Hefty sum for some and a shake-off feast: a talk show with three artists as Imelda reappears at the CCP

“Members of a militant teachers’ organization criticized on Wednesday [Sept. 2] the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP)’s planned gala tribute for former First Lady Imelda Marcos, saying it is an ‘utter disrespect’ for the Filipino people,” reported GMANews.tv last Tuesday [Sept. 8], and said “the Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) vowed to stage a protest rally on Friday [Sept. 11] during the invitational gala event in honor of Marcos, the founding chairperson of the CCP.”

     Update Sept. 11: “Flamboyant former first lady Imelda Marcos arrives at the government-run Cultural Center of the Philippines for a special ‘gala tribute’, held in her honour, in Manila on September 11, 2009 despite angry protests that the event should not go ahead.”—Tumblr.com

     And as a way of reminding ourselves, we might be interested in re-reading novelist F. Sionil Jose’s letter to the CCP in August of 2008, explaining his reason for walking out of the “necrological services” [see Wikipedia entry on ‘Philippine English’ on the meaning of that phrase, eulogy actually] for composer and conductor Lucrecia Kasilag—click here

Well, . . . you know, modesty aside, I can only say it a hundred times. My blog post of last Thursday [Sept. 3] regarding the “five fruits of the nationalization of art” had blabbered so much already about these normal consequences, and cannot say anything more. As did other earlier blog posts here with the ‘art and the state’ label that have whispered quite enough warnings about more inanities to come at/from the CCP, the National Commission for Culture and the Arts, or whatever else state institution for the arts, be it in the near or far future. What can I say? The CCP, the NCCA, and the nationalization of art by government and its willing subjects, is Imelda Marcos. Has always been, always will be. And even if this country by dint of a miracle (a nightmarish one, some say) is to fall into the hands of the Communists, wouldn’t the CCP and the NCCA then simply be tasting the other end of the same banana? Except that this time it’ll all be about social realism, away from the dictates of the present ruling parties’ standards of good and tolerable art. What can I say? I can only be tremendously honored by that guest appearance of my earlier blog on this subject which appeared in its entirety in a major online column.

     To bore you for a second, let me just narrate a bit of what happened. When Philstar Online critic-columnist Sylvia Mayuga read my blog essay of last week titled “Five fruits of the National Art tree,” she thought of making way in her online column so that that blog of mine can appear there, in her Only One World column (at philstar.com) as a guest column. She intimated to me this thought one day [afternoon of Sept. 3] and quickly notified me of its being “a go” the very next day [Sept. 4]. The streamlined version that finally appeared on Philstar.com can still be read here. Again, it was already quite an honor for me even just to be asked. And even before this guest appearance, in the preceding week, Ms. Mayuga had already generously featured my name—embarrassed and elated—in the concluding paragraphs of her column essay “New Morning for Inang Bayan” in a supposed exchange between “two young minds” contemplating the issues, the other mind being that of an Oxford University doctoral student of postcolonial literature and former CCP employee and member of the Gawad CCP committee, a mental warrior named Lila Shahani. (Ms. Mayuga also provided a link at her column to another blog of mine that she mentioned in this latter column, “Two fruits, one tree [or, why there is no such thing as a national artist],” and an attached interview with Ms. Shahani).

     Now, after those two Mayuga-column guestings, and after getting wind of a lot of comments supposedly addressed my way but not delivered this way (many not posted, in fact)—comments that were either in agreement or partial agreement or total disagreement with the essay, or even critical of the necessity of the essay in the heat of the moment of awaiting the results of a fight at the Supreme Court—I thought that I have written enough about the subject with those blog essays on the National Artist issue in this site (again, with the ‘National Artist’ “label”; in blog jargon, a “label” means “a subject or theme keyword assigned by the blogger to a set of articles or postings”). Yet, as I sense this will not just be another fleeting issue for the blogosphere chatter but something that might have to stay with us for a long, long time, to perhaps remind us to return to it again and again in the form of other Carlo Caparases and Cecile Guidote-Alvarezes and Imeldas, I thought I may give the issue concerning the inherent evil of a nationalized artistic culture just one more exposure . . . as I here make way in my turn (S. Mayuga-fashion) for the guest appearance of three Facebook friends of mine, each from a distinct representation in the visual arts, to have their say on the issue as moderated by me.

     One of our guests is Bob Bernardo A. Nuestro, a visual artist who—along with other independent artists—proudly runs a gallery called Artist-Run Independent Art Space and is the head of the painting department of the Philippine Women’s University School of Fine Arts. Our second guest is Ronald Achacoso, a quite articulate and subtle painter whose stark intelligent works often show at the West Gallery aside from Mag:net Gallery; Ronald was one of the Thirteen Artists Award grantees chosen by the CCP in the year 2000. Our third guest is Dulz Cuna, a restlessly independent painter from the Visayas, art events organizer, and humanities professor at the University of the Philippines in the Visayas, Tacloban campus.

     So, without further ado, let’s go to our guests. Welcome, guests.

# # #

JSV: Bob, Ronald, Dulz. Could you tell us of any experiences you've had regarding state sponsorship of your art, if any, whether through the CCP or the NCCA or any other government institution?

