What Are Poets For in a Post Po-Mo Society?

Published in Manila Bulletin

"Lumapos kaw. Ya tapos. Di kaw mauno."
(You will succeed. You will finish. Nothing bad will happen to you.)
– Mandaya Panawagtawag Ritual

In a far-flung village of Davao Oriental in a remote town called Cateel, there used to live a native guardian of “mangmang” (bamboo instrument). He was called the “Bamboo Beater”, whose task, in his entire life, was to wake up the villagers before sunrise by beating the bamboo instrument.

At exactly 4 o’clock in the morning, he would thump the “mangmang’ in a harsh manner and then, the sound would slowly ebb away with melodic beats. The rhythmic vanishing sound would serve as a reminder to the villagers that their endeavors should be fruitful and meaningful at the end of the day.

POETS AS THINKERS AND GUARDIANS OF TRUTH

Poets today are like Bamboo Beaters, they rouse people’s consciousness from indifference and complacency. Most often, poets create a discordant sound reflective of social reality and stir up the society’s conscience toward commitment and responsibility.

Poets are preordained to speak up the “Truth” and the “Summum Bonum” (highest good). When poets create, they reveal something that is not yet revealed before, but has already been happening within the lives of people in a particular society. This revelatory process is the disclosure or unveiling of “Truth” because poetry, like philosophy, is the embodiment of metaphysical realities, which are the Truth, the Good, and the Beautiful.

No poetry is created outside its own reality because it is an anathema to its ontological meaning as the precursor of “Truth”. In like manner, Poets as the guardians of “Truth”, have a moral responsibility to bring the ideals of “Truth” to be pondered upon by the members of society.

As thinkers and guardians of “Truth”, poets should make poetry accessible to the people as the primary recipient of their musings. They should not alienate their readers with lofty linguistic expressions, or confuse them with otherworldly imageries and symbols, because poetry, as a product of creative freedom, is neither self-conscious nor rigidly conventional. As the highest form of language, poetry is supposed to reach out and touch the human lives with dignity and meaning.

For instance, the poetry of an Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore or the Japanese poet Akiko Yosano spoke the language and sentiments of its people based on their social realities, beliefs, and culture. Tagore and Yosano had woven their sensuous experience of language by speaking from their own native tongue, in such a way that the people in their respective milieus could identify as though the written or spoken verses were their own.

Conversely, in a ‘post po-mo society’ (Post Post-Modern Society), it is not the conventional form or structure of poetry that is consequential, but how accessible it is to the people, how it addresses their concrete realities with urgency, and how it represents their “voice” within the particular conditions of their society.

In the same manner, as the revelation of truth, poetry seeks to establish a dialogue with people; it converses in their intimate moments with gentleness and compassion, rousing their souls to experience the transcendent amid their convoluted world, so to say.

As a dialogic encounter, poetry reveals realities that matter to the people’s lives rather than that of the poets. Even if poets were to write in a confessional or autobiographical manner, they can still address or respond to the people’s reality, as an eloquent representation of the latter’s “voice” or sentiment.

In the end, poetry is not about poets who write about poems, but it is about people living within a historical society. Poets dissect society and its historicity as the terminus aquo and terminus ad quem in their linguistic discourses about the “Truth.”

Poetry, therefore, can only be meaningful if it is conceived based on the concrete realities of a historical society, nurtured by the richness of its own language, and delivered with poignancy to be experienced and reflected upon by the members of the same society.

CROWNS AND ORANGES: WORKS BY YOUNG PHILIPPINE POETS

The recently launched “Crowns and Oranges: Works by Young Philippine Poets”, edited by Dr. Cirilo F. Bautista and Ken Ishikawa, is a compilation of carefully, if not arbitrarily, selected poems by young Filipino poets. Some of them are recipients of Palanca Awards and other award-giving bodies – both local and abroad.

Noticeable in the entire collection is the “binary perception” in the psyche of the young poets, mimicking the Western dichotomy of the world (e.g. individual vs. society, black vs. white, literal vs. figurative). The “I” or the poetic voice is generally distant, similar to the protagonist of Albert Camus’s novel “L'Étranger”; other elements apart from the “I” are mere subsidiaries within the content of the poem.

Apparently, the shifting of reality among the young generation of Filipino poets is imminent and the gap from the older generation, like Gémino Abad, Virgilio Almario, Cirilo Bautista, Marjorie Evasco, Edith Tiempo, Emmanuel Torres, and Alfred Yuson, among others, is cavernous.

As a point of comparison, the poetry of the older generation possesses rhythm, logical flow of thoughts, and didactic resolutions at the end of poetic narrative. Their perception of the world echoes the “I and Thou” phenomenology of a Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, which is identifying the world as another “I”, not a thing or “I and It”. The young poets, on the other hand, trudge on existential angst where the “I” is the center and the world is a drab picture to be conquered and understood in relation to the “I”.

At times, their voices can be sardonic, bold, or harsh yet, they offer no resolution at the end of their creative outputs, but an open-ended statement to be deciphered by the readers. They have demonstrated an exceptional skill, though, in creating an element of unpredictability in their respective poetic narratives. Perhaps, this is where creative freedom works best, the ability of these young poets to create texture and tension based on their own perception of reality.

In “Persona”, for example, Joel Toledo poignantly confesses at the end of his poem, “Allow me to introduce you to my other selves.” The line is tinged with cynicism and self-indulgence. Arkaye Kierulf delivers a strong ironic statement in his poem about pain and death, “For example: A Flower / is the most beautiful lie.”

Ramil Digal Gulle caught the attention of his reader in “Brassier Speak.” Call it dark humor; his introductory line lures the reader to read further, “The very first bra in China arrived in 1920.” And it moves on and on entertaining the reader with the poet’s tête-à-tête. Another element of unpredictability in the poem is the “quotability” of lines. Angelo Suarez writes a lingering phrase in his poem “At the Train Station,” which says, “Something in the mouth, like language, / breaks beneath the weight of a flower.”

Generally, the poetry in “Crowns and Oranges” is poignantly bleak, cynical, and melancholic – devoid of quixotic perception of the world – but effacingly grounded on the poets respective realities. It is awe-inspiring, though, how these brilliant young poets mastered the creative techniques and nuances of English language. However, it is also lamentable how little did these poets write in their own respective regional languages.

