I make museums, that's how Marian Pastor Roces often matter-of-factly describes her work. An art and museum curator of almost 50 years, Roces considers museums an essential part of understanding a culture and reversing the harmful misconceptions that have dragged Philippine society down. "Curation is about dealing with moral questions," she says.
Why do Filipinos cannot solve large social problems, why do we have confused notions about our identity, and what should a new museum a hundred years from now contain about our present time? Watch the full interview in the video.
Why do Filipinos cannot solve large social problems, why do we have confused notions about our identity, and what should a new museum a hundred years from now contain about our present time? Watch the full interview in the video.
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00:00:00 Magandang araw, Podmates! Howie Severino muli na nagpapaalala na nakakatalino ang mahabang attention span.
00:00:08 May kasama na naman tayong dakilang Pilipina, si Marian Pastorosas,
00:00:13 tagapagtatag na mga museo, curator, thinker, cultural critic, at marami pang iba.
00:00:20 Magandang araw sa 'yo, Marian. Nice to see you!
00:00:23 Magandang araw. Nakakatuan na inibitaw mo ako dito.
00:00:28 Well, thank you for making the time. I only see you now in glossy magazine photos.
00:00:33 Of course, I'm talking about this recent Vogue magazine feature.
00:00:38 They glammed you up along with other distinguished ladies.
00:00:42 And that feature about you covered this broad sweep of your interest.
00:00:47 In fact, I've known you for a long time, but I learned a number of things I didn't know about you.
00:00:53 So that's a credit to the magazine and its writers.
00:00:56 Anyway, among your many hats, the first one that is always listed is curator.
00:01:06 So first question, what is a curator in a nutshell?
00:01:12 Mabuti, tinanan mo. Ganito, akala, may confusion.
00:01:15 Akala interior designer, akala...
00:01:19 Akala naman, architecto, pwede silang mag-curate.
00:01:21 Pwede naman, siguro, kailangan silang sa ibang disiplina.
00:01:25 Pero ang mahalaga, halimbawa, i-hambing natin sa interior designer.
00:01:30 Pag interior design, kahit ano pwede, ang limitation mo lamang kung anong gusto ng kliyente mo,
00:01:35 o kung ano yung type mo, feel mo, kung saan ka pakunta bilang isang...
00:01:41 Ganun na nga, alagad ng sinin.
00:01:43 Ang curatorship ay hindi ganun kalipre.
00:01:46 Hindi siya, hindi mo maaaring gawin ang gusto mong gawin.
00:01:51 Dahil, pag ikaw ay nag-curate ng isang pagkatanghal ng isang exhibit o museo,
00:01:59 ang importante ay meron kang tinatawag nating thesis,
00:02:03 meron kang argument, meron kang gustong tilahad.
00:02:08 So, inbis na isulat mo sa isang aklat, ginagawa mo 'yon, nilalahad mo 'to,
00:02:14 o inihahayag mo 'to sa pamamagitan ng mga gamit, ng mga katangsining, mga artifacts, at kung ano-ano pa.
00:02:25 So, you are working with space, you're not working with the page of a book.
00:02:29 So, ang halimbawa ang gusto mong sabihin ay the 1950s was our most American period in the Philippines.
00:02:35 Halimbawa 'yon ay argument mo.
00:02:37 Gusto mong sabihin 'yon, gagawa ka ng exhibit para maipakita mo na tama ang iyong argumento.
00:02:45 Ipapakita mo kung ano-ano galing sa 1950s, maaaring newspaper articles,
00:02:51 maaaring mga refrigerator nung araw na 'yon, maaaring koche nung araw na 'yon,
00:02:55 maaaring mga personalities nung araw na 'yon, di ba?
00:02:58 Para maipamulat mo sa iyong audience na parang 'yong 1950s dapat natin pag-aralan kasi Americano-Americano tayo noon.
00:03:06 Halimbawa lang 'yon, hypothesis lang 'yon.
00:03:08 But that's an example of you have an argument to propose to the public.
00:03:14 Ganun po ang curator ko.
00:03:16 But it's a profession, ano? Kasi you identify yourself as a curator.
00:03:21 But parang wala ko masyadong alam na curatorship major sa college.
00:03:25 How did you become a curator?
00:03:27 Kami yung mga nauna. So, hindi kami nang galing sa pag-aamal o pagsasanay.
00:03:31 Ngayon may doctorates, of course, no?
00:03:33 But when I began 50 years ago, there was no such thing.
00:03:36 So, para kami yung 001.
00:03:41 So how did you end up as a curator?
00:03:43 A curator specifically of museums and big exhibits?
00:03:47 Yes. 50 years ago, it was really 1974, I graduated from Arts Akohawi.
00:03:56 Martial law, no?
00:03:58 Martial law.
00:03:59 Ngayon, pag nag-graduate ka ng Communication Arts, actually dalawa lang ang iyong posibilidad e kung 1974 ka nag-graduate.
00:04:07 Either you become part of the Marcos Machinery, the propaganda machinery, or you belong to entertainment.
00:04:18 Neither of which was really interesting to me at that time.
00:04:21 Now, yung mga kaibigan ko naman, di ba?
00:04:23 Hindi nag-underground na din sila. So, wala silang profession, di ba?
00:04:26 Mahirap, mahirap ang mga decision. You're 20 years old, nag-de-decide ka, hindi ko gusto ito, hindi ko gusto yan.
00:04:32 So, kailangan ko magtrabaho.
00:04:36 So I actually walked up the ramp of the Cultural Center and asked if there was a...
00:04:42 Cultural Center? Okay.
00:04:44 Yes. I actually asked kung may vacancy.
00:04:47 I got hired that day in 1974.
00:04:52 I was like a new grad. I was asked to write a paper immediately on a work of art and they accepted me.
00:05:00 So, I became a curator in 1974. That actually makes me the oldest curator in the Philippines now.
00:05:07 Yeah, but just to refresh, 1974, the Cultural Center and many other...
00:05:12 Because Imelda Marcos.
00:05:13 Yeah, cultural institutions were controlled by Imelda Marcos.