     Bob Bernardo A. Nuestro: I have no experience with state sponsorship because I’m not comfortable with having to deal with these institutions, although I have some friends there. That is why my gallery is called Artist-Run Independent Art Space [ARIAS]: we are independent, we never ask support from the NCCA.

     Ronald Achacoso: I received a modest grant in 1988 to do a large-scale painting at the CCP. I enjoyed that project. I had the energy then to do very ambitious works and I thought Judy Sibayan, who was Officer-In-Charge at the time, did a good job following up and corresponding with the artists. I was nominated a couple of times for the Thirteen Artists Award and finally received it in 2000. Very political, and I was the token representative at the time of the “unanointed” crowd. I filled up the walls with drawing exercises on paper—cost almost next to nothing—and I think it was an issue of sorts: people were ribbing me about what I did with the money. I think if they give you a cash award it should really be up to you what you want to do with it. Pero yung parang bibigyan ka ng award, tapos you have to prove you deserve it? Ano yon?

     Dulz Cuna: As an artist and cultural worker, the main feeling I get is the alipin saguiguilid (slave in the corner) effect. They use me to get this and that, research on this and that, paint this and that—honestly, I get the preemption that I am some Indio Cinderella and my sovereign rights are in the coffers of a wicked Stepmother. I remember a long time ago, when I helped out in CCP’s Museo ng Kalinganan by bringing their Outreach people to the Orasyon tattoos in Olegario Larrazabal’s warlord fiefdom, an island called Gayad, the barangay started teaming up with folk religious cults and mambabarangs (black magic/witchcraft practitioners) that I feared for my dear mental life torn between the sacred and the profane. . . . Some articles and data were gathered (which I could not include in my paper, for it was sacredly and gingerly possessed by the Museo) and bagged, to my dismay, because it was “guests first,” you know what I mean? Well, when the Museo opened I saw my name in a 10 pt.-font typeface in the Acknowledgements section, among many others in a brochure, as boon. . . . Another one. When the NCCA launched “Sambayan” (National Arts Month), my fellow visual artists and I individually made long paintings for our (Leyte) provincial stage. . . . Ms. Guidote-Alvarez (director of the NCCA) was impressed by them and she “borrowed” the nice ones and brought them to Manila. When we asked the provincial government later where the other painting banners were, they told us Ms. Alvarez did not return them. . . . There are many other experiences where I felt the alipin syndrome, if I enumerate them all I warn this reply won't be short and sweet. . . .

     JSV: Well, do you think private sponsorship is better?

     BBAN: It’s better. Private sponsorship is more businesslike and professional; you must really have good ideas for the sponsor and, of course, for the artists themselves.

     RA: Not in a position to say, really; depends on who’s giving it and for what purpose, I guess.

     DC: I can’t judge yet. This alipin syndrome with the government system that stocks me with projects that I missed the Metrobank, AAP, Shell etc. art contests, robbing me of time and eligible age for joining . . . and now there’s the Philip Morris Philippine Art Awards Competition . . . I’ve got to . . . I’ve got to.

     (giggles from everyone)

     JSV: But don’t you think everyone who got a grant deserved it, or at least one you know who got one?

     BBAN: No, I don’t believe they deserve it; it’s all from the same kami-kami, tayo-tayo, connect-connect thing. Except for a few, maybe. Maybe?

     RA: Obviously not. I said I would join the funeral march for the National Artist of the Philippines title award if the most vociferous awardee were inside the coffin himself. I kind of like the idea that Carlo Caparas’ winning is there to agitate. Anyway, the National Artist award is a relic of a fascistic regime that has seen better days and I sincerely believe we should lay this award to rest, Caparas or no Caparas. Essentially the same thing with the other minor awards. Masyado tayong pang-award mentality.

     JSV: Dulz? Don’t you think everyone who got a grant deserved it?

     DC: No!

     (laughter)

     JSV: So, what do you have to say about the CCP?

     BBAN: The same. CCP is politically manipulated. Even the succession is blurred, not published. Politics in art is natural; it is part of some people’s survival tactics to eke out a living.

     RA: CCP is a mausoleum more than anything. It even looks like one. It failed to fulfill its role and it needs the artists to validate it instead of the other way around. It’s a non-entity. In the ’80s it still retained some prestige, but the signs of erosion and decay were already there.

     DC: Launder the Imeldific diaspora that seems to be seeping out of the Center stealthily!

     JSV: And the NCCA?

     BBAN: The same. They are all just easily manipulated by active professional parasite artists into giving the latter government money.

     RA: I know nothing about it. I’ve met some people who get to show here and there because of it, they seem to be nice and all that but not very intelligent.

     DC: Don’t handle Artist or Culture awards. Be sentinels in the ramparts instead and leave us to be Rapunzels swinging by our hair in our Ivory Towers like in a mad Cirque de Soleil!

     JSV: So, how do you get funding for your art?

     BBAN: I get funding from my collectors from our gallery, they are all private citizens but always have a concern for the development of art.

     JSV: How ‘bout you, Ronald?

     RA: Now that’s a big problem.

     (laughter)

     JSV: Dulz?