Famous poets who wrote in their own native tongues, like Tagore, Neruda, and Yosano, conquer the English-speaking world by asserting their own language. In our local literary scene, however, with the exception of a handful, like Virgilio Almario, Vim Nadera, and Sonny Villafania, to name a few, Filipino poets assert their own world by conquering the English language.

To sum, editing an anthology of poems from young generation of poets is parallel to the gathering of fruits in the orchard. The choice is not whether the fruits are good or bad, but the choice has to be made based on the degree of ripeness. Are the fruits ripe enough to be eaten or will they need more time until they are ready to be picked up or harvested? One has to make a critical choice and decide which poem or poet is worthy of inclusion and which one is not.

In like manner, the editor(s) is compelled to follow a paradigmatic pattern, not only to consider the poet’s achievements and body of works, but also to dissect the relevance of literary output in relation to the theme and structure of the book.

Dr. Cirilo F. Bautista and Ken Ishikawa have done an exemplary job in “Crowns and Oranges” which, in itself, is a work of art. It may not be a comprehensive anthology of the entire generation of young Filipino poets. Even so, its ambitious attempt to represent the “voice” of the post po-mo poets in Philippine literature is a long stride worthy of adulation.
© Danny Castillones Sillada

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Sillada, Danny Castillones. “What Are Poets For in a Post Po-Mo Society?” Manila Bulletin 7 September 2009: E 1-3. Print.

The Abueva and the New Sisa Murals at the National Center for Mental Health

Napoleon Abueva, National Artist for Sculpture

Published in Manila Bulletin

“We want a few mad people now. See where the sane ones have landed us!”
~ George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

Even at the National Center for Mental Health in Mandaluyong City, art has found its place not only to uplift the souls of the mentally challenged patients, but also to signify as a historical symbol of those who served and those being served by the institution for almost a century now, or eighty years of its existence to be exact.

In this vein, two murals were recently re-dedicated and unveiled respectively known as the Abueva Mural, a 35-year old mural done by the National Artist Napoleon Abueva, and “The New Sisa Mural”, recently created by three Filipino artists known as the PST Muralists.

The re-dedication of Abueva Mural and the unveiling of a new one highlight the 80th year anniversary of National Center for Mental Health, one of the leading mental institutions in the country.

THE ABUEVA MURAL

Condescendingly standing at the right side entrance of National Center for Mental Health compound is a 35-year old mural by National Artist Napoleon Abueva. Carved on marbles and embedded on the concrete, the mural is composed of geometric mass of blocks, engraved figures and portraits of NCMH founders.

Intriguingly, at the extreme right of the mural, are three womblike shapes and inside in each section is a figure of awkward body posture; a naked boy holding onto a metal bar, a man crossing his arms above his head, and a naked figure in a fetal position. Another arresting element is the pictorial narrative of two mentally challenged patients; two hospital’s male aides are holding a madman while the other, a woman, is sitting in a classic position of a “mentally ill” patient.

After cleaning and restoring to its former grandeur, which was initiated by one of the staff of NCMH and an artist himself Jonathan “Jonski” Olarte, the mural was re-dedicated with the presence of its creator, National Artist Napoleon Abueva.

Sitting on a wheelchair with his ever-loving wife, the former director of NCMH, Mr. Abueva could only quip and smile over his earlier opus, which seemed to be swallowing up his presence. The mural was created in 1974 at the height of the artist’s career as a sculptor.

Present at the event were Bernardino A Vicente, MD, MHA, CESO IV, Medical Canter Chief II, who gave an inspirational message and a welcome address by Dr. Venus Serra-Arain, MD, FPPA, MHA, Chief, Medical & Professional Staff Community Service and Chair of NCMH 80th Anniversary Souvenir Program Committee.

THE NEW SISA MURAL

At the lobby of NCMH administration building is the “New Sisa Mural” with Sisa at the center, donning a sanely wide smile flanked by two children. (Sisa is one of Jose Rizal’s notable characters in his novel “Noli Me Tangere”.) The mural depicts the 80 years of NCMH service of treating and maintaining the mental health of Filipinos in Metro Manila and other parts of the country.

The mural is a collaborative endeavor of three artists Bing Siochi, Ernie Patricio, and Harry Torres, the PST Muralists; they are all members of Las Piñas Tuesday Group. Jonathan Olarte, member of NCMH 80th Anniversary Souvenir Program Committee, proudly presented the mural and its creators during the unveiling headed by Dr. Bernardino A Vicente, Medical Canter Chief II, and Dr. Venus Serra-Arain, Chief, Medical & Professional Staff Community Service.

The mural is made possible by the effort of Dr. Venus Serra-Arain and Jonathan Olarte, who conceived and raised the fund for the project. “The New Sisa Mural” is envisioned toward a sound mind and mentally healthy Filipinos, in honor of the 80th anniversary of NCMH.

The blessing and unveiling of two murals, the Pavilion 2, and the NCMH Museum & Souvenir Shop were done by Fr. Apolinario Matilos, NCMH chaplain last May 13, 2009.

© Danny Castillones Sillada
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*Above artwophotos: (1) National Artist Napoleon Abueva, (2) 35-year old NCMH Mural by National Artist Napoleon Abueva, (3) Re-dedication of Abueva Mural at NCMH, (4) The New Sisa Mural at the National Center for Mental Health, (5) The new mural with NCMH officers and staff

Something about Sarah & Her Art

Published in Manila Bulletin

“Because we are also what we have lost.”

– From the movie “Amores Perros”

“IF THERE'S ANYTHING bleaker and darker in this world,” says Sarah in the caption of her pen and ink drawing of a girl with a mask, “nothing can compare to a girl’s pain of being left orphaned by the deaths of her parents almost simultaneously.”

Perchance, tragedy happens for a reason; sometimes, it has no apparent reason, and whatever its reason, intrinsic or fortuitous, tragedy, as an inevitable reality in human existence, will either make a person’s life stronger or intolerable to live.

