Mideo Cruz's "Poleteismo" exhibit has been called a lot of things recently, including "sacrilegious", "blasphemous", "offensive" and my personal favorite: "sickening". The Catholic Church is all up in arms, so are a bunch of Catholics, and Imelda Marcos.
So thank God (no pun intended) for the silent few. For "jeric92002" of pinoyexchange.com who said: "kakatawa naman yung mga image" and most especially "tonton" who wrote: "Sacreligious nga. Nandun si Mcdo pero wala si Jolibee." Because otherwise, all I've been hearing is how this is somehow the bane of all our existence, while actual injustice keeps happening around the country. While everyone's busy defending Catholicism or art or freedom of expression; while everyone's engaging on the always inane debate about what constitutes "art", we're all missing one fact about this allegedly "controversial" exhibit - it's fucking hilarious.
Above is a video artwork entitled "A Fire in My Belly" by deceased American artist David Wojnarowicz. Made in 1987, the video was pulled from exhibition at a Smithsonian museum in Washington, D.C. after the Catholic League condemned it as "Anti-Christian Hate Speech". Earlier this year, however, the Museum of Modern Art in New York rescued it from obscurity, saying in a statement: "We endorse the position of the Association of Art Museum Directors, which states that freedom of expression is essential to the health and welfare of our communities and our nation."
Depending on your worldview, this story is either a triumph of artistic freedom or proof that the government isn't doing enough to protect your religious beliefs. In fact, if this story is all you know about this story, then your opinions would be limited to those two extremes almost by default. But watching the video is an experience in and of itself. It's so weird and outrageous that there's no way I can possibly take it seriously, even if I somehow figured out what it was that should be taken seriously. When I was in high school, a few of my friends listened to Death Metal bands like Danzig and Deicide; bands that were trying really hard to sound and look evil. Their songs, lyrics, and album art always made us laugh until we were in tears, the same way we laughed at Pauly Shore in "Encino Man". And we were 14.
Here's the most important fact about "A Fire in My Belly": it was made in 1987. The American concept of art as a means to "shock" was already tired by 1970. By the turn of the century, this type of video art had already become the subject of countless parodies, my favorite of which is this scene from the movie "Ghost World" in 2003.
I often find "What is art?" discussions uninteresting because it's ultimately irrelevant. What is with this obsession over semantics? Art is too powerful, too meaningful, and too important an aspect of human civilization to be reduced into a boring dictionary debate. Here's the question that actually matters: "What is good art?" All other questions are irrelevant, and that includes "Should art be moral?"
"Shocking" artworks such as those found in Mideo Cruz's "Poleteismo" keep happening because Filipinos won't stop getting outraged. Our art is forever stuck in puberty because our threshold for "shock" is so ludicrously low. That is why the movie "Ang Babae sa Septic Tank" was such an important film: because someone finally had the balls to ridicule the masters of shock-art that continue to dominate Philippine Independent Cinema. Someone finally called these people out for limiting the artistic objectives of an entire generation of filmmakers towards the merely "controversial" and "transgressive".
But who could blame them, really? Authority figures in this country have been treating artists as if they were a bunch of giggling teenagers for decades, so it shouldn't come as a shock (there's that word again) when they behave accordingly. That's how we've managed to cultivate an artistic atmosphere in which art exists for the sole purpose of pissing these authority figures off, where art gets talked about in a national scale only when the word "offensive" is used, and where art refuses to grow up.
So thank God (no pun intended) for the silent few. For "jeric92002" of pinoyexchange.com who said: "kakatawa naman yung mga image" and most especially "tonton" who wrote: "Sacreligious nga. Nandun si Mcdo pero wala si Jolibee." Because otherwise, all I've been hearing is how this is somehow the bane of all our existence, while actual injustice keeps happening around the country. While everyone's busy defending Catholicism or art or freedom of expression; while everyone's engaging on the always inane debate about what constitutes "art", we're all missing one fact about this allegedly "controversial" exhibit - it's fucking hilarious.
Above is a video artwork entitled "A Fire in My Belly" by deceased American artist David Wojnarowicz. Made in 1987, the video was pulled from exhibition at a Smithsonian museum in Washington, D.C. after the Catholic League condemned it as "Anti-Christian Hate Speech". Earlier this year, however, the Museum of Modern Art in New York rescued it from obscurity, saying in a statement: "We endorse the position of the Association of Art Museum Directors, which states that freedom of expression is essential to the health and welfare of our communities and our nation."
Depending on your worldview, this story is either a triumph of artistic freedom or proof that the government isn't doing enough to protect your religious beliefs. In fact, if this story is all you know about this story, then your opinions would be limited to those two extremes almost by default. But watching the video is an experience in and of itself. It's so weird and outrageous that there's no way I can possibly take it seriously, even if I somehow figured out what it was that should be taken seriously. When I was in high school, a few of my friends listened to Death Metal bands like Danzig and Deicide; bands that were trying really hard to sound and look evil. Their songs, lyrics, and album art always made us laugh until we were in tears, the same way we laughed at Pauly Shore in "Encino Man". And we were 14.
Here's the most important fact about "A Fire in My Belly": it was made in 1987. The American concept of art as a means to "shock" was already tired by 1970. By the turn of the century, this type of video art had already become the subject of countless parodies, my favorite of which is this scene from the movie "Ghost World" in 2003.
I often find "What is art?" discussions uninteresting because it's ultimately irrelevant. What is with this obsession over semantics? Art is too powerful, too meaningful, and too important an aspect of human civilization to be reduced into a boring dictionary debate. Here's the question that actually matters: "What is good art?" All other questions are irrelevant, and that includes "Should art be moral?"
"Shocking" artworks such as those found in Mideo Cruz's "Poleteismo" keep happening because Filipinos won't stop getting outraged. Our art is forever stuck in puberty because our threshold for "shock" is so ludicrously low. That is why the movie "Ang Babae sa Septic Tank" was such an important film: because someone finally had the balls to ridicule the masters of shock-art that continue to dominate Philippine Independent Cinema. Someone finally called these people out for limiting the artistic objectives of an entire generation of filmmakers towards the merely "controversial" and "transgressive".
But who could blame them, really? Authority figures in this country have been treating artists as if they were a bunch of giggling teenagers for decades, so it shouldn't come as a shock (there's that word again) when they behave accordingly. That's how we've managed to cultivate an artistic atmosphere in which art exists for the sole purpose of pissing these authority figures off, where art gets talked about in a national scale only when the word "offensive" is used, and where art refuses to grow up.
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