kultura

the revolution cannot be staged

I had high hopes for Banaag at Sikat, The Rock Opera, a promise of good music and singing, a contemporary retelling of Lope K. Santos’ original novel on the winds of change that would bring the country to revolt against the overwhelming conditions that capitalism and feudalism wrought on the nation. But as it began with fake guitar playing between friends Delfin (Al Gatmaitan) and Felipe (Roeder Camañag), attached to what then becomes a fake amplifier, and with dancing from a chorus many of whom seemed uncomfortable doing the robot and dancing hiphop, I had to wonder if this musicale meant to be funny.

Love and revolution, not necessarily together
Because it didn’t stop, not the fake guitar-playing, not the requisite head bang. The beautiful love song between Delfin and Meni (Ayen Munji-Laurel) could only lose its tenderness with Delfin fake-playing the song. In this First Act, the beginnings of love are introduced to us at the same time as the characters, all of whom are perfect stereotypes that exist in an oppressive feudal society. Cigar factory El Progreso is owned by Meni’s father Don Ramon Miranda and Don Filemon, both unforgiving and unapologetic capitalists, who refuse to raise the wages of their workers who are ready to revolt. Nyora Loleng is wife of Don Filemon but is mistress to Don Miranda, a seeming pawn to macho control more than a powerful woman.

the rest is up at gmanews.tv!

komentaryo

month three of P-Noy: notes of a pinay*

and so it must be said, that September might have been the best month ever for P-Noy, at least compared to those first two months where things just weren’t going his way, or his way just seemed to be going wrong.

the past month, P-Noy conveniently left the country for a visit to the US at around the same time that the Incident Investigating and Review Committee (IIRC) submitted its report on the August 23 hostage tragedy to Malacanang. in the midst of questions on the report — on the fact that it was sent to China before it was revealed to us, on the fact that what we finally saw lacked the section on the IIRC’s recommendations — P-Noy left, with a 57-person delegation to go to the US and address a United Nations delegation.

and as they celebrated the 25 MILLION PESOS to be spent on that trip, it became clear that we were really just hungover from GMA and the kind of spending she did, that we are out to just draw these comparisons, forgetting that 25 MILLION PESOS is a fluggin’ huge amount for any trip. this amount, given the number of travel companions of P-Noy (which apparently includes his barber, baka nga naman humaba ang hair niya, baket ba), could be bigger than that of the Queen of England‘s (oh but maybe sister Kris would be proud?).

but let’s forget about that amount, why don’t we? after all, what should matter is that he has done well, he has done us proud. he delivered a speech at the UN General Assembly, where he promised justice and the fulfillment of the UN’s Millennium Development Goals, where he enjoined the world to come up with its own people power (naks) towards balancing inequality and finding unity (naks ulit).

never mind that injustices continue in the country, ones that for some reason P-Noy doesn’t want to handle differently from his predecessor: there are the extrajudicial killings and the forced disappearances of activists, there remain political prisoners including the Morong 43.  maybe P-Noy needs to be reminded that the UN itself had sent Special Rapporteur Philip Alston to the country in 2007, and he promptly “convincingly attributed” these injustices to the armed forces. now i imagine that the P-Noy government thinks (1) that those armed forces aren’t his, which therefore absolves him of responsibility, and (2) that he has delegated this to CHR Head Etta Rosales who will promptly act on this.

if the former is true, then P-Noy has every reason to Free All Political Prisoners, yes? if the latter is true, then P-Noy has every reason to Free All Political Prisoners, yes.

but there’s more to that US trip than just that UN speech. P-Noy also brought home the bacon, the ham, some eggs to boot, all of which are extensions of or improvements on previous agreements with transnational American companies, none of which mean being freed from our foreign debt, something that was offered to Cory during her time, something that i wish P-Noy would ask for now, because i have to believe that it’s possible to repeal all debt.

more than anything else, versus how this US trip might have “saved” the Philippines in whatever way (including meeting Obama, naks, one more time!), the fact is that it was P-Noy who was saved by this trip from what was going on in Manila while he was away.

there was the question of jueteng, the ensuing debate, the truth that what’s needed is a creative alternative to it, versus its abolition which is downright impossible. make the government alternatives better than the illegal jueteng, and it will kill the latter. send me an email if you want a copy of this proposal, which really is premised on good ol’ common sense and a whole lot of living in a province where jueteng lords it over.