“I and THOU” ENCOUNTER

Some time ago, I met Sarah Demetria Gaugler at Cesare Syjuco’s art exhibit at F*ART (Fashion & Art) in Quezon City, which I attended as one of the performance artists. Sarah’s hair was purple, her eyes round, her smile mesmeric, and her face angelic. She was, then, a typical Fine Arts student of UST and a typical girl next door, whose bashful smile is incongruent to her hip personality.

She was there to interview me about my drawings on paper, as part of her college thesis. Her questions were scarce, reluctant and reserved. I spoke self-effacingly about the techniques and nuances of my works. I also mentioned some Filipino artists that I admired with their draftsmanship on paper, like Raul Lebajo, Amor Lamarroza, and Caloy Gabuco, to name a few.

As our conversation progressed, I noticed something about Sarah; it was something poignant that lurked in the depths of her eyes. As if those velvety, round eyes were inviting me to swim into a world laden with throbbing memories until, unknowingly, we had already barged in into each other’s private world.

I could not remember how she opened up the bleak pages of her life or how she spoke, in a reluctant manner, the anguish of her soul; all I remember was the sublime encounter between two people. It was not a romantic encounter, though; neither did it lead to something sensual or physical but, as the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber says, it was an “I & Thou” encounter in grace and compassion.

Like Sarah, I have had my own share of pains and tragedies in life; I lost almost all the people that I dearly loved and cherished. Consequently, as we laid our souls naked to each other, it was easier to open up because they were already broken. And that same human “brokenness” had become a transcendent encounter to acknowledge and embrace our respective wounds.

A GLIMPSE ON SARAH’S WORLD
 

A few months after her father’s death, Sarah’s mother, a Filipino-American nurse, followed, leaving her and her younger brother orphaned in the heart of New Jersey, USA. The year was September 22, 1997; she was 10 years old and her younger brother was barely 5 - both are born to American and Filipino parents.

“I went across the street to my house, to my room, to where my lifeless mommy was…” she writes on her blog journal dated August 3, 2007. “My heart stopped… I didn’t know how to contain myself... I didn’t know anything else, but the horrible pain in my chest… We’re now alone and my fears have come… I didn’t know what would become of me... And I cried and I cried...”

Two days later, Sarah left the US with her younger brother bound for her mother’s homeland. “I was on a plane for the Philippines,” she says in the same journal, “leaving everything and everyone that I ever knew and loved behind.”

Since then, Sarah’s world took a 180-degree detour on a different path that would mark the beginning of her relentless struggle as a young girl and later, as a young woman. She would also later pour out all her pains and anguish in her blog on the internet in the form of journals, drawings, poems, and photography.

In the Philippines, Sarah and her brother stayed with their aunt. However, wanting to live on her own, Sarah would rent a place and continue her studies at UST. But during those times, she underwent a terrible crisis in her life. In one of her journals, she wrote, “I've got all these shitty problems right now… I don’t want to go back to the self-destructive person that I was…”

However, Sarah was also quick to regain the balance of her spiritual self and it showed how determined she was to overcome her torments when she wrote words that revealed her aplomb, “Everything is going to be all right! Cheer up! Pray! Work! Have faith in God! Everyone has his or her own problems to deal with! You’re not alone! Many people love you! Draw! Paint!

Don’t worry about it! Smile! Breathe! Count your blessings!”

Perhaps, no one would suspect that behind Sarah’s beguiling beauty, talent and brilliance, lay something gloomy inside her delicate world. As reflected on her drawings of lone and masked girls, Sarah dons an archetypal persona to hide the looming shadows of her soul. In fact, I attributed one of my paintings to her, which I titled “Behind the Mask of Sarah.”

In the painting, I portrayed a huge mask at the center of the canvas with vibrant color, echoing one of Sarah’s journals: “Most of the time I’m sad, but you’ll only see me smile and you’ll only see me laugh. And even though I get tired, you'll never know my pain and you’ll never understand, as long as I keep you at a certain distance.”You’re not alone! Many people love you! Draw! Paint! Don’t worry about it! Smile! Breathe! Count your blessings!”

REAL-LIFE HEROINE

It’s been a long while since I last saw Sarah. I heard that she already finished her bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts at UST, participated at group shows, won an NU Rock Awards as “best album packaging” for Orange and Lemons’ Moonlane Gardens, and worked as illustrator, graphic designer and part-time tattoo artist, aside from an occasional modeling stint for signature clothing.

Most recently, she has been performing as a vocalist of Turbo Goth band with Paofario. She is also “guesting” at some radio FM stations, either playing with her band or promoting her gigs at some music venues in Metro Manila.

I just can’t imagine how a young orphaned soul can rise amid the bleak conditions of her fragile world, transforming herself from a delicate, broken girl, into a very talented, strong and independent woman. But Sarah could not have been “there” had she given up her life too early or had she remained wallowing from the tragedies that beset in the early stages of her existence.

At the end of the day – after witnessing her joys and sorrows, strengths and weaknesses, triumphs and defeats – I can say that Sarah is my kind of heroine in real-life, who doesn’t give up hope in life. She uses her adversity, instead, as a vehicle to achieve her dreams.

Her self-respect and dignity as a woman remain integral, as she continues to embrace and live a decent life amid the temporal trappings of an indecent world.

*Above artworks by Sarah D. Gaugler


© Danny Castillones Sillada

WILLIAM YU and His Art of Divine Worship

Published in Manila Bulletin

“I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free."
- Michelangelo (1475-1564) 

His baritone voice progressively rises amid the placid stirring of his guitar, ascending steadily with the spiritual lyrics of his song composition. Then, slowly, the melodic sound ebbs away in a laid-back tone, as he tranquilly mumbles his prayer before an empty canvas.

Suddenly, in an almost daunting manner, he spreads his arms like a crane taking off from a marshland. His right hand, loaded with brush and paint, flaps across the windy air of his open studio, flailing and drifting in an élan but gentle manner.

Gestural and spontaneous brushstrokes, at the speed of 300 kilometers per hour, swiftly emerge on the surface of his canvas. Layer upon layer of loose forms and vivid colors begin to take shape. Then, in less than an hour or so, his divinely inspired enactment finally gives birth to an apotheosized creation.

