Iconoclasm in art / failure of nerve

By Elmer Ordonez

Senator Edgardo Angara may well have put the “Kulo” controversy to rest by not recommending sanctions against the CCP board. All possible sides were heard at last Tuesday’s Senate probe presided over by the former UP president. Enlightened and benighted views and questions were entertained. Angara seemed satisfied that the CCP board promised to review their procedures for exhibits.

All’s well that ends well? Here’s my take on the issue:

Weeks of pressure from the Church clergy/ partisans including Palace intervention compelled the CCP board to pull out the entire “Kulo” exhibit, not just the controversial installation “Polytheism” of Mideo Cruz.

CCP chair Emily Abrera said the board did not “cave in” to the pressure but a decision was reached, by referendum, to withdraw the exhibit before its expiry today. Against the closure were Abrera, Florangel Braid, and Carol Espiritu while a majority of six including CCP president Raul Sunico were for closure for reasons of “public safety.”

The exhibit had already been shown at Ateneo and UP Diliman and no problem arose from viewers. The exhibit was to commemorate the 150th birth anniversary of Rizal by alumni artists of Rizal’s alma mater, the University of Santo Tomas, celebrating its 400th year of its founding. Historically, the UST’s school of fine arts under the late National Artist Victorio Edades was a pioneer in modernist art while the University of the Philippines was still following the classical style with Fernando Amorsolo and Guillermo Tolentino as leading lights. Edades’ 1928 exhibit triggered a running debate between the moderns and the conservatives.

At the about the same time Jose Garcia Villa was suspended from the UP for his “obscene” poem “Man-Songs” by a committee led by traditional poet Dean Jorge Bocobo who must have thought Villa’s modernist work was “bad writing.”

The advent of modern art or “the shock of the new” came rather late in the Philippines. Mideo Cruz’s installation would have been in its element during the time of “Dadaism” in Europe. Edades’ works were modern in style but were they infused with “ideology and politics” like Picasso’s anti-fascist “Guernica?” Edades’ “The Builders” had a proletarian touch; his students were more into depicting Filipino history and identity like the murals of Carlos “Botong” Francisco.

“Dadaism” itself (with Marcel Duchamp as a favorite example with his “Fountain,” a urinal hanging from his installation) was a protest against the senselessness of the First World War and against bourgeois art. He did not expect the public would tolerate his “shock art.” Just as the academe in Loyola and Diliman did not create a big fuss over Cruz’s work. Thanks to a TV camera man who showed shots to the bishops when the trouble began.

“Kulo” or revolutionary ferment was obviously inspired by Rizal’s iconoclasm in the last decades of the 19th century when Rizal and the Propagandists produced incendiary literature that would lead to the 1896-1898 Revolution that ended Spanish colonial/monastic rule. Rizal and Marcelo del Pilar were particularly scathing in their anti-friar writings. The two novels of Rizal to this day are taught in some schools expurgating or sanitizing passages considered offensive to the Church.

Constantino Tejero of Inquirer thinks Cruz’s “Polytheism” is expressive of “racial memory embedded in the subconscious”— a virtual history of church and colonial abuses up to the present. Lito Zulueta also of Inquirer consigns Cruz’s work to iconoclastic art. Iconoclasm has a long history of idol-smashing (literally and figuratively) in religion, politics, culture and art. The Church itself destroyed images and icons carried by its forces deemed responsible for their defeat in battle.

In Rizal’s time the theocratic state responded to his “blasphemous” and “heretical” novels by banning them and ultimately having him shot by firing squad. Today, if some defenders of the faith have their way, they would perhaps have the offending artist burned at stake like Joan of Arc, and those responsible in the CCP for approving the exhibit, charged in court and made to resign.

Those who find Cruz’s work offensive have the right to protest or to picket the exhibit but do they have the right to resort to vandalism or arson? The latter act conjures images of book-burning, and history is replete with examples of this kind of censorship in totalitarian and supposedly democratic societies. The Church provides the faithful with an index of approved books bearing the phrase “nihil obstat” or nothing objectionable. “Prior restraint” cannot be imposed in a pluralistic society.

The UP Arts studies department statement provides the aesthetic and intellectual justification for engaging controversial art works in discussion rather than banning them. It says: “While there are contending interpretations of an image presented by art, the ethical course of action is to process the contentions and that is what art ensures: a process of communicative action. The closure of an exhibition only achieves the closure of democratic, informed and thoughtful engagement.”