     DC: The parian or tabo (tiangge) system with my fellow visual artists (from the VIVA, MAWF, TIVA, KANSIAGU collectives); we paint, sell, and put aside funds for materials . . . or write friends abroad, sell online, market, mountebank, etc. . . .

     (laughter)

     JSV: Do you feel comfortable about your fellow artists getting funding from the government while you don’t?

     BBAN: I do not feel comfortable with that, with those professional applicants for all available grants and residencies, because their body of works can’t settle on real art statements. Instead, they live their artistic lives like parasites. Some suck out government funding for, say, critiquing the government! With this last type, it is all part daw kuno of post-modernist discourses, which is actually creating false myth-making and just manipulating the thick-skinned government funding agencies like the NCCA to give them money. Getting funding from the government is OK if the artist is really creating significant work, but in my twenty years in the art scene I have not seen any significant exhibition funded by the NCCA. Or maybe I am not aware of any.

     JSV: Ronald?

     DC: (shrugs)

     JSV: What about you, Dulz, were you comfortable with your getting funding from the government, fully aware that some of your peers didn’t?

     DC: Nope. That DARN LIQUIDATION scares the itch mites off our pores! And the Commission on Audit rushes after us with a Beeeeg Steeeek!

     (laughter)

     JSV: Would you say you’re against it, then, this government funding for the arts?

     BBAN: I am against the government’s funding of exhibiting artists or professional artists. I’d be okay with funding for students, those who really study art. I am the head of the painting department of the PWU SFAD. . . . I believe institutions like schools of fine arts should be the ones funded, along with students considered as marginalized.

     RA: Can’t really say I’m against it but really think I could use their money.

     DC: Not really; we like the allocation part. But I remember the time when we had the fluvial festival regatta contests in Tacloban—the “Layag (Sail) Painting Contest” had a cash prize of P5,000, while the banqueros racing with the sails had P20,000 to boot. When we questioned the disparity, the government organizers said: “But you are just painting! They have to row the boat!” Ergo, there should be an intrinsic system for grants and allocations.

     JSV: Bob, you’ve never had any state-supported art made, but don’t you sometimes wish you had?

     BBAN: I wish I had but it must be more businesslike. It’s like commissioning, for—say—public art or socially-concerned works.

     JSV: Ronald, wouldn’t you want to have another shot at state-supported art? As you said, you could really use their money.

     RA: Some people have the talent or tenacity to avail of these things. I’m not one of them.

     JSV: Dulz, you wouldn’t mind, would you?

     DC: Yeah, well, we were jealous when our good friend Nemiranda of Angono, Rizal had landmark edifices made in Tacloban and was paid a hefty million sum. We felt slighted ’cause we have good sculptors in our group, so why naman didn’t our local government support us and instead gave the award to an out-of-towner? No offense meant to Ka Nemi, blinow-out naman kami, hehehe.

     JSV: To shake you off, huh. [FIN]

Realist static in a Romantic moment

“Morning thought,” critic-columnist Sylvia Mayuga wrote today on her Facebook Wall. “Why can’t we grow a President in Noynoy Aquino as a nation? He’s about as old as Obama. He’s got good genes. He was very thoughtful in Congress and the Senate, though not as talky as his peers. He was serious about straightening out the national budget and social justice. What he lacks in experience could well be made up for with new ways of directly consulting our people, a la Nehru. That would be historic.”
     To which I commented, “My neighbor says Noynoy is not yet ready. I said, well, Cory Aquino was not ready. The readiest, who planned a really long time to become president, were Ferdinand Marcos, Joseph Estrada, and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. Which ready candidate now would you want to be president?”
     “Were our babies ready to become the center of our world when they were born?” Sylvia wrote back. “Basta they came. That’s the hand of God. What I’m doing is discerning that hand for His/Her beloved people.”
     “It’s not really a candidate you vote for when you vote for him,” I wrote then, not sure whether this would sound pro-Noynoy but I wanted to comment on candidates in general, “it’s the people around him. And that includes the economic advisers with bags of theories and/or interests who whisper in his ear, the general that tags along every time, the balimbings (carambola, a many-sided fruit) that have been chastised, and so on. Voting for a candidate is not voting for a captain of a ship, it’s voting for a whole ship. Joseph Estrada when he was surrounded by University of the Philippines professors early in his national career was a different Joseph Estrada from the later one surrounded by gambling operators. Cory Aquino’s anti-Freedom from Debt Coalition stance was not Cory Aquino’s stance, it was the Asian Development Bank’s Joker Arroyo’s stance.”
     Sylvia wrote back, “Thank you, historian de Veyra. You give a good summary with God-given insight.”
     Which made me blush and spill my coffee.
     Sylvia, the journalist, then tweeted all on Facebook, “Lupang Hinirang at Club Filipino as we speak. . . .”
     Peter Casimiro, a market analyst on Wall Street, joined in the fun. “Great post, Sylvia!” he wrote, almost in live stream, “luv the use of ‘grow’. You’re spot on with this call. Kulang na lang yata is a sense of whether he has the fortitude to carry his parents’ brand of justice and equity with the same intensity his father had! Until a few weeks ago he did not believe this was his calling or mandate . . . still no fire in his belly for the role . . . is he still just a willing passenger in this journey or is he going to drive the darn bus? . . . So, to your point, a call for Pinoys to help him grow into the role and to build that fire in his belly is exactly the recipe! Anway, a true democracy does not happen in the vacuum of politicos, it’s inherently participatory and pervasive. Bangon! Makibaka! Makibagay!”
     I was munching too fast on my doughnut now, careful not to smudge the keyboard with doughnut filling and sugar powder.
     “Spot on ka rin, Peter.” This was Sylvia. “All the way from New York. O, mga magulang, ninong at ninang na tayo, ha! Katatanggap lang ni Noy ng tawag ng puso ng Bayan at Mahal na Ina at Ama.”
     “Spot on insight too, Jojo!” wrote Peter then. “So, who’s around Noynoy now? I know one and saludo ako since I’ve known him forever, but you said it right. Who’s around him? . . . To my point earlier, if Noynoy gains cajones and begins to ‘own’ his role he will have the same ammunition to use to shoo off the wannabes and pick the cream of the crop (all hopefully with integrity and talent) for his posse.”
     Sylvia the journalist enters: “O, ayan. Bayan Ko na. Tapos na ang press con, campaign kick-off as I write. Organizing my notes into NOTES for all of you. Sandali lang.”
     I remember when I was a kid in the province and I had a shortwave radio that had too much static I couldn’t turn it loud; I always had a high when I got to tell my parents and brothers and sisters what was going on in the present, whether it was of a space shuttle exploding or a people power revolution progressing in Poland or an actor who just died. Years later, of course, I’d have the same elation in front of the cable TV, telling everyone who just came into the room, what just transpired. This is universal, I guess. I’d imagine this is the same high that gets journalists into writing NOTES, only bigger, or higher, though I can’t really say. But I’d imagine it’s a combination of a desire to inform as well as influence with an approach, a drive that makes them risk lives at a warfront, the way skateboarders risk joints to accomplish literally high maneuvers. I can relate to this because I’m a poet, fiction writer, and blogger with a paralleling corporate identity. We risk getting into cramming point just for the high of practicing our art within that long recess we assign ourselves without anybody’s permission.