The resultant processes of his composition sum up the momentary surge of passion – a spiritually inspired art making with a mesmerizing effect on the audience. The profound encounter with his creative feat characterizes the mystical amalgam of William Yu as a painter, “high priest” (exodus 35:30-32), and a performance artist.

“HALLELISM” AS AN ART OF DIVINE WORSHIP

William Yu’s artistic method called “Hallelism” has stirred controversy and raised eyebrows of some artists in the local art scene for infusing religious belief and ritual in the course of art making.

His ardent critics, on the other hand, labeled him as a charlatan born-again Christian for being outspoken of his faith in relation to his “hallelistic” art. However, to his friends and close associate of artists and those who witnessed his entrancing performance, he is like a Rabbi or a Bezalel (exodus 35:30-32) who conjures up the spirit to enlighten his act of worship to his Creator.

“Hallelism captures the heart of the viewers in an indescribable and riveting manner,” said Beverly Callaghan, a Canadian missionary who witnessed William Yu’s spiritual art performance. She described that William Yu, being the forerunner of new spiritual art movement, “embraces the process in the creative act of worship to the Creator of the Universe.”

“When I looked at William Yu’s paintings,” said a Chinese artist, Zhang Xun Lei, “the strokes and lines are so strong and free. He expresses his soul on his canvas that one could feel the presence of the spirit in his art.”

Hallelism, according to William Yu, is an act of creative worship to glorify God (Psalm 98:1-9) through painting. It is like any other charismatic or spiritual activities such as singing or dancing except that the artist uses art to praise and glorify God, the real Master of his creation. In the process of art making, William Yu sings and dances and, like a high priest, he summons the inspiration of the Holy Spirit to guide his hand in front of his canvas.

“Hallel”, as the etymology for Hallelism, is derived from the Hebrew word which means “to praise or worship God”. The artist coined the word “Hallelism” for his new concept of art that involves the worship of God through mind, body and soul (1 Thessalonians 5:23).

Creating a work of art as an act of worship is the main concept of Hallelism. The ritualistic preparation before executing an artwork is vital to the whole process where the artist has to pray for the wisdom and guidance of the Holy Spirit (John 3:3-8). The process in which the artist engages in his art is already an act of worship, and the result of that process (the artwork) is the product of divine inspiration.

The artwork in this context, however, is not the main objective of Hallelism but, indispensably, a part of the entire creative process of worship and adulation.

In similar manner, the creative process is not concerned with artistic style or technique for it is, according to William Yu, “an indefinite art with no definitive style and objective; it is constantly changing, and can only be deciphered through the infinite possibilities of coded symbols and meanings on the surface of the canvas.”

FROM SECULAR TO SPIRITUAL

At the outset, William Yu, who hails from Baganga, Davao Oriental, is already known for his “picasoid” figures that, along with Filipino masters like Legaspi and Ang Kiukok, uses a palette knife, instead of paintbrush in rendering oil color on canvas.

His previous art characterizes an exaggerated geometric form of human figure with a seemingly twisted body posture. At times, it could be bleak or whimsical with feisty, brilliant colors. In this mode, the artist has captured the pathos and sensibilities reflective of Filipino values and culture.

His current oeuvre, on the other hand, is entirely different from his earlier works. The geometric shape of figures is dissolved deliberately into a rather loose and tangential juxtaposition of forms and colors. His composition is more contingent on the dynamic flow of brushworks in contrast to his earlier works with calculated use of palette knife on canvas.

In a more holistic approach, his act of painting is no longer confined to a one-dimensional activity, but as a performative process that involves the activity of body and soul, the “ora et labora” of art making.

Conversely, the form and substance of William Yu’s hallelistic art is not far from the abstruse and flattened surface of abstract expressionism. In executing his art, he employs the surrealist unconscious and random processes of art making by redefining its automatist technique albeit, done and inspired in the context of spiritual worship.

In this manner, he “desecularized” surrealism and abstract expressionism by invoking the guidance of the Holy Spirit during his creative enactment. By doing so, he redirects the creative energy from an ordinary experience into an extraordinary encounter with God, the artist’s Master Creator.

The dialectical development of his aesthetics, on the other hand, does not only focus on spiritual worship. William Yu, in his own right, acted not only as a painter, but also as a high priest who exorcizes the secular nature of art by infusing his religious faith and values, thus, bringing back the image of God in the midst of a secularized society.

In essence, his art transcends the conventional attitude of art making; it is a metaphysical and spiritual quest for the Divine Truth.

THE VIRTUE OF FAITH AND HUMILITY

“Master Yu,” as he is fondly called among his Filipino and American friends and collectors in the US, is the artist’s artist, whose personality evokes humility, kindness and benevolence.

His generosity to his fellow artists is unconditional. He shares his artistic gift by helping those who are eager to learn how to paint; he welcomes them with open heart and gives them shelter until they are confident enough to stand on their own.

His childlike faith characterizes the “Beatitudes” that Christ teaches in “Sermon of the Mount” and, while living a very simple life with his family, he lives his faith in total surrender to God and allows God to shape his art in accordance to His will.

As a religious person, he believes that art can become an agent of change in our society so long as it is directed to God (John 15:5, Isaiah 41:13), as the source of inspiration for any artistic endeavor.

The significance of Faith in our time, according to William Yu, is an indispensable gift that liberates man from his uncertainties and sorrows; it gives him wisdom and direction in life amid the trappings of materialistic society.

To sum, unlike the canon of post po-mo art where the movement of spirit is horizontal, which is the portrayal of the banal, secular, and the absurd; William Yu, in his own way, is redirecting its course to its original direction – the vertical movement of the spirit between man and his Creator.

© Danny Castillones Sillada

The Pathological Migration of Truth in a Post Po-Mo Society (Culture & Philosophy)

Manila Bulletin, Lifestyle Section (Art & Culture), August 25, 2008, pp. F 1-2.

"If you would be a real seeker after truth, you must at least once in your life doubt, as far as possible, all things."
- Rene Descartes, Discourse on Method

In a convoluted world of mass media, spoken words, texts and visual images cascade like insalubrious waters from a huge repository of dense and elliptical concept of created realities. Subliminal images, casuistic answers to the problems that are not yet existent, textual and visual intimations are barraged, aggressively, in the human psyche as though they were the embodiment of Truth.

