Tag Archives: TEDx Diliman

kultura

Notes on TEDx Diliman: ideas worth sharing? #4 & #5!

TEDx Talks are independently organized TED talks across the world, which is about “riveting talks by remarkable people.” TEDx Diliman was my first. This is a review of each of the TED talks that were part of it, done in 18 minutes or less, because that’s the time limit of a TED Talk. Read more about TED here, and check out this really good video on TEDx here.

Fernando Sena: How to draw an eye

with all due respect to someone who “needs no introduction, as his influence as a teacher has touched the lives of some of the most acclaimed and sought after artists today” (via Sena’s youtubevideo caption).

teaching us literally how to draw an eye? towards in the end promoting one’s art classes and one’s own son.

que horror.

the only thing worse than Sena’s TEDx Diliman talk was Nina Lim-Yuson’s talk: 18 minutes or so of shameless self-promotion of Museo Pambata projects.

both beg the question: wherefore art thou ideas worth spreading?

and really. what a waste of time.

kultura

notes on TEDx Diliman: ideas worth spreading? #3!

TEDx Talks are independently organized TED talks across the world, which is about “riveting talks by remarkable people.” TEDx Diliman was my first. This is a review of each of the TED talks that were part of it, done in 18 minutes or less, because that’s the time limit of a TED Talk. Read more about TED here, and check out this really good video on TEDx here.

Glecy Atienza on Buhay: Theater for Life

what Ma’am Glecy had going for her TEDx talk were two things: (1) a life lived in theater, and (2) a theater life that has actually affected change in the spaces it has inhabited. these two should be in every TEDx talk, these are its most basic requirements. but also Ma’am Glecy had an anchor here, something that was the premise of and what drove her whole talk: theater as something that evolves from buhay (life) to buhay (live). i’d argue with that last one and say that it might have worked better had she used the term “alive” but that’s really just a matter of style. what’s important is that Ma’am Glecy allowed this concept to function not just as anchor, but as central idea that’s also a clear assessment not just of theater, but of her life lived within it.

this is what a TEDx talk requires, doesn’t it? because an idea worth sharing is not one that we pluck out of thin air, nor is it the stuff of just dreaming. an idea worth sharing is one that has been proven to work, one that has affected change in some form or manner, one that has, in the course of its existence come to terms with what needs to be done in order to reach a goal that’s about change of some form.

here Ma’am Glecy asserts that in the course of her years in theater, the notion of actor has since evolved for her: she is also artist, who does her own research, who teaches, who organizes communities around theater productions that can change the way they view their lives, the way they might see themselves. here, it will be difficult to question Ma’am Glecy’s assertions about the possibilities of change through theater, and this is precisely because she knows exactly from where she speaks.

but too, what Ma’am Glecy proves here is that it is not just years that a TEDx talk requires, it is more importantly about being self-reflexive and self-aware, where one’s limitations are clear, but even more so one’s ability at compromise, and role in change. these are the kinds of things we might all learn from, because these things are premised on concrete change done within real conditions of nation.

in the end, Ma’am Glecy would be one of the few who actually had proof of how art and culture can change our world, which was the TEDx Diliman theme. she would, in the end, be one of three people who’d do that here.

out of 11 speakers. go figure.

kultura

notes on TEDx Diliman: ideas worth spreading? #2!

TEDx Talks are independently organized TED talks across the world, which is about “riveting talks by remarkable people.” TEDx Diliman was my first. This is a review of each of the TED talks that were part of it, done in 18 minutes or less, because that’s the time limit of a TED Talk. Read more about TED here, and check out this really good video on TEDx here.

Aureus Solito and his search for magic

what struck me about Aureus Solito’s TEDx talk was that he was the first to do it extemporaneously, as a TED talk should be.

which is not to say that there was much in Solito’s talk that made for an idea worth spreading as is the promise of a TEDx talk. what he did in fact, was tell the story of his life as it is tied to his Palawan roots, and he spends all of his 18 minutes just moving from childhood, to elementary school, to highschool, to college, and how the stories of Palawan would riddle his years, would make him weird in school, would give him the advantage of having stories magical and real.

this was interesting for sure, but not quite what should take most of those minutes spent in a TEDx talk.

ideally, you tell these stories as context for how you’ve used those experiences of your roots and your traditions, towards coming up with some bright idea that works, something that helps in saving these traditions that you find are important to you.

this Solito suddenly throws into the mix in his last two minutes onstage, where he talks about people and nature being one, where he mentions in one quick sentence that what he does through film is to try and achieve a certain kind of magic, a certain healing, which also means warding off the evils that are apathy and mediocrity.

this was Solito’s bright idea worth spreading. this was not what he talked about in the 18 minutes that he was onstage.

one realizes: all stories might be personal, and that is well and good. but TEDx talks demand ideas. ones that might be emulated, ones that could inspire, ones that have already taken steps in changing the world. in that sense, stories are but the premise of ideas worth sharing, and without the latter, the magic Solito grew up with becomes nothing but the words in a story that’s only his, not at all ours for the taking.

komentaryo

notes on TEDx Diliman: ideas worth spreading?

TEDx Talks are independently organized TED talks across the world, which is about “riveting talks by remarkable people.” TEDx Diliman was my first. This is a review of each of the TED talks that were part of it, done in 18 minutes or less, because that’s the time limit of a TED Talk. Read more about TED here, and check out this really good video on TEDx here.

Roby Alampay on freedom is our competitive advantage

the thing with saying that the Philippines’ advantage is our freedom is that the only idea it gets across is a romance with the freedom of expression we enjoy (as exemplified apparently by having the TEDx talk to begin with, Alampay says), which of course also means limning over the fact of activists being jailed and disappeared, cultural worker Ericson Acosta still being in jail, and really begs the question: what freedom?

Alampay’s 18++ minutes (yes he was allowed) was spent talking about freedom being our competitive advantage because it can mean making the country the center not just of civil society which feeds off of freedom, but also the center of academic freedom (“Kaya namin ‘yon!” he says). both will mean generating jobs and contributing to the economy, creating an industry out of our freedom.

for Alampay, freedom is the card we can play, because, and i quote: 

freedom is the one thing we do better than anybody else.

do we? really do freedom well I mean? Alampay uses the example of CCP’s closure of the Kulo exhibit (without mentioning it of course), without realizing that in fact in fact more than proving that the gov’t can just take away our freedom, that incident also proved that when we are questioned about our freedom, we have no idea how to defend ourselves. we mess it up completely: our artists, curators, cultural workers. we do not know how to defend ourselves, we do not know how to talk to media, to the people who don’t care for our art but will care about religion, and we mess it up. that is us messing up even as we are free. that is proof that we don’t do freedom well.

even more false? the idea that there’s academic freedom where we are. i’ve lived off of two universities in this country, and when you’re immersed in that manner you also know that in fact your freedoms are false in these institutions, they are limited to what is the intellectual parochialism that’s there, they are limited by the people who have been in the academe all these years.

most importantly, academic freedom, artistic freedom, freedom of expression are all highly questionable when you come from here and know | feel | see that freedom is also overrated when it cannot will not put food on people’s tables and more and more people are falling below the poverty line.

and if you live in the Philippines, you must also know — and must admit — that most of the time we are delusional about our freedom because we are middle class educated English-speaking TEDx speakers. or, as Alampay says, he’s an economy of one, dreaming.

dreams are good. but as ungrounded and unfulfilled, as romanticized and sophomoric as this? not at all worthy of a TEDx talk. but it sure sounds like something the PNoy government would love to hear.