there was the attempted demolition of a squatter community in North Edsa QC, in favor of the Ayalas who are going to build (another!) mall on what was government property. now i don’t know about P-Noy, but conversations must be had with people from squatters’ communities because only then will he find that (1) they are squatters in Manila because they are victims of land grabbing and its contingent devaluation of rural livelihood in the provinces to big landowners (like the Cojuangcos) and developers (like the Ayalas); and (2) some of these individuals and households put out money to have the right to this space: there’s always money exchanged between squatters/vendors and local government officials and police. this is all under the table of course, and more than anything explains why Pinoys who live in squatters areas think they have a right to the space. the province-to-city migration meanwhile tells us what the government needs to develop for the squatter problem to be solved. (and pray tell, anti-squatter people, how it is productive that you are nothing but anti-squatter people who are ready to pounce on these people?)

ah, all these P-Noy left behind for his OICs to handle or mishandle. when he finally came home, he did so with a bang by saying that he was now for a birth control and family planning policy, which does tie in — though not completely — with the Reproductive Health Bill.

i can only cross all my fingers and toes that P-Noy doesn’t back down in the face of this Pinoy Church. that he doesn’t back down in the face of the devout Catholics in his life, which include his sisters.

that he doesn’t fear excommunication, reprimand, the loss of the Pinoy Church’s support. because in fact it’s about time that we see the separation of Church and State in this country. because only then will women cease to be sacrificial lambs to notion(s) of morality and correctness, the ones that maims and kills them every day.

come on P-Noy, you can do it!

*because the Aquino sisters are already counting down the months to their brother’s and family’s freedom from us all, seeing us as the burden in their lives as if their brother didn’t choose to run for office and didn’t want to win.

kultura

relevant RockEd culture: notes on contemporary Pinoy rakenrol

The noise is overwhelming. SaGuijo isn’t made for long conversations with friends, not even when you’re all outside sitting at the farthest table from the entrance, having drinks and cigarettes. The truth is you’ve been here since dinnertime when it was empty and bright. You almost forgot it was the place of noise and crowds and youth, the one you hadn’t gone to in a while.

It had been a long day and, both emotionally and literally, food was what you needed. You also wanted to get eating out of the way while it was quiet enough to have a meal. The bagoong rice, salpicao and tokwa’t baboy, and ice-cold San Mig Lite seemed about right. Except that it was already noisy in your head, the kind of noise that apparently can’t be erased by a filled stomach. You came from the Maximum Security Compound of Bilibid Prisons in Muntinlupa, and after two years met an old friend—one who’s been there for almost a decade, the one for whom freedom is such a remote possibility, you cannot even see it.

The NGO Rock Ed was reason for that visit to Bilibid. Every Wednesday of every week, a bunch of prisoners expect Gang Badoy to arrive and teach them some creative writing.

the rest is up at pulse.ph!

kultura

romance(s) in Catalina Africa’s “The Etymology of Disaster”

It’s easy to be distracted by how pretty the works of Catalina Africa are in The Etymology of Disaster (West Gallery, West Avenue, Quezon City). The work that welcomes you to the exhibit after all, is a collage of black and white photos of sunsets, reminiscent of and invoking romance, the kind that we all know off. The letters that spell “departure” in bold bright pink letters makes it seem like both sunsets and disasters are happy. This dynamic between the brightness and the darkness, though all romantic.

Our shadows in boxes

A non-descript shadow box with a bunch of brightly colored used and uneven candles seems happy from afar. Up close you’ll find that it is attached to a mirror, is bound by a chain, atop what looks to be a tiny skateboard. “Home Guide to Bullfighting” requires the spectator’s reflection, as her incomplete image disturbed by the candles attached to the mirror, necessarily invokes an amount of discomfort. The sadness comes from the realization that this might be about you, and the ways in which home is about a bullfight, is about being chained down, is about wanting to get away, candles as symbol of both hope and death.

“Maybe, Baby (Study for a Parfait)” is a shadowbox with a piece of shell against what looks like a chest x-ray result. The word “maybe” is spelled out on the shell, the last four letters in white ink, the yellow letter M hanging from the shell. The light and love in a piece of shell, something that’s cliché souvenir, which is always one of a kind, ties the rarity with the uncertainty of something being experienced again. The x-ray kills the romance, as it proves life at the same time that it fails to see its heart. Maybe, there is love here. Maybe there is heart. Maybe, baby, there’s romance.

Breaking it gently, subtly

Africa’s “Broken Pleases” is an enlarged photo of the beach, with brown sand, a dark sea and blue skies. Bright colored balloons fly against the sky, though not freely: the balloons are tied to a step ladder, the same color of the sand. The sky is alive, as are the balloons, and yet what is alive is held down by what’s on land. This is how things are broken, where what pleases is destroyed by what it has to live with: the sky against the darkness of the beach, the balloons against land.