00:05:16 And in fact, kasi inabanggit mo yung propaganda ng Marcos regime.
00:05:20 I mean, it was kind of an extension of that, right?
00:05:22 That's correct. Pero ang pakiramdam ko kasi halos wala kang puwang.
00:05:27 So, humaanak mo ko ng parang tingin ko, hindi ako nagtagal, ha? Three years lang ako.
00:05:33 Mas madugo siguro kung nasa National Media Production Center ko.
00:05:38 Or I'm sure it was harder.
00:05:41 So, it became my first job and it's still my work today. Yun, dun ako nagsimula.
00:05:46 Wow. Okay. Well, obviously, you've done well.
00:05:50 But just in the generic sense, kasi when you say curate, parang...
00:05:55 I mean, everyone needs to curate, diba?
00:05:57 It's not just a profession, but in the generic sense, you curate things which you put on Instagram, diba?
00:06:03 You cannot put everything on your social media. You cannot include everything.
00:06:07 So, in a way, parang in a generic sense, everyone is a curator.
00:06:11 We're all choosing what's important to us or useful to us in this vast universe of information or things that can be valued.
00:06:22 Ngayon, yung sinasabi mong definition na curation or curatorship, ay ganun na nga.
00:06:28 Parang lahat na, pwede mo curate, pwede mo curate yung meals sa aeroplano, etc.
00:06:33 Everything is curated because the idea is that you form things para magkaroon ng isang dating o isang mensahe o isang kwento.
00:06:42 All right. But that is not a curatorship that I entered and I'm still practicing.
00:06:48 Because I entered the scene, the art scene, in the 1970s.
00:06:54 Panahon ito ng the post-colonial moment, tubaga.
00:06:58 When modernity was shifting, modernity was being criticized.
00:07:03 And I'm still a critic of the modern to this day. Kasi dun ako pinanganak, tubaga, noong period nayon.
00:07:09 So, nagkataon ba na nandoon sa cultural center yung pinaka matitigas ang ulong artist?
00:07:14 It's very strange. Very, very strange.
00:07:17 And ang natutunan ko noong maagang panahon na yun ay ang curation is an ethical profession.
00:07:25 The questions you are answering are not yours. It belongs to particular communities.
00:07:32 And siguro mas madali kung maipaliwanad sa 'yo kung sasabihin ko na bawat project na sisimulan ko, meron akong tatlong tanong sa sarili ko.
00:07:46 And I learned this earlier and I still do it now.
00:07:49 The first question I ask myself is, "Kaninong kwento ang gusto kong ikwento? Kanino ito?"
00:07:55 In other words, for whom? For what? Etc.
00:07:58 Pangaluan tanong is, if I tell this story, sino ang napapawi? Sino na-erase?
00:08:03 These are really ethical questions.
00:08:06 My third question to myself is, who gives me the right? Sino nabigay sa akin ang karapatan?
00:08:10 To decide which story is more important than another story.
00:08:14 So it's an ethical practice because you want to be able to be free of being number one, bayaran.
00:08:29 Halimbawa may humingi sa akin ng museum sa mining industry.
00:08:33 Halimbawa, siyempre tatanungin ko is, ano bang gusto mangyari ng mining industry? Papano ba ito? Gusto ba nila magandaang dating nila sa lipunan?
00:08:47 Ito ba mga ito ay gagasa sa malaking pera dahil napakapangit ng reputation ng mining industry? May hirapan ako doon.
00:08:56 So that is actually not the kind of use of the word curation today.
00:09:02 But I continue to practice it because this is the global practice of curatorship.
00:09:06 It's not curating a menu.
00:09:10 Unless you're curating a menu to make an important moral point, maybe about slaughtering animals, maybe.
00:09:20 That's a curatorial exercise. But curation is about dealing with moral questions.
00:09:27 What is a story valid for an entire society or for a small town?
00:09:34 I want to ask you about a particular project that you've been mentioning to me.
00:09:41 Itong museum project mo sa Basilan.
00:09:44 You identify yourself as a curator by purview. You introduce yourself as parang tagatatag ng mga museyo.
00:09:53 You set up museums. You say it in a very matter-of-fact way as if it's so easy.
00:09:59 But we know how big those kinds of projects are.
00:10:02 You're setting one up in Basilan. As we all know, as many people know, Basilan doesn't have a very positive cultural reputation.
00:10:16 Let's put it that way. The only times I've been to Basilan, in fact, is to cover conflict.
00:10:20 There was a major hostage taking there about 20 plus years ago.
00:10:24 May mga firefight. It's well known for harboring this and that rebel group.
00:10:30 So why Basilan?
00:10:33 Number one is, the reason I make museums is because nung hindi na ako ma-employ, I mean I'm really totally unemployable already because ang tigas ng ulo ko.
00:10:44 So I decided that I was going to set up a corporation and I was offering the corporation to make museums.
00:10:50 So it is in this capacity that I've been making museums all over the place.
00:10:54 One of my last projects was BARMM, Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, which was the organization, it's the juridical entity that followed ARM.
00:11:07 Okay.
00:11:09 Which is the autonomous region.
00:11:10 Autonomous region.
00:11:11 Yes. Mahabang kwentuhan kung bakit naging BARMM, pero nagkaroon ng referential, nagkaroon ng de facto a sub-state.
00:11:22 So hiniling sa akin na gumawa ng museum sa capital, sa Cotabato City, sa Sheriff Cabungsuhan Center Complex.
00:11:33 Matagal na kasi akong involved sa Mindanao, pero nakakatua yung pagkakataon na makagawa ng museum sa Muslim Mindanao.
00:11:41 Ngayon, marami ako naging kaibigan na ngayon ay silang namamahala sa maraming lugar sa Mindanao.
00:11:47 Isa na doon ang Isabela, na ang mayor na nahalal ay kaibigan ko.
00:11:53 So tinapos niya ako, sabi niya gawa naman tayo dito. Kasi kung bakit natapos ko na yung overall BARMM story, no?