The illusive landscape of realities had never been before portrayed and magnified in such a persuasive manner that even those who speak about it convincingly believe that it existed. What is sensational before the very eyes of the consumers in a consumerist society is more real and tangible than the Truth itself, which can be bland and boring.

A showbiz personality, for instance, who has a steamy liaison, is more appealing and titillating to the human senses than the person who is doing a benevolent act to the society. The former is worth millions of audiences while the latter is worth only a handful and fifteen seconds of praise on the television.

And those who have the power and money to influence the mass media possess the power to distort and bend reality for their own advantage than those who have nothing but the Truth, which is also, ironically, tradable depending on the price being offered.

A multi-national corporation can pour millions of dollars on a questionable product via a mass media campaign by tailoring the “truth” for global market even if the “product” threatens the well-being of the society or the environment. Corrupt political leaders can invent or twist the Truth in their favor by hiring a high caliber PR company just to maintain their power and popularity before the eyes of their constituents.

Lamentably, the commoditization of “Truth” in our post po-mo (post-modern) society is so blatant that those who can afford millions of dollars worth of “truths” possess the power to influence, dictate to, and manipulate people and society.

Does Truth still matter or is it just subservient to the created world of mass media and popular culture?

Conformity of Freedom and Created Needs

Mass culture, as part of popular culture, produces mass production of goods and services to satisfy the needs of the consumers. Mass media presented these goods and services in a highly fashionable manner in such a way that the credulous consumers believe them as the real panacea of their needs.

The main target of mass culture is the exploitation of the insatiable human needs, creating and inventing realities to gratify the same needs and wants, which are obsessively ravenous and self-centered. The more consumer products pour in the market the higher the human desire to accumulate the “goods” in a frenzy manner.

The manic urge to accumulate seems irrational and endless, resulting in “decisional exhaustion” and “estrangement of needs” (when a man has already obtained what he wants but finds inappropriate or irrelevant on the “needs” that he just acquired). The symptom is subliminally pathological, submitting and surrendering oneself without question to the multifaceted array of commoditized products in the global market.

Who can resist, for instance, a new technological gadget that promises more features than the previously sold in the market? Who can resist a “wonder drug” that promises overnight beauty or slimming effect or instant relief from hopelessness and depression? Who can resist a sublime promise of various political, religious and rebel leaders for a harmonious and prosperous society?

No one! Because the human psyche of a thinking being in a post po-mo society is anxious, nay, gullible to believe on anything or anyone that can satisfy the absurd quest for sensational “truth”. Consequently, rational judgment has been diluted with an inordinate array of product-collocations and subliminal messages that are bombarded in the human consciousness.

Freedom is no longer defined as “free will” but a freedom to believe, accumulate or belong to anyone or anything that possesses the power to mimic, create or twist the “Truth”.

The Pathological Migration of Truth

The Truth is discernible because it is perceived by a thinking being based on the empirical and metaphysical realities of this world. What happens if a thinking being ceases to rationalize and perceive the Truth, can the Truth still exists or will it transform into a new facet of truth to fit within the irrational realities of a thinking being?

Intrinsically, the evolution of Truth from medieval to modern period follows a dialectic movement, a Hegelian principle on thesis, antithesis and synthesis. In popular culture, the Truth does not evolve in a dialectical mode; instead, it subverts and mimics the Truth to become the archetypal reality of a consumerist society.

The mass culture commoditized this “archetypal reality” by inventing and creating “human needs” in the form of consumer products. The advent of highly technologic “mass media devices” magnifies and heightens the commoditized human needs in varying moods and manners as though they were indispensable in the lives of the consumers.

The sensationalized “truth” that is presented by mass media is so illusively real and tangible that it transmogrifies itself into a new reality, creating an endemic effect on the credulous society. This transmogrification process is the pathological migration of truth from subliminal to a “commoditized truth”, which is subconsciously guzzled in the human consciousness by popular culture.

The “Pathological Migration of Truth”, as coined and defined by this writer, is the migration of subliminal truth in the human psyche with pathologic behavior to believe or acquire commoditized realities that provide instant or temporary relief in the human senses.

The migratory process is inevitably viral, dulling the human judgment amid the pandemic influx of product-collocations and subliminal mediums that are pounding the human mind on a daily basis. As such, the deviation of human behavior and perception of reality is inchoately encoded to believe on a “sensationalized reality”, which can be bought, sold, exchanged or traded in the global market.

The pathological migration of truth via commoditized product does not only alleviate the fleeting needs of the consumers, it also “viagrates” the frigidity of human soul by suppressing the previously unfulfilled needs with another “created needs” in a gradational manner.

Hence, what has been imbibed in the human psyche during the pathological migration becomes a “contiguous reality”, so that when a stimulus of commoditized needs is presented before the consumers, it immediately seeks instant response from the human senses. And the response is always programmed to acquire those “created needs”; otherwise, the unfulfilled “needs” will create existential void in one’s soul.

The Defragmentation of Convoluted Truths

Can we defragment the cluttered “truths”, as purported by popular culture, in the same way as we defragment the cluttered files in our computer system?

The truth is – the cluttered “truths” that we believe or acquire from the dictate of popular culture is nothing but the substitutions of our own uncertainty of realities. We believe in these “truths” because they respond to the urgency of our “sensual needs”. They instantly satisfy the insatiable desire of a pleasure-seeking “self”, which is egotistical by nature.

It is easier to believe, for instance, on a “magical pill” that promises an overnight slimming effect than believing on diet and exercise that will take several months for a 300-pounder to reduce. It is easier to believe on beauty product that is being endorsed by a celebrity figure with flawless skin even if, by birth, our own skin is craggy and irreparable, because we illusively want to identify ourselves with the endorser.

Conversely, to defragment the created “truths” is to redefine our hierarchy of needs based on our actual reality, and not the reality that is being haggled on us by mass media and mass culture. After redefining our hierarchy of needs, we have to validate whether these created “truths” are relevant or irrelevant in our pursuit for happiness and the common good of the society.

