The future of progress
Our family had a get together during the holidays. My brother's son was home for Christmas, from work in Manila as a computer programmer for a Singapore based company doing much work for the Hong Kong government.
Typical or even expected of such workers in what is seen as a cutting-edge industry he was brimming with confidence in the future of technology; that technology shall solve the problems we are facing today as spelled out, he said, in a book he had recently finished reading.
At this, my friend who is visiting and I exchanged knowing glances. Her siblings are also into computer science, though perhaps not as sold as my nephew seemingly is into the “high technology has all the answers” mantra.
More than perhaps her siblings and almost certainly my nephew, we both have deep skepticism for the ideology of high technology, though we both certainly are intermediate-level computer users who depend on such use for our daily life and, with a well appreciated sense of irony, in the development and even the propagation of our skepticism.
More than the direct use of computers, though, we rely on the written word, hard copy as it were, in books, magazines, journals and assorted publications; one such material she has gifted me with.
Written by Ronald Wright, 'A Short History of Progress,' is a slim volume that presents the case for a second and careful look at 'progress' being traps instead of triumphs, as seen in archaeological records past civilizations have left for us in their ruins, magnificent though we think of them and rightly so.
The title of the first chapter, 'Gauguin's Questions,' immediately grabbed my attention, as an artist who consider Gauguin among my favorites. These questions are contained in one of Gauguin's largest, most enigmatic works done in an outpouring of grief at the news of the death of his favorite daughter and following long and hopeless bouts with illness, poverty and suicidal despair.
Where do we come from, what are we and where are we going are the three questions, the most prominent text, in French, in this mural. It is the last question that Wright seeks to answer in this book and to make the case for a cautionary approach to the promises – temptations, more like – of high technology as the engine of 'progress.'
Anthropology has practically answered the first two questions, writes Wright who is also a historian. We are the remote descendants of apes who lived in Africa about 5 million years ago. What differentiates us from modern apes, our kin and not ancestors, is that over the last 3 million years we have been shaped more by culture than nature to the point of causing so many extinctions that the fossil record of our dominion is like the impact of a small asteroid.
Though not uniform across the globe, our current civilization is the history of the overcoming of 'progress traps.' The first of these traps was the perfection of hunting some 3 millions years ago that saw that spectacular mass slaughter and extinction of the big mammals; mammoths, wooly rhinos, giant wombats and other marsupials, giant tortoise, giant bison, even horses from across the Americas.
The escape from that trap led to farming which, in turn, has led to industrialization and to the greatest and most precarious experiment of all – worldwide civilization.
While there are still differing cultures and political systems in the economic level there is only one big civilization feeding on the whole planet's natural capital.
There is no corner of the biosphere that escapes our hemorrhage of pollution and waste. Such interdependence means that a collapse of civilization, if and when it happens again will, this time, be global. Think climate change.
The book, gloomy as it is, strikes a hopeful note. There is no other future but now. And now is the time to act on sharing resources, cutting down on pollution and waste, dispensing basic health care and birth control, setting economic limits in line with natural ones, and instituting policies that favor caution, conservation and social justice. There won't be another chance.
Sunday, December 31, 2006
Wednesday, December 27, 2006
12.28.06 kulturnatib
Ligalig
I don't follow Tagalog movies much. From experience, I have found them to be a waste of time and money. There are, of course, exceptions. But these have been few and far between. I have been told though that the independent, alternative and digital film scene has become vibrant in the past few years. Proof of this is the slew of (necessarily small) productions, festivals, and awards and recognition garnered by these that have made it to the international film fest circuit.
Cesar Montano is a name that is bruited about as among the new film makers who are invigorating the steadily growing moribund local film industry. He is, of course, an actor first and foremost. And he is not the first to cross over from being in front of the camera to getting behind it, but perhaps, the first to garner a major award with a first attempt. In 2004, he won best director award in the Manila International Film Festival (MIFF) with his movie, “Panaghoy sa Suba.”
