/

(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)

IN SEVERAL blogs of mine (such as here, here, and these seven blog essays 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.
     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.
     However, I now happen to have a different macro-view of both these matters, despite my retaining certain facets of my old angle.
     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.
     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 cannot avoid 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.
     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 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.


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?
     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.

     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.


MY ONLY wish is that every regime's espoused art fully acknowledges and declares itself as part of the regime's art intended for the nation. The state ought to require this acknowledgement and/or declaration, as 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).

     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 critics aware of this relationship, whining is put aside and mere recording of the contexts becomes the only necessary order of the day.
     In a Business World article circulating in Facebook this morning regarding a supposed golden age in Philippine art, 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 sunud-sunuran lang (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."
     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]

Moving On, In Hindsight, and Predicting the Future of Art

1. Moving forward, ano ba dapat ang artist?

IN TV host and social critic Lourd de Veyra's show on AksyonTV called Word of the Lourd, 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:

     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.

     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.

     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.

     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.

     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.

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.

     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?

     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.

     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.)

     "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.

     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.

     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.
     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 sekyularismo bilang haven ng panginginsulto sa relihiyon kundi sa pagdikta nito ng prinsipyo ng demokrasya na nagbibigay ng kalayaan kanino man na manginsulto kanino man. 

2. In hindsight, what is art, who is it for, at ano ang matalinong art?

STRANGE THAT in novelist F. Sionil Jose's philSTAR.com column titled Hindsight, 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, "The CCP Jesus Christ exhibit: It ain't art".

     Ahem. Okey. Mga kaibigan, naalala ko tuloy.

     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?

     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 . . . "

     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.

     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.

     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?

     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.

     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.

     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.

PARDON MY attempts at wit. Wit is a 1995 play and 2001 movie about cancer.

     I mean, God forbid the Gabâ (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?

     "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.

     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."

     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!

PARDON MY attempts at wit. Dahil sasabihin lang ng mga deboto, aha! ang witty sa sineng Wit ni Mike Nichols ay namatay sa cancer, buti nga. Gabâ. 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 Gabâ ang sickness at death, lalong-lalo na ng mga deboto na dapat ay unang nakaaalala sa mga turo ng kanilang martir na nagpakamatay sa mga pahina ng Bagong Testamento.

     Should this attitude towards Gabâ 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.

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.

     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.

     "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.

     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.

     "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.

     "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.

     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.

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 readily 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).

     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.

     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?"

     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.

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.

     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.

     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.

     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 and ourselves.

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.
     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' The Fall a portrait of one such moral authority in the process of questioning his own morality?

"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?"

     "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."

     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?

     "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?"

     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?

3. Art from now on, ano ba?

WE ARE all Barthes.

     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.

     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?"

     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.

     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.

     So, what does this Mideo Cruz affair finally give us as a final context?

     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 gabâ" context, for one.

     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.

     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.

     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?

     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?

     We are all Barthes.

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).

     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.

     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.

     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.

     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.

WHILE WE'RE on Barthes, I'd like to call attention to his The Pleasure of the Text, 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 A Lover's Discourse, 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.

     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.

A FRIEND of several friends commented, "I'm getting tired of this whole Brouhaha! Couldn't people just get a life?"

     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.

     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."

     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 within 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'."

     Now, assuming this reading of mine (one of a few other readings I could muster) jives with the artist's own intent, what now?

     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.

• F. Sionil Jose photo borrowed from http://www.philstar.com/Article.aspx?articleId=716740&publicationSubCategoryId=79
• Art installation fragment photo borrowed from http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=2351116256560&set=a.1142395559298.22078.1209724241&type=1 

Gloria Arroyo, Underappreciated Patron of the Arts

1. The Underappreciated

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.

     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 Sesame Street-like fashion, over and over and over to the lessons of past History for these to sink in.)

     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.

     Here is that glimpse.

IN 2009, GLORIA Arroyo insisted on the proclamation 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 Sesame Street 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.

     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 New York and Washington DC; 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! She 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?

     A bit later on, the government of Gloria Arroyo, through the Cultural Center of the Philippines, accorded the former First Lady Imelda Romualdez Marcos—wife of the then-already-deceased, previously-exiled dictator Ferdinand Marcos—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 Darwin's Sesame Street of slow, historical evolution to have its way and say on the matter in our education in the future, our education today.

     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 hovering about the front of the Lumbera house, 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. If 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.

     A day later, what more happened? Gloria Arroyo appointed an accountant to man the helm of the country's Cultural Center. The arts community, quite naturally, went berserk. But they couldn't appreciate the logic of it. Gloria Arroyo was teaching the Sesame 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 they 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 as 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?