The CCP board may still redeem itself by standing their ground against the recrudescence of obscurantism and repression. They will not be alone.

eaordonez2000@yahoo.com

the path for Revolutionary Routes

by katrina stuart santiago

it was daunting more than anything else, though at some point all that operated was an amount of yabang: i’ve seen friends do this before, i’ve seen wonderful beautiful local books happen without a big publisher behind it, without press releases coming out in papers. and this book, i knew, deserved the major major effort of blood/sweat/tears because it is about family and history. because it is unconventional in form, an almost refusal to fall within the genres that are familiar, a straddling among creative non-fiction/historical essay/memoir. because it demanded a freedom from the standard limitations of publishing, given its refusal as well to deal with the ways in which things are usually written, how they usually look, what can usually be said.

read on

censorship and, uh, karen davila? is that you?

the day after ccp closed the kulo exhibit, the day karen ocampo flores resigned from ccp, a crowing karen davila on teleradyo phoned ccp president raul sunico and said: CLEARLY YOU WILL HAVE TO CENSOR ARTWORK (!)

it would be funny if it didn’t hurt so much… this popular broadcast personality, a u.p. graduate, masscom if i’m not mistaken, obviously doesn’t know that her own freedom of expression should be everyone’s freedom of expression, that the freedom of expression she enjoys was hard-fought and hard-won, that her freedom of expression is contingent on everyone else’s freedom of expression, including, especially, that of artists like mideo cruz, and, yes, works like poleteismo, na hindi pambababoy kundi pagpupukaw ng kaisipan in this very corrupt and catholic country, and not necessarily to the detriment of religion or the undermining of one’s faith.

after all, it could very well be as ust alumnus, now u.p. professor, neil garcia says:

i take issue…with the knee-jerk reaction of some dominican apologists, who are quick to disown mideo cruz with outrageous passion. this artist is indeed a thomasian, for he cares about the church, with which his imagination appears to be slavishly fascinated, even if or precisely as he can only express this care (and this fascination) in disagreeing and disagreeable ways. after all, given the mass reproduction (and reproducibility) of the church’s ubiquitous, habitual and fully habituated images, their willful and disagreeable deformation may in fact be the best way to make them perceptible (and therefore, efficacious) again… this artist may well be an evangelizer of sorts, in which case the philippines’ great thomasian institution should simply revel in this unwitting “accomplishment.”

but i guess that’s all way too high for karen davila who, like imelda and the bishops, simply can’t stand the sight of the penis, can’t see the penis as anything but vulgar and obscene, especially as juxtaposed with images that she holds sacred.  but bong austero, though disgusted and disturbed, too, sees the powerful implications of the images.

There are those who have condemned the art installation for its blasphemous and disgusting images and stop there, dismally failing to see through the powerful implications of the images in terms of preaching morality. Oh please, don’t we all use negative characterizations to preach what is right and moral? Our soap operas, plays, and movies rely on the sheer evil of antagonists to deliver powerful messages of redemption. We tell our kids stories of the big bad wolf and of the evil stepsisters to illustrate the power of positive values by contrast. Why can’t we draw parallels in this particular case? Just because something is disgusting and disturbing doesn’t mean it cannot be moral.

…The art installation takes things to extremes to bring home the message – it is art, for crying out loud, no less different from a play shot through with absurd imagery and over-the-top metaphors and symbolism.

…I have learned by viewing the exhibit that faith is strongest when put to the test. The icons that we revere are mere representations of the Supreme Being that we worship. When one’s faith is strong and resolute, provocation in the form of disgusting images can only strengthen it further rather than weaken it.

The tragedy is that we live in a country where freedom, tolerance and respect for diversity are mere theoretical concepts that are embraced only when these suit one’s comfort zone and never in situations when their application would truly matter.

worse we have a president who, after expressing disapproval of the artwork, now says there’s no censorship.  yeah, right.

the major major question now for karen davila is, paano na ang iyong rh bill advocacy?  and don’t tell me that one has nothing to do with the other.  charlson ong in imelda redux makes the connection, too, especially since anti-rh congressmen and senators have gleefully joined the fray.

Why has Art that has heretofore been the concern of a few gallery-goers, artists, critics, collectors, students and sundry eggheads suddenly become the object of congressional ire?

