Photograph of the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) by VisitPhilippines.com.hk. Courtesy of Wikipedia.

Art, all art, as the British writer Jeanette Winterson would remind us, is a foreign city [1], which is to say that it is fluent in tongues and steeped in traditions that inevitably require no small degree of adaptation and acclimatization on the part of those who seek a meaningful encounter with it. To behave as though art bore the onus of conforming to and confirming beliefs and expectations long held and cherished is to act like the boorish tourist who assumes, nay, demands that the locals speak his or her language, indicating a fatal combination of arrogance and ignorance that ought to be despaired at and deplored. And yet it is that very combination with which the past several days have been marked when one examines the clangorous—I hesitate to use the word “popular”—discourse that has erupted around the now-closed Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) exhibition “Kulô”, which, in addition to 31 other works of art intended to play off the convergence of the sesquicentennial of national hero Jose Rizal and the quadricentennial of the Pontifical and Royal University of Santo Tomas, features Poleteismo, an installation by Mideo Cruz that is both fulcrum and field for what been not so much a debate than a protracted shouting match, with terms yanked out of context for maximum incendiary effect: “blasphemy” and “terrorism” on the one hand, and “moralist hysteria” and “religious myopia” on the other.

What is needed here, then, is prudence—the virtue that I believe to be the informing spirit of the proceedings this afternoon, and which the philosopher and theologian St. Thomas Aquinas describes as “right reason applied to action” [2]. The medieval thinker further explains that it consists of the following: first, inquiring into the issues involved; second, judging what one has found with care and deliberation; and third, acting out of reason based on what one has inquired into and judged.

What are we to inquire to and judge as we attempt to modulate from art to society and back again? While there are many points of entry available for us, I venture to propose a cautious and meticulous reckoning with three key words that have roiled to the surface of the present turmoil, all the while bearing in mind that these are charged and invested with multiple, competing significations, and that the relationships between and among them are troubled and troubling. Under each key word, I will also pose some questions, by no means exhaustive.

Catholic. For better or worse, Catholicism is inextricably bound up with the history of the Filipino people, and while one can and should condemn the Church for its career of violence and cruelty, for its perpetuation of the logics of colonialism and patriarchy, refusing to look further is ultimately too facile, too reductive a maneuver. Let me stress at this juncture that the ecclesiastical hierarchy of Philippine Catholic Church is definitely not the entirety of that church, and that the various lay groups who have aggressively chased after and hogged the spotlight of public scrutiny are definitely not representative of the entirety of the laity, whatever their claims. I would add that Catholic teaching explicitly allows for dissent from official, non-infallible positions on the basis of a tested conscience. In view of such caveats, how should “Catholic” be understood? How is it made to operate in the contemporary climate of reception, particularly when it is made to confront art, and to what ends?

Filipino. The CCP was erected by self-styled demigoddess Imelda Marcos in the name of truth, beauty, and goodness, a Platonic trinity that effaced its enormous costs. It has since sought to shake off its associations with elitism and excess, though the succession of Mrs. Marcos’s descent upon the center to view Poleteismo by the closure of “Kulô” was not missed by a sensationalist press, led by Philippine Daily Inquirer, which attributed the latter event to the former [3]. In the 21st century, over 40 years after it was first established, what sort of nation, what sort of “Philippines” does the CCP imagine and refer to? Who are the “Filipinos” that it seeks to address—that it considers its stakeholders? When, in its vision-mission statement, it declares that “it nurtures and promotes artistic excellence, Filipino aesthetics and identity, and positive cultural values towards a humanistic global society” [4], how does it make sense of these categories, and who are involved in such sense-making?

Offensive. The word “offensive” has taken on an affectively taxing character under the current circumstances. Deployed in juxtaposition with “bastos” and “kadiri”, the term implies that Poleteismo inevitably provokes tactile or visceral revulsion. The nomination of Poleteismo as “offensive” has been used as a tactic to exclude it from the domain of art—indeed, to define what is art and non-art—and to launch appeals to “beauty”, “decency”, “propriety”, and “morality”, while the possibility of conjunctions between the artistic and the disgusting—conjunctions with which the history of art is conspicuously branded—is evaded. How are we to draw the ambit of “offensiveness”? What is the difference that “offensiveness” makes, and how does it bear upon the status of a work as “art”? And if we try here to build a case for free expression, how do we do so without valorizing intentions of the artist at the expense of eliding audience response, for which the artist is to some extent responsible?

While conflict can certainly be productive when contesting parties make an effort to engage each other, it seems to me that engagement precisely is what is lacking, and thus desperately required, in the situation at hand, because the fiercest, most ill-informed, and most mediagenic commentators are ostensibly at peace with absolutely diametrical opposition. The consequence of this is the reinforcement of the area and circumference of the existing discursive circle, rather than its transformation into another, more feasible shape for the sake of art and its diverse publics. Should such a state of affairs be allowed to persist, the social ferment precipitated by “Kulô” would be less “vehicular and transitive” [5]  than rigid and chronic, less verbal than nounal—a boil in the sense of a bacterial infection that continuously fills with pus and dead tissue, placing the whole body politic at risk for worse afflictions.

I suggest that one of our tasks today is to diligently and prudently lance that boil.

—Jaime Oscar M. Salazar

*

The preceding remarks were delivered in slightly different form earlier today at “Art as Threat/Threats on Art: Focus group discussion on ‘Kulô’”, an activity sponsored by the Department of Art Studies, University of the Philippines-Diliman.

Works Cited

1. Winterson, Jeanette. “Art Objects”. Art Objects: Essays on Ecstasy and Effrontery. New York: Vintage Books, 1995. 3-21. Print.
2. Aquinas, Thomas. “Question 47. Prudence, considered in itself“. Trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province. Summa Theologica.  New Advent, 2008. Web. 9 Aug. 2011.
3. Cultural Center of the Philippines. “Mission-vision statement“. CCP MISSION-VISION. Cultural Center of the Philippines, n.d. Web. 9 Aug. 2011.
4. Balana, Cynthia D. and Philip C. Tubeza. “CCP shuts down controversial exhibit on Imelda Marcos’s prodding“. Inquirer News. INQUIRER.net, 2011. Web. 9 Aug. 2011.
5. Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “The Poet”. Selected Essays. Ed. Larzer Ziff. New York: Penguin Books, 1985. 259-84. Print.

[Image source]

React and interact:

• Read other posts filed under Features.
• Follow our social networking accounts to receive news and site updates.
• Review our comment policy and leave a comment below.
• Visit our contact page and send us a message.

Be Sociable, Share!

•