Category Archive for: kultura

kultura

The tale of an online mob #NachoDomingo

I happened upon the case of Nacho Domingo too late. It was Sunday, September 29. I asked a friend who had posted about social media responsibility and online mobs what he was talking about, and he told me to do a Twitter search for his name.

It yielded little, though the few tweets that came up were ones of mourning and condolences, a lot of regret. By later in the day more and more tweets surfaced that were turning defensive: this is about frat culture, they said. The system is to blame for his death, many others said.

The blame game on Twitter seeped through the rest of the week, with some accounts coming out with names of “people who killed Nacho,” which just continued the cycle of blaming and shaming, bullying and mob rule that brought upon us this death to begin with.

I spent the rest of that Sunday and early last week going through Twitter accounts and mining it for information. Facebook was pretty wiped clean, and there wasn’t much to see there. But Twitter, with its 140-character, shoot-from-the-hip demand — so much of what transpired remained there even as many deleted posts. The sadness grew as this process revealed what it must have been like for one person to see this unfold, and not just on Twitter and Facebook, but also, now we know, in his phone’s inbox.  (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…)

kultura

Notes on the intellectual in the time of Duterte

Wrote this for the book launch of “Na Kung Saan” by Teo Marasigan, February 6 in UP Diliman. The task was to talk about intellectuals in the time of Duterte, na nakapaloob sa forum na “Kamalayan at Kultura sa Panahon ng Pasismo.”  

I met Teo in college, in the 90’s, but only built a relationship with him in the Gloria years, in the late 2000s, when so many of us, my Nanay Angela and myself included, ended up using the internet for blogging. This was pre-Mocha, pre-paid mob, pre-Facebook boosting and trolling.  Then, people were still writing long-form articles, well-threshed out yet open to discussion, in fact begging for a discussion, naghahanap ng makakausap tungkol sa mga isyung panlipunan. May biruan pa, may collegiality. These were the years of the Arroyo presidency, before Facebook and Twitter took over the internet — and a chunk of our intellectual culture.

But of course there were many other reasons for the death of blogging and critical-political thought. There was the fact that many of the critical bloggers during GMA’s time were absorbed into PNoy’s three-headed communications team. I remember two years into PNoy’s leadership, being told by one of those writers who had ended up in Malacañang: kayo na lang ng nanay mo ang hindi pa namin nakukuha, ang hindi pa bilib sa’min.” Or something to that effect.

Natawa ako, na nadismaya: ‘yun pala ang ginagawa ng gobyerno, “kinukuha” “pinapabilib” ang mga kritiko-intelektuwal, isang paraan ng pagpapatahimik. (more…)