     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 historical documentation-of-sorts of that event 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 Daloy 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.

2. The Underrepresented

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.

     CNN-like NY Studio is catering to the Filipino expat community in New York City, and presently the program's interviewee is that above-mentioned rebel leader who, we found out, is also currently headquartered in the city. 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).

     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.

     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'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.

     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:

     Lila Shahani III: Good afternoon, Mr. Greenman.
     Greenman: Good afternoon.

     LSIII: 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 preserves 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.

     G: (to the audience) Hey guys, what’s up! Great to be here. (to the host) 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 of the Nation. Mabuhay ang mga National Artists! (the audience responds with ‘Mabuhay!’s) Oh, and I'm an Ernani Cuenco fan, by the way.

     LSIII: (laughs) Sira ka talaga, e! You don't even bother to answer Mr. de Vega IV's question. Ba't hindi mo type yung dalawa 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.

     G: First of all, yeah, oo nga, oo nga, sorry, Mr. de Vega. Pero sorry di ko type si FPJ except sa Aguila. I'll answer your question later. First, Lil, dapat talaga walang National Artist. Kahit sarili nating favorites wala tayong gustong gawing Number One natin, di ba? Lahat ng favorites natin gusto natin number one sila lahat, di ba? I say, subsidize production in reverse, that is, by giving the production mode tax breaks; that way mas egalitarian, hindi special people lang ang meron. . . . O di kaya, para masaya at wala nang away, idadaan sa wrestling o sabong. Ang may nanalong manok, siya ang National Artist. At least pag ganun alam natin ang Diyos ang nag-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. Wala akong pinapaburan na kandidato 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, hindi ako pabor sa National Artist of the Philippines title dahil ayokong i-impose ng state o ng isang commission ang mga gusto nito para sa akin, and vice versa if nasa akin ang power. The issue is, bakit ba tayo mahilig mag-power trip over the underrepesented, sa politics man o sa arts?

     LSIII: Tama! Finally, a serious answer. Agreed! (laughs) Ay, pero ayaw ko ng sabong, ha. Ikaw naman, dadagdagan mo pa ng animal abuse! Pero, actually, mas marami nama'ng pera ang economic elite natin kaysa sa gobyerno, so dapat sila nalang ang mag-fund ng mga private awards. Like Lila Acheson Wallace in the US or the Rockefellers. Ayan o, sina Henry Sy IV, Lucio Tan V, and Jaime Zobel XIII!

     G: Tama ka. O artists mismo. Actually nga, magaling na exercise ng imagination sa isang artist ang wala siyang resources, di ba? Bakit ako, poet with eight books na rin kahit wala naman akong perang pang-publish ng P65,000/500 copies na book? Resourcefulness should be a part of the art, matagal nang itinuro ng Marxist criticism iyon, the politics in/of artistic production.

     LSIII: Ba't ikaw ang magbabayad ng P65,000? Dapat yung publisher mo, di ba? 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. Parang welfare economics ni Amartya Sen. Did you know that Sen's wife is an expert on Adam Smith at Cambridge? 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 Barcelona, 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!

3. The Underfinanced

EDDIE DE VEGA IV (phone audio): 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.).

Franz Schubert

     Lila Shahani III: Yes, yes, Mr. de Vega.

     EdV IV: I think I shall listen now to my recording of Puccini's La Boheme. Or perhaps the modern version, Rent 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.

     LSIII: Oh, thank you, Consul General, thank you. B'bye, have a good one. Hmm, La Boheme. . . . Okay, where were we? P65,000, Greenman. Why you, why not the publisher?

     The Greenman: Ah! Sa National Book Store of the Republic of the Philippine Archipelago, ilan ang poetry books na published ng publisher itself, ilan ang 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. Mas matindi nga ang sa recordings, kaya mga bands ngayong sikat sa Pilipinas ay mayayaman (middle to upper-middle class). EMI would demand meron ka ring pang-marketing. Sila, distribution lang. Magkano mag-advertise sa isang billboard? P65,000/week sa main avenues. Marxist criticism on artistic production, you say? Well, kahit Marxists sa University of the Philippine Archipelago ayaw i-discuss 'yan e. Now, I agree that artists and patrons and the market should all be part of the equation. Government, nil dapat, zilch dapat, dun na lang sila sa museums at education. Dun na lang ang controversy sa kung sino dapat ang nasa lobby ng film museum, halimbawa, si Caparas ba o si Lino Brocka. At least malalaman natin sa ticket sales ng museum kung sino ang trip ng citizenry. And Puccini's La Boheme? Panalo, Mang Eddie, sir!

