Reactions to the Director’s Notes

In one of the first meetings of the newly formed Council for Baguio Creative City, I was asked to present a general terminal report on Ibagiw. We were still working on the comprehensive terminal report at the time, and what I presented was just an overview. In that same meeting, I mentioned my intention of sharing relevant portions of that report publicly in the interest of transparency and to serve as a guide in succeeding editions of the festival, which was welcomed by the body, particularly its chair, Ms. Adelaida Lim.

When I published the first two sections of the Director’s Notes which touched on the issue of lack of sufficient funding for EntaCool and the sentiment expressed by an artist on being asked to perform pro bono, I received a call from Dr. Raymundo Rovillos during which he informed me that the views expressed in the articles did not sit well with some members of the BACCI Board and Executive Committee. I explained that articles merely presented issues and challenges that we as a community faced in the past and continue to be confronted with today.

This has clearly and undeniably put a dent in my professional relationship with BACCI. And yes, I had a choice – I could have just ignored these issues and pretended that they did not exist. It was perhaps the “safer” path.

Ignore the issue of lack of funding for cultural endeavors and allow it to plague succeeding festivals, exhibits, productions.

Ignore the issue of organizational inefficiency and allow it to continue to get in the way of responding to the needs of artists and artisans.

Ignore the difficulties the creative community experience in getting the government to be more responsive to its needs.

Make the report more palatable, more politically correct.

But this is not the time to stay within our comfort zones. The sincere attention that the current administration is giving art and culture – it’s been a long time coming. Now, with the LGU’s full support behind us, is the time to confront and find solutions to these issues.

With this, I reiterate my position - as long as we continue to gloss over these issues, sweep them under the rug instead of acknowledging them, pretend they don’t exist, we would never find solutions for them and these will continue to hound succeeding initiatives in the future.

And as concerned artists and citizens of Baguio who have been placed at the forefront of these initiatives, it is our shared responsibility to bring these issues to the fore and find solutions for them.



*The above is part of the full terminal report for Ibagiw 2019 that was submitted to the Mayor, the City Budget Office, the Council for Baguio Creative City and BACCI. The full report is published here. 

IBAGIW & BACCI

CAVEAT

I do not assume to be an authority on matters relating to corporate affairs, organizational structures or financial management. But the following observations are predicated on realities we experienced in the course of staging the Baguio Creative City Festival 2019. While the recommendations may be considered to be nothing more than a mere lay person’s suggestions, may be disregarded in view of the abundance of experts and more credible professionals either in the current Council for Baguio Creative City or the specialists that it has engaged, it is my hope that the former, it is my hope that the observations, on the other hand will be given due attention by the CBCC, BACCI, the LGU and other stakeholders.

It is not the intention of this report malign or smear persons, and it does not. What it does is merely present issues that are relevant to our shared desire to forward the collective aspirations and alleviate the plight of local artists and artisans. In the end, we all envision a more vibrant and robust creative community in the City of Baguio.

Revisiting BACCI’s Mission and Vision

The establishment of the Baguio Arts & Crafts Collective, Inc. is one of the best things to happen for the creative community in recent years. With the diminished influence of the Baguio Arts Guild which during the late 80’s and early 90’s placed Baguio on the national and international maps as a relevant center for arts and culture, and past administrations’ neglect of the sector in the last two decades, the city has been needing a force that would galvanize and unite the creative community. BACCI has the potential to be that force. 

Surely, it’s still in its infancy, finding its footing, having been formally incorporated only in early 2019, and there are several actions that could be undertaken to make the collective realize its potentials.

Quoting one of BACCI’s statements, we learn that the collective was formed “to help the city in supporting and giving value to artists and their arts and to create a community that will shelter and encourage them.” Furthermore, on its Facebook page, the profile of the collective states that “BACCI is a platform for cooperation, coordination and sharing between and among the artists, artisans and creatives of Baguio and its environs. It works for an enabling and nurturing environment where creativity and innovation are developed.”

But since its creation for the purpose of serving as the lead organization in the staging of the first Creative Festival in 2018 and its formalization and legalization in early 2019, BACCI, other than the staging of Ibagiw, has yet to take concrete steps to realize the above pronouncements. In fact, at least in the months that I engaged with them as a member of the local creative community and as Creative Director of Ibagiw, no proposals for specific projects to realize those aims were forwarded nor discussed, let alone executed.

To date, BACCI has yet to make amendments to the default template for a corporation’s constitution and by-laws that it has adopted to make it specific to the needs and intentions of the collective. The constituency that it intends to serve has distinct social, cultural, industrial and economic circumstances, and an organization that aims to be responsive must be guided by a constitution and governed by rules that were specifically designed to respond to those unique circumstances.

The effect of this lack of a specific corporate mission and vision, constitution and by-laws cascades all the way down to its officers where positions such as “Executive Director” and sectoral representatives were created and persons were appointed without a clear set of tasks and responsibilities.

RECOMMENDATIONS

• Amend the constitution and by-laws of the organization to be responsive to the actual needs of the community it wishes to serve.
• In the absence of the above, the current Board of Trustees may issue a resolution defining the mission and vision of the collective, along with an outline of tasks and responsibilities for each of its officers.

Restructuring BACCI

With the adoption of the default template for its constitution and by-laws comes the default structure for its officers – President, Vice-President, Secretary and so on. And below that set of officers, an executive committee was created with the general assumption that the members of this committee would be the ones tasked to execute all the projects of BACCI and manage all its administrative concerns.

