I can’t answer for anyone but myself. For me, I see this controversy as a challenge to both the Filipino artist and the audience. For the audience, this is a challenge to be critical on looking at art and to give out an educated criticism of it. For the artists, I see this as a challenge to be more sensitive to their audience and to be insightful more than just simply being inspired. I see this whole thing as a disruption of the status quo that art is just an expression. I really find that very selfish. Maybe it’s about time we communicate.
Art should somehow have aesthetics… I was also looking for harmony. I saw portions of Mideo’s work through pictures, but it seems like anyone can do what he has done. It looked like a typical wall at a room in some people’s houses, full of posters or pictures, put together to save space, like it’s the inner being of a person who might not be putting his faith in the first place (hence, polytheism or Poleteismo), but other than that his work could be easily interpreted as something else, something offensive, and it didn’t help that he just said, “beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.” (I’m not entirely sure that this was his exact words.) That was more selfish. If there’s a deeper meaning to his “art,” then he should have shared it, but it seems like there isn’t, or maybe he’s really just plain selfish. The forum was his chance to turn things the other way around, but he wasn’t able to give better explanations. It was just right that CCP closed it down. Now that he’s not showing up, he’s making things just harder for himself; why not let the artist within him go out bravely & say something else other than “beauty is in the eyes of the beholder”? Let me go back to my previous statement that anyone can do what he’s done. Looking at pictures of his work, I must say that was too easy. I couldn’t see much of the artistic process that he must have gone through before installing his work at the CCP. I am assuming that I got part of the message he was trying to communicate, but for all the others, he could have helped with the interpretation (since his execution didn’t use much imagination).
People might defend “Poleteismo” as a shock art… they got what they wanted, they shocked the souls out of most people, even I was shocked, but what comes out to be even more shocking to me is that his work was kind of mediocre. This is not just about freedom of expression & the CCP as a place to uphold that freedom. It’s also about CCP, that it has to be more discriminating between art &… fart. Di lang dapat puro freedom of expression, CCP ‘yan e… Cultural Center of the Philippines. Kung maglalagay sila ng isang bagay, kahit fart pa ‘yan, sana pumili sila ng medyo mas maganda. Even an ugly message could be communicated in a beautiful way.
Oh, Mideo. You must now be having fun under your spotlight. Buti ka pa pinagtutuunan ng pansin ng Senado. Masaya ka na bang na-overtake mo ang iba pang mas mahahalagang usapin tulad ng kakulangan ng mga silid-aralan?
