Trying to understand why art can offend, and why artists should continue to be free
by: Imelda Cajipe Endaya
“What in art gives such remarkable power that it can offend? What makes people susceptible to being offended?” Thus spoke Prof. Flaudette May Datuin, taking off from WJT Mitchell’s What Do Pictures Want? I’m glad I attended the UP Arts Studies forum yesterday on the now closed “Kulo” exhibit at CCP. It was such an intelligent, unemotional exchange of facts and ideas on a wide range of offensive art, audience reaction, culture and legalities.
Forum speaker, lawyer and Prof. Alden Lauzon, cited that Article III, Section 4 of the Philippine Constitution pronounces that “[n]o law shall be passed abridging the freedom of speech, of expression, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and petition the government for redress of grievances.” And in an attempt to define the ever-subjective “obscenity,” he quotes: (from Miller vs. California/ cited in Bernas)
The basic guidelines for the trier of facts must be: (a) whether “the average person, applying contemporary community standards” would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest… (b) Whether the work depicts of describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law and (c) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.”
The ongoing controversy however is not about an artwork being prurient or obscene but more about blasphemy and sacrilege in a largely “Catholic” populace. Apparently, there are no legal precedents on such matters when it comes to testing our 1987 Constitution of the Philippines. So discussion on this did not ensue. Except I gathered it is best for artists espousing social transformation to test the aesthetics of their art on street folks rather than on May Datuin or Patrick Flores.
Before the forum, I told Mideo Cruz that I myself was offended specifically by the oversized crimson phallus placed on the crucifix, and the Jesus image with eyes blackened with dripping ink. The stretched condom hanging on one side of a crucifix was just as odious, I said. But that I didn't think CCP should close the exhibit. Politeismo should have been left open for restricted viewing. Datuin said that we should have seized this as a teaching moment. She even asked that the exhibit be reopened for such purpose. I agree, though maybe it can be moved elsewhere on safer grounds of free-thinking academe. Now I think, my neighbors and relatives would ask me the same way as many have asked CCP Chair Emilie Abrera, “Katoliko ka ba?”
Read full article here.