     LS III: Look, guys, Mr. Greenman, our audience, all I'm saying is: what if you have a brilliant young girl in Palawan who's gifted in music? But her parents can't afford to buy her the violin she so desperately wants. Ikaw, Mr. Greenman: you can nurture your talents because writing is the cheapest art form, after all. E, paano na ang mga filmmakers at lalo na ang mga musicians who have to start young? Paano kung type niya si Jacqueline du Pré at ang cello? Sino ang mag-babayad? 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 lang.

     Greenman: Kaya nga, 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. Ang culture natin ngayon, magdadala tayo ng ballet performances sa mga rural barrios, tapos pag nagustuhan ng mga anak ng magsasaka at wala silang pambili ng pang-pirouette na sapatos, patay na. Tsinelas nga di makabili e. Ayoko ng mga tatay na tinuturuan ang mga anak nilang mag-appreciate ng violin, tapos pag nagkagustong mag-violin, di maibili. Ang culture kasi natin pilit. Pinipilit maging cultured sa mga bagay na di natural sa atin, when we should be nurturing the art na nasa neighborhood natin. If it's a neighborhood of violins, great. Pero kung rondalla, wag nating piliting magkaroon ng cello. Tapos manghihingi tayo ng funding sa mga kapitbahay natin? Kung magbibigay, okey. Kung hindi, pa'no? By law? . . . Now, literature. Literature for publication is one of the more expensive arts in the Philippines, 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, pangmayaman ang writing, unless mayaman ka sa connections among Readers o Editors sa publishing houses, readers and editors whose bosses may finance a couple of non-profitable books a year. Walang cheap na art. . . . So, anyone can say his art is underfinanced. Kanino ba ang hindi? On the other hand, all art can be cheap if you do art that is natural to you. Ang pangit kasi sa atin, meron tayong tinutukoy na high art, so jeepney sticker art ayaw natin i-sponsor o ayaw i-cover ng media ang isang magaling dito the way NYC covered magaling na graffiti artists in the 1980s. Colonial pa rin kasi ang sukat natin sa all right na art as against sa hindi all right. . . . By the way, regarding Amartya Sen's wife nga pala, the economics of liberals naman (say, New Keynesian) are not necessarily anti-market, di ba? Kahit nga si Paul Krugman dinifend ang oil speculation, di ba? Necessary components yun. Ang point lang ng liberals like Krugman, i-regulate ang dapat i-regulate. Even Milton Friedman often agreed on this. Kahit sa politics ganun din, a liberal is not necessarily left-leaning in all issues. So, okay sa mag-asawa magkaibang poles, parang Shriver-Schwarzenneger. Si Ninoy, halimbawa, socialist, probably progressivist; si 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.

     LS III: 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?

     Therese Yason: I'm Therese Yason.

     LS III: Therese Yason, go ahead.

     TY: I think dapat 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.

     LS III: 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.

LSIII: ALL RIGHT, we’re back. Therese. Therese, you were saying during our commercial break, something you wanted to emphasize?

     TY: I was just trying to emphasize that subsidies should go to nurturing creative and independent thought in all fields. 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.

     (applause)

     LSIII (also clapping): 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 New York 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 na nga kung minsan) era, so that young girl in Palawan 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. Yung mga dancer, tinatawanan sa Korea for this "strange" career choice, but they're actually really good. 'Di ba ito na ang 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 New York, for instance. Graffiti, language in New York City menus, hip hop—all of this has become rich fodder for cultural studies. Sa CCP din. 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—oo nga, 'no? 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 sana you took a picture of that spoon!

     (laughter)

4. The Over-coddled and the Under-attended

G: 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 Moscow, 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. Me mura namang violins, e. 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.

     LS III: Oh, I see now. But then we agree! (himala!) We both believe in the market doing its work, but I'm more Keynesian than you and I follow Sen. Tama ba?

     G: 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 himala! (laughs) . . . 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.

Philippine National Library

     LS III: But doesn't "nurturing not just museums but freedoms and equality in education" precisely involve state subsidies? If not, what do they involve? Yung high/low, English/Tagalog, ibang usapan iyan. 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 naman is your beef with museums? As someone whose grandmother used to work in the Museo ng Kalinangang Pilipino, I know that there are creative, cutting-edge museums (though not necessarily there in Manila, 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?

     G: That's what I was saying, Lil. The state should 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, then 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.

