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Of Rizal, Shakespeare, and Mideo Cruz: Top 11 in arts and theater in 2011


As with every year ender, this is replete with limitations. The major one for arts and books is its cost—and I don’t mean the cost of buying art. Contrary to popular belief, I don’t usually get to watch plays for free, which I don’t really mind, but it does put a limit on the theater productions I can go to at any given time. Art exhibits of course are free, but given that galleries and museums are spread out across the city, it’s always a challenge to actually see everything that’s going on at any given time. Between distance and the cost of public transportation or gas and parking… you get my drift.
 
So here’s a list of the arts and theater that I spent on in the past year, ones that I think are the more important 11 to talk about as 2011 draws to a close.
 
Mideo Cruz and 'Poleteismo.' There’s a general disinterest in Philippine art in this country, and so when it came under attack it was not only Mideo Cruz who was surprised—we all were. After all “Poleteismo” had been exhibited before, and it’s easy to come up with a list of works that deserve the accusations of blasphemy and kabastusan more than this one. But here’s the power of a TV show latching onto the work with the tone it takes for an exposé of sorts. Lynching could only follow. And with no clear united voice asserting the stand of the art community, with the discussions within the art community muddled by questions of whether this was good or bad art, it was easy to see why we failed to win this battle against conservatism and rabid Catholics. We’d like to think it ended with the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) deciding to close down the whole Kulo exhibit of which “Poleteismo” was part. I think it ended with the revelation of who exactly are the conservatives among us—National Artists and broadsheets included. Then there’s this: who has cared about Philippine art since then? No one really. And we come full circle.
 
Ronald Ventura breaks a record. And sells his work “Grayground” for P46.9 million at the Sotheby’s Modern and Contemporary Southeast Asian Paintings auction in Hong Kong in April 2011. That this prize tag was celebrated was wonderful for sure, but it does beg questions that the art world refuses to answer, much less problematize. That is, how are we valuing local art at this point? What processes are involved in the “making” of art extraneous to the artist, the curator, the critic, the historian? How are these processes affected by a growing globalized art system within which we are no big players, but another marginal art space open to interpretation and valuation and reimagination by the wealthier other? But we’d rather not discuss these beyond the academic sphere where they are expected to exist, we’d rather not talk about the money beyond P46.9 million pesos, we’d rather really celebrate a major coup such as this especially if it means staying in the dark about what goes on behind the scenes, eh?
 
ManilArt 2011. Speaking of the dark and sad about the arts, it must be said that while I will not deny my affinity to this year’s ManilArt director Delan Robillos, the talk that happened during and after the event is more horrendous than any of the biases we might speak of. Because there might be reason to complain about every change made to ManilArt this year—fewer booths, a big reveal moment, a program that was worth watching—but it cannot be said that there was no rationale in these changes. And so given the ones whose hot headedness got the better of them at the gala because they didn’t care for the program, the more classy art patrons revealing they just wanted first dibs at the art and didn’t care much for anything else, and anonymous text messages fueling talk about fake art, it was clear that the collective spirit that the director wanted to create for this year’s ManilArt was not welcome. So while it might not have felt or looked like a baratilyo or tiangge, the ugly talk in ManilArt 2011 did make it seem more like it. Art and cheapness do come together. How’s that for a reality check?
 
The year of Jose Rizal. In the year of National Hero Jose Rizal’s 150th birthday, theater and museums celebrated. But it was the small exhibit that was Touch Me in Hiraya Gallery that sadly went unnoticed, which is not surprising considering that it dealt with questions we’d rather not ask about Rizal and his writing, issues we’d rather not discuss in light of art making in this country. There’s the fact of false power we might be attributing to Rizal’s books given that a majority of us only read it in translation. There’s the mass and capitalist distribution of Rizal images and its use in art and its enterprise. Which brings to light access as myth: do we really know how to access Rizal, his books, any form of art at all? Isn’t access always restricted to begin with, from the distance that’s default in translation, to the distance that art placed in a gallery creates between artist and spectator? And so in this exhibit, the spectator breaches this distance and is allowed to touch the works of 10 artists, who made books that might have been as much inspired by Rizal as these go against the (re-)production of Rizal, and against the inaccessibility of art, in contemporary times. The books were produced, priced, sold and distributed in the course of the exhibit, putting into question the valuation of art and art making, and allowing the spectator not just access but ownership. That it was as liberating for me as spectator, as it must have been for the artists, as it should be for the year of Rizal’s 150th, makes it worthy of mention. This exhibit was curated by the poet Angelo Suarez.
 
