Sure, many art practices have been winging it via online platforms since 2020 but the uncompromising nature of street arts can teach us a thing or two about the non-negotiability of physical and public spaces to artmaking, especially in times of crisis, under authoritarian regimes.
True to his cultural agenda, the Duterte regime doesn’t and won’t go all the way like Marcos did—except for the edifices—so he could still maintain an illusion of democracy. How could this government be accused of curtailing press freedom when it shut just one network down as it trolls another?
Unless your place already has a study, which is highly doubtful if you belong to low-to-average-income earners in the Philippines, working from home must have felt like, at some point, preparing for a play production.
Escaping our deterministic tramlines individually often makes us corrupted sellouts, whereas changing them collectively makes us revolutionaries.
Credibility is automatically compromised once information dissemination gets treated as business. Only information that translates to profit or that conditions people to consume becomes published or aired.
But there can be no further wondering why government feels threatened by progressive education. State forces insist that they “rescued” Lumad students—they rescued them from further learning how government assists in the corporate plunder of their ancestral lands, from realizing the potential of their collective strength as our young heroes then realized their collective strength.
Batid kong hangad mong mapabuti ang mundo. Simula pagkabata, sa tuwing tinatanong ka kung anong gusto mong maging, palaging sagot mo ay ang manghuli ng masasamang tao. At tila dumarami nga sila, sapagkat gabi-gabi na lang, laman ng mga balita ang iba’t ibang kaso ng pagnanakaw, panggagahasa, pagpatay.
There’s a higher plane where seeking for accountability can take us to, such as contemplating about socio-political systems which allow such adverse projects to perpetuate, about who really benefits from them. This saves us from the simplistic, ignorant, and cliché narrative of citizen-blaming.
If DepEd were to make sense, now is the “perfect time” for honesty—from their end. The agency has to admit that the absence of teacher supervision makes learners primarily responsible for their own learning progress.
Just why are public officials so obsessed with superficial beautification than, say, making spaces more inclusive?
