2nd day in GenSan
Posted by: Fats in: Mga Pulong atbp > Takaw at Sursur!It was November 15, the day of the “Kuro Satellite Gathering.” Alma scheduled it from 1-5 in the afternoon, originally in a conference room at Lea’s Pension but, due to schedule conflicts, moved to a function room of Halina Restaurant just nearby. I finished the visual aid for my presentation (a very simple OpenOffice slide presentation). I guess I’ve never really been very good with making my own visual aids or multimedia presentations. 
I had early lunch at Lea’s Cafe - chicken liver and some rice, really quite good, but such a huge serving so I wasn’t able to finish all of it. By around 12:30, some students working with the organizing team for the Kuro arrived and we all went to the Kuro venue.
The organizing of the Kuro c/o Kalimudan was just fantastic. The lecture on art and advocacy by Nestor (who came in from Davao City) was also very good (I wish there was more relaxed time to talk with him, but perhaps later when I get the chance to visit Davao). The level of interaction and discussion among the participants were so good that I felt rather jealous, somewhat wishing that I had a similar group of people here in Manila. I have been on numerous forums here and discussions have always been so restrained, very little interaction coming from the “audience” (indeed sticking to the role of audience rather than active participant). I suppose it might have to do with people’s living involvement with the issues (which are deeper in places like GenSan) and perhaps also might have to do with the format of the gathering. The Kuro was intended to be as unrestrictive and fluid as possible and Kalimudan made that not only a possibility but also a working success.
Some of the issues that came up in the open discussion was 1. use of pirated software and how it affects the creation and distribution of art; 2. unavailability of FOSS solutions for art, communication, distribution of art and media; 3. the problem of “art as entertainment” whereby art and artists are marginalized by their compartmentalization into the entertainment sector (perhaps problematizing the community’s own view of “entertainment” as trivial); 4. what does art advocate? The question of advocacy, for example the case of the photographer taking photos of poor people and entering the photo in a contest; 5. practical know-how on using the Internet to support artist’s works.
The issues raised are very important and I truly wish that it was more possible to draw connections between the issues and the topics taken up in the presentations. My handicap is that my understanding of the Bisaya language is quite poor (Bisaya, Tagalog and English were the languages used in the Kuro). Bisaya is a beautiful expressive language and I should learn it more …
Anyway, some photos that I took in GenSan are at the Korakora Small Gallery, together with photos taken by Alma/Kalimudan. We are still waiting to get the text written by the blogger and the transcriptions to be placed on-line but the problem is the NCCA website which is taking ages to set-up the WebSining Forums. Quite disturbing, these types of problems, which is why it is very important to nurture a small group of people who can truly work together and not let each other down…