Visual artist and ad man Alan Rivera entered the page. “Wow,” he wrote, “I can imagine this exchange with audio! Man, that would be real time. By golly, ang gagaling pa nitong mga nag-uusap na ito. Daig ang BBC. Hey, Facebook, do you think you geeks can work out something in the very near future to add sound to comment streams? With your clout, I’m sure you can propose a collab with those geniuses who design computers/laptops/PCs. Wow. Do it already, FB. Sound with comments.”

     A few seconds of silence, then a notification alert. Reload and there he was again.
     “@Jojo:”—Alan wrote, the way Facebook users address specific friends or non-friends involved in a commentary thread—“Right. When is a candidate ready? When they’ve worked out the rackets? The numbers? Picked out their spots, etc., atbp.?
     “Perhaps letting the ‘people’, meaning us, ‘grow’ a Pres might be our only hope for this country that had so many ‘ready’ candidates before. And let’s give Noynoy guts. And a lot of PW (Political Will).
     “Catch 22—who among the ‘people’ will help ‘grow’ this Pres? Seems like we’ll have to pass this guy through a sieve. But a sieve could have other designs—some fine, some coarse, some mixed, and so on, and this ‘design’ will determine what passes through it for serving.
     “Problems, problems,” he added.
     “Cool ka lang, Alan,” Sylvia suggested, always the big sister, but then entered into the thread her own elated lines. “Maganda talaga ang balita sa Club Filipino ngayong umaga. Wala na si Gringo Honasan, playing soldier guarding Juan Ponce Enrile, like at Cory’s inaugural. Puro bata, provincial delegates, mga pareng hindi know-it-all na maganda ang dasal, si Ballsy Aquino na napaka-sweet at Ate-like ang sinabi tungkol sa kapatid, at siempre si Noy, si Mar Roxas at media. May problema pa sa transmission ng cable—dalas hindi malinaw sa screen. Kahit na, na-deliver ang magandang balita! PARA SA BAYAN. Di sa isang pamilya o partido. Far out! Editing my NOTE.”
     I remember when I was a kid in the province and I had a shortwave radio that had too much static I couldn’t turn it loud. Things are clearer today, through Facebook Notes and blogged comments and SMS.
     “@Peter:”—I wrote—“We’ll know who’s finally got Noy’s ears when he begins to talk about policies. Too many pa ngayon to tell which ones’ll be his engineers manning the ship when he's sleeping or dining. :)
     “@Alan:”—I went on—“‘Grow’ is the right word, as Peter agrees, and at the moment, we’d have to see who among the competing farmers would finally get Noynoy’s blessing to be his advisers. The people, on the other hand, those in the grassroots level and not the birds chirping on Noynoy’s tree ears, can influence Noynoy in getting rid of this guy and getting that guy in through the usual channels—we’ll send worms to remind the tree. This is Jack and the Beanstalk in the making and our only way for now to get to that giant in the clouds with his/her hoard of gold.
    “Dadalawa ang metaphors dito, a,” I noticed, “ship tsaka tree. Okey, me pan-dagat at me pan-lupa na ang sandatahan! :D”
     “Ehe. I’ll try for the sky,” Sylvia chimed in.