For this year's MIFF Montano once more has an entry. “Ligalig,” is a movie that tries to, looks like it is trying to put an MTV, digital edge and a straightforward psychological, crime thriller together. The result, however, is like barako coffee with sour cream dressing. It leaves one with an indescribable taste in the mouth and a determination not to try it again.
A friend, like many female friends who frankly admit to being taken by Montano's good, 'matinee idol' looks, badgered me into watching this movie. Both of us have seen a Montano movie before, but with opposite impressions. She saw “Bagong Buwan,” and considered Montano to be excellent in that movie. I saw “Panaghoy” and thought the movie to fall short of its ambitions. But, we both agreed that the movie poster for this latest Montano was intriguing and well-done.
“I like it already,” she said with the first minutes into the movie that featured solarized close-ups, gritty and soft-focus scenery, edgy title and credits work and gothic-rock soundtracks. I agreed.
Then the movie moves on to what clearly looks like green-mask technique where a foreground action gets superimposed on a background thats supposed to look like a complete scenery. In this case, it is Montano supposedly in a cab – he is a cabbie – driving through Metro Manila though it is impossible to tell just where.
And, in what is a dead give-away, Montano drives like nobody drives in a vehicle that is moving. He holds the steering wheel steadily in zero position. Even a child driving a toy car knows that anything that is moving will always have a small left-right, maybe even up-down play. But, Montano is oblivious to this even while his cab is supposed to be turning as can be seen from the moving background.
But the worse is still to come.
There are characters that are developed only within what's possible in half a sheet of tissue paper, there are scenes that are so gratuitously expected – Katya Santos is so voluptuous that an outdoor shower scene where the camera crawls up and down her glistening body is as expected as fat on pork adobo – there are the police who go about sleep-walking like in their investigation that, in the end, still results in a solution to the crime and there is the action-rooted Montano who has to sneak in an action sequence that leaves one's head in a spin dryer.
This is a technique driven film. And the techniques are that of digital editing and animation. Substance wise it attempts at a montage. But, it is still clearly motivated by the realities of the box-office so there has to be some kind of story behind all that.
Here, the movie fails miserably. One has to look for the story behind or beyond the movie. One has to find it in one's brain, not imagination. Imagination cannot work in a vacuum. Imagination has to work on something.
Here, there is nothing. Or, actually, there are too many things – the bane of Tagalog movies – that amount to nothing.
Box-office wise it doesn't even look promising. There were a total of six other people in the whole theater with us, a day into the festival, who were clueless or simply, perhaps, like us, didn't have enough brains to remember that the old saying about not judging a book by its cover actually meant something.
I don't follow Tagalog movies much. From experience, I have found them to be a waste of time and money. There are, of course, exceptions. But these have been few and far between. I have been told though that the independent, alternative and digital film scene has become vibrant in the past few years. Proof of this is the slew of (necessarily small) productions, festivals, and awards and recognition garnered by these that have made it to the international film fest circuit.
Cesar Montano is a name that is bruited about as among the new film makers who are invigorating the steadily growing moribund local film industry. He is, of course, an actor first and foremost. And he is not the first to cross over from being in front of the camera to getting behind it, but perhaps, the first to garner a major award with a first attempt. In 2004, he won best director award in the Manila International Film Festival (MIFF) with his movie, “Panaghoy sa Suba.”
For this year's MIFF Montano once more has an entry. “Ligalig,” is a movie that tries to, looks like it is trying to put an MTV, digital edge and a straightforward psychological, crime thriller together. The result, however, is like barako coffee with sour cream dressing. It leaves one with an indescribable taste in the mouth and a determination not to try it again.
A friend, like many female friends who frankly admit to being taken by Montano's good, 'matinee idol' looks, badgered me into watching this movie. Both of us have seen a Montano movie before, but with opposite impressions. She saw “Bagong Buwan,” and considered Montano to be excellent in that movie. I saw “Panaghoy” and thought the movie to fall short of its ambitions. But, we both agreed that the movie poster for this latest Montano was intriguing and well-done.
