Category Archive for: arts and culture

kultura

because literature IS serious business

It seems like a foregone conclusion: how else would Singapore do a writers’ festival but with seriousness and business-like professionalism? What’s striking about the first few days of the Singapore Writers’ Festival (SWF) though is this: while business sense would dictate the selling of books in relation to the event, there’s also a clear sense here of going beyond that. And the SWF does so by showing us how literature and writing might on the one hand be celebrated as creative endeavor, and on the other assessed as end product with goals of publication and readership, always with the possibility of the text affecting change.

This is to say that each of the panels I went to were done professionally at the SWF, where moderators had read the books of the writers they were to have conversations with, where they actually become credible points of reference for a discussion with the audience. My context obviously is the Philippines, where even international conferences suffer not just because of sloppy work by local scholars, but even more so unprofessional moderators who think that hosting à la talk show is what this role calls for.

But I digress, and I only do so because of envy: much might be said after all for professionalism especially when it comes to literature and writing, particularly because by our mere existence as writers and critics we demand that it be seen as important. At the SWF, the first thing that’s equated with its importance is a clear respect for writers, which begins with reading their work beforehand.

Read the rest here!

kultura

on Digging In The Dirt, an exhibit

and how art criticism fails in this country. stop talking to the artists! start looking at their work!

"Pure" by Martin Honasan
"Pure" by Martin Honasan

The endless gaze in Digging In The Dirt

In literature we always say the author is dead, a convenient and highly questionable concept really that allows the reader a pretense of reading only the text, ignoring as much as possible the notion of the writer as center of truth. In reviewing art, it still seems like a contradiction to do an interview with the artist in relation to a new work; always this means falling into the trap of making him explain himself.

This is what’s working against Digging in the dirt, an exhibit that’s interesting enough to talk about extraneous to who the artist is – or what that name holds. What’s in a name, when you’ve got some art to look at really, and portraits that already demand a conversation? This is the work of Martin Honasan.

The first thing that strikes you is the breadth of the portraits that are here (and the fact that it’s in the midst of a busy mall’s hallway): from huge canvases with heavy acrylic paint to small canvases with sparse almost pen and ink sketches rendered in watercolor, from dark almost dank colors to bright yellows and reds and stark whites. Even just the heavy hand in the large canvases vis a vis the lighter hand used for the smaller work is unique in itself, especially when one considers that across these portraits are the eyes as focal point, no matter how it’s rendered, regardless of the size of the work.

Read the rest here!

kultura

on naming Ballet Philippines as the Phil Nat’l Ballet Company

and questions on national and cultural, and the crisis that is Philippine dance, that can only resonate for the rest of culture industry in this country. excerpt from the piece by Myra Beltran:

<…this> greatly changed environment <…> also signals that the bill can be examined in terms of its assumptions about the “national” and “culture” (Philippine culture). These are the discourses which inform the bill. These discourses summoned by the bill then imply that a deeper discussion on this bill apart from the one centered on who is “more deserving” or not, can be made and that it is no easy labelling of being “for” or “against” the bill. It does not seem to be as simple as saying or implying that that those who oppose this bill would probably not oppose if they had been the beneficiary or implementor of this bill – rather, part of those who are being dismissed as simply “against” truly mean to have a sincere inquiry as to who is speaking for whom in this bill, what is being spoken in behalf of the “whom,” and whether the answer to this should be enacted into law as a republic act. [5] I suppose those are also topics which also concern the entire arts community as all precedents do have a subsequent ripple effect.

A case in point is that one of the reasons cited by Ballet Philippines in seeking the status of “national” is the precedent set by the naming of the Bayanihan Philippine Dance Company as the “national folk dance company” (R.A. 8626 by the 10th Congress) with the contention that others who oppose this current bill would do well to seek the same for themselves, “to work for it”, [6] as the Bayanihan bill itself provides. On this count, and if one were to proceed to “work for it,” the proposed bill also summons the notion and the distinction between a “national folk dance company” and a “national ballet company” as both representative of “Philippine culture.” And then after, if one indeed were to “work for it,” what kind of “national” entity would one be? The same question would be posed to one working for a “national theatre company” or “national orchestra” in the future.

click here for the rest of it.

kultura

celebrating the production of Peter Pan

A text like Peter Pan banks on wonder, given an audience of children who would be overwhelmed by the idea of flight. But it also banks on an adult audience that can go back to an amount of youthful innocence, given the familiar. Of course this familiarity can also be this text’s undoing, owing to its many versions, some more iconic than others (think Robin Williams as Peter). Any staging / rendering / version then can only really be successful in light of this kind of intertextuality: an audience will bring to this text everything – big or small, major or minor – that they know about the text. And it’s entirely possible that in the end this will only mean a harsh judgment of the version that unfolds in front of them.

Or not. Repertory Philippines’ Peter Pan, A Musical Adventure is difficult to put down, even when you’re a jaded adult. Of course it could’ve just been me, ready as I was to be fascinated by the flying this production was treating the audience to. But there were other things here that were wonderful too, if not surprisingly seamlessly done by the production.

Click here for the rest of it!

kultura

the writing responsibility

because i’ve been thinking about, which is to say struggling with, writing and self-centeredness, this can only be serendipitous: a piece on poetry, but which is really about writing, from mabi david:

To write is to come to an awareness, says Carolyn Forché, which I believe wholeheartedly. I write because it is the way available to me of thinking about the world, of apprehending experience.

Thus is the self implicated in the poem. We must write with vigorous self-reflection and be accountable for every word we put on the page.

When we glorify what we write, harboring illusions of distinction or consequence, we sacrifice self-awareness for ego, and what we write is at once boring, narcissistic, and annoying. At its very least.

At its worst, we fail at our responsibility as writers to consider ourselves limited and fallible, which pushes us to be more rigorous in our analysis. We fail at our task to keep scrutinizing and interrogating all stable sets of beliefs—ours and society’s—no matter how difficult the task or how unpleasant in the service of potentiallyarriving at the Truth.

When we feel so assured of the power and respectability of what we write, what beliefs and attitudes do we preserve and what do we foreclose? Thinking our beliefs more vital and virtuous than those of others who do not share our views, how do we begin to regard differences?

To approach our task as writers with a totalizing, aggressive belief about its capacities, we border possibly on self-aggrandizement and see differences as threats.

We enter a room and light a candle. Someone we don’t know walks in to light another and how is it we think this additional fire diminishes the light in the entire room?

click here for the rest of this short but/and/therefore brilliant piece by mabi.