An individual can only be free if the mind is void of any preconceived notion of “truths”, because the very source of freedom to believe comes from the soul of a rational being, which seeks an Ideal Truth that resides in the human soul. This “ideal truth” is preordained to the Summum Bonum or “highest good” based on faith, hope and love of humanity.

The Summum Bonum does not seek gratification on material things but on the transcendent realities of Love, Beauty and Justice. These metaphysical realities provide lasting effect in the human soul rather than the fleeting effect of “created truths” in the human senses.

To sum, no one can destroy a man who is not programmed to believe on any created “truths” because he is his own reason of Truth and the Truth is the reason why he is.

© Danny Castillones Sillada

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Above Artworks:(1) The Pathological Migration of Truth in Aesthetics, works on paper by Danny C. Sillada, (2) The Truth Behind the Mask (oil on canvas by Danny Sillada), (3) Truth Without Reason, pen & ink by Danny Sillada, (4) Created Truths in Art (works on canvas by Danny Sillada).

How to cite this essay:

Sillada, Danny Castillones. “The Pathological Migration of Truth in a Post Po-Mo Society”. Manila Bulletin (Arts and Culture) 25 August 2008; F 1-2. Print.

Revelation of Secrets & the Aesthetics of ‘Syjuco Tres Marias’

"The things we keep secret are always bigger and more frightening in the darkness than they are in the light of day."

– Elspeth Allcott
Published in Manila Bulletin, Pages F1-2, Lifestyle Section, September 8, 2008

In the corpus of aesthetic language, the disclosure of secret is the poetic revelation of truth through visual, literary and performing arts. As a poetic revelation, aesthetics uses visual imageries to reveal what is hidden based on the artist’s personal encounter of reality within a particular society.

This revelatory process is autobiographical by nature because art or any work of art, for that matter, is always personal – either representative of the artist’s reality or the reality of his or her environment. However, before the reality can be processed and translated into art, it has to percolate from the artist’s psyche and experience.

Inherently, the creator is personally involved in the process of art making so that, when a particular work of art is finally revealed, it becomes the “incarnate” of Truth from the artist’s perspective to be understood and deciphered by a historical society where art is created and addressed to.

MAXINE SYJUCO: “A SECRET LIFE”
In her first collection of poems titled “A Secret Life”, Maxine R. Syjuco is like a spider that lures her reader to tiptoe into the web of her secret world. She passionately weaves the vignette of her thoughts and feelings in-between verses, flutters and spins her delicate “voice” with grace and elegance, until the reader is gradually trapped within the complex web of her poetic creations. Dense and abstruse in form and substance, Maxine’s collection of poems possesses the characteristics of John Berryman’s lyricism, Sylvia Plath’s bold and elliptical lines, Anne Sexton’s sardonic voice, and Robert Lowell’s complex and autobiographical style of writing.

The 1950s and 1960s are described as the beginning of popular culture, the gradual collapse of cultural values and beliefs, the pluralism of social and political ideologies, and the advent of a technological and consumerist society. It was also the time where existentialism was gaining its momentum from such prominent literary figures like Jean Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Albert Camus.

The same era that “confessional poetry” emerged from the influential American poets such as Robert Lowell, identified as the father of confessional poetry, Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton (both students of Lowell), and John Berryman that would later change the history of American poetry.

In the local literary scene of post po-mo “confessional poetry”, Maxine’s voice emerges as the dialectical representation of her generation. Her poetry addresses some salient issues, which are eminent in the post po-mo society, i.e., the dislocation of hierarchy of values and the susceptibility of human psyche amid the “created realities” offered by popular culture.

The poems “Dear Mr. Prick”, “How to Murder a Naked Woman,” and “Red Light District: Lost Rules of Usage” are looming pictures that mimicked the sensationalized staging of realities in mass media.

Other poems like “How to Murder a Mocking Bird,” “Caution: Falling Debris,” “That Men Are Creatures,” and “Mrs. Stitcher” are derisive protests on traditional values and beliefs, whose beneficiary-victims are, most often, the children and the submissive wives of a conservative Filipino society.

Her poems, per se, are not self-revelatory confession of personal anguish and torment, which are inherent of Lowell, Sexton, and Plath’s poetry, but more on Berryman’s subtle and lyrical characterization of different personas, addressing the Freudian’s “Id,” “Ego,” and “Superego”.

Using the “I” in most of her poems, Maxine has always emerged as the heroine of her oedipal narrative, a subtle dissent from the symbol of authority and traditional system of thoughts. Similarly, the poems “To Sartre,” “I Am in Love with Galileo,” “Chewing Chopin,” “Dear Seurat,” “Jackson Pollock and I,” and “Who Shot Bukowski?” are transferential reverberations of her academic studies, a satiric gripe against the prominent figures in Humanities.

Another salient element in her poetry is the use of familial imagery, exploring Jungian’s theory on personal and collective unconscious. In “Mrs. Stitcher”, for instance, there is the displacement of the imagery of “context”, blurring the lines between symbol and the actual derivation of reality.

In another poem “Caution: Falling Debris”, it opens: “My father was a drunken carpenter/ who liked to build fires. / He built three great fires in his lifetime, / all in all, at least, that’s what I remember.” Then, in the fourth paragraph, the father was trapped, figuratively, by his own fire “until he became a silhouette” including his daughter and wife “where recycling was not cheap”.

Gothic, witty, irreverent and, at times, laden with dark humor, Maxine has woven a new kind of poetry reflective of her generation. Her eccentric use of words and imageries creates a poignantly strange linguistic expression, which is unique to her voice: Freudian, surreal and existential.

“A Secret Life” is slated for launch in September at Mag:net Bonifacio High Street. A second launch will be held in October in Indonesia with her father Cesare A.X. Syjuco and Alfred A. Yuson, among the Filipino representative poets at Ubud Writer’s Festival in Bali.

MICHELLINE SYJUCO: “THE PRIMAL FORMS”
Another aesthetic revelation that was unveiled by one of the “Syjuco Tres Marias” last August 8, 2008 at Mag:net Café, Bonifacio High Street, is Michelline Syjuco’s collection of sculpted jewelry on metal titled “Armadillon”.