“I like it already,” she said with the first minutes into the movie that featured solarized close-ups, gritty and soft-focus scenery, edgy title and credits work and gothic-rock soundtracks. I agreed.
Then the movie moves on to what clearly looks like green-mask technique where a foreground action gets superimposed on a background thats supposed to look like a complete scenery. In this case, it is Montano supposedly in a cab – he is a cabbie – driving through Metro Manila though it is impossible to tell just where.
And, in what is a dead give-away, Montano drives like nobody drives in a vehicle that is moving. He holds the steering wheel steadily in zero position. Even a child driving a toy car knows that anything that is moving will always have a small left-right, maybe even up-down play. But, Montano is oblivious to this even while his cab is supposed to be turning as can be seen from the moving background.
But the worse is still to come.
There are characters that are developed only within what's possible in half a sheet of tissue paper, there are scenes that are so gratuitously expected – Katya Santos is so voluptuous that an outdoor shower scene where the camera crawls up and down her glistening body is as expected as fat on pork adobo – there are the police who go about sleep-walking like in their investigation that, in the end, still results in a solution to the crime and there is the action-rooted Montano who has to sneak in an action sequence that leaves one's head in a spin dryer.
This is a technique driven film. And the techniques are that of digital editing and animation. Substance wise it attempts at a montage. But, it is still clearly motivated by the realities of the box-office so there has to be some kind of story behind all that.
Here, the movie fails miserably. One has to look for the story behind or beyond the movie. One has to find it in one's brain, not imagination. Imagination cannot work in a vacuum. Imagination has to work on something.
Here, there is nothing. Or, actually, there are too many things – the bane of Tagalog movies – that amount to nothing.
Box-office wise it doesn't even look promising. There were a total of six other people in the whole theater with us, a day into the festival, who were clueless or simply, perhaps, like us, didn't have enough brains to remember that the old saying about not judging a book by its cover actually meant something.
Saturday, December 23, 2006
12.23.06 kulturnatib greetings
Merry Christmas
whether or not you buy into christmas -- and for many christmas is nothing but a lot of buying -- here is my opportunity to express my thanks to all of you for staying with me and this blog, even if much of the time i am unaware just how you are staying with me.
how else to express this but through the good old reliable card! so below is your christmas greetings card from us.
whether or not you buy into christmas -- and for many christmas is nothing but a lot of buying -- here is my opportunity to express my thanks to all of you for staying with me and this blog, even if much of the time i am unaware just how you are staying with me.
how else to express this but through the good old reliable card! so below is your christmas greetings card from us.
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
12.14.06 kulturnatib
Graffiti art
A friend, I think, is trying to make a career in graffiti art. He is equipped for this, more than anybody I know who has the temperament for such. He has enough years of training in art school to get a doctoral degree, though his original ambition was, and, perhaps, continues to be the more modest Certificate of Fine Arts.
I have seen him poring over his books on graffiti art by himself and with other artist friends as well. He has wielded his aerosol can paint spray on wall surfaces of his mother's properties that include two cafes and restaurant and an outdoor activities shop. He even hired an assistant, also a budding graffiti artist, to work with him on these. The reviews to these works are mixed, again coming, mostly, from friends.
I really haven't talked to him about this seeming turn in his career direction. So, I don't know how far he is planning or is determined to bring this forward.
But I would like to tell him that if he is more serious this time around than his last career stab at being a surfer -- or was that a restaurateur? -- then he should move. And move fast.
Because I have caught a glimpse of the future of graffiti art here. And it sucks. I am not talking about the walls that regularly get painted and repainted with civic-inspired works on peace, the environment, the family and all that spice and everything nice. Though these can suck too.
There is as much art on these walls as can be produced by the threat of a failing grade and the various inducements from monetary to funerary -- the promise of cookie points for that one-way trip to heaven.