Nothing to Declare. An art project that has brought together local and international artists around the question of migration and connectedness, the transience of current times, Nothing To Declare is an ongoing exhibit at Vargas Museum in UP Diliman and the Yuchengco Museum at the RCBC Plaza in Makati. What might be most interesting about this project is its premise that art needs to be discussed, not just as end product, but as process. One that involves creativity but even also movement—literally and figuratively—from the task itself of beginning and ending an art project, to traveling through/via/with the creation of art, to the fact of its infinite possibilities, its endlessness. But just looking at it as art exhibition? The installations are so worth going to the museums for, particularly Josephine Turalba’s “Ecdysis” and Nikki Luna’s “Ovoid/Void” with Hanna Pettyjohn’s “Untitled” all at Yuchengco, as well as the video installations across both Yuchengco and Vargas. Nothing to Declare is a project initiated by Flaudette May Datuin, Josephine Turalba and Precious Leaño. The Vargas Museum exhibit is curated by Leo Abaya, and the Yuchengco Museum exhibit by Claro Ramirez, Jr.
 
Pilipinas Street Plan. The tail end of last year had this community of street artists invading the Lopez Museum in an exhibit entitled Extensions where they filled one room with murals and installations inspired by and going against works by National Artist J. Elizalde Navarro (1975), Fernando Zobel (1961), and the 18th century map of the Philippines by Pedro Murillo Velarde. Suffice it to say that PSP rocked that project mostly by being itself: the room was filled with their rakenrol following, which is to say it could only make the hoity-toity art crowd infinitely uncomfortable. But also this year, overshadowed by the controversial “Poleteismo,” PSP put up a mural in the second floor hallway of the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) to commemorate Rizal’s 150th , and it was work that was way more critical than most. It rendered Rizal as a ladies’ man, labeled him as everyman, the normalization not at all a tribute as it was an up-yours: you are one of us and nothing else. And this is ultimately what PSP's productivity lives off as well: a normalization of art by celebrating it in public spaces, and an insistence on the fleeting and transient and pricelessness of graffiti. That this also goes beyond the gallery system is precisely the point.   
 
Pastrana and Anading make signs. Early in the year Gary Ross Pastrana and Poklong Anading did Between Signs at Silverlens Gallery, and I fell in love with it. So much so that I couldn’t write about it (yes, it’s a lot like falling in love with a real person), and instead I inhabited that space the two artists created, re-inhabited it through the photos that I took, and just kept it for myself. I knew then that more than the dialogue of similarity and difference that Between Signs fostered as the two artists put together pieces/versions of their past works into one exhibit, it was the reconfiguration that attracted me to the exhibit. For as they drew the lines that connected the art making they both had been doing separately but within the same group exhibits—even more so the same art world–Pastrana and Anading ended up disturbing the existing signifiers (their individual works) upon which their individual artistries are based. But this necessarily also meant destabilizing what these works mean–debunking existing signifieds–for them, practically destroying really the works that are the premise of both their successes as artists, thereby also putting into question their being artists period. It’s a paean to transience of meanings like no other, something art would rather not deal with, but which is really in the hands of Pastrana and Anading’s Between Signs? Practically a death of sorts. And yes that’s me waxing romantic.
 