Alan hoped. “Hope the good pipol who will come in won’t be like those good pipol who came in with Cory but dropped out soon after because their guts weren’t ironclad at kinain ng muriatic politics. They have to realize that politics has its own default morality and that’s not the same as the morality of the general population. Ang hirap ng laban, but a war has to be waged and battles will have to be won a hill at a time. Let’s just all pray we win the war in the end.”
     Sylvia prayed. “Hail Mary, full of grace. . . . Our Father, who art in heaven. . . .”
     Peter laughed. “Haha. . . . Luv the angle, Jojo. I agree, grassroots nga. Perhaps something akin to Paul Collier’s bottom billion approach. It’s gotta have mass buy-in (why not use the million signature platform kaya?) . . . that’s the only way it’ll create critical mass ending with Noynoy clinching the elections (i.e., rather than starting from the top, let the people buy into the movement and actually work for it; the trapos [traditional politicians] will get out of the way as the ‘good’ guys bubble up to the surface when the movement gains ground for Noynoy to pick up as he moves along). Perhaps his army might want to dip into this link for some foresight on the planning—for as Collier so eloquently notes at the end, ‘from a politics of plunder . . . to a politics of hope’—click here.
     “Dagdag lang. Notice Collier’s approach is practically a plug-and-play model, can be easily tweaked for ’Pinas; the basic structure and premise is solid.
     “Basta the eyes on the goal lang. It isn’t the politics, politicos, the bits ‘n’ pieces, the disheveled rotten branches of gov’t, not even the electorate that’s important. What’s important is the country!”
     I agreed. “You’re right, Peter, Collier’s thesis can be easily tweaked for the Philippine setup. While mostly in reference perhaps to Iraq/Afghanistan and African nations in conflict, Collier’s idea of fixing the economy first before the politics does remind me of Cory’s mistake in doing it the traditional way. Now, Noynoy can reverse that process. Of course, in the Philippine setup, fixing the economy includes fixing the system monitoring the loans, appropriations and allocations. In short, you can’t fix the economy without fixing the corruption leaks in the supply pipes. Romantic economics, but then all economics are Romantic, they have to be. Realism often just leads us to sulking. :)”
     “Thanks, Jojo. Yup, it was on the heels of African and Eastern bloc war-torn environs that his book came out, so I guess it’s based on the patterns he saw there. Maraming anggulo yan kasi, but I think the supply pipes are key, pare. Lalo na ang microfinancing, too little so far but not really too late. He can beef up the distribution channels and break up the roadblocks (i.e., mga competitors and thugs), secure the repayment channels to build credibility and assurance for investors, then unleash it to all the barrios, get the military involved in a beneficial capacity (swaps, first-refusal deals for family, etc.) and you now have an invested security force to ensure its success and the success of the small private sector groups participating. Then on to the Commission on Audit, justice system, etc.! Hahaha, sorry got carried away there. As for the sulking, I hear you on that! Luv that Romantic economics phrase, haha! Yeah, kasi mostly aloof macro ang hinahabol natin, hindi bagay!”
     I remember when I was a kid in the province and I had a shortwave radio that had a lot of static. I couldn’t turn it loud. But sometimes the news got so exciting or worrisome that I’d turn it loud as it could be turned, static and all. Life is Romantic.
     I took a bite on my second doughnut and, while musing, saw the eye-like stare of its yellow filling.

All leaders in history have actually been grown by a people, for the wrong or the right reasons (Hitler was a product of his people), and while it is true that power brokers or power-investors are the elements that nudge personalities or potential celebrities into running after a crown or golden seat of power (as well as withdraw support from those personalities), these power brokers in history bow or adapt to the pulse of the moment: in our time manifest in polls, in media calls, in the clamors in the street. True, power brokers are behind Noynoy Aquino’s having suddenly emerged in the limelight as an unlikely messiah, nay, I believe power brokers are behind all candidates in our democratic cesspool, and thus candidates can be read as power brokers’ cocks in a cockfighting cockpit (Gloria Arroyo as Enrique Razon Jr.’s, Mike Arroyo’s, etc. perhaps?). But an election being a democratic process (unless superbly rigged), wouldn’t the presence of power brokers itself be proof of a people’s hand in those candidacies and choices? A broker is one who sells, and selling presupposes a market. And a seller-market relationship in turn presupposes a mode of measuring what the market wants. In Noynoy’s case, therefore, would we not then allow that Noynoy’s having suddenly emerged was precisely a manifestation of how a people influenced the power brokers, in that the power brokers saw in Noynoy (by the people’s pulse) one who might be a better horse to bet on as against, say, the Mar Roxas-Korina Sanchez magic yet-to-be? And why would the people voice their preference for a “winnable” persona with a yellow mystique over a yet-to-be-a-dark-horse? (I call on mystique as a factor in marketing, just as candidates from all parties call on mystical divinities and churches to bless their respective candidacies—e.g., Gloria Arroyo’s “God put me here”).
     Now, given that power brokers are there to exploit or deceive the Romantic pleas and dreams of a people with promises of salvation (Erap’s ‘Para sa Mahirap’ slogan, for example), isn’t that by itself proof that there is that market to be deceived? And, conversely, that that market can choose not to be deceived. And, therefore, when the market does choose the latter, the power brokers can perhaps only hope for a miracle if they in their turn choose not to adapt themselves to the dynamics of a people’s ignorance transformed into awareness. How do power brokers adapt to a people’s growing awareness? It varies. But this fact always remains: that awareness is a factor in marketing, and products are grown in the market according to the people’s ignorance, gullibility, or fears, as well as to their awareness, anger, and courage. [END]