I am not even talking about the slogan splashed walls of the left, whose imagination seem to be the fill-in-the-blanks kind where the blanks are filled-in with the name of the current national administration in power.
Historically and traditionally, grafitti art has been the canvass of the left or the left-leaning who gave voice to the voiceless, the powerless, the oppressed and, perhaps, even the simply bored.
No, I am talking about something more sinister. More ominous.
In recent days, I have have had to travel the stretch of AS Fortuna street, through both ends of Banilad; the Cebu City end to the Mandaue City end and back, for work.
When I first saw it, I noticed it but paid it no mind. I've seen it before, in more worrying profusion. But, this time, it was by its non-threatening lonesome. It even looked pretty, I grant.
But, the following day there was two more of them. The next day another one was added. This was just on one stretch of wall. The wall of the San Miguel Brewery and Bottling plant, I believe.
What I'm talking about has a name to it. Where I saw it first it is called MMDA Art. These geometrical, mono or trichromatic bunches – five or six to a bunch – you see along the entire length of EDSA. In many of these is the stamping, MMDA Art, like an artist signature or imprint.
This, of course, is an effort, an operation – military operation, comes to mind – to combat real graffiti of the sort that, to many people, especially those in authority who could be at the accusatory spotlight of these graffiti, see them as eyesores.
It won't will not be surprising that these people have an Imeldific view of art. Art is the the clean, the good, the beautiful. Graffiti, in this view is neither clean nor good nor beautiful. Therefore, not art. Even, therefore, nothing.
That's why my friend has to move. He has to claim his space. He has to assert the right for a public expression of art that is not merely cute, pretty, safe, soporific, ultimately boring and funded from the public coffers at that. For I cannot imagine that MMDA art is a free project from an artist's or an artist group's starving good intentions. No way, highway.
He has to assert his right to say that art is not always clean, not always 'good', not even always beautiful. For this, however, he has to realize that it is not the most solid of grounds to build a career on. So is surfing for that matter.
A friend, I think, is trying to make a career in graffiti art. He is equipped for this, more than anybody I know who has the temperament for such. He has enough years of training in art school to get a doctoral degree, though his original ambition was, and, perhaps, continues to be the more modest Certificate of Fine Arts.
I have seen him poring over his books on graffiti art by himself and with other artist friends as well. He has wielded his aerosol can paint spray on wall surfaces of his mother's properties that include two cafes and restaurant and an outdoor activities shop. He even hired an assistant, also a budding graffiti artist, to work with him on these. The reviews to these works are mixed, again coming, mostly, from friends.
I really haven't talked to him about this seeming turn in his career direction. So, I don't know how far he is planning or is determined to bring this forward.
But I would like to tell him that if he is more serious this time around than his last career stab at being a surfer -- or was that a restaurateur? -- then he should move. And move fast.
Because I have caught a glimpse of the future of graffiti art here. And it sucks. I am not talking about the walls that regularly get painted and repainted with civic-inspired works on peace, the environment, the family and all that spice and everything nice. Though these can suck too.
There is as much art on these walls as can be produced by the threat of a failing grade and the various inducements from monetary to funerary -- the promise of cookie points for that one-way trip to heaven.
I am not even talking about the slogan splashed walls of the left, whose imagination seem to be the fill-in-the-blanks kind where the blanks are filled-in with the name of the current national administration in power.
Historically and traditionally, grafitti art has been the canvass of the left or the left-leaning who gave voice to the voiceless, the powerless, the oppressed and, perhaps, even the simply bored.
No, I am talking about something more sinister. More ominous.
In recent days, I have have had to travel the stretch of AS Fortuna street, through both ends of Banilad; the Cebu City end to the Mandaue City end and back, for work.
When I first saw it, I noticed it but paid it no mind. I've seen it before, in more worrying profusion. But, this time, it was by its non-threatening lonesome. It even looked pretty, I grant.