This dynamic of being held down, is also in “Happy Camping II” – a triptych of photos of a wooden house set-up against the greenery of a park. The first image shows the facade of the house, the second is its other side which reveals it to be a one-dimensional structure, the third seems to show one of two panels used on the house. While there is no destruction here in the conventional sense, the slow revelation of what this house actually – to be just a piece of plywood, be further divided into smaller pieces of wood panels – invokes a strange sense of sadness at how true it could all still be.

No happy in the ending

The rendering of sunsets and moments and love in “The Etymology of Disaster” is a happy and romantic thing by itself – there is nothing here that’s sad or destructive. Until the bright pink letters that spell “departure” sinks in, and you realize what these sunsets actually are: they are endings. And with the notion of leaving, of separation, of impending absence, Africa is able to point out that there is no happiness in these endings, there are no happy endings.

Which is true as well for the romance with poverty that popular culture lives off of, the kind that allows for a brand like the defunct Wowowee, to invoke so many other images, including that of tragedy. In “Wowowee” Africa installs seven photos, one for each letter, each one rendered through colorful flowers and twigs, and set against the ground upon which too many died in the show’s stampede. The prettiness of the flowers and their bright colors, don’t do much for the sadness that happens with this ending.

Meet yourself

It’s in “Happy Camping I” though, that the mind of Africa comes alive. A framed white piece of paper, written on which is an extended spider map in pencil. The map begins at the center with the word “LET’S” – obviously a reference to the invitation, “Let’s go camping!” What floored me was the thought process that went into this work, where that center branched out into six thoughts that interconnect at certain points, allowing for a set of activities that could/would happen in chronological order.

Camping here becomes analogous with doing whatever it is we want, beyond rules and parents and school and convention. Here, happiness is borne of this unimaginable freedom that would allow us to talk about “ordering someone to take off his pants, exhausting all possibilities, making a soundtrack for pissing, gambling our lives away, engaging in dangerous liaisons, starting a fire, smoking grass.”

Of course what is ultimately sad is the fact that while these are freedoms we hold dear, we cannot easily (if at all!) exercise these freedoms. And that, Africa teaches us, is where our romance with disaster lies.

—

note: all photos taken byme. the West Gallery site is down, but it’s at http://www.westgallery.org.

other reviews up at: suddenschool and nothingspaces.

komentaryo

the travesty of the Pinoy Church 2: life and death in Quiapo

today, the Pinoy Catholic Church gathered people to pray away the President’s decision to educate all Filipinos about family planning and give them the right to choose what to do. they also gathered to pray away the RH Bill and the probability that it will be passed into law.

the Pinoy Church elders invoke the name of the President’s mother: she wouldn’t do this, they say, she was close to bishops, she was saintly, she listened to the Church. Archbishop Aniceto says: “the country must learn to embrace the gift of life and to defend it against the ‘culture of death’.”

the Pinoy Church’s faithful carried placards with photos of aborted fetuses.

this connection between family planning/birth control/the RH Bill and aborted fetuses is a lie that the Pinoy Church has sold pretty well. they speak of contraceptives and abortifacients as one and the same, they speak of artificial family planning in the same vein as killing off babies. this is a lie.

any definition of contraception will tell you that Pinoy Church elders are wrong: contraceptive pills, intrauterine devices, injectibles, condoms do not kill babies. they keep women from conceiving.

there is no baby, there is no abortion. in fact there is nothing in the woman’s uterus (which she solely owns by the way). there’s no nothing.

except 11 women who die during childbirth every day, women who get pregnant emotionally and physically unprepared for it, women who can barely survive the pregnancy, women who leave their babies because they don’t know what else to do. women who are unprotected by the State, are ill-informed if not uneducated about their rights to their bodies, their right to their lives.

and right there in Quiapo, where the CBCP wanted to pray away the RH Bill, women have found and bought bottles labelled pamparegla (to force menstruation) and pampalaglag (to force an abortion). right there in Quiapo, in front of that beautiful Church, countless Filipino women have gone to pray for forgiveness as they give the tablets and syrups and liquid in bottles a test drive. right there in Quiapo countless women have gone and disappeared for an hour or two or three, to risk their lives on beds and in rooms inhabited by women and girls like them, who don’t know what else to do. some or many of these women die, we don’t know for sure: they fall off the radar as they enter these spaces.

the CBCP prayed in Quiapo today, prayed against the RH Bill, family planning, birth control. prayed against the culture of death. prayed for the culture of life.

and right there in Quiapo, the travesty of the Pinoy Church could only be clearer than the bottles of pampalaglag that surrounded them. as they insist on valuing life, they have by their own refusal to give women the right to their bodies, been insisting on the culture of death all this time.