This has not been the case – whether in matters that are internal to BACCI or with projects such as Ibagiw. While it must be noted that some of its officers have a relatively clearer idea of the tasks and responsibilities association with their positions and execute them efficiently such as the Treasurer and the Corporate Secretary, majority do not. This state of ambiguity impacts negatively on all aspects of BACCI’s procedures.

At times, these positions, along with members of the board, are filled arbitrarily and without due process, with recommendations or directions coming from persons who actually hold no official positions in the organization.

The organization also describes itself as an “open and non-exclusive group” that is “non-hierarchical” and “encourages self-management and self-regulation by artists and creatives.” But the lack of a defined membership process also results in an undefined constituency.

RECOMMENDATIONS

1. In addition to the recommendation of defining tasks and responsibilities for each of the collective’s officers, BACCI may also look into streamlining artist representation in its executive committee. In the general assembly held in March, 2019, certain artists in fields of creative expression that have no representation in the current organizational structure asked for inclusion. This was noted in the synopsis of that assembly, but no action has been taken since. This brought to the fore two basic issues: who’s supposed to act on that concern and who else has the collective left out in terms of representation? In this regard, BACCI may limit the number of representatives to umbrella classifications that cover a greater number of creative fields, for example:

• PERFORMING ARTS to cover Theater Artists (actors, directors, playwrights, technical personnel, etc.), Musicians, Dancers, Monologists/Stand-up Comics, etc.
• FILM AND VIDEOGRAPHY to cover Filmmakers, Directors, Screenwriters, Commercial Videographers, Documentarists, etc.
• VISUAL ARTS to cover Painters, Sculptors, Printmakers, Photographers, etc.
• LITERARY ARTS to cover Novelists, Poets, Essayists, Bloggers, etc.
• CRAFTS, FOLK ART & LIVING TRADITIONS to cover weavers, carvers, cultural performers, etc.
• NEW MEDIA ARTS to cover Graphic Artists, Animators, Projection Artists, Vloggers, and other creatives that primarily utilizes new technology in creating works
• CREATIVE & CULTURAL INSTITUTIONS/ENTERPRISES mainly to provide representation for institutions whose functions fall within the local creative eco-system such as Easter Weaving Room, Museums, Galleries, Craft Shops such as DL Silver, Pilak, Mayat-an Handicrafts, and yes, even DTI’s OTOP center, etc.

The above are just examples of those umbrella classifications and either some may be merged or more could be added. Certain specific fields of creativity may fall under more than one category, but they may be assigned to one primary category. The sectoral representatives could then elect a Creative Director who will sit in the Executive Committee side by side with the Executive Director. The reason for this is that having one person leading the executive committee may result in a singular point of view when assessing proposals and executing initiatives – that one person may be an efficient administrator but lack the necessary artistic sensibilities needed in an organization that aims to forward creative endeavors, or vice versa.

This organizational structure may be visualized as follows:

Project proposals may come from the general membership which are submitted to the appropriate sectoral representative. Proposals are then assessed mainly by two officers: the Creative Director who assesses the proposal for its artistic merits and the Executive Director who assesses the proposal for its administrative, logistical and financial implications and forward the proposal their recommendations based on their respective assessments.

2. It may now be time for BACCI to revisit its “open and non-exclusive” policy that may sound romantic but is not really responsive to the collective’s mission and vision. The establishment of a membership process will not only provide BACCI with a more defined constituency, member artists, artisans and institutions become real stakeholders and could claim ownership of, participate in and take responsibility for the collective’s initiatives and projects.

In addition, this will enable BACCI to have access to data from its members that could guide them in conceptualizing and initiating projects for the benefit of its members and the whole creative community.

But this is not to say that the organization should only serve the interest of its members, projects such as the staging of the Baguio Creative City Festival benefit the whole creative sector and the rest of the community - it could and should continue executing projects such as this. But members could be afforded increased participation and more benefits – for one, industry representation for those who have yet to professionalize their occupation or creative community-related endeavors.

The above recommendations revolve around instituting reforms that hopefully could improve the efficiency in which the organization executes its projects. The recommended organizational structure is just one suggestion, more concepts could be explored, but the aim remains: BACCI needs to be restructured as the current composition has been proven to be inefficient.

Funding BACCI and Financial Management

One of the main challenges that the project management team of Ibagiw experienced was funding and the lack of a financial management system in place. Although the root of this problem could be traced back to the issue of ambiguity in BACCI’s organizational structure.

As mentioned in the Director’s Notes section of this document, except for the sponsorship of HABI – The Philippine Textile Council which was made possible through the efforts of BACCI President Adelaida Lim and the funding from the City Government of Baguio, all other funding for Ibagiw was sourced and pursued by the third-party Project Management Team.

And when the festival needed bridge financing, it was also the third-party project management team that secured necessary funding, with the approval of members of the board and the executive committee.

This should have been the responsibility of BACCI as an organization, that was clear, but without a clear and specific set of responsibilities for most of its officers, BACCI could not and did not take steps in this direction, even when faced with the possibility of the festival’s cancellation. This would have been the scenario if we didn’t take on the responsibility of soliciting funds to ensure the success of the festival.