Might it not be that the Religious Right, gearing up for a final RH fight, and stung by revelations on the “Montero Bishops” are opening up another front in their war against “secularists” and their perceived allies in the Aquino Administration? Your paranoia is as good as mine.

more and more it seems to me this was a test case, the bishops and their anti-rh constituency testing the waters: will scare tactics work, will the media be supportive?  so paano na, karen davila?  you’ve given the bishops an inch, next time they’ll take a foot.  today it’s no to penises on artwork in the ccp, tomorrow it’ll be no to any and all mention of “ari” and “penis” in all media.  paano na ang sex education that young and old alike are in dire need of?

it was a trap, karen davila, and you walked right into it.  so now you’re cleaning up, it would seem.  can’t find your headstart interview with chris millado on you tube, can’t find pinky webb’s xxx either.  good job, girls.  self-censorship after such major major foot-in-mouth disasters?  not that we’ll ever forget.  neither will the bishops who must oh-so-love-you.  i’m sure though that it’s no ticket to any kind of heaven.

the industry of offense, art as sacrificial lamb 
boiling over: Kulo
Kulo full album 

CCP folds to terrorism :(

on teleradyo, karen davila and vic what’shisname are ignorance & arrogance personified.  speaking for an angry people daw, and telling us how to think and what to think.  hey you two, you’re back in the dark ages, along with the prez and some senators and congressmen, why am i not surprised, the bishops must oh so love you.  at the very least, please read this : roby alampay’s Democracy as Religion, and level up the thinking and talking naman!

Let us take it from the experience of Muslims. (Let us be honest to start, in other words: If there is any religion that truly reels from shallow and irresponsible discourse in the Western-media dominated modern world, it is Islam.) Just before 9/11, and even before some Danish cartoonist with balls started drawing Mohammed, Islamic nations led by Pakistan had begun calling annually for a non-binding UN resolution condemning “defamation of religion”. Every year from 2001 to 2010 the proposition received a majority vote from the UN Human Rights Council and the General Assembly.

But every year, too, that majority vote had grown smaller and smaller, with previously fence-sitting members of the UNHRC one-by-one siding with the resolution’s steadfast critics: they who had warned that the broadly-worded resolution would likely be used by repressive governments to stifle any expression that can even remotely be tied to religious sensibilities. (The Catholic Church in the Philippines, for example, ties faith and decency to everything from the Reproductive Health debates to jueteng.)

The “religious defamation” lobby, in a strategic retreat, abandoned the annual campaign for a UN resolution against defamation of religion this year. Instead, it sought common ground with advocates for free expression, who were coming to every annual vote with an ever-growing list of reports and governments that had been proving their fears well-founded. The result: the UNHRC this year voted unanimously, no longer passing a resolution “combating defamation of religions”, but in its stead, one (with a deep breath) “combating intolerance, negative stereotyping and stigmatization of, and discrimination, incitement to violence, and violence against persons based on religion or belief.”

Two crucial shifts in the thinking. First, the focus goes from requiring governments to protect religion, to demanding that states protect individuals. Second, the emphasis is no longer on religion, but on tolerance.

The consensus no longer calls for restrictions on legitimate expression. Instead, it takes a more constructive and positive approach, emphasizing education, not prison and not violence, to weed out intolerance and bigotry (which, in any culture, is always seen as a symptom of maleducation, bad breeding, and an immature society.)

Tolerance will ultimately benefit all, the heretics as well as the faithful.

and to filipino artists out there.  i am dismayed that we are not united in protesting CCP’s surrender to CBCP’s censorship.  this is not about how worthy or unworthy mideo cruz’s art is.  this is about being forced to abide by values that blind and terrorize.  tinitimbang tayo nguni’t kulang :(

Let the artists be weird. They can only try to push the boundaries of thought and expression. That is why they are called the avant-garde. They are soldiers further in advance of the army itself, slashing and burning and clearing the path for whatever may follow. The boundaries must be expanded, but the artists themselves have no power to dictate where the rest of society will go.

For governments, on the other hand, as even the Organization of Islamic Conference effectively conceded, the reflex to empower itself, and to restrict rather than expand democratic space, is automatic. The notion that states can and should define and execute what is criminally insulting is an invitation to destroy all that a nation such as ours supposedly upholds: democracy as well as, ironically, faith itself.

Imelda Marcos, coming down on the side of the Inquirer, spoke of the Cultural Center of the Philippines as sanctuary for the Filipino soul. For all, she said more specifically, that is true, and good, and beautiful about this nation. She throws in the proposition that as a state institution, there is no place in the CCP for any thought that could insult any religion.

Actually, it is the other way around. As a state institution consecrated to the arts, the CCP should be agnostic to the notion of insult, and dogmatic to the possibility of expression, to the chance of happening upon art.

Art as Terrorism? Try Democracy as Religion. Where democracy is dogma, every expression is prayer, freedom is shared and miraculously multiplied to nourish the multitude – the idiots and even abusive among them. Abuse, of course, as in all religions, is a sin; but abuse of thought is also always indefinable, and so in the democratic theology, tolerance is the highest virtue. Democracy provides the only true environment where you can defend your faith, if you really have it, while also protecting the rights of others, if you really believe we all deserve it.