00:12:01 Bago natin puntahan ang basilan, gusto ko lamang taliwanag kung ano yung curatorial plan noon BARMM museum. Gusto kong ipagdiinan o bigyan ang diin kung paano nanatili, kung paano nagpunyagi yung ordinaryong Muslim.
00:12:25 Hindi ko gustong itutup sa mga bida, hindi ko gustong itutup sa mga leader. Kasi kilala natin lahat ng leader on many sides, very forward yan sa media.
00:12:37 Pero gusto kong ipakita doon sa museum, lalo na bagong tatag pang BARMM, kung paano sila naka-survive yung iba't-ibang ordinaryong Muslim.
00:12:48 So yun ang aking ginawa. Mabutit, andun siya, nakatayo siya, nakakaalil.
00:12:58 So, on concrete terms, I want to ask you about this Basilan Museum. So, I mentioned that Basilan has a, let's put it this way, a colorful history, not just cultural but political.
00:13:16 There's been a lot of conflict there, banditry, terrorism, etc. So, curating a Basilan Museum, are you going to include maybe the more tortured part of their recent history?
00:13:32 I mean, the scary part, Abu Sayyaf was active there for a while, the Bernham couple were hostage there, and then there was this incident in Namitan, this notorious incident in Namitan, where there were more hostages that were taken and there was a major firefight.
00:13:51 Sure. And it's just coming out of it. Ngayon lang sila nakakaraos, kung paga, dun sa period nayon. I just want to clarify, the museum is for Isabela de Basilan, the city, not Basilan.
00:14:07 We're still dreaming of a Basilan Museum. This is for one place. So, this is a very interesting moment in time and a very interesting place. Number one, Isabela de Basilan did not choose to belong to BARMM.
00:14:24 It rejected. Administratively, sa Pilipinas, kasali sa administration ng Sambong Peninsula. Number two, it is a Christian majority city in a Muslim majority province.
00:14:39 So, that's very interesting on its own. Now, as you know, Basilan, in the referendum, decided to go with being under BARMM. So, it's a strange situation where this Christian majority town in a Muslim majority province, and administratively,
00:14:57 kung pa, kaibang pa sila ng administration. Yung isa, BARMM, yung isa, Sambuanga. Alright. But very interestingly, they elected a Muslim woman mayor.
00:15:09 So, I told my friend, and that's Mayor Hataman, Mayor City Hataman, very interesting moment in time. Maglagay tayo ng museum to cross-cultural understanding.
00:15:22 Ating ipaliwanan kung sino-sino ang tao dito. Bakit sila nandito? Ano ba ang pinagsimulan ng alitan, ng awayan, and all of that.
00:15:36 Now, I would like to also point out that a historical narrative is not necessarily, it's not the only kind of narrative you can curatorially present.
00:15:46 You can present other formulations, other frameworks na hindi history. Alright. Ang importante muna dito sa ginagawa ko na ngayon sa Isabela is to bring out things that people might find surprising.
00:16:06 But also, the people in Isabela might find, ah kami yan talaga. Number one, labing-anin na wika ang winiwika sa Isabela. So, nandiyan yung kayahan, which is not the majority.
00:16:21 And then there's all the Sama languages. As you know, there are about seven Sama languages. So, ang madami sa Isabela ay Sama Dilaot, which we know as Bajau, and Sama Bangingit, which had a colorful history, which no Bangingit right now remembers.
00:16:41 Okay. And then you have, obviously, Tsabacano. Tsabacano, malapit lang yung kaya sa Zamboanga City.
00:16:50 In fact, Isabela always thought of itself as Tsabacano, always thought of itself as Zamboanga. So, there's a culturally interesting thing there, even psychologically, for the people of Isabela.
00:17:02 They did not think they were part of Basilan. They don't actually go to Basilan, even if they are in Basilan. Very, very interesting and very complicated.
00:17:13 Pagkatapos, yung mga rubber industry, nagdalaya ng lahat ng klaseng tao. Ang mga rubber industry people are, you know, Ilocanos, Piligaynon, Cebuano.
00:17:26 Yeah, it'll be interesting. When is this opening, by the way?
00:17:30 It's opening, most likely, in the early part of next year.
00:17:35 Okay.
00:17:36 But, a little bit now. So, yes, there was Agusayak, but then there's this really long hugot, di ba? Ang lalim ng hugot talaga.
00:17:43 Hindi na din nila naalala. Yung pinagbulan ng ang daming tao, ang daming kung saan saan galing na tao, na marginalized yung yakan, na marginalized yung mga Bajau atsaka mga ano.
00:17:54 So, you know, it's like, let's look at what happened to this island, you know, over the last 100 years.
00:18:00 And even before we start talking about the current troubles, because it's just coming out of those troubles, di ba?
00:18:08 Yes.
00:18:09 Sino naging Agusayak? Mga yakan sila. Sino ang yakan? Bakit sila nag-kumbagan, nag-gourmand talaga kumbagan, no?
00:18:17 So, this museum is going to help put all of that into context, no?
00:18:19 It hopes to. It hopes to. I mean, you can't do much with, in terms of financial demand, kasi it's a fourth-class city. It doesn't have that much money.
00:18:28 Yeah. I want to ask you then about that. Let's also zoom out from Basilan and talk about museums in general.
00:18:35 I mean, Basilan, of course, is Isabela and Basilan, they're very poor. I mean, BARM itself is poor. I mean, the country is poor.
00:18:45 So, why build museums at all? Why are these worth spending money on versus spending the same money on hospitals and ayuda and food security?
00:18:57 So, why are museums important?
00:18:59 Okay, zoom out tayo. Hindi ko sinasabi na kailangan mo mahalin lahat ng museum.
00:19:05 As you can see, you can build a museum in a place like Basilan and it can serve its purpose for a very precise curatorial plan, which is cross-cultural understanding.
00:19:17 And it's probably for them more than it is for tourists, diba? Although, dumatating na ang tourists. Okay.
00:19:23 But let's look at the big picture. Bakit hindi na lang yung anong gagastusin mo sa museum kung let's say may manakikang project, bakit hindi mo nalang gastusin sa poverty alleviation and all of that?