In hindsight, as professionals, it may have been more prudent for us to simply abandon the project when it became apparent that the organization that hired us neither had the financial nor administrative capability to fulfill its obligations. But we weren’t merely mercenaries, we were part of the community whose communal interests the festival, and in fact, BACCI, aimed to serve. At the risk of exposing ourselves to personal liabilities, we moved forward not only to ensure the success of the festival but help BACCI fulfill its obligations as the lead private sector partner of the city in this project.

*The above is part of the full terminal report for Ibagiw 2019 that was submitted to the Mayor, the City Budget Office, the Council for Baguio Creative City and BACCI. The full report is published here. 

To the Mayor and the Baguio Arts & Crafts Collective, Inc.

First, I would like to express my gratitude to you for the honor of being designated as the Creative Director of Ibagiw: The Baguio Creative City Festival 2019 and as Consultant to the Creative Desk from June to December, 2019. This endeavor has brought to the fore issues affecting the creative community that present opportunities, challenges and invaluable insights that could help us in our efforts to forward Baguio as a haven for art and culture.

Secondly, I would also like to share that in the last few weeks, the professional relationship between myself and the leadership of the Baguio Arts & Crafts Collective, Inc. (BACCI) has become untenable. And while the recent Council for Baguio Creative City meetings seem to have established the assumption that I am once again being designated as the director of this year’s staging of the festival, this unfortunate development regrettably renders that assumption unfeasible, BACCI being the officially designated lead private sector partner of the LGU for this particular project.

With this, I hereby submit to you the Terminal Report for the staging of Ibagiw: The Baguio Creative Festival 2019 in fulfillment of my final obligation as the director of the festival and as consultant to the Creative Desk. The report chronicles the journey we took in staging Ibagiw from conceptualization to conclusion. And in line with both my positions as festival director and consultant, the report also includes observations and recommendations on several areas of concern that I believe are vital to the development of Baguio’s creative community and economy.

Given the current circumstances, it is with much regret that I inform you of my decision to take a step back and preclude myself from further involvement in the staging of this year’s Baguio Creative City Festival to give BACCI a free hand to appoint a director that they can comfortably work with.

In addition to this, the facts that 1) the position of Consultant was essentially also meant to provide for artist representation in the Creative Desk and 2) my appointment was made possible by the endorsement of BACCI as the acknowledged organization that is supposed to represent the city’s artists and artisans, I also believe that delicadeza and prudence dictate that I also relinquish this official designation again to allow the organization to appoint a person more suitable to their preferences.

Thirdly, in view of all of the above, I also believe that my continued presence in the Council for Baguio Creative City, whose primary members are, or at least up until the conclusion of Ibagiw, were also the conveners of BACCI, may just get in the way of the harmonious working relationship that the committee needs in order to efficiently serve the interests of its constituency. Acknowledging my own deficiencies in working within the preferred parameters of its primary private sector conveners, I hereby forward my resignation from the CBCC.

Finally, I wish to express my gratitude to you, Sir, for your advocacy to uplift the local creative community, which I share, and for your sincere efforts in this area, which I shall continue to support in my personal capacity, both as a concerned artist and citizen of Baguio.

-KMA

The story of Ibagiw - Part I

The following is the introduction to my notes on Ibagiw: The Baguio Creative City Festival 2019 which form part of the terminal report that we shall be submitting to the Baguio Arts and Crafts Collective, Inc. and the newly-formed Council for Baguio Creative City. 

In the coming days, relevant parts of the report shall be posted on the festival website and its Facebook page with the intention of sharing information that could help future initiatives be truly responsive to the needs of the creative community, improve the plight of local artists and artisans, help the creative community understand the challenges we face and the opportunities and other possibilities available to us, and further forward Baguio as a creative city, as designated by UNESCO and as a matter of fact.   

I. INTRODUCTION 

Just a day after the final press conference he attended and one day before the formal opening of the Baguio Creative City Festival 2019, Mayor Benjamin B. Magalong was back at the site. There were no paintings yet on the walls earmarked for exhibits, and that’s because the angle bars where the paintings would be hung from weren’t installed yet, the platforms for the performances have not been constructed yet, and that’s because the boards and lumber we requested have not arrived yet. Purchases care of the City Government have been delayed which included other logistical needs such as flood lights, electrical wires, etc.

Nevertheless, the venue was bustling with activity. I guided the mayor to the competitions room, which we have named Ibagiw Hall. Inside, weavers were halfway through their three-yard tapestries. The mayor engaged the weavers in conversation, asking how they were, where they’re from (two of the finalists came from Mt. Province and another two were from Ifugao. The rest were either from Baguio or Benguet), thanking them for their participation. We then walked over to where the basket weaving and metalcraft finalists were working. While there were a couple of woodcarvers in the vicinity of the competition hall, the rest have established themselves in various nooks and crannies of the old diplomat hotel to be able to work in peace. The mayor was fascinated by a work-in-progress of a finalist who was weaving strands of copper wires into a braid. He asked what she was aiming for – a bracelet, which would form part of a set of wearable jewelry which included a tiara and ear cuffs.

Outside the Ibagiw Hall, 12 groups of artists that were commissioned to render their interpretation of the theme, “Re-imagining Baguio,” were working on their respective frames on every available wall space big enough to prop each of the twelve boards measuring eight by twelve feet against. The mayor requests to be allowed to paint a section of one mural, and an artist gladly offers him a brush. Noticing another group’s work which included lettering that looked similar to some un-welcome graffiti found on fences and gates around the city, the mayor playfully declares, “aha, kayo pala yun a!” Everyone in the room laughed.   

