komentaryo

poverty, human rights & PNoy’s devt plan

In a land where a president takes pride in conditional cash transfers and poverty alleviation disbursements, it is not surprising that there is no real long- term solution to solve poverty. Worse, poverty is seen only as by-product of corruption: such was Benigno Aquino III’s campaign slogan, such is the continued tagline for what it is that ails the nation. It is corruption not poverty, it is corruption not human rights, it is corruption not a systemic dysfunction that keeps the poor where they are. (more…)

kultura

on Caringal’s “Status/Hiatus”

it was the start of the year and after this boycott of Manila Contemporary i welcomed the chance to go back. but of course i did just in time for another non-exhibit, i.e., it’s that time of year when the works from the stockroom / backroom, the ones waiting to be sold, are hung on gallery walls. at least this time it was clear. and this time there were works worth talking about. well one work that i can’t pass up. (more…)

komentaryo

the death of us all

in conversations with my Pinay friend Sunshine who left for the US five years ago, and who came to visit in the middle of January, tears were necessarily in order. what was surprising was that while these would be shed in the first two hours or so for the distance we had kept and the things we had survived separately, the rest of our time together would be spent crying about nation, if not shaking our heads in dismay.

by the end of it i found that what needed to be articulated, what needed to come from me, what Sunshine needed to hear, was this: Catholicism, as we know it in this country, is the death of us. (more…)

komentaryo

Malacanang’s miscommunications team strikes again!

in September of last year, in a conversation about the PNoy government that was riddled with questions from a British filmmaker newly met, i found myself talking about the disappointment that is Malacanang. the palace with a three-headed communications office that takes pride in being connected to the people, and yet has proven time and again to be releasing either the wrong information, too much information, or just not speaking up when it should.

that conversation led to many things, though an interesting tangent was this: the new-acquaintance-turned-friend tells me that he had sent a proposal to Malacanang in the mid-2011 to do a docu-film on a-day-in-the-life of PNoy, an inside story of the Palace and the President’s life kind of thing, much like those done for and on Obama. the proposal had landed on the lap of employee #1, who works within one of them communications offices, who had seemed interested in the project, and promised to take it up with his superior. my filmmaker friend was optimistic. (more…)

komentaryo

criticism interrogates, questions, shatters

from “on criticism” by eli guieb:

Criticism shatters.  It shatters the shibboleths of our silenced lives, the deep silences about the wrongs of society.  To challenge those silences has often come to mean courting tragedy.  Criticism challenges those silences.  It breaks silence free from its silence.  It proffers breakthroughs that break down debilitating silences, and, in the process, rejoices in the breakdown of unwanted silence.  (more…)