     LS III: 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 process: 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. Tama ba?
     G: 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 United States but, since not so centralized when it comes to approvals . . .
     LSIII: I'm not sure about that . . .
     G: . . . 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.
     LS III: Ok, fair enough.
     G: In that sense, pareho kami ng partido ni Ms. Yason pagdating sa education and arts education. Sa mga na-educate na sa arts, walang grants from the state, sila na ang bahala sa buhay nila para matuto rin naman ng resourcefulness at pagpapahalaga sa pera ng tao. Ibang tao naman, please. Baka me nangangailangan ng micro-financing dyan para mang-shine ng sapatos, and so on. Sayang ang pera sa grants e, at nawawala ang fair competition among artists.
     LS III: But aren't you limiting artistic production to the economic elite and the truly resourceful, like you, then, Greenman? Social Darwinism naman iyan! E, paano na kung may disability ang artist o depressed (therefore walang drive) pero talagang magaling naman? I mean, could Jean-Dominique Bauby (who wrote The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) have written his book if France didn't have socialized medicine and his medical expenses/needs hadn't been taken care of?
     G: Sa healthcare, Lil, I'm a socialist. Sa arts, I'm a Reaganite.
     LS III: 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.
     (laughter)
     G: My logic is really simple, Lil. If we're to socialize artistic production, then let's socialize all production, sabi nga ni 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 (giggles from the audience). 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.
     (continuing giggles in the audience)
     LSIII: Constipation, diarrhea, what's next?
     (laughter)
     G: Wait, are we going on a commercial break? I gotta go poo.
     (laughter)
     LSIII: 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 iyan, di ba?
     G: 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 Chile 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. (laughs) And Cannes, in relation to the French or in relation to the Filipinos who want to win there? Those are two long and very different discussions.
     LS III: Sachs to Chile, you mean Bolivia, don't you?
     G: Sorry, my mistake. Bolivia, yes, and Poland and Russia later for Gorbachev, but drawing inspiration from von Hayek's and Friedman's work in Chile for Pinochet. Sachs' shock therapy tried to do Friedman one better, I think.
     LS III: 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, ang ibig ko lang sabihin sa Cannes 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^st century, somewhat like organic food). But Cannes, unlike, say, Sundance, is very much subsidized by the French government. So paano iyan?
     G: 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.
     LSIII: W-w-w-w-w-wait. Ano ba, hindi mo na naman sinagot ang tanong ko tungkol sa Cannes!

5. The Overhauled

THE GREENMAN: 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 Philippines, 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 Cannes, among the French, as far as I'm aware. There are other factors: Cannes 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 Cannes 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 Cannes (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!"

     Lila Shahani III: 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 Cannes. 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. Cannes is actually funded by both the French government and private sponsors. Public-private partnerships, kung baga, 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?

photo from http://www.imglobalfilm.com/festivals

     Greenman: 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 likely 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 Cannes 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 Cannes 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. Cannes is good while it is good. When it ceases to be good, it will already be evil. Simply because the people's money always, always, 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 Lord of the Rings. The leader's responsibility is to keep that treasury from turning into an evil thing. Grants are inherently evil because they're selective; Cannes 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, because 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.

Napoleon painting from http://rompedas.blogspot.com/2012_11_01_archive.html

     LS III: 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. Ano'ng klase'ng sagot iyan? Well, Cannes is successful because the French like it and, once they don't, e di hindi na. But, okay: Cannes 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? Kasi di ba type mo'ng i-fund ang 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?

     G: 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. Cannes, 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 all artists.

     LSIII: 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 past 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 tabula rasa outside the grants process either; in other words, the world itself 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. At maraming salamat din sa inyong lahat. Mabuhay si Greenman at ang mga artistang Pinoy!

     G: W-w-w-wait, Lil, do we still have a minute? Can I just answer you there briefly?

     LSIII: One minute. One minute.

     G: 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 everyone, is subsidized. Thank you for inviting me. It was a pleasure.

     LSIII: Well, Greenman, . . . oh, what? Oh, oh yes, we have a viewer's question! I almost forgot that segment (shakes head, audience laughing). Okay, just one more minute. We have another minute? Great. Greenman, an email sender from Parañaque City 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.

     G: 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. (shrugs)

     LSIII: The Greenman, ladies and gentlemen. Good night, everyone. Don't forget, tomorrow our guest will be the actress Kristina Aquino III. Good night!

     (music, credits and acknowledgment graphics) [END]

***

(ACKNOWLEDGMENT: The conversation above actually took place on Facebook between Lila Shahani [a UN consultant and doctoral candidate at Oxford University], Ms. Shahani's friends [Atty. Eddie de Vega, Consul General of the Philippine Consulate in Barcelona, and Therese Yason, artist and art teacher], and a real Greenman.)

• Photo of Gloria Arroyo borrowed from http://www.forbes.com/lists/2007/11/biz-07women_Gloria-Arroyo_1YDI.html 
• Photo of Franz Schubert painting borrowed from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Schubert
• Violin photo borrowed from http://www.freewebs.com/violinduets/Violin1.jpg
• Philippine National Library photo from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Library_of_the_Philippines