00:19:33 Now, one part of me is a policy analyst because I am part owner of a think tank. It's a brain trust.
00:19:41 So, we run analysis. We were authors of the poverty alleviation study for the World Bank, for example.
00:19:53 So, drawing from that, I can see from a cultural perspective, kasi cross-cultural kami sa brain trust, which is my other company, I can see that decisions are really not informed by accurate information about the Filipino.
00:20:11 May madami tayong mga assumptions na nakakamali. Ang tingin ko, I have been really working extremely actively through this think tank to understand that a lot of our policy making is not based on accurate archaeology, accurate history.
00:20:32 There is a huge gap between scholarly work and policy work. Walang organic links. The only organic links are in the field of economics and maybe a little bit in the field of sociology, where the academics in economics are actually the policy makers in the economic life of the country.
00:20:52 There is no organic link between, let's say, the archaeologists in the Philippines and policy makers. None. And therefore, we run into all sorts of problems with, for example, language policy, pabalik-balik, daniya, we have a lot of problems with the national narrative.
00:21:09 Now, the national narrative is a dangerous one as far as I'm concerned, because it's not informed by new science, by updated science, and it's not informed by updated critical thinking. A lot of the parts of our national narrative is actually racist.
00:21:26 And so, mahirap ang ating policy makers. So, ang tingin ko, you can actually keep going with our poverty alleviation procedures and with a government like ours today, you probably are going to have sasablayan kasi unang-unang kokonti ang magagaling na policy makers dito sa administration ito ato sa kayong Duterte.
00:21:52 But I'm saying that even with the best of our policy makers, sasablay tayo sa kultur. And if that goes on and on and on, then we can keep throwing money into all of these really gut problems and never see the end of it.
00:22:14 Because ang formulations and ang assumptions are not informed by updated science on the Philippines. Let's say you create a law like Indigenous Peoples' Rights Act, IPRA, 1992. So, that's recent, right?
00:22:30 We should know better because while I believe that politically IPRA is correct, it should have happened when it happened. However, isa sa mga definition ng indigenous people is the historically marginalized. That is also correct.
00:22:51 There are historically marginalized people in the Philippines. Ang mahirap dyan is paano tayong dalawa? Indigenous tayo eh. We're indigenous Tagalogs, diba? We speak a language.
00:23:06 Our problem in the Philippines is that we copy indigenous peoples' struggles from other countries. For example, Australia, where the white people are literally culturally different from aboriginal people.
00:23:23 And they really came from another land. I do not trace my roots anywhere else but the Philippines.
00:23:31 Ito lang naman tayo, diba? Although may kahalo na rin.
00:23:36 Wala namang hindi halo dito eh, as many of our scholars have pointed out. I'll just give you another example. For example, ang First Nations ng Canada, they are really North Americans.
00:23:48 In China, the Yunnan people, yung mga Bai, mga Yi, mga Hmong people, they're not Han. They're not Han Chinese.
00:23:58 Alright, now what is the difference between an Ilocano and an Icneg? None. Similar language, similar ritual structure.
00:24:07 Ang pagkakaiba is about 400 years ago, the grandfather of one became a Christian and the other one refused to become Christian.
00:24:14 But there is no difference. So, if you are not careful with the impact of such words as IP, in terms, for example, of racism, for example lang,
00:24:29 akala natin iba silang lahi. Akala natin iba silang tao. I have a dear, dear friend who's a mayor in one of the Tagalog towns.
00:24:44 I do not, she's a wonderful mayor and she's a wonderful human being. And when the whole Mama Sapano event, you know, exploded in media,
00:24:55 she was literally crying to me and saying, "Bakit ba hindi bumalik na lang yung mga Muslim na yan sa Malaysia?"
00:25:01 It's like, these are our executives. These are our policy makers. Why can't we just understand the actual scientific work that is being done?
00:25:17 We've had magnificent scientific work in the last 50 years. You can't sort that out. Mag-a-awe na mag-a-awe, papatayan na papatayan.
00:25:26 Nobody remembers that, as a matter of fact, the closest linguistic relative of the Tausugs are Subuanos.
00:25:35 Very close on languages. Subuanos, people of the current, Tausugs, people of the current. The languages, we have 170 plus languages in the Philippines,
00:25:48 they're all interrelated. These are all Austronesian languages. So I'm just saying that if we persist in, well, in my field,
00:25:59 othering through administrative frames and plans, then we are missing out on a lot.
00:26:09 And when you use Indigenous people, so-called, as fodder for tourism, you're not aware that there's a latent racism in it,
00:26:25 because there's a latent racism in the beginnings of the country, in the foundational elements of the Republic.
00:26:35 Yeah, yeah. This is related to something else that you've been wanting us to do, which is to rethink Filipino identity and our origins.
00:26:46 And in fact, you're mentioning Indigenous in a context that I'm familiar with, because my father, yan ang hugot niya,
00:26:57 ang tatay ko, Tiganegros, silay. And then, nung nungunulukas yung Indigenous Peoples Rights Act,
00:27:05 and then IPs became kind of a popular term, Indigenous Peoples. My father was saying, "How come I'm not considered Indigenous
00:27:14 pag sinasabing Indigenous Peoples? I do not trace my bloodline, my roots to another country.
00:27:21 I'm as Indigenous as the Igorots, as the mga Itneg, as all these other officially designated Indigenous."
00:27:30 My father represented the Philippines overseas as a Filipino diplomat, so he thought about these things.
00:27:37 But you're making me think about it again, no? And it's interesting, ang sinasabing mo rin,
00:27:44 it kind of reinforces a certain racist stereotypes, racist history that we've had,
00:27:53 all because we're trying to mimic the way foreign societies have evolved, where Australia and the United States,
00:28:03 immigrants from different parts of the world came to a land that was already occupied by Native people,
00:28:10 Indigenous people in that area, kasi nga Indigenous became politicized, no?
00:28:15 I mean, it became kind of a way of categorizing a particular, not even, not even, not even natives, eh?