Five fruits of the National Art tree

from left to right: Cinemalaya Foundation founder Nestor O. Jardin, National Artist for Theater Design Salvador Bernal, CCP Chair Emily Abrera, National Artist for Literature F. Sionil Jose, National Artist for Literature Bienvenido Lumbera, in a press conference announcing the group's questioning the decision of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to add four new National Artist awardees without consulting the selection committee. (Photo from http://www.pep.ph/news/22724/CCP:-Malaca%C3%B1ang-bypassed-rules-of-the-selection-process-for-National-Artists/1/2)

THE tug of war between those who want Gloria Arroyo to retract her insertion of the names of Carlo Caparas and Cecile Guidote-Alvarez into the year's National Artist of the Philippines status roster, on the one hand, and those who want to defend the President's prerogative through either legal terms or a rare aesthetic liberalism, on the other, continues. "I'm happy that it's in the court," Alvarez told the press. "There will be no more shouting in the streets. We can have a civilized discussion."

     Really? I predict that come the day of the awarding ceremony, a few will yet reel, others be shaking their heads, and some be in a self-congratulatory mood. I shall merely ask the question again: where does this really end?

1. Battles

I do not just mean this one about Caparas and Alvarez, but the whole shebang of battling it out for an aesthetic hegemony and political accommodation which has long been here, only not as loudly annoying in the past as now: there were the less raucous protestation by some quarters over composer Ernani Cuenco's recognition by Joseph Estrada's government, the questioning eyebrows over Fernando Poe Jr.'s conferment, the rumors spread about town regarding Virgilio Almario's, weird glances towards Ben Cabrera's, and a few more. Who is to say these guys don't deserve the elephantine Recognition? Who is to say they do? I declare that, like the first EDSA (or EdlSA) revolution that birthed a thousand EdlSA-like mini-rallies all over the country that always spring up every time a mayor is asked to vacate his seat, the Caparas and Guidote-Alvarez affair will henceforth birth an annual parade of protests from the Cultural Center of the Philippines to the National Commission for Culture and the Arts over the coming years' (decades') new National Artist recognitions. And why is that? Because everybody still agrees it's not the "system" that's rotten, at present it's only Gloria Arroyo and Carlo Caparas and Cecile Guidote-Alvarez who stink in the minds of their opposition; in fact, almost everyone agrees, with a constant nod toward each other, Catholic Church mass-fashion, that the National Artist award is holy.

     In her Philstar.com column of last Saturday, "New Morning for Inang Bayan," Sylvia Mayuga wrote: "Only 15 days had passed since this fighting spirit went to court for arbitration of this controversy weighted to the side of the Muse."
     I'm wondering, though, if the Muse is aware that the defendant in court is her own son (Caparas), daughter (Alvarez), and spouse (Arroyo). When the Muse allowed herself to marry and remarry and remarry, again and again, always at the disposal of any government for a husband (even while Eastern Europe's artists were celebrating their divorce from the clutches of their respective governments' domestic violence), this Philippine Muse virtually allowed herself to be tied to a monster system she would forever have to contend with. It's not going to stop at Caparas and Alvarez, as it did not at Ernani Cuenco or Fernando Poe Jr., as it did not when whispers crawled the gutters over Virgilio Almario's "canonization." Again, who is to say they don't or do deserve the honor? There will always be this battle, because the Muse told her children to scramble for their father's (the government's) blessing. And I'm not just talking about the government at Malacañang, but the government of cultural institutions whereby the process of nationalizing art has forever been celebrated in this country as every artistic child's ideal reference. But I wouldn't blame the children. Nor would I blame the approached or welcomed spouse. I'd blame the Muse. The Muse in us all.

     Or Muses, if you will. From the Philippines on to Europe and on until we reach the US's National Endowment for the Arts, the same combats over judgments, marginalization, mis-appreciations, the deserving and the undeserving, unworthy authority, and so on, within this system of state art patronage, rankle on like an irritating global itch no one wants to finally cure.

2. Dependence

The Muses. It's all over the country. Everywhere you go in the archipelago, in every province, the classic complaint goes like this: our government here is not supportive of the arts. We heard the same complaint hurled against then Cory Aquino's press secretary Teddy Boy Locsin when he expressed the taboo declaration: "culture is not a priority." We hurled the same pail of tears at President Fidel Ramos, whose government echoed Locsin's plea.