While the energy of the artists and artisans working on site clearly elated the mayor, I sensed his concern that the rest of the room remained bare just a couple of days before opening. I led him to each of the rooms around the courtyard which we have named in honor of some of the original settlers in Kafagway, as the natives called the general area of what would eventually become the City of Baguio, and I proceeded to describe to him what could be expected in each of those empty spaces on opening day. Group exhibitions in several rooms, installation art pieces, a wet-plate photography exhibit, the area in the courtyard where the performances will be staged, etc.

I could feel both his excitement and anxiety – after all, this was the first major cultural event under his 5-month old administration, and he ran on a platform which included culture and the arts as part of his core agenda.

As we were heading towards the exit, he turned to me one more time and asked, “so, Karlo, we’re all set for the opening?” Much of the materials were delayed; we’re running low, no, we’ve ran out of cash on hand since a big chunk of the funding was coming from the Tourism Promotions Board, and it would be released in the form of reimbursement after the event; our guests from Angono, Rizal were arriving any time then and will be setting up the next day; there were dozens of artists and members of the festival staff to provide meals for; add to that over a hundred featured performing artists for the opening ceremony; and so on and so forth. I usually keep an event or production’s problems known only to me and a handful of other people in the staff, but desperate times called for desperate measures. Either we get some cash advance to cover the coming days’ major expenses, or… no, there was no room for an alternative scenario. The festival will happen and we needed cash to make it happen.

I replied, “No, sir we’re not all set for the opening.”

He didn’t’ seemed surprised, or if he was, he managed not to show it. I added, “we need roughly one million to get us through the nine days of the festival. We were given a guarantee that the funding from the Tourism Promotions Board will be released within the year.”

“Are you sure?” calmly, he asked. “Yes, sir, I am.”

I wasn’t. Again, desperate times, desperate measures. With eyes closed and fingers crossed, I offered to personally sign for the cash advance.

Over a month since the closing of the festival and the funding from the sponsor has not been released. The deadline to reimburse the cash advance from the City Government has come and it had to be paid back already. No ifs or buts.

While acknowledging the sincere efforts of the current leadership to develop the local creative economy and uplift the artists and artisans of Baguio and with all due respect, but handing over a personal check to the city accountant, while we understand that we agreed to such terms, I couldn’t help but notice the irony of it all – an artist reimbursing the government for expenses for a festival that was staged as part of the city's commitments to UNESCO as a member of its creative cities network.

This is the story of Ibagiw: The Baguio Creative City Festival 2019.

Art in a box, just like in the real virtual world

I would have to say, there were very inspiring moments.

Rachael Turner was engaging, her insights interesting, as was the story of Madlab (Manchester Digital Laboratory). Always say yes, she said, and in a whisper added, within reason. Then there were couple Robert and Lorraine Sylianteng who have given their property in Escolta a new lease on life by turning it into a creative hub, and with it may have just given the former major business district a chance at redemption. I wish I could have heard more from Ee Soon Wei of Art Printing Works-Malaysia, his journey was similar to that of the Sylianteng couple's. But there was not enough time.

For three days, creative communities united at the Arete of Ateneo de Manila. The first two days were filled to the brim with presentations, testimonials, pats on the back, success stories, offers of courses and workshops to make creative communities, hubs to become success stories, all in PechaKucha format - quantized storytelling, 20 slides, and presenters spend a maximum of 20 seconds on each slide and they have no control over the way the story should flow, Microsoft's Powerpoint's programmed to automatically advance to the next slide after 20 seconds. Your whole story, or pitch, whatever, in six minutes and forty seconds. Tops.

The PechaKucha website describes the format as the "Art of Concise Presentations," It originated in Tokyo in early 2000's, they say, "as an event for young designers to meet, network, and show their work in public." Apparently, it's totally new for everyone who went up on stage last weekend, not one was able to properly tell their story within the "rules" of the format, not even the representative of a reputable international business school who was supposed to show us how it's done by supposedly doing a presentation on how to tell your story, or give a pitch, in 5 minutes in, well, 5 minutes. Just like everyone, the first minute or so went well, and just like everyone else, he rushed through the rest of his story like a runner going down a steep incline. And even then, he breached his own time limit. That's the thing about the PechaKucha format, both the presenter and the audience, at least in last weekend's gathering, tended to focus on whether the presentation can make the deadline.

I was terrible at it. I did rehearse my presentation, and I had trouble spending 20 seconds on a slide where I only needed five, and spend 20 seconds on a slide that I needed 30 to properly tell the story of. Some slides I somehow missed a couple of lines and finished ahead of the 20 seconds, others a thought came to me midway which had me going over the limit. Between speaking to the floor director and  the tech guy to cut me a bit of slack and chill and focusing on the story I thought was worth telling, there was hardly any real time left to tell the story. What? I know, right. 

I understand that time had to be managed properly to make the most out of the eight hours per day, tell the storyteller they have six minutes or so to tell the story, but don't tell them how to divide those 6 minutes or so into strictly equal segments. In a conference for creative communities and artists, it's counter intuitive.

Each batch of presentations was followed by an open forum. The conference gathered creative minds, people, in one place, then placed a wall between them. Don't speak, text. 160 characters max. There's no microphone in the middle aisle where members of the audience could walk up to to ask questions, but there's a website you log on to where you can type in your questions. You can identify yourself or post your question or reaction anonymously. Most did post their questions and reactions anonymously.

