Tag Archives: cultural crisis

kultura

Death of culture (2): Cultish leadership for CCP

President Duterte’s installation of Nick Lizaso as head of the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) is painfully ironic – if not dangerously so.

On the one hand, it is clear that this President doesn’t care much about culture, so one wonders why he would appoint any of his men to these cultural leadership positions. On the other, one can see this as a statement in itself about what Duterte thinks about culture: anyone can lead it, never mind that he is incredible, never mind that he is unproductive, never mind that he speaks about art like it’s the 1940s, and likens the work he must now do to  building a Church.

“This mission is almost Pentecostal for it is all about Apostolate for Art and Culture. I enjoin every Filipino citizen to help me in this Apostolate – spreading the good news of art to all the corners of this archipelago. For it is art that will save us as a nation, as a people, as one humanity.”

That comes from Lizaso, Duterte-installed CCP Head. Apparently out to build a religious cult while he’s at it. (more…)

kultura

Lizaso at CCP: Death of culture (1)

The problems of the sectors of arts and culture in this country are multifarious, and there is no doubt that any of us cultural workers who are at the bottom of the totem pole can only believe in the possibilities of change, and look forward to it, too. Many of us try and work towards that change, but if cultural work is your bread and butter – and you’re not one of the lucky ones who comes from privilege to begin with – then you have no choice but to compromise along the way, work with institutions and hope to change these, be critical of the ways in which our creative freedoms (usually all we have) are disrespected or abused.

But as I’ve said before: President Duterte appointing the un-credentialed and inexperienced, incompetent and incredible, into positions of cultural power do nothing for our psyches, even less for our morale, and absolutely nothing for the conditions of our labor.

Installing someone like Nick Lizaso into the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP), for no reason other than that you know him personally, and denying completely the right of the sector to decide for itself who it might want as leader – that is not any kind of change, President Duterte. (more…)

komentaryo

Sacred cows, criticism, and the media as enterprise*

When your teacher asked me to come in to speak with you, my first reaction was: are you sure? baka masira ang buhay ng mass com students mo.

See, I am not trained as a journalist, nor do I practice it as a discipline. I’m not part of mainstream media, and consciously so. In college, I was a comparative literature major. My MA degree was on philippines studies. Much of my early history as writer had to do with following the arts and culture beat and doing mostly reviews and pop culture criticism. All that time I was conscious of how there is a journalistic practice that would do the arts beat, too, and that they were mostly writing about press conference and going on junkets, attending premier nights and socializing, and with all due respect to the lifestyle journalists, it’s just not my cup of tea.

But criticism is. As a practice and as a discipline that allowed me to do art reviews with a degree of credibility. Long before I started doing that for the Philippine Daily Inquirer and GMA News Online, I had been maintaining a blog, radikalchick.com, where I had the freedom to write what I wanted, regardless of readers and followers. (more…)