     I say we, and why not?—almost every one of us in the arts is guilty of having benefited at one time or another from this system. I say we, because it is not seldom that we are all led by our artistic hunger to approach anyone and anything dangling the possibility of sponsorship that would boost our careers. And whether you've failed a thousand times to get that grant or won a thousand times at getting that funding, the fact remains that we are all affected. Grant winners and funding application losers both marched to the NCCA to protest the new "scandalous affair" or expressed disgust on their respective Facebook Walls. Isn't it about time, though, we examine whether this cycle of dependence is really what we want, this mode of measuring art and achievements or this route of guaranteeing production really what we prefer?

     I'm surely going to be despised by a lot of my peers for sticking to my belief that the state should have no business interfering in the arts. The arts are exchanges among artists and audiences. When government favors certain voices, that is to say, favors them with grants using public money, that's tantamount to asking another voice (say, an unfavored one) to contribute via taxation to the fund for the government-favored voices who are actually his government-favored competitors. I say, why not allow the arts to be handled by the individual and by the private sector and free the state from the headache of choosing artists to favor? Why not leave the state alone, so it can focus on the running of museums and education and social services? If government is to put a stake in the arts, should it not only be for education purposes? Doesn't it look legitimate when universities handle the arts instead of Commission bureaucrats, if only because in the universities it’s often for education purposes?

     When government interferes in education it does so in cognizance of its duty to equality. When it interferes in the people's various arts, it does so out of an ignorance of its people's variety. As to who among my friends enjoy having to pay a cultural tax every time he/she buys a movie ticket, with the awareness that this collection might be used to fund the art or literature of his/her peers whose art make him/her puke, I do not know. What I know is I might not mind contributing materials to some, and only some, of the artists being presently funded by the government, but that the government would dictate me to do so (through the tax system) does not make me feel happy about my contribution. Why does my contribution have to be regulated? I will go visit my friend artists and lend them loans anytime I want, not because government tells me to. It's quite ironic. While Poland and the rest of Eastern Europe fought to liberate its artists from the hold of the state, here we are as a nation with even communist-hating elements of the educated or financial elite asking government to put its hands deeper into the arts pot. The National Artist title controversy of 2009 is the monster everybody in the arts helped create. And this controversy will not be the last, until we face the fact that there will always be this battle for who gets the blessing of government and of art authorities with government appointments. I asked in one of my blogs in my blog series on the National Artist award, why are we so into the nationalization of the arts that Lino Brocka so hated?

     And why is it that it's the arts profession alone that's getting this favor? Why not, say, the baking profession? Imagine this to be the case among bakers, for example. The bakers would rally around a town plaza with placards saying "Give More Support to Baking!" "Support the Baking Culture!" And each one of the bakers approaches a journalist and testifies to this lack of the government's support for baking. Not support in terms of flour price regulation/subsidies, but in terms of flour-making grants or for the awarding of the National Baker of the Philippines title. Would Dunkin' Donuts and Country Style enjoy watching bakers from Mister Donut go home with the favor, knowing that they (DD and CS) contributed modest or hefty sums into that baking subsidy fund? Why can't the bakeshops and the bakers just compete without a public option? This is not healthcare, for god's sake, it's baking! And what is true for baking or skateboard manufacturing or the party event business should be true for painting, for filmmaking, or for making those cute little poems too!

3. Stultification

I had a discussion again on this issue with Lila Shahani, an Oxford University doctoral candidate working on postcolonial writing in English, who recently became one of my Facebook friends and a main character in my blog of last week titled "Two fruits, one tree (or, why there is no such thing as a national artist)"—also a part of my series of blogs about the National Artist title award. Ms. Shahani agrees I should present my following query to each and every artist in this artistic nation: "I think the larger question—should government be funding the arts and, if so, in what manner?—begs serious attention." But then, she also lays down on the table her own take and queries: "You apparently think that government shouldn't interfere, period. I feel that it should be involved in terms of funding indigenous or larger ethnic and regional communities so they can produce the art more easily (venues, workshops, materials, etc). Should there be academic/cultural canon-makers, however? I'd have to think about that some more. Where it might appear, at first blush, that this encourages creativity, it might in fact be the case that too much of it can actually stultify the very creativity it hopes to engender."

     Too much of it, not enough of it, stultify it will. The nationalization of art produces acceptable art, safe art, pretty art, nationalistic art, protest art that doth not protest too much towards the government that maketh it eat—certainly not art that questions the standards and clichés of those in "authority," certainly not art that explores virgin forests of beauty that have long been regarded as ugly by those who have to approve your funding, certainly not art that defies the codes of prettiness, not art that defies convention or conventional "fashionable rebellion," not art that questions long-established definitions of nationhood and good citizenry. And the reason for that is simple: guided art is un-free art.

     So, am I saying that much of the art sponsored by government funds have been mediocre? No. Some of them may even be revolutionary. But that would be because their revolutions got approval; in short, approved revolutions. What about those who didn't get their revolutions approved? What happens to their revolutions? How many have been sponsored that turned out to be mediocre, how many turned out to be great? How many got hefty grants for forgettable performances? Critics in their various fields of specialty can answer those questions and tell us whether government funding has really wrought out champions. How many revolutionary (or simply innovative) art got disapproved? Why? And even assuming that critics of the future will all agree that the CCP under, say, former advertising-industry stalwart Emily Abrera was a grand phase in CCP's history, what is to stop the institution from degenerating into a less grand epoch under new management?

