Category Archive for: kultura

kultura

kawayan de guia: no compromises

a version of this was published in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, October 26 2009.

Kawayan de Guia is clear about his art. It’s his way of talking to the world, engaging it in dialogue, transcending its limits. It’s his upbringing, his lifeblood, his provincial context that is Baguio. It’s his grounding in history, his way of telling stories, his political stance.

Speaking this concretely and categorically about his art, Kawayan just might be the more uncompromising of our contemporary young artists. To explain one’s art may after all be seen as violent to one’s works, if not the end to one’s career: isn’t the appeal of art precisely its lack of clear reason?

But Kawayan tells it otherwise. The human condition is central to his work, cutting across the tragic and comic towards the boastful, highlighting the notions of progress and development as falsities, bringing to the fore the need to see a bigger picture. To Kawayan, the structures that abound in our world are but perspectives that need to be broken down into pieces, if only to take discussions to another place, that’s anywhere but here. (more…)

kultura

the young and the giddy

a version of this was published in the Philippine Daily Inquirer’s Arts and Books section, October 26 2009.

She was obviously overwhelmed silly by the fact that she was chosen as one of ten most exciting young artists. Which is no surprise really. Dina Gadia is the youngest of the group at 23, and just might have more going for her other than her age: she has a clear sense of what it is that interests her, where her art must lie, and what it is she can do without – or must necessarily rebel against. (more…)

kultura

the artist as activist

a version of this was published in the Philippine Daily Inquirer‘s Arts and Books section, October 26 2009.

Kiri Dalena looks at me and acknowledges familiarity – here was no high and mighty, isolated and removed artist. After establishing the lines that bound us, she jokingly whispers a rhetorical question, “I am not young or exciting … why am I here?”

There is nothing here in fact but self-deprecation, and a whole lot of humility. Kiri talks about her art, diverse as it is, as if it is all a matter of life and death. No, not in the romantic sense of dying for an art project, or having a life unworthy of being lived without art. There is no romantic notions of being artist here, no I’m-an-artist-hear-me-roar bravado. Instead, Kiri speaks in a hushed voice that belies a very clear sense of perspective. Maybe even a stark notion of her function as artist. (more…)

kultura

N.O.A.H. survives the flood

a version of this was published in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, in the Arts and Books Section, September 21 2009.

There is nothing like a Christian musical for kids that can get any adult-with-a-heart clapping with glee and stomping her foot to the beat. Trumpets’ N.O.A.H., No Ordinary Aquatic Habitat surprisingly did just this. I had braced myself for a born-again musical, i.e., one with a lot of preaching and conventional praise songs. Yet, despite some of these, Trumpets still managed to surprise me, what with its wit and humor, and even more so with some political consciousness – in a Christian musical? God forbid!

In N.O.A.H., while God might have been everywhere and anywhere, speaking to Noah from the heavens, he was also quite political. Case in point: when the flood finally cleans up the world, the narrator (Sam Concepcion) doesn’t just talk about the literal trash and decadence that was washed away, he also mentions corruption and politicking. Add to this the fact that one of the antagonists who first appears onstage looks like GMA, complete with the hairdo and the mole, as well as a placard that screams “Vote Me!” and you’ve got a whole lotta politics going on here. (more…)

kultura

when art and music collide

a version of this was published in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, September 14 2009.

It was on two seemingly disparate occasions that the interweaving of art and music came to life for this writer. The first one involved the unfinished and unfulfilled CD project of the arts organization CANVAS and Ambient Media, where local musicians collaborate with visual artists on the theme of Filipino identity. The second was what seemed to be a run-of-the-mill album launch of Grace Nono, in a genre all her own, singing her versions of various Visayan-Cebuano love songs.

In the end, both experiences meant a letting go of the ways in which I view art in itself, or listen to music by itself, as both collide into an intertexuality that’s both of the moment, but is entirely universal as well. (more…)