But, the following day there was two more of them. The next day another one was added. This was just on one stretch of wall. The wall of the San Miguel Brewery and Bottling plant, I believe.
What I'm talking about has a name to it. Where I saw it first it is called MMDA Art. These geometrical, mono or trichromatic bunches – five or six to a bunch – you see along the entire length of EDSA. In many of these is the stamping, MMDA Art, like an artist signature or imprint.
This, of course, is an effort, an operation – military operation, comes to mind – to combat real graffiti of the sort that, to many people, especially those in authority who could be at the accusatory spotlight of these graffiti, see them as eyesores.
It won't will not be surprising that these people have an Imeldific view of art. Art is the the clean, the good, the beautiful. Graffiti, in this view is neither clean nor good nor beautiful. Therefore, not art. Even, therefore, nothing.
That's why my friend has to move. He has to claim his space. He has to assert the right for a public expression of art that is not merely cute, pretty, safe, soporific, ultimately boring and funded from the public coffers at that. For I cannot imagine that MMDA art is a free project from an artist's or an artist group's starving good intentions. No way, highway.
He has to assert his right to say that art is not always clean, not always 'good', not even always beautiful. For this, however, he has to realize that it is not the most solid of grounds to build a career on. So is surfing for that matter.
Tuesday, December 05, 2006
12.07.06 kulturnatib
Bike4U(se)
Alfredo Hermosilla and Arnel Dinopol are very similar in many respects, except that Arnel is shorter by a head and they come from practically opposite municipalities of the island of Cebu. Alfredo, is from Danao and Arnel is from Samboan.
Otherwise, both of them are lanky, dark in the way that many rural boys are, they are both 18 years old, taking the same course of electromechanics at the same school, the Center for Industrial Technology and Enterprise (CITE) Technical Institute and, most importantly for why I talked to them, they belong to the same bicycle club.
Despite bicycles hardly ever factoring in our urban planners couch-interest in how our city is designed and planned to work, there are many bikers here, both individuals and organized into bicycle clubs. And, from anecdotal evidence, their numbers are growing. But, it was the first time I heard about a bicycle club of an unbelievably different sort, the one that Alfredo and Arnel are members of, when their club was mentioned at a press conference recently.
Their bicycle club, it was said, didn't have bicycles. But what they lacked in bikes, I learned, they made up for in enthusiasm, doggedness and, most of all, an original, if somewhat impenetrable name: Faxite Omnis.
This press conference was on the occasion of the turn over of funds that were raised by Jens Funk and Martin Langevoord who, last September, biked from Pakistan to China along the Karakoram Highway in what they called 'Bike for a cause '2006,' and who, in this bike-adventure-cum-fund-raising venture, sold kilometrage of the trip that was about 1,100 kms in length at 60Php or 1Euro per kilometer. They raised a total of 69,000 Php.
The beneficiary of the funds is the Bike4U Foundation. This foundation is organized by local bike enthusiasts, many of whose leading lights and driving force, including Funk, are connected with the CITE. The foundation aims at encouraging the use of the bicycle as commuter transportation, especially among students, and to further the familiarization of and operational skills on the bicycle through seminars on bicycle safety, maintenance, assembly and dismantling. Also, the foundation is trying to encourage the participation of the wider bicycling community through their donations of used bicycle parts, equipment and accessories.
Towards the end of this month, used bikes that have been solicited by Funk from Germany are arriving. They are to be distributed to deserving individuals and groups or communities. For reasons of faster implementation, recipient familiarity and demonstrable need and interest, Alfredo and Arnel's bicycle club will be among the first beneficiaries.
No, we didn't form the club because of those bikes, both of them say. “Our club project, making bicycle stands, was Mr. Bobby Payod, our adviser's idea and he suggested it way before we heard that there was an opportunity for our club to finally become a real bicycle club,” says, Alfredo, veiled anticipation sneaking out from his voice.