It features the artist’s handmade jewelry designs, which are made of unique and intricately sculpted and soldered metals, embedded with spikes, bullets, clenched pearls, gemstones and fragments of rocks from outer space.

Guest of honor National Artist Napoleon Abueva and other notable guests the poet and columnist Alfred A. Yuson, art critic-artist Cid Reyes, and restaurant mogul Raymond Reyes, among others, graced the opening of the event. Landscape and interior designer Al Sibal curated the show.

The opening of Michelline’s exhibit was a historic evening – “The ocho-ocho weekend that was” – as described by Alfred Yuson in his column “Kripotkin”, because of so many events that were unveiled that Friday (08-08-08) in the local art scene, needless to mention the opening of Beijing Olympics in China.

Packed with sardine-like crowd inside the Mag:net Café, the event was highlighted with the fashion show of “Armadillon” collection. Fashion models include Trix and Maxine Syjuco, Arianne Tonda, Cami & Chinky Hiquiana, Iza Elises, Natasha Rodriquez and this writer, the only thorn among the roses.

It was followed with live performances of poetry, music and performance art by the usual members of the Electric Underground Collective: Cesare A.X. Syjuco & Jean Marie Syjuco, The Syjuco Sisters, Eghai Roxas, Yanna Acosta & Project Ganymede, Alfred Yuson, Bailan & Ukay-Ukay bands, Bob Balingit & The Wuds, Alan Rivera, Danny Sillada & Mangayaw band, Mannet Villariba, Lirio Salvador & Elemento, Mitch Garcia, Art Casanova, Ian Madrigal, The Slave Drum, Parking in Mogadishu, to name a few.

The “Armadillon” collection is the debut exhibit of Michelline Syjuco, the eldest sisters of the “Syjuco Tres Marias”, daughters of avant-garde artists Cesare A.X. Syjuco and Jean Marie Syjuco. The exhibit is extended up to the month of September at Mag:net Café, Bonifacio High Street.

TRIX SYJUCO: “THE BLACK BRIDE”As an offshoot of visual art, performance art subverts the form and structure of conventional art making by using material devices and bodily movements in presenting the imagery of reality during the performance.

Contrary to performing arts like dance, theater and musical, live art performance is a dynamic and unrehearsed presentation of symbolic images through live actions in front of the audience.

In her recent performance at the opening of her sister’s (Michelline Syjuco) jewelry collection at Mag:net Café, Trix Syjuco stunned the audience with her riveting feat in “Black Bride”. Clad with black wedding dress while her collaborator, acting as a priest-bridegroom (this writer), is wearing a white cassock and satin scarf with eye-shades covering his face.

The contrasting images are hauntingly surreal; the priest, instead of sanctifying the sacrament of matrimony, was going to marry the bride. In the same vein, the bride’s black wedding dress, a traditional symbolic color for a widowed wife in mourning, amplifies the gothic and bizarre imagery of the performance.

The tension heightens when the bridegroom (the priest) and the bride reenact a bodily sensual encounter in a dance-like movement. Then, the latter, as if awakened from demonic spell, chastises the bride by wrapping her body and face with plastic sheet. The bride, to complete the ritual, sprinkles her head with black and white powder and pours out the holy water on her body.

Passionate, primal and, at times, perturbing, Trix Syjuco’s performances break the wall of her mild-mannered archetypal “self” without subverting the form and content of her live art presentation. Her performances like “I Fell in Love with a Killer”, “Plastik” and “Black Bride”, to name a few, inherently follow a trail of existential angst, disillusionment, and embittered human relationships.

Her subtle use of imageries and devices is intelligently delivered in a dialectic manner, purging and liberating the harrowing quest of her inner persona as a woman and as an artist and, at the same time, creating a succulent seedbed to grow and nurture her aesthetics.

 © Danny Castillones Sillada

Aesthetics of Collocation & the Women of Bencab

“The society based on production is only productive, not creative.”

~ Albert Camus

Published at Manila Bulletin
Lifestyle Section (Arts & Culture)
Page F 1-2, June 30, 2008

“Mass Culture,” as part of popular culture, produces diverse products for mass consumption. As a commercial culture, it does not follow the principle of economics; instead, it subverts the laws of “supply and demand” by inventing or creating “needs” for the insatiable consumers.

Every day, consumers are bombarded with hundreds of products being advertised on television, newspapers, glossy magazines, internet, billboards, and so forth. The textual and visual images are, aggressively, inescapable!

Most often, the consumer’s capability to make a decision on what or which product to purchase is hindered by a wide array of “product-collocation”, as a result of multiple subliminal messages (textual or visual) that are imbibed in the human psyche and consciousness via mass media advertisements.

“Product-collocation” is a collective display of two or more similar products of different brands, placed side by side for the consumers to choose from.

Every consumer has to make a choice among those presented “product-collocations”, and before an individual can make a decision on what brand or product to purchase, he or she is already suffering from “decisional exhaustion”. When an individual suffers from headache, nausea, or unexplainable anxiety while shopping, it is a symptomatic result, if not the cause, of “decisional-exhaustion”.

In aesthetics, the counterpart of product-collocation is “media-collocation”. It is when two or more mediums are placed side by side as integral part of the pictorial composition.

As an aesthetic device, media-collocation mimics “mass culture”, albeit in an explorative or satirical manner. The best example of both product and media collocations is Andy Warhol’s serial copies of celebrities and branded products in what is known as the aesthetics of “pop art”.

MEDIA-COLLOCATION AS AN AESTHETIC DEVICE

The literal meaning of “collocation” is the close association of things, or the arrangement of things beside each other. The etymology of “collocation” comes from the Latin word “collocatus”, past participle of “collocare”, which means to place or to set side by side in a place or position. “Locus” is the root word of “collocare”, meaning “place” or “position”.

In the corpus of linguistics, “collocation” is defined as the co-occurrence of two or more words that are frequently or typically used together. For example, “herd of cows”, “crystal clear”, “blue sky”, “red sun”, “part and parcel”, etc.

In art, “media-collocation”, as coined and defined by this writer, is the juxtaposition of two or more mediums, arranged sided by side in a single or series of textual or visual composition.