00:28:24 Because I'm Native, di ba? So how should we be thinking about Filipino identity?
00:28:28 First, let's think about what we should criticize, what we should be critical about in terms of narrating ourselves.
00:28:37 And this is obviously the work of museums and books, right?
00:28:41 We've really failed to update the science, I think.
00:28:46 But yung panahon ni Risa, let's go back to the illustrado.
00:28:52 And as you can see from our discomfort with the overcoat right now,
00:28:58 it's because all of the people in the last 100 years who wanted to celebrate Risa, and he should be celebrated.
00:29:08 You can imagine, I read most of his letters. He should be celebrated.
00:29:14 But the people who made the statues, the people who commissioned the statues, the people who deified Risa,
00:29:22 they defied him as this indio that went to, no, not indio, mestizo, that went and used the overcoat.
00:29:32 And he belonged, as a matter of fact, to a group of Filipinos who were prosecuting, so to speak, socially and culturally,
00:29:41 the equivalence or the equality of the colonized with the colonizer.
00:29:47 Because such was the politics of the 19th century. Now, where does this politics come from?
00:29:54 It does come from the beginnings of the concept of nation.
00:29:58 And the concept of nation was not there forever.
00:30:02 You can date it as Benedict Anderson dated it. It was an 18th century concept of community.
00:30:12 Now, why do I go there? Because the concept of nation arose, emerged in Latin America.
00:30:20 And it arose there, if you follow Anderson, which is the most cited book on the concept of nation.
00:30:29 Imagine communities.
00:30:32 It's a community that you imagine. You imagine yourself as part of that community.
00:30:37 Why was this necessary in Latin America? It was because there's a group of powerful people,
00:30:43 or becoming powerful in the 18th century, who were neither Castilla, they were not accepted as Castilla.
00:30:50 They were not born in Iberia, nor were they Native Americans. They were mestizos.
00:31:00 And mestizaje is vital to 19th century nationalism because it was born there.
00:31:10 The nation as a concept was born with mestizaje.
00:31:14 Right. Now, they had revolutions to become nations. So, you know, you had Sigon Bolivar,
00:31:20 and then you had the Mexican Revolution, the Argentinian one, and so on and so forth.
00:31:25 So I always say that, well, I'm not a historian, but I've been studying the shift in the late 19th century,
00:31:33 where you essentially had the end of the American revolutions.
00:31:42 So the American revolutions included all of that, New Mexico, Bolivia, Argentina, Uruguay, all of that.
00:31:47 The last was the Philippine Revolution. So while we were the first republic in Asia,
00:31:53 we were also the last of the American revolutions. 1898, it was the last of the Empire of Spain.
00:31:59 It was Puerto Rico, Filipinas, and Cuba, the last of the Spanish realm.
00:32:09 Now, the people who advocated nationalism advocated a nationalism that was Latino,
00:32:18 meaning to say it emphasized mestizaje. So, Sila Rizal were mestizos, and they were the emergent bourgeoisie.
00:32:30 And the constitution that they created and the nation that they created essentially did not include
00:32:38 what we now call IP. It was really the illustrator that took what I call—
00:32:46 Well, excuse me, just to clarify, when you say mestizo, we're not talking about the usual connotation of mestizo today,
00:32:53 which is like half Spanish or with Spanish blood. Rizal didn't look European.
00:33:00 You're talking about he was more Chinese, mestizo Chinese.
00:33:05 You're Chinese. But let me just point out something that's very, very important to point out.
00:33:11 When Rizal signed the last document for his execution, because you sign a document,
00:33:18 you're going to be executed, because you turn over your possessions to the state,
00:33:23 and you turn it over, just a footnote to history, you turn it over because the cost of your trial,
00:33:30 you have to bear the cost of your trial. So, Rizal signed it.
00:33:35 He will get the land, because it's his. He will get his boat, he has a boat, etc.
00:33:41 And you know, it says Jose Rizal, and what it said in the end under his name was "Mestizo Sangley,"
00:33:49 because that was how he was considered. And this was his last signature, how he crossed out mestizo Sangley.
00:33:57 He wrote "Indio." I mean, this is stunning. It's his last signature.
00:34:05 So, he, despite the fact that he belonged to what was called the mestizo, mestizo Chinese, mestizo Castilla, etc.,
00:34:16 may be by one of my grades, gradated young, but the whole idea, and that's why I use the word mestizo,
00:34:24 it's a culture that gives cultural preference to mixed. As you know, Indonesia does not do that,
00:34:32 and certainly Japan does not do that. They do not give cultural preference to mixed race.
00:34:37 All right, but let's not go into race because race is a non-category. We shouldn't even use the word,
00:34:44 but let's go back to Rizal. He did belong to that time, and the Philippine nation, in effect,
00:34:54 because it was born so early, it was born in 1898, it was born at the end of the American revolutions.
00:35:04 So, there is a particular cultural nature to our nationalism, and it really implied that the ITA,
00:35:14 that the IEP today, that the MORO were actually not part of this single nation.
00:35:21 We're still struggling with it up to now, right?
00:35:25 Just to fast forward, and then related to that, Marianne, my first exposure to you actually was as one of the leaders
00:35:34 of this movement called Pagbabago. Obviously, that means change. So, what needs changing?
00:35:44 And then, what should be the product of that change?
00:35:48 I think if we could inform policy with science, particularly what's going on in archaeology,
00:35:58 in linguistics, in anthropology, Philippine studies, it's a huge amount of work that's been done by our scholars.
00:36:06 If we could construct organic links, or make it organic, with policymakers, with politicians,
00:36:15 so that perhaps when we design things, whatever it is that we design, if we design, let's say, poverty alleviation projects,
00:36:24 if we design rice, what we do with rice, whatever it is that we're designing for the country,
00:36:31 then it could be based on some seriously solid data. I think that will help. I really think that will help.
00:36:39 For example, I'll give you a very good example from just right now. We are jumping up and down again about rice.
00:36:49 All right, I mean, all of my friends in brain trust, they know the ins and outs of this field,
00:36:57 whether the fact that we can never really be rice self-sufficient, they have the economics to bear that.