Just like in the real virtual world.

I heard the phrase business model a lot. And gentrification, the idea of which most of the presenters seem to dislike very much. 

There were a lot of calls to avoid, prevent, even rally against gentrification. The calls were made against a backdrop of a blinding high definition LED wall, overflowing coffee, business school pitches on the importance of a proper business model, and testimonials that mostly equated economic gains with success, even good art, etc. What? I know right. 

The main proponent of the gathering was the British Council, and apparently Thames Business School. I had trouble reconciling the need for creative ideas to flow freely, sincerely, authentically on the one hand, and the pitches to place creative communities in pre-fabricated templates called business models on the other. I acknowledge the need for a way to make artists make rent, but not at the cost of being forced to color inside the lines, or think within a box. 

If artists and artisans and creative hubs and communities must be boxed, packaged in a way that would not only enable them to be economically viable and sustainable but at the same time help and allow them to thrive and flourish creatively, then the least we can do is not to come forward with a pre-fabricated box. Sit down and have coffee with the artists, understand their individual processes, the stories they want to tell and why they want to tell them, understand their dynamics and how those dynamics resulted in a community, a hub, what made them gravitate towards each other, then create that box, that business model, according to those unique processes, dynamics, circumstances, personal, individual aspirations, raisons d'etre. 

Or, well, I could be wrong about all this. 

I missed the tour of selected creative hubs around the metro on the third day. Limited slots only. 

Installation just outside Arete at the Ateneo de Manila, brightly colored flags on poles that flowed freely in the wind, each distinct piece of cloth reacting uniquely to its environment and together forming ever changing forms and shapes. I learned so much looking at this installation. 

Ibag'iw, the Barrel Man 2.0, being cultural and the great reveal

Interestingly, a colleague referred representatives of I Juander, a tv magazine show on GMA 7, who are doing a feature on the barrel man, to me, the referral coming at a time when I recently proposed to have this iconic Baguio souvenir as the main theme for installation art pieces for the upcoming Ibag'iw - the 2nd Baguio Creative Festival on November 16-24, 2019.

The object of my and GMA 7's current fascination and curiosity is a woodcarving depicting a man inside a barrel. The great reveal happens when the barrel is lifted - a rather over-proportioned penis springs out. It's been a regular offering at souvenir shops in Baguio for decades and according to the tv show's crew, a professor they interviewed for the feature didn't mince words when asked about the the lack of written material as to its origins - because it's irrelevant.

Several blogs and other sites online though tell the story of how in the year 2000 National Artist for Film Kidlat Tahimik "agreed to pose and be photographed" as a live version of this "irrelevant" novelty item to purportedly make a statement about Baguio's colonial past. Several also quoted Kidlat's theory, or rather his discovery after conducting a study in the 90's that the barrel man was actually a "protest statement of sorts," "made to play a prank on Americans who made Baguio City their alternative government center in the 1900s, and in so doing displaced the Ibalois who originally lived in the area.

Then there was the exhibit in Chicago in 2008, "Beyond the Barrel Man," In one write up about the event, the author asked "Does the barrel man have a long cultural history, or is it last-century adaption of Pilipino woodworking skills?"

The woodcarving industry here is very much a market-driven one. See how much life-sized carvings of Avengers characters have proliferated? Root chairs and tables have recently given way to the current fad of Japanese-inspired minimalist designs. One of the more popular key chain designs  in Maharlika today is of a fish made of quilted brightly colored pieces of leather. There may be a more romantic explanation for the presence of wooden dolphins on the shelves of souvenir shops in Asin Road, but more than two decades ago, an exporter gave a woodcarving shop a design depicting a dolphin and ordered thousands of them with the words, "Made in the Bahamas," painted at the base.

I, and many share this sentiment, find the penis ashtrays offensive and crass, but there on the front shelves they are.

Later this year, the city will be holding the 2nd Baguio Creative Festival, of which I was invited to direct the staging. The festival is in celebration of Baguio as a creative city, both de facto and according to UNESCO.  In one of the brainstorming sessions, I offered an original song I composed for use as the festival's theme. I played it in that meeting, and one of the comments was that it was not "cultural" enough. Whatever that means. And not "indigenous" enough. Should we scrap the planned evening of country music then?

Hold on. Must we see only what we want to see and ignore the penises and dolphins? Must culture be stagnant? Shouldn't it be, nay, isn't it fluid, ever developing, ever changing, taking the shape the landscape dictates where seeds are constantly planted some of which die a natural death while others germinate, take root, continue to grow and become undeniable aspects of it? Should we force ourselves to believe that Baguio culture is and must only be about aspects of it that are indigenous, or those that agree with the palates of aesthetes and intellectuals?

All this is making me reconsider what the upcoming creative festival should all be about. I proposed that theme for the installation art pieces because the concept offer a wide range of creative possibilities. After all, we're all barrel men and women, I think. What matters is the great reveal when those barrels are lifted, that's what I am very curious and excited to see... and that the base says not "Made in the Bahamas" but created by and in Baguio.

Or, Ibag'iw. 

"Sa libingan ng maliit, ang malaki'y may libangan"

A small boat carrying Filipino fishermen was rammed by a much bigger Chinese-owned boat. And as the former started sinking, the later fled and left the fishermen for dead.

A mere "maritime incident," the president said, and "maliit na incident lang," as recent senatorial elections topnotcher Cynthia Villar echoed.