As an aesthetic device, media-collocation elicits discursive interpretation of the binary subjects from referential to the final juxtaposition of the artworks. Media-collocation heightens the portrayal of textual and visual images into a deeper understanding of aesthetic symbol and meaning.

There are two kinds of media-collocation: inductive and deductive. Inductive collocation is to produce the same textual or visual image from the same subject and arrange them either in a linear or layered locus. The deductive collocation, on the other hand, is to extract a symbolic image from textual or visual sources and place the artwork (texts or images) side by side with the referential subject as integral part of the entire aesthetic composition.

A well-known Filipino avant-garde artist who uses both inductive and deductive collocations is Cesare Syjuco. His media-collocation, known as “literary hybrid”, is varied and complex as he explores both textual and visual images alternatively on Plexiglas, board, back-lit frame and boxes with Plexiglas or tarpaulin. His unique art is the multifarious combination of both literary and visual references, using an assemblage of texts and images within a defined space.

Another type of media-collocation can be found in Francisco Viri’s “Abstraction of the Figure”. During his 2005 exhibit at The Crucible Gallery, Viri created a four series of works from realistic to abstract images of the same subject and placed them side by side on the wall. Abstractionist and taxidermist Lindslee uses a unique juxtaposition in his “Figuring Abstraction”. In one of his works, he stuck a sliced taxidermal goat at the center of the canvas with texture, form and color that mimicked the skin of the goat.

Equally arresting is the video animation of painter and performance artist Jevijoe Vitug during the Philippine International Performance Art Festival in 2005 that was organized by Yuan Mor’O Ocampo. From the footage of his performances, he created a series of frame by frame drawings and morphed them into video animation as part of his live art performance.

Perhaps, the most complex and varied presentation of media-collocation was during the Chromatext Reloaded exhibit in 2007 at CCP, organized by PLAC and curated by Jean-Marie Syjuco and Krip Yuson. It was a brilliant and diverse array of textual and visual collocations from holographs to photographs, from illustrations to paintings, and from sculptural to video installations.

Among the participating poets, writers and artists were National Artists Edith L. Tiempo and Virgilio Almario, Jimmy Abad, Merlie Alunan, Tita Lacambra-Ayala, Juaniyo Arcellana, Cirilo Bautista, Butch Dalisay, Ophelia Dimalanta, Marjorie Evasco, Pete Lacaba, Vim Nadera, Danton Remoto, Frank Rivera, RayVi Sunico, Cesare A.X. Syjuco, Jean-Marie Syjuco, Ricky de Ungria, Krip Yuson, and the late Sid Gomez Hildawa, to name a few.

BENCAB’S WOMEN AND HIS MEDIA-COLLOCATION
Typical of Bencab’s works on paper, print and canvas like “Sabel”, “Larawan” and the “Japanese Women” series are, generally, demure and downtrodden but pullulating with majestic presence, pompously garbed in a seemingly stolid and austere manner.

With the exception of some of his works like the Bali sketches of women, which are more elaborate and relaxed with a well-defined facial expression. In the same vein, some of his “Cordillera” women elicit tension and drama with anxious look, muscular arms and body, and exaggerated hands and feet as if laden with hard work.

In his recent exhibit titled “Related Images” at Silverlens Gallery in Makati, Bencab explores and reinvents a new style and technique in his art making. He created a suite of stylish media-collocations, juxtaposing his nude photographs and drawings of women in a dynamic and sensuous manner.

He arranges his nude drawing, in a linear collocation, with the referential subject (photograph), dashes it with a single vertical stroke of color either red or yellow, and the result is elegantly stimulating. The viewer will have difficulty of choosing which of the two collocated mediums is better – the photograph or the drawing.

Bencab does not only explore the visual form and technique in his new series of nudes, he also exploits the technology of digital art as ancillary device to his pictorial composition. He crosses over between the traditional and modern art making and comes up with a unique structure of form, style and mood of his nude subjects.

For instance, in his “Related Images 01”, Bencab uses a negative filtering of nude photograph in digital manipulation, thus, enhancing the sensuality of bodily shape and contours of the female body. In similar manner, the transparent and oblique mass of dark yellow and gestural lines on the nude drawing creates a dynamic interplay between the binary subjects of his composition.

His nude women, in this particular series, are carefully choreographed, reclusive, genteel and, at times, dreamy. There is fluidity and harmonic structure of collocated images in a sumptuous and graceful manner. The artist’s hand and mood is placid and more relaxed as though he is relishing his subject or just having fun during the process of art making.

As a master illustrator, painter, printmaker and photographer, Bencab has created vicarious portraits of women that reflect their nature in different mood, time and epoch. He articulated the strengths and vulnerabilities of women with such passion as though they were his own in a metaphorical sense.

His “Sabel” series, for instance, is an iconic portrayal of a woman in flight, destitute and rootless. Perchance, this is the only series that the artist is so passionate about addressing the social issues in the country, translating the existential angst of the mother nation in flight, laden with adverse economic and political scuffles.

Bencab’s women, in general, are elegant, reticent and existential with a fragile existence yet, they evoke a powerful and enduring presence in his works. Whether they are dressed or naked, the artist conjures up their mystical allure not only as muse in his art, but as an indispensable presence both in his artistic career and his life as a painter.

He has explored and transcended the nuances of forms, moods and colors of his art in such a way that his women are portrayed not as a mere element or adornment in the pictorial composition, but as the very essence and convergence of female’s ontological meaning both in art and in the society.

To sum, Bencab’s recent exhibit is the simulation (drawing), in a philosophical sense, of the simulation (photography) of the simulation of empirical reality (the reference of actual subject), transforming the collocated mediums into a compelling symbol of metaphysical reality.

© Danny Castillones Sillada

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Above Arworks: (1) There Are no Hierarchies..., by Cesare Syjuco, (2) Campbell Soup I Portfolio, 1968, by Andy Warhol, (3) Figure with Umbrella, 2005, by Francisco Viri, (4) Nude Variations and Bencab (photo by Erwin Obcemea), (5) Related Images 01 by BenCab, (6) Related Images 03 by BenCab