Category Archive for: arteng biswal

komentaryo

The women of the Philippines VS Julian Ongpin

In what world is Julian Ongpin a victim? Under what circumstances would a man born to privilege, to massive wealth, enough to fashion himself as “art patron” and “angel investor” at such a young age, in what world would he be a victim?

Found with the lifeless body of Bree Jonson in a hostel room they shared, a death surrounded by more questions than answers, any other person would be kept in detention—and rightfully so.

Found with 12.6 grams of cocaine in that room they shared, and testing positive for drugs, any other person would either be dead with a placard on his body labelling him as “nanlaban,” or be arrested for illegal possession and kept in a jail cell teeming with drug suspects.

Found on CCTV moving about the crime scene strangely—from disappearing to go to the fourth floor of the hostel, to getting a ladder to remove jalousies from the bathroom window of the hostel room, and then not going through that window, to finally disappearing into the room and only some time after calling on the hostel staff for help—any other person would have been treated, and tagged, and seen as a suspect.

Julian has elided all of this. He is not in detention—not for drug possession or for being a suspect in a questionable death. He is not being tracked by the authorities—at some point the police admitted they didn’t even know where he was (maybe in their house in Manila or Baguio, they said). According to the police report, he “continuously drank liquor” in the presence of the police—a disrespectful, arrogant move only the wealthiest among us would do.

And now charged with drug possession by no less than the Department of Justice—not the police, not the National Bureau of Investigation, but the DOJ—Julian has opinion columnists like Emil Jurado and Tony Lopez, writing about his alleged innocence. Two (old) men who obviously have no sense of gendered writing, and are revealing for all the world to see the kind of misogyny they believe in, are framing Julian’s innocence by trampling on Bree’s character.

As woman, as human. None of us should be having any of it.

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kultura

Shamaine Centenera-Buencamino and the creative spirit

You do not know Shamaine Centenera-Buencamino.

Yet you’ve seen her often on television and in film. She’s that archetype of a mother in the soap opera factory, as she might be the secondary character we forget in that recent rom-com. You might remember her as the mother of Basha in One More Chance, in that one scene where she asks if Basha’s okay, kung kaya pa ba ang heartbreak kay Popoy. She is also the mother of Teptep in Maybe This Time, the one who for most of the film is inexplicably disapproving of her daughter but who breaks apart as mother who forgives and understands and loves.

Of course you are wont to forget her, or imagine her to be the every-actress whose name you do not know, and whose face – when you see her in another film, another TV show – you will remember but can’t quite place. That this is the way the cultural system has created us into audience goes without saying.

That Centenera has an enviable body of work in theater, and holds the reputation of being one of few actors who can breathe life into any role at all, is the ironic twist to this story. And tragically so. (more…)

kultura

Oca Villamiel, art and magnitude

NOTE: An old piece remembered because Oca Villamiel’s “Back To Nature” just ended its run at Finale Art File, and still takes from this kind of magnitude. 

In 2012, I happened upon Oca Villamiel’s “Stories Of Our Time,” which was a deceptively simple set of art assemblages made from old dolls, with expectedly missing heads and limbs. I was on a gallery run with Singapore art journalist Mayo Martin, driving all the way to Fairview for Light and Space Contemporary to prove a point: look at how large this city is, and how difficult it is to even look at all exhibits at any given time. It’s so unlike Singapore! I was telling Mayo.

But of course there’s the kind of art one encounters in Manila so distinctly different from SG. Specifically, there was Villamiel’s work, filling up the various galleries of this art space, playing with old dolls not just through framed and contained assemblages, but also by filling up a whole space with dolls hanging from the ceiling. The effect was an eerie curtain of bright wide eyes and lifeless bodies.

We were on our way out when someone from Light and Space told us there was more outside, in one of the warehouse-spaces. We followed him down some steps, and as he opened the warehouse doors, our jaws dropped. Within that large space was a garden-like installation of doll’s heads and body parts attached to flimsy sticks. At the center of this garden was a shanty filled with dolls and doll parts. Walking around the garden, walls were filled with shadows of uncanny flowers and growth, almost pretty, absolutely breathtaking. This work was entitled “Payatas.” (more…)

kultura

The refusal to give up today

This was published on July 27 2012, after the premier of the documentary “Give Up Tomorrow” at the 2012 Cinemalaya in CCP. Remembered it today, and reposting it, because for whatever reason, there is a film on the Chiong Sisters coming out this week. — KSS.

On the evening of July 16 1997, Paco Larrañaga was having drinks with his classmates from culinary school after a full day of exams. He went home at 2AM and was back in school at 8AM on July 17, for more exams. The teacher who proctors the tests swears that Paco was present in that classroom, his classmates are witness to his attendance – in school and for drinks the night before, official school records prove his presence, too. Paco was in Manila, and nowhere else, on July 16 and July 17 1997.

I insist on beginning this story this way, not because “Give Up Tomorrow” has successfully swayed me into believing that Paco’s innocent. This documentary’s power in fact is that it wasn’t out to sway anyone into believing anything, as it could and will only bring you to the point of disbelief, that slowly moves towards the territory of dismay, and then into that space that you know to be anger. Interwoven with a whole lot of shame, and plenty of sadness, here is a documentary that can only be heart-wrenching not because it might bring you to tears, but because it will tug at both emotion and rationality, heart and common sense. (more…)

kultura

Political insidiousness, public complicity

Boses ng Masa is deceptively simple and painfully familiar, which is what’s both good and bad about it: the discussion is worth having, but you can see that ending from a mile away.

It’s not that you’ve seen this before, as it is that you have lived it.

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