National Artist F. Sionil Jose. The past year was witness to National Artist F. Sionil Jose’s acrimonious honesty about arts and culture in this country. Over the breakfast buffet at the Singapore Writers’ Fest last October, he told me, “Hija, at my age, you just get really angry about the way things are,” as he launched a diatribe about what has happened to the Philippines post-EDSA, and how we’ve come to trail Singapore and the rest of Southeast Asia. As I had the morning’s coffee and pastries, this old man’s anger suddenly made sense to me: I might not agree with his aesthetics, nor about what art is and isn’t; but I will respect his right to now speak without a filter, calling a spade a spade, sans apologies. He’s got the years over us, but even more important, he’s got work to support what he says. I’d rather hear what F. Sionil’s got to say than what the self-proclaimed cultural experts on these shores have to say; I prefer his painful honesty than self-serving parochial criticism anytime.
 
Shakespeare in the year of Rizal. Go figure. While PETA’s claim to fame this year might be CareDivas, it’s sad that what this overshadowed was an infinitely better production in William. A high school musical (literally) written by Ron Capinding, this focused on the learning of William Shakespeare’s work vis a vis the real life struggles of middle-class teenagers in light of issues such as family pressure and oppression, school bullies, homosexuality and stereotyping. This is one production that proves that there is great original theater on these shores, even as it is inspired by someone as foreign as Shakespeare. It would be a Shakesperean tragedy meanwhile that would make for one of the best productions I saw this year. Tinarantadong Asintado, an adaptation by Layeta Bucoy of Titus Andronicus directed by Tuxqs Rutaquio for Dulaang UP, was haunting and beautiful–in its use of language, but even more so in its staging. Controlled craziness never looked this good.
 
Celebrate the talent. Truth to tell I’d rather we do original work–there are tons of locally written plays that have yet to be staged after all. But this year I found value in the fact of Atlantis Productions and 9 Works Theatrical staging what they have, if only because it is here that local talent does shine still, over and above, or maybe precisely because, they are within foreign texts. In 9 Works’ Sweet Charity for example, that ensemble cast was just brilliant, living up to the challenge of a Bob Fosse production and choreography, highlighting as well the talent of people like OJ Mariano and Ciara Sotto, underrated as these two are. Atlantis Productions’ staging of Brian Yorkey and Tom Kitt’s Next To Normal meanwhile proved that a cast of six Filipinos–when they are up to par with a Pulitzer Prize winning text–can carry an audience to the depths of despair and the heights of hope.
 
Virgin Labfest 7. Because the talent was so worth the trips I made to the CCP, and the amount I had to pay for parking and gas and food. It was tiring for sure, and just filled–filled!–with so much work painful to watch because it was truthful and heartfelt and of-this-context. But here were the biggest things that CCP’s Little Theater, with the most sparse of sets, did for me this year: Kawala by Rae Red and directed by Paolo O’Hara, Evening At The Opera by Floy Quintos and directed by Jomari Jose, Mga Lobo Tulad ng Buwan by Pat Valera, alongside all three plays revisited from last year’s VLF. And on that stage, the gift of talent: Chris Pasturan, Miles Kanapi, and Ana Abad Santos.
 
And here was my 2011. There aren’t a lot of names here compared to last year, where I had Mark Salvatus and Dina Gadia among others, and this is not to say that no names—old or new—is worthy of mention. I do think though that it seemed like a quiet year, with no major jaw-dropping exhibits or successes, though that could be me becoming more jaded through the years? It could also just be the Rizal-mania that permeated the arts.
 
Or it could be that the “Poleteismo” debacle just outshone everything else. The consuelo de bobo then was: “At least people are now talking about Philippine art!” Well yeah, but much might be said about speaking of art intelligently and critically, respecting the freedom and liberalism it lives off of. Otherwise all that happens when the noise dies down is that we’ve given government an excuse to spend less on arts and culture, and the bigger public is even more disenfranchised in our own refusal to engage them in better discourses about why art is important and relevant and valuable.
 
And in the end, when the noise died down, we just went back into our tiny little bubble labeled Philippine arts and culture. Now where’s the good in that? –KG/HS, GMA News
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