00:37:03 I come in with the idea that we have hundreds of varieties of upland rice, which we should take care of.
00:37:09 We should be entrusted by the world with the preservation of upland rice varieties, for example.
00:37:17 But what most people do not factor into policy analysis is the fact that Filipinos were not rice eaters.
00:37:26 We lived for 4,000 years in this archipelago on root crops and fish. We were not even pig eaters except for ceremonies.
00:37:36 And rice is ceremonial. It was for rice wine, it was for suman, which is only in the field.
00:37:42 But the rice that we're talking about, how did rice become such a political plant?
00:37:50 That should factor into the political decisions because rice is political.
00:37:58 All presidents promise adequate rice, and we have not made it possible for us, actually, to be self-sufficient in rice production.
00:38:08 It's too expensive for farmers to produce rice right now. And the expensiveness of that, I mean, I can go on and on.
00:38:15 It goes into the 1999 of Ferdinand Marcos and how that was so heavily invested in chemical fertilizers and in, well, not genetically modified, but the stock, the rice stock, you have to buy.
00:38:35 Or the Department of Agriculture has to give you the rice stock. So it changed in the 1970s. Rice became a political promise, but it was a political promise also earlier.
00:38:48 Why is that? Because rice was what our colonizers wanted to eat. They didn't have bread, they didn't have wheat.
00:38:55 So all powerful people in the last 400 years were eating rice. And kamote culturally became, "Yun lang ang kinakain namin nung gera. Yun lang ang kinakain na may hihirap."
00:39:07 You know, turning your back on 4,000 years of sustainable agriculture. And that's what I mean by this do not factor into policymaking.
00:39:19 We could go back to kamotes for crying out loud.
00:39:23 I want to ask you about this. You were quite outspoken some time ago about the wearing of gold jewelry, vintage, antique. Tell us about that.
00:39:40 Why were you a bit upset by a particular celebrity wearing antique gold jewelry?
00:39:49 All right. They're not just antiques. I mean, it's all right if you wear any kind of antique that you can lay your hands on, of course.
00:39:55 But there is a law. It is the omnibus cultural bill that says that you cannot dig out great sites with gold.
00:40:08 It's only the National Museum archaeologists who should be digging this out. Now, why is this important?
00:40:15 There are two reasons for me. One is, again, science. I'm just trying to find out who we are.
00:40:23 And number two is a word that you and I use a lot. The word is impunity.
00:40:28 I find that this is entirely connected to impunity because impunity is not just a cup. It is an entire culture of impunity.
00:40:37 All right. The first one has to do with if you disturb a grave, which is known in archaeology all over the planet,
00:40:44 you disturb a site that you can't get the data. If you just make a head there and break bones, literally, of people who died 500 years to 1,200 years ago.
00:40:59 These are your ancestors, of course. You kind of dig around because they went to their graves with these gold things that covered their eyes.
00:41:07 They had funerary artifacts. All right. Now, this cannot belong to individuals anymore.
00:41:15 And the law says that it does belong to all of us.
00:41:19 So, you know, origin of gold jewelry, it was taken from a burial site and then worn at an event. Is that right?
00:41:27 Yeah. I mean, that's what happened.
00:41:30 Yeah. Well, it was recomposed so that eye covers and mouth covers were, you know, reassembled so that they become a piece of jewelry.
00:41:40 Now, there's two things that, well, I said two things. One is you lose the science if you keep feeding the underground grave digging.
00:41:55 That's rampant in the Philippines. It's been rampant for about seven decades, since the 70s.
00:42:04 We are very lucky that the Central Bank has a collection and that there was a Luxin collection,
00:42:11 which is now in the Ayala Museum, that we can see how fabulous it is.
00:42:15 But now we can't see much of it anymore because it just goes into the trafficking of archaeological materials.
00:42:26 What do you now miss? There are many things. There are many questions about the gold gives us more questions right now than they give us answers.
00:42:39 Because they're so incredibly well done. And I don't say this out of nationalism.
00:42:45 I just say this as a kind of hardcore art person, that it is truly magnificent.
00:42:53 Now, when you find something that's magnificent, you think immediately of kingdoms, big things, Harry, Reina, Princesa, etc.
00:43:04 But we don't have archaeological evidence of kingdoms in this country. We don't have any.
00:43:10 We don't have Angkor Wat or Goro Burdur.
00:43:15 We don't have monumental art. We actually have absolutely no evidence of an urban situation in our archaeological past, in the prehistoric past.
00:43:27 Now, where did this stuff come from? How did this happen? How is our gold that's coming out of gravesites?
00:43:36 Why are they so utterly beautiful? And I feel that you can't answer that question.
00:43:47 You can't answer the question because everything has been disturbed. Is it possible, like I'm proposing?
00:43:55 Is there a theory? I'm sure you've been guessing.
00:44:00 There are two theories. One is that it's not from the kingdom.
00:44:05 So it's not imported from the traders?
00:44:11 Yes, someone said it's imported. Not ours.
00:44:15 Number two is, yes, it's ours because we still know how to make these things, except we don't make them as well as what you can see, the evidence of the graves.
00:44:27 And so the other possibility is that we have kingdoms that we haven't discovered.
00:44:34 That's another proposition.
00:44:37 Wow.
00:44:39 Okay.
00:44:41 After all this time, there's no evidence of that.
00:44:44 I doubt if we're going to find any evidence of some kind of durubudur or even some kind of city.
00:44:50 Now, my personal proposition is, is it not possible that another way of being human happened in the Philippines,
00:44:59 that you can make such incredibly good things without kingdoms?
00:45:05 That's my proposition. I can't answer it.
00:45:08 You can see the rice terraces, for example, which is the only monumental thing on earth that is not a monument in the, you know, in the classic.
00:45:19 It's a living thing.
00:45:21 Well, one thing is that living thing. The other thing is that it is the only big thing on earth that was not made by slaves.
00:45:29 That big?
00:45:32 Yes.
00:45:34 It's just something to think about.
