Category Archive for: arts and culture

komentaryo

Ma’am Lilia #LQS

I’ve always considered myself lucky to have been in the State U in the late 90s to the 2000s, across an undergraduate degree and my MA, because it gave me the opportunity to have the best teachers in the humanities.

LQS was one of those teachers, and she didn’t just welcome me as a sophomore into a basic Filipino classroom, she also would have me in her MA classes the years before she left for the States. I don’t remember much about what those classes were exactly, as much as I have a keen sense of what it was that I learned in them, beyond readings and syllabi, given the kind of teaching she practiced.

It was in that sophomore Filipino classroom, for example, where I had the best lessons in diversity and unity, history and empathy. It was there that I became friends with Anifa, who was the lone Muslim girl in class, and who LQS grouped me with for final projects. This meant being forced into discussions about Muslim Mindanao and the struggle of the Bangsamoro, with the goal of building upon similarities, toward working on truths borne of the multiplicity of voices. I was in over my head. I realized very quickly that there was no cramming all this information about Mindanao into my head, and that I had to settle for admitting that I knew very little, and what I had instead were questions. It was also the first time I had a sense of risk and privilege. Where I realized that a conversation such as this one meant so much to Anifa, whose life, history, heritage were on the line, while it did not, in any way, affect the way in which mine would unfold.

At some point before that final project’s presentation, I told LQS that I felt it was important that Anifa be the one to lead the discussions, and she nodded. Like I had learned the lesson she meant for me to discover for myself. Read the room. Let others speak. Admit your limitations. Be an ally. Know your place. (more…)

kultura

Institutional, nervous, and other breakdowns

The first time a young writer came out with a Facebook status (dated August 2) about having been taken “sexual advantage” of in a writing workshop, I shared it with a very clear statement about silence. Fresh from the CNN Life panel for the Readers and Writers Fest where we were asked what is the biggest realization we’ve had about the cultural sector, I said that it is about how much of it operates on silence. We don’t know what’s going on, how things are decided, how the systems work, and all that we ever discuss is what we see on the surface: the finished art work, the published piece, the film, the TV show, the dress. But the work that goes into that, the institutions that come into play, the oppressions that are intrinsic to that system — we are kept in the dark about these things. After all, we can be so aware of power relations and capital, and still deny what that truly means. (more…)

kultura

Portrait of a pro-Duterte cultural worker; or how to be director of #SONA2019

Step 1. Say Yes. The money’s good, and in the age of disinformation and press releases, you can always get away with saying you’re doing it for free — the President’s propagandists will ensure that the President’s base (the 80% that approve of him according to surveys!) will believe you, and that’s all that matters. Of course you’d be stupid to do this shit for free. There is a price for the kind of shaming you know you’ll get, the raised eyebrows from your peers, the way history will judge you. No one will take it against you that you took on government raket; but history will judge you harshly for wanting to put this icon of this dark times in a good light. You need to get paid for this. And well.

Step 2. Embrace Denial. Duterte is not responsible for the thousands dead in the drug war. He is not responsible for the forced evacuation of the Lumad communities in the name of big business wanting to take over their ancestral lands. He is not responsible for the worsening poverty. He is not responsible for the killings of farmers and peasants. He is not responsible for the state of the nation where democracy is discredited, criticism is a crime, and activists are deemed terrorists.

The propagandists are paid to embrace denial. You are, too.

(more…)

kultura

Kin Misa, visual artist

Here’s a piece I wrote in 2011 on Kin Misa’s work, which I think now was ahead of its time, but what do I know, what do we know really, about life and death, rejection and struggle, except to try and make do, make from, make regardless of everything else that happens around us, until it is time to say no. Let it go.

Here’s to you Kin. Happy trails. — Ina. 

The end of the (art) world in Kin Misa’s online exhibit

There’s never reason to go online before seeing an exhibit as far as I’m concerned. This means being blown away by fantastic work when I least expect it, at the same time that it means coming across horrid exhibits that I travel two (or five) cities for. Always, I allow myself to be floored. Yes, that’s me living on the edge. But what of an exhibit that only happens online, for reasons that are about what’s real and concrete, and about creativity and imagination? What happens when an exhibit rejects my notion(s) of art spectatorship, as it rejects the usual audience, doesn’t get the standard patrons, won’t follow the rules — spoken and otherwise — for art and exhibition in this country? What happens is rust and color by multimedia artist Kin Misa.  (more…)

komentaryo

Is this still a whiff? Bato and Diño, FDCP and tax rebates

It was bad enough that Bato dela Rosa had the gall to have a film made about his life — after all, it was under his leadership at the PNP that we saw THOUSANDS of Filipinos killed in a bloody drug war that he insisted was necessary because his god … este, his President believed it to be so. Of course a film that is blatantly propaganda via hagiography is nothing new. Neither is the admission that this film is about getting him a Senate seat. Let’s not even get into whether or not he has the credibility and credentials for it (and no, Jimmy Bondoc, insisting Bato’s loyalty to the President is enough is just idiotic, also: anti-nation).

Let’s just talk about the fact that he is already an administration candidate, which means that he already has the benefit of using government resources for his campaign. And then he makes a film about his life, which he need not declare as a campaign expense, even when he himself admits it’s supposed to help him win the elections. Imagine? It’s like getting campaign ads aired without having to declare it as part of your campaign. It’s getting away with spending millions on your campaign without having to declare any of it. 

But it gets worse. Enter Liza Diño’s Film Development Council of the Philippines.  (more…)