CENSORSHIP AND, UH, KAREN DAVILA? IS THAT YOU?
12 August 2011
www.stuartsantiago.com
the day after ccp closed the kulo exhibit, the day karen ocampo flores resigned from ccp, a crowing karen davila on teleradyo phoned ccp president raul sunico and said: CLEARLY YOU WILL HAVE TO CENSOR ARTWORK (!)
it would be funny if it didn’t hurt so much… this popular broadcast personality, a u.p. graduate, masscom if i’m not mistaken, obviously doesn’t know that her own freedom of expression should be everyone’s freedom of expression, that the freedom of expression she enjoys was hard-fought and hard-won, that her freedom of expression is contingent on everyone else’s freedom of expression, including, especially, that of artists like mideo cruz, and, yes, works like poleteismo, na hindi pambababoy kundi pagpupukaw ng kaisipan in this very corrupt and catholic country, and not necessarily to the detriment of religion or the undermining of one’s faith.
after all, it could very well be as ust alumnus, now u.p. professor, neil garcia says:
i take issue…with the knee-jerk reaction of some dominican apologists, who are quick to disown mideo cruz with outrageous passion. this artist is indeed a thomasian, for he cares about the church, with which his imagination appears to be slavishly fascinated, even if or precisely as he can only express this care (and this fascination) in disagreeing and disagreeable ways. after all, given the mass reproduction (and reproducibility) of the church’s ubiquitous, habitual and fully habituated images, their willful and disagreeable deformation may in fact be the best way to make them perceptible (and therefore, efficacious) again… this artist may well be an evangelizer of sorts, in which case the philippines’ great thomasian institution should simply revel in this unwitting “accomplishment.”
Read full article here.
