Attention to the role of media makers and artists in articulating and expressing the Asian mobile cultures. The total award money is US $20.000 and the selected works will be exhibited in various on and offline venues.
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Although some of the ministry’s arguments against OLPC is debatable, I can only agree entirely with the statement that the scheme is being propagated in a conceptual vacuum as key argument that can underlie the rest. It is good that India opened the debate on (in this case) OLPC, as more debates and discussions on the part of national organization should be taken up on all issues of development and technologies.
Fatima (more…)
Call for Entries END FRAME VIDEO ART PROJECT
Deadline for Submissions: 11 August 2006
The End Frame Video Art Project calls for entries to the Philippines’ first video art festival. Presented by Visual Pond and Power Plant Mall in partnership with The One Minutes, the Cubicle Art Gallery and the Listening Group of Companies (Listening in Style, D-Cinema in Style and Digital Cinema in Style) and with support from the Ateneo Art Gallery, the End Frame Video Art Project aims to call attention to and create discussion on video art done by local artists and experimental filmmakers. (more…)
As if I do not have enough to do (or maybe I just like killing myself), I have just set up Korakora -Projects (http://proyekto.korakora.org/ or http://www.korakora.org/projects/) as a site for “doing things.” While all the musings and theory are distilled in this blog and the main Korakora site, I have decided to set-up a separate site for actual projects. (more…)
I wrote this preface “The Incompassionate Society”* in 2000 for a short essay called “Lunch” which I wrote in 1998 and first distributed through local BBSs and shortly through the Internet). Also, now I realize that the real reason why I was invited out to lunch by my aunt and her elderly friends was because I have been staying at home rather miserably after my father died in 1997. I am posting these texts here as a re-newed reflection on a global society obsessed with “youth culture.”
(*After Imelda Marcos’s book of speeches “The Compassionate Society.”) (more…)
I took the issue of “Freetrade” in exploring this question because it is a rather complex problem, far more complex than simplistic answers such as “sacrifice”, “perseverance”, “choice”, “hardship”, “savings”, “management”, “professionalism”, “experience”, “talent”, “education”, “responsibility” - mostly about the desire and proficiency to build an arts career after having made the choice to creative practice (with all its assumed perils - and rewards). (more…)
There is a Filipino joke/riddle that goes: “Konting bato, konting semento, pinatuyo: monumento” (a bit of rock, a bit of cement, let dry: monument.)
The monument (from Latin monere meaning “to remind”) is supposed to be something set up to keep alive the memory of a person or event, as a tablet, statue or other. I don’t know where the old joke/riddle above came from but it seemed to reflect a cynicism towards the modern tradition of monuments in public space.
(Photo: The UNESCO Heritage Site Monument in Vigan City, Ilocos Sur).
A few months ago I went to my mother’s hometown Vigan to see how the prestigious title of Unesco World Heritage Site has changed people’s lives. I also asked the Biguenos about the benefits of such prestige. The responses I received were all negative, cynical - from the rich families to the workers to the lowest in the economic and social class - the title simply gave funds for the local officials to squander. And in memory of this great squander, is the Vigan World Heritage Monument, a great public squalor. It was the most deplorable sight that I have ever seen.
The Monument may look grand in the photo, but that is what all these representations are supposed to do - impart that monumental feeling - but like tombstones, they actually serve as markers and covers for the corruption and death of living culture it has destroyed and buried under the ground.
For some of the Biguenos I spoke to, the death is real: they mourn it and they try to forget the grief in the struggle for daily survival. For the poor Biguenos, this is the way, and for the richer ones, they have fled to Manila, other cities in the country or overseas. They have no ambition of bringing up their families in the prestige of culture that has changed their dreams of Vigan forever.
I’m really sorry, but this is the reality of “cultural heritage.”