In another time and place, perhaps it could've been. But not today. Not in the time when Chinese-owned businesses catering exclusively to Chinese citizens a lot of whom are working in the country illegally some in Chinese loan funded government projects are sprouting all over. Not in the time when the present administration has willingly shelved our legal victory in an international tribunal and has all but formally ceded our sovereignty over our seas and islands.

Certainly not in the time of Duterte making threats, albeit empty, to go to war against Canada when their waste ended up in our shores. And that threat came immediately.

And after days of silence, the president finally said something. Are we surprised that his statement and that of the Chinese government's sounded alike? There wasn't even much paraphrasing done. Duterte's statement almost sounded like an echo. Much like Senator Villar's.

The Inquirer reported today that Presidential spokesperson Salvador Panelo said, "the UNCLOS does not mandate the rescue of distressed mariners in international waters if they will pose a security threat to their rescuers."

The much smaller Vietnamese vessel certainly did not see any security threat when they saw the sinking fishing boat and came to rescue the Filipino fishermen.

"Ganito ring araw nang agawan ka ng laya...," Amado V. Hernandez wrote decades ago. "Sa libingan ng maliit, ang malaki'y may libangan."

Ouido-ing my way to an EP

I was maybe around 9 or so, biking around Project 6, Quezon City, when I heard the sound of someone playing the piano coming from one of the apartments in a row along Road 3. The door was open, and from the road I saw her and I walked my BMX closer to get a better look at how her fingers moved on the keyboard. She noticed me, stopped playing, smiled and asked if I wanted to try it. I was shy as a child, but at that moment I found myself getting off my bike and walking in. She stood up from the bench, I sat down and just looked at the keys.

Her name was Cecil, and she was a piano teacher. She showed me a simple finger exercise, then asked me to try it out and for the first time in my life I played the piano. She said she liked the way my fingers moved and asked if I would be interested in taking piano lessons. I said I’d be back, I’d ask my mom.

My mother said yes, we bought that blue Michael Aaron Grade One Piano Book, and for the next few weeks, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I sat down with Ate Cecil and learned the basics of playing the piano and on Saturdays, since we didn’t have a piano at home, she let me practice for free for a couple of hours. To be able to practice at home, I drew piano keys on our window sill and I would go through the exercises on it and just imagined the sound in my head.

My favorite pieces were “Sandman’s Lullaby,” “The Birdling’s Serenade,” and “The Swing.” One Saturday, I was left alone in their living room to practice and I lifted the bench cover and browsed through the other piano pieces and chanced upon a Grade 2 version of the swing. I tried to play it and like that version better and on my next session with Ate Cecil, I showed off. She smiled but reminded me to be patient and not just jump to more advance pieces just because I could sort of read the notes and play them. She pointed out that my fingering was wrong, I played certain bars inaccurately, etc.
I breezed through the first half of the book, and struggled when we got to the sharps and flats. I never got to finish the learning all the pieces in the book.


I don’t remember exactly why anymore, but I stopped going to Ate Cecil’s. Maybe it was because I got busy with the Workshop for Creative Survival, where I got introduced to theater with my mother as my teacher. I didn’t even get to learn how to play chords. Although in that workshop, I learned how to play basic guitar chords.

Years later, I was an assistant stage manager at the Cultural Center of the Philippines. In the play, “Larawan” (a Filipino translation of Nick Joaquin’s “Portrait of an Artist as a Filipino”), and in one of the scenes, Tony Javier played by Ricky Davao, was supposed to play the piano. Ricky wasn’t a pianist, so we had a second piano on the opposite side of the wall from where the piano was onstage where a pianist, Ian Eballe, played what Tony Javier was supposed to play with Ricky going through the motion of playing onstage, finger-sync-ing “A Tisket, A Tasket.” There was a piano in the conference room which served as Tanghalang Pilipino’s rehearsal space, and one afternoon Ian saw me tinkering with it. He suggested I learned the piece in case, for one reason or another, he couldn’t make it to a show. But the piece was just too complicated for me. But I did ask him to teach me basic piano chords, and with that limited knowledge, I learned to play basic chord progressions. Piano sheet music for songs would usually have the chords at the top of the staff, and I was amused that I could play basic piano accompaniment to some Broadway songs in the books stacked inside the piano bench at the conference room. John Arcilla and I must have tested everyone’s patience that time we were both obsessed with “What I did for love,” that’s all the sound that came out of the conference room whenever there were no rehearsals.

With those basic chords I learned from Ian, I started playing around with my own melodies. A couple of years later, working at an advertising production house, a co-worker who was also a roommate heard playing around with a Casiotone, and asked if I could set a poem he wrote for his girlfriend to music. I tried and was able to come up with a basic chord progression for it, but didn’t get to really finish it.

Then I moved to Baguio, and moved by the scene at our balcony one afternoon where an invisible group of gong payers gently filled the air with their music just as fog was slowly rolling in and covered the mountains, I started to write down the following lyrics to capture the moment:
“Unti-unting binabalot ng ulap ang kabundukan, tila be isang batang sa pagtulog ay kinukumutan...”
But the moment called for more than just words, I felt, so armed with a guitar with a couple of strings missing and those basic guitar chords I learned as a young boy, I started composing a melody for the words. And that was the first song I ever completed: “Sa Saliw ng mga Gangsa.”