Undoubtedly, their club will attract more members, both boys agreed. But, with our adviser, we are now working on a more stringent requirement for getting in, they say. The Bike4U foundation has its own stringent requirements for availing of the donated bicycles, which Funk says will serve as a model of sorts for such a project that has never been done before locally.
Fortunately, the club and the foundation's requirement do not include demonstrating the ability to bicycle the short but very steep climb– seriously so, according to Funk -- to the institute's hilltop campus in San Juan, Talamban.
Still, were this the case, Arnel would qualify. “I have climbed it,” he says shyly. Not only that, he will demonstrate this everyday, when he gets his bike which will be a big help as he will, by then, have moved to a house farther away in Mandaue.
Alfredo Hermosilla and Arnel Dinopol are very similar in many respects, except that Arnel is shorter by a head and they come from practically opposite municipalities of the island of Cebu. Alfredo, is from Danao and Arnel is from Samboan.
Otherwise, both of them are lanky, dark in the way that many rural boys are, they are both 18 years old, taking the same course of electromechanics at the same school, the Center for Industrial Technology and Enterprise (CITE) Technical Institute and, most importantly for why I talked to them, they belong to the same bicycle club.
Despite bicycles hardly ever factoring in our urban planners couch-interest in how our city is designed and planned to work, there are many bikers here, both individuals and organized into bicycle clubs. And, from anecdotal evidence, their numbers are growing. But, it was the first time I heard about a bicycle club of an unbelievably different sort, the one that Alfredo and Arnel are members of, when their club was mentioned at a press conference recently.
Their bicycle club, it was said, didn't have bicycles. But what they lacked in bikes, I learned, they made up for in enthusiasm, doggedness and, most of all, an original, if somewhat impenetrable name: Faxite Omnis.
This press conference was on the occasion of the turn over of funds that were raised by Jens Funk and Martin Langevoord who, last September, biked from Pakistan to China along the Karakoram Highway in what they called 'Bike for a cause '2006,' and who, in this bike-adventure-cum-fund-raising venture, sold kilometrage of the trip that was about 1,100 kms in length at 60Php or 1Euro per kilometer. They raised a total of 69,000 Php.
The beneficiary of the funds is the Bike4U Foundation. This foundation is organized by local bike enthusiasts, many of whose leading lights and driving force, including Funk, are connected with the CITE. The foundation aims at encouraging the use of the bicycle as commuter transportation, especially among students, and to further the familiarization of and operational skills on the bicycle through seminars on bicycle safety, maintenance, assembly and dismantling. Also, the foundation is trying to encourage the participation of the wider bicycling community through their donations of used bicycle parts, equipment and accessories.
Towards the end of this month, used bikes that have been solicited by Funk from Germany are arriving. They are to be distributed to deserving individuals and groups or communities. For reasons of faster implementation, recipient familiarity and demonstrable need and interest, Alfredo and Arnel's bicycle club will be among the first beneficiaries.
No, we didn't form the club because of those bikes, both of them say. “Our club project, making bicycle stands, was Mr. Bobby Payod, our adviser's idea and he suggested it way before we heard that there was an opportunity for our club to finally become a real bicycle club,” says, Alfredo, veiled anticipation sneaking out from his voice.
Undoubtedly, their club will attract more members, both boys agreed. But, with our adviser, we are now working on a more stringent requirement for getting in, they say. The Bike4U foundation has its own stringent requirements for availing of the donated bicycles, which Funk says will serve as a model of sorts for such a project that has never been done before locally.
Fortunately, the club and the foundation's requirement do not include demonstrating the ability to bicycle the short but very steep climb– seriously so, according to Funk -- to the institute's hilltop campus in San Juan, Talamban.
Still, were this the case, Arnel would qualify. “I have climbed it,” he says shyly. Not only that, he will demonstrate this everyday, when he gets his bike which will be a big help as he will, by then, have moved to a house farther away in Mandaue.
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