4. Death of the Individual

Creativity is anywhere and everywhere. Apart from artists supporting themselves, not all of whom are well-to-do, how many times do we witness support for artists given by private individuals and foundations? And, lacking that support, how many times have we heard the phrase "aesthetics of poverty" passed around in areas where a lack of funds for expensive oil paint exists and creativity is still running wild? Why should government dip its powerful hands in the free exchange as if it wants to put up a propaganda TV station to compete with the private networks, yet operated via those networks' large tax contributions?

     The nurture of achievements? Artistic achievement can neither be a property of the state nor the claim of the state. Many experiences in communist countries have shown us a thousand times the futility of achieving high artistic standards under the state's guidance defining what is the highest art, unless the art products in their pedestals are read in the context of irony. The National Endowment for the Arts in the US, with its more advanced guidelines for approval in terms of communal representation or democratic accommodation, is still constantly pestered by questions of too much interference by the boards (and I'm not just talking about the Robert Mapplethorpe affair). Artistic achievement is finally by the individual and for critics to debate on, and many an individual artistic genius proved to have better achieved their stature through the minimal interference of somebody else's guidance. To say that it is worthwhile for the government to spend twenty million pesos for twelve artists with the hope that the investment will catch one genius is baloney. Artists become lesser geniuses with their patron's interference and become visceral geniuses when they have a falling out with their patrons. Or, as in the case of Ludwig van Beethoven, when they don't care much for what their patrons demand and seek to surprise them instead with what these patrons didn't expect.

5. Brainwashed Art

Who will be mother to the arts if government opts out? This has been the classic blackmail verse flaunted by those who have come to believe that if government opts out of arts-funding, the arts will die. But even such frightened dependence can be inspired by a lot of branding they can see around them. Booker or Man Booker, Pulitzer, Nobel, Palanca, Ayala, among other names—these are private efforts that can boast of better patronage than their counterparts in government. And if you don't agree with the various institutions' standards of the good and the beautiful, fine, it's their money, not yours. A government arts commission, in contrast, would tell you to go to hell if you can't agree with their standards but still ask you to pay your cultural taxes so they can continue to operate.

     Who will be mother to the arts if government opts out? Ask that to the artists from the provinces who do not have access to public funding, who never had access to such public funding. Ask that to the urban artists who scoff at the approval demands and inane requirements by the committees lording it over artists' theses as masters of the acceptable.

     "France is pretty heavily centralized this way and there hasn't been as much new blood as, say, England or the US," says Shahani. That is a critical opinion. But my friend brings out an example of long dependence that has not adapted well to the globalized valuation of respect for the market. As with the US National Endowment for the Arts, long been a topic for contention in the US, as with the Philippine cycle of cliques' battling it out for a hold on the CCP or the NCCA, as with France's proclivity for subsidies, artists—for a long time now alienated from the popular artists of the middle to latter 20th-century—have come to distrust the market. Artists have called the market, or the popular audience, stupid. They have called the market uneducated. And so, as if to wound it with vengeance, indirectly want to tax it for their nurture and survival so they can ram their respective weirdness on the masses' uncomprehending throats.

     "But leaving artistic recognition to the invisible hand of the market," as Ms. Shahani points out, "might not necessarily be a bad thing (as long as production itself has been subsidized) since it will generate competition and creativity, which is exactly what we want and need. This might in fact be more effective in the long run than having artists wait for—and conform to—government dole-outs."

The Pith

This is all understandable, really. Many a book have been written about how art veered too far away from the popular audience. And although there are still, say, the Juzo Itamis and the Quentin Tarantinos in "art cinema" or "film festival cinema" who have found ways of addressing both the needs of professors and those of ordinary sarariman (salary men), all in one product, the bulk of the artist population still prefers to talk to their fellow artists. Or to the art societies' embedded critics. Or to the well-heeled patrons of the art.

     Which is just fine, really. I do that, too. My poetry and fiction in English are mostly not for the masses. Not yet, anyway, and maybe never will be. But we, artists, shouldn't tax the people so we can concoct forever our esoteric kind of stuff. Who will be mother to the arts if government opts out? Well, no one! And I mean no one should baby artists, and certainly not the state. An artist should work his butt off and fund himself. He should be able to see that when he begins to do that, he would not just have learned how to work, he would have learned how to think and compete. And what if our artists cannot start to do that? I'd say no number of Caparases and Alvarezes will ever wake us to the real problem: artists' scrambling for, and consequent embarrassing dependence on, blessings from the State.

     I ask, why should your art as one artist be subsidized by a hundred of your peers and a thousand of your uncomprehending neighbors? Isn't that by itself no less shameful than what we're presently protesting against as political patronage? [FIN]

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Author's note: This author wishes to acknowledge Sylvia Mayuga for the guest display of this blog essay on her Philstar.com column, appearing there as a wonderfully-streamlined version of the blog care of Mayuga's own experienced hands. I am tremendously honored.