I don’t sing, though, and since I’ve forgotten how to read notes, and much less write. So whenever I compose, the only way I could preserve the composition is to memorize it or do a rough recording so I could teach it to the singers and musicians I choose to collaborate with.

I have since dared to compose more musical pieces - background music to my plays, songs that evolve into a sung-through musical, etc.

In 2009, the people behind the Baguio Flower Festival invited me to screen the documentary I made on the history of Baguio City. My first thought was who would sit in front of a screen for an hour or so to watch a documentary at the of Session Road while a trade fair and everything that came with it went on? I thought of spicing the screening up a bit by performing songs after each segment of the documentary. The songs would either introduce a segment, or sort of sum it up or be a commentary in the end.

The first song I composed for that screening was “Kafagway,” a song that paints a picture of how I fell in love with this city, and ended up calling it my home.

A segment in the documentary talked about Daniel Burnham’s Plan of Baguio, and for it, I wrote a song called “Ano’ng Plano?” while the song “Kasaysayan o Titulo” was inspired by the story of Mateo Cariño, the Ibaloi who owned much of where the center of Baguio now stands and how the American government in the Philippines appropriated his family’s land to realize their dream of a hill station.

Later on, I adapted the basic concept of that screening and turned it into a theatrical performance, adding more songs into the repertoire, “Mithiin,” a song that was originally the theme song of the opposition which hoped to bring change to Baguio in 2004, and “Welcome to Baguio City (ca. 09 AD).”

These songs found their way into the multimedia monograph, “Kafagway: Sa Saliw ng mga Gangsa,” which is currently on exhibit at Cafe By The Ruins Dua.

An EP of these songs have also been released and may now be streamed/downloaded on Spotify.
PS. - the EP would not have been possible without the invaluable contribution of the following:
Ethan Andrew Ventura, the musical director I’ve been collaborating with for the past 12 years who arranged much of my compositions during that period, and from whom I’ve learned so much... he calls me “kuya” but he’s a mentor to me.

The Open Space artists who’ve been singing my songs through the years, and especially those who were part of this EP - Jeff Coronado, Eu Arcilla Caburao, Roman Ordoña, Jose Ball, Caesar.. thank you for keeping the fire burning.

And to my sons, Leon Karlos and Aeneas, whose contribution to this effort is as invaluable as they are inspiring.

And last but most importantly, my wife, RL (Alta Montagna), who, after being sneered at by a colleague with whom I shared my dream of composing music decades ago, encouraged me to give music a chance and was the first to believe that I could, in fact, compose...

A multimedia monograph?

So about a year since Celestina and I casually agreed to schedule an exhibit at the Cafe by the Ruins (Dua), Kelly Ramos’, curator, call came: she needed the title, poster design and write-up for the exhibit. I admit, when that call came, I had nothing yet.

Well, what it was going to be about, that I was sure of: Baguio.

At first I planned to do a straightforward photo exhibit. But when I started putting together the images that I thought merited a space on the wall, I couldn’t help but want to share the stories that went with the images so I started putting together pieces I’ve written in the last two decades or so. A couple of weeks before the scheduled opening, what I had was a collection of images, essays and song lyrics. Then, after listening to a previous recording of one of those songs, I thought of doing a recording of the rest and include that in the work.

What is it? Wikipedia defines a monograph as “a specialist work of writing on a single subject or an aspect of a subject, often by a single author, and usually on a scholarly subject.” That’s kinda close. But I had images and music that went with it so I thought that a “multimedia monograph” would be the closest I’d get to describing what Kafagway: Sa Saliw ng mga Gangsa was.

There’s a poem inspired by an invisible cañao that developed into a song; commentaries on the current state of the city; letters to two mentors who have been huge influences on my being an artist; a photo of a blessed tree that I chanced upon across a valley in Loakan, and another one in the rain at the top of Kennon Road; there’s an image of a man walking home at dusk; among other stories of the last 25 years.

Although this may be considered as my first solo exhibition, this wasn’t exactly a solo work. For the recording, I collaborated with local artists: Ethan Andrew Ventura arranged and did the instrumentation on four of the six songs in the compilation which featured Eu Arcilla Caburao, Roman Ordoña, Joselito Balleta (Jose Ball), Caesar Salcedo, Jeff Coronado and my sons Leon Karlos Altomonte and Aeneas Altomonte.

At the opening of the exhibit last October 31, 2018, we performed those songs live to a crowd of mostly fellow artists and Baguio lovers.

The limited edition of 25 monographs, individually signed and annotated, are currently available at Cafe By The Ruins Dua, Upper Session Road, Baguio City and the exhibit will run until the end of this year.

Don't smile for me

I don't want you to just look far into the distance, I'd like for you to look at and actually see something. 

I stopped doing weddings when couples stopped getting married and started staging weddings.

I remember my first wedding gig - I was a back-up videographer/photographer. The groom's father, who was obviously having issues with the fact that his favorite son was naturally being overshadowed by the bride, hired us even if they already had a whole crew from Manila doing the same thing. "That group was hired by the bride, and they might just focus too much on the bride and her family. I want my family to be featured in the video and in photos too."

That set-up worked out well for me. People, particularly the bride and groom, weren't posing nor performing for me. I documented the wedding from afar, from the sidelines, for the crew from Manila made sure I knew who the "real" videographers were and would not hold a pose for me. As soon as they got their shots, they immediately dismissed the subjects to make sure that I didn't get to shoot my own frames or footage.

Stolen shots, they call them, and they were all I was able to get and that's exactly how shooting that wedding felt - I was stealing moments. But from those stolen moments - of the father's silhouette on the balcony waiting for his son to finish dressing up, of the son coming out of the room (a quick steady shot then a quick pan back to the father) and the tears welling up in the father's eyes, a bride's unguarded moment walking out to the garden on her way to a pre-wedding shoot with her bridesmaids... woven together and they told a pretty nice story. They, both the groom's and the bride's families, ended up distributing the video we made instead. But in these days of pre-nups and post-nups and what-nots, I lost interest in telling a staged story. Wedding clients didn't want the photographers to simply capture the ceremony as it unraveled, these days most couples primarily perform for the cameras which make for contrived walks down the aisle, first kisses and first dances, etc.

I'd like to shoot a kiss that happened, one that was motivated by an impulse, an attraction, a desire to express a feeling and not the one that was done for my camera lens. I'd like to take photos that capture beautiful moments, and not moments staged to get the perfect picture. I love the grain in under-exposed photos, the imperfections of an imperfectly framed photo that tell stories, I want that smile that's brought about by a happy thought, and not because the photographer said, "smile."

But these days, there are hardly clients for such photos.

Death and taxes

I made the mistake of commenting on an article written by one Peter Wallace, a naturalized Filipino and a staunch advocate of the Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion, or TRAIN, a gift the Duterte administration gave to Filipinos last Christmas. Naturally, the supporters of the president having the strongest presence on the Philippine Wide Web, it didn't take long for the comment to be commented on, with one saying: "binasa mo ba yung sinabi ni Wallace o talagang ignorante ka lang?"

He was correct on both points, I did read the article and yes, I am somehow ignorant.

The article mentioned above is mainly a response to critiques of his position on TRAIN, perhaps a lot coming from ignoramuses such as me who are feeling the pinch of higher prices of gas and many other basic commodities, to whom he says, "Let’s put the blame where the blame lies: international price movements and traders using TRAIN as an excuse to raise prices when they can."

Here's my ignorante two-centavos' worth: True, the whole world is suffering from higher prices of petroleum products, not just us, thanks to among other things the resulting global political and economic instability of Trumpism. But while a price increase of a mere few US cents is just that to other countries, local gas price increases are essentially higher because of the peso's poor performance, which as of this writing trades at PHP52.50 - USD1. Currency experts may debunk that ignorante argument, but while local gas prices went up bu a mere 20 US-cents, it meant a whopping 10-pesos per liter increase from last year's prices.

Here's my ignorante layman's calculation. Our family averages 25 kilometers per day in our car, or 750 kilometers a month. Our car uses an average of 8 liters, city driving, per kilometer. So that's about 94 liters of gasoline per month. With an increase of Php10.00, we're spending P940.00 extra pesos monthly. Mr. Wallace, that's a lot of bigas. I haven't included my work's transportation needs there - I do a lot work out of town lugging equipment and a lot of times have no choice but to bring a car. So throw in a couple of hundreds of kilometers in there, or a dozen or two extra liters of gasoline.

Add to that the few extra centavos and pesos that we've had to pay for all the other commodities which prices have recently gone up.

In Baguio, taxi fare recently went up. What was once a 80-peso cab ride from downtown to our place now costs P120.00. Wow, sosyal, naka-taxi... magjeep kasi kayo. Sure, but in a lot of places up here, at certain hours of the day, one has no choice but to take a taxi. A lot of those working the graveyard shift in call centers have no choice but to take a taxi.

That's just gas and transportation.

Wallace, by his own account, came to the Philippines to do business back in the 70's. My problem with Mr. Wallace's justifications is that these are made from a capitalist's point of view. We pay the same extra P10.00 price increase in gasoline, but he has more ten pesos-es than I do, and the rest of his ten pesos-es in banks, trust funds, stocks and what-nots earn him more ten pesos-es, while most of us only have the ten pesos-es we get every 15 days to get by.

But the money generated by TRAIN will be used to fund the government's Build, Build, Build program and other basic social services, Wallace argues, which would spur economic activity and growth. I'm patriotic enough, I believe, that I'm willing to make sacrifices for the greater good. But Mr. Wallace himself admitted that the bureaucracy is a mess. Corruption is still rampant despite the president's broken promise of eradicating it in months. The Commission on Audit has been busy flagging this and that department, government agency, personnel for various questionable transactions. How much of the funds generated by this tax will actually go to pubic hospitals, farm-to-market roads, school buildings and how much of it will be spent on projects like Cesar Montano's Buhay Carinderia project or SocGen Calida's questionable allowances?

And, correct me if I'm wrong, but why does it seem like we were better off economically without the TRAIN under the previous administration? Not too long ago, we amazed the world for having a stable currency, a stronger, resilient economy. Didn't Duterte himself said during the campaign that the problem with the Aquino administration was that it had so much money but didn't spend enough?

My comment on that social media link to Mr. Wallace's article said:

It may not be solely because of Train, but it's everything about the regime put together: misdirected initiatives, impunity, disregard for the rule of law, human rights violations, lack of a concrete policy on various issues and areas of governance, nepotism, cronyism, etc. etc., ad nauseam... = instability, loss of investor confidence, a weakened economy/currency, a weakened republic...

I still stand by that.

Benjamin Franklin was quoted as saying, "... in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”

Looking at the drug war and TRAIN, it's just so true.