00:45:38 And something to be proud of, actually.
00:45:41 So, yeah, this brings me to a...
00:45:43 To continue with the goal. What about this goal?
00:45:46 Can't you have incredible things that don't come from kingdoms? Is that not possible?
00:45:51 But I can't answer that because the gravesites are all disturbed.
00:45:56 The archaeologists are always late.
00:45:59 The National Museum, the gravesites are all destroyed. The monuments are always the first.
00:46:05 But my point number two is, just because you have a lot of money, you can do anything.
00:46:14 You have the impunity to flaunt the law or to be ignorant of the law.
00:46:23 Because the law is there to protect all of us and to protect our story as a people.
00:46:30 And we can't have our story as a people if you keep disturbing the sites and displaying your ability to flaunt.
00:46:40 And this really gets my goat.
00:46:42 So I'm sorry I'm a little bit, you know.
00:46:45 Yeah, yeah. Well, that brings me to a larger question.
00:46:49 Because you've been an astute observer and commentator about the Filipino condition and the human condition as well.
00:46:57 But in particular, the Filipino condition.
00:46:59 I want to ask you this.
00:47:01 Because every time I'm driving around Metro Manila with its gigantic traffic jams,
00:47:07 the lack of courtesy, the homeless people, the poverty.
00:47:11 I've been seeing it all of my life here in Metro Manila.
00:47:16 And then when I go overseas, I can't help but think about how other countries have already solved some very basic problems.
00:47:24 But we have not here in the Philippines.
00:47:26 So granted, we have a lot to be proud of in terms of our heritage and culture.
00:47:31 And these should be exhibited in museums, et cetera.
00:47:35 I want to ask you, what's wrong with us?
00:47:37 How come we can't organize enough to solve big, common problems?
00:47:44 Obviously, it's a kind of question that I should not even dare to have a pat answer.
00:47:50 I can't have a pat answer.
00:47:51 I'm so opposed to pat and simplistic answers.
00:47:55 But having said that, and hopefully that I do not make the mistake that I accuse people of making.
00:48:03 Let me give it a shot.
00:48:05 Everything that we've been talking about, the fact that you create a nation that essentially does not look kindly on local culture, on ourselves.
00:48:17 In fact, denies.
00:48:19 And the only places we can put for evidence of traditional culture is to make them into posters for tourism or make them sing and dance,
00:48:29 which makes them even more abject or get designers to recreate their traditional clothing into contemporary clothing.
00:48:38 That's about all we can. That's how we handle this.
00:48:41 We do not see them as our relatives.
00:48:46 We do see ourselves as the middle class and the upper class as patrons of this marginalized people.
00:48:56 Very few, and I keep going back to policy, very few policy makers make sure that you understand what dignity means when you're creating a project.
00:49:10 Because if you create a project, for example, where you are asking them to become effectively a factory for clothes,
00:49:17 then you are not allowing them any dignity.
00:49:20 You're just making yourself feel nice because you're giving money to these people.
00:49:23 So, a society that is built on a very deep, what is the word I'll use, anxiety about the person in Bahag,
00:49:38 an anxiety about the fact that we did not create kingdoms,
00:49:43 an anxiety that can only solve itself by hanging on to Jose Rizal, who was brilliant,
00:49:50 and wanting to be him.
00:49:54 It's not bad to be Jose Rizal, but even Jose Rizal turned his back on the native.
00:50:01 Even he did, and you will see it in his letters.
00:50:04 You will see it in his description of the people exhibited at the Universal Exposition in Madrid, who were from highland places.
00:50:16 If we do not address our essentially racist anxieties about who is superior and who is not superior,
00:50:30 then we will constantly formulate our projects as a country without addressing the deep-seated disdain for that which we think is not acceptable to the West,
00:50:51 or to the big countries on earth, the civilized countries like China.
00:50:55 So, what do you do?
00:50:57 You create cities where the sidewalks, I mean, if you try to walk EDSA on the sidewalks,
00:51:07 you will know immediately that the street is not for you, it's not yours.
00:51:11 You can get run over by a bus on EDSA, because you're not supposed to matter.
00:51:17 Only the ones with cars matter.
00:51:20 And so, then you have many, many, many cars, because when you arrive at the middle class or arrive at the middle class status,
00:51:28 then the first thing you think about is buying a car.
00:51:31 And then that increases our problems with pollution and with roads and with traffic and all of that,
00:51:40 because a person without a car is a non-person in the Philippines.
00:51:44 You're walking on the sidewalk and buses can run over you.
00:51:47 You know immediately that the city is not yours.
00:51:50 You know immediately that you don't belong to the people who own the country.
00:51:55 And you can think about that in terms of urban planning, you can think about that in terms of traffic,
00:52:03 you can think about it in terms of how the people who are not considered civilized are trafficked.
00:52:15 I'm wondering though if that's a generalized attitude on the part of decision makers.
00:52:22 That's true, that observation that small people don't matter and that's why there are no sidewalks, etc.
00:52:29 But we're really referring to these public thoroughfares or public streets, etc.
00:52:37 But where the private developers are the ones making decisions.
00:52:42 If you go to Ayala Avenue or BGC, the sidewalks are very walkable.
00:52:48 If you're on a pedestrian, you feel like you're a human being, you feel respected.
00:52:55 And in fact, like in BGC, you go to Subic for example, motorists generally follow rules, otherwise they're good.
00:53:07 There seems to be a divide between what's public space and what's private space or space that's controlled by private people.
00:53:18 So on the one hand, it's cultural but it's also this whole divide between what's public and what's private.
00:53:26 It's like the private is the one who's more human.
00:53:30 But I wouldn't draw such a hard line because the private developers are obviously enlightenment creatures.
00:53:39 They've done their... they studied at Harvard.
00:53:43 They know what's going on in the world in terms of the discussions about empowerment of everybody, etc.
00:53:48 Our people are up to date, the ones who are educated are up to date in all of that.
00:53:53 And yet, those beautiful places where suburbia exists, you cannot go there without a car.
00:54:02 It is an enclave. It's still an enclave.
00:54:06 The rest of the people take a bus to Tuvbina. That's what they do.
00:54:11 And so it still depends on the car.
00:54:15 I'm quite clear about this because this happens to be something that I studied.
00:54:20 I studied first Western Australia for a doctorate that I didn't finish.
00:54:26 And I saw the development of that city because Western Australia was selling iron ore to China like nobody's business.
00:54:34 And so the city of Perth was just rising up in front of your eyes.
00:54:38 However, if you study the way the urban planning was going, no Aboriginal can go to the places where there are yachts.
00:54:45 There's no public transportation. The roads are not made to go there.
00:54:49 The roads are made to exclude you.
00:54:51 So you can have apartheid without actually saying apartheid.
00:54:55 You can actually plan your cities.
00:54:57 And the private developers know that they could have this wonderful life as long as you cordon it off from the rest of the mess of the country.
00:55:09 I'm not letting the private developers go just very quickly.
00:55:13 It happens to be something that I studied.
00:55:16 And I still think that the public sector is also on the other hand trying its best.
00:55:22 But in fact, Howie, if I studied this a little bit further, I'm very keen on how cities are born and how they evolve.
00:55:36 I think you might find a very strong argument about private sector developers driving two things simultaneously.
00:55:48 One is beautifully laid out cities and the other is emphasizing the divides.
00:55:54 I think an argument can be mounted.
00:55:57 Yeah. Okay. Now, again, zooming out, when you are already curating and building a museum 50 to 100 years from now,
00:56:08 and I'm assuming you will still be an active curator then,
00:56:12 what should be remembered about this time?
00:56:17 What should you curate about this time that should be displayed there, exhibited, so that Filipinos 100 years from now can learn something about our current period?
00:56:32 I mean, what's significant about what's happening, let's say in the last 10, 20 years that many generations should still know about?
00:56:41 I'll give you two answers.
00:56:43 One is something that I've already done with Bangsamoro.
00:56:47 I remember I said that I was determined not to focus on the leaders, however important they are, but how ordinary people survived 50 years of war.
00:56:57 For example, I found out that the women whom Jamila Alindongan was helping in Marawi…
00:57:11 The weavers, no?
00:57:13 Yeah, they were not weavers before Jamila stepped in.
00:57:16 They didn't know anything about weaving. They learned weaving during the war, during the Marawi siege.
00:57:22 And they were telling me that they decided that they were just going to go into weaving because it makes them…
00:57:30 The sound of the bombing was every day in Cezanne.
00:57:34 And so if they were focused on weaving, which requires tremendous focus, then all of the sound of war sort of…
00:57:41 They can deal with it or it disappears.
00:57:44 And obviously, they also can make a few bucks, right?
00:57:47 So when I was doing the museum in Barn, I said, "That's your story.
00:57:55 Those are the women who actually know how to make something that's what they call today a growth potential or something that has hope in it, simply by focusing on something like weaving."
00:58:10 I'm not here to be nostalgic about weaving or to be romantic about such stories, but such stories exist.
00:58:20 So when I found out about that, I had the armed people order all of the accolstery of the museum from those women so that it just feeds directly.
00:58:33 So there's a little bit of a lifeline, right?
00:58:36 So obviously, the people of ARM, they understood that this is a living connection.
00:58:43 But once that happened, then I found out that it also happened in Basilan in the 1970s when Basilan was being bombed.
00:58:51 And when Holo was being bombed, there were these women who started weaving as well.
00:58:55 They moved to some of the cities, they started selling weaving.
00:58:58 There was no cash economy before that point.
00:59:01 Cash economy entered in the 1970s when these women started dealing with war by weaving.
00:59:08 Very interesting to me. But then apparently, as I went along making that museum, I realized that it was happening with song, with musical forms,
00:59:17 that they were not just psychologically assisting themselves and their communities through a terrible time.
00:59:24 They were actually recording. They were the journalists.
00:59:28 They were doing it through song.
00:59:32 By the way, I found out that there is a kisa, which is a song form on Buddaho, which was passed on orally.
00:59:42 So that's one.
00:59:44 Buddaho, the mountain in Holo.
00:59:46 Yeah, where 600 people were massacred by Pershing.
00:59:49 Yeah, yeah. During the Philippine-American War.
00:59:52 There is an actual song that was like a recording of the event.
00:59:58 All right. So 100 years from now, 200 years from now, I should like some understanding of how people in the Philippines managed this wreckage of a country
01:00:11 to do something that's rather stunning.
01:00:18 I mean, imagine starting to weave in the middle of a war or singing in the middle of a war.
01:00:24 I'll go back to the Buddaho.
01:00:28 I found out from my friend, the mayor of Isabela City, that one of her relatives knew about the Buddaho event,
01:00:38 the killing of 600, and that the kisa singer with her gabang, she's just a band of sirens,
01:00:45 was actually annotating the war, annotating the murders during the time of the murders.
01:00:52 And she was one of the last to die on Buddaho, which means that it was passed on as a story.
01:01:03 I tell myself, you know, if I find artists who have this kind of commitment to art.
01:01:08 Yeah. And you have, no? You have. I mean, I went to one of your exhibits in the Ateneo,
01:01:14 the Arete Museum, which memorialized through various installation and art projects,
01:01:22 the massacre, another massacre that happened in Mindanao in the 1970s.
01:01:28 And you've written about this so-called intersection of contemporary art and human agony,
01:01:38 which is, you know, and I guess this stretches back centuries, no?
01:01:44 I mean, you've had Picasso doing the same thing during the Spanish Civil War.
01:01:52 And, you know, and it's still a prized work of art up to now.
01:01:58 And we're still talking about art from that period.
01:02:01 So I guess that's what you're talking about. Now, 100 years from now, you want that kind of art.
01:02:06 You want that kind of, these kinds of works in a museum that people will look at and remember how Filipino responded to human agony.
01:02:21 Like you and I responding to our circumstances today. I mean, you do your thing, for example, with the Tokhang.
01:02:29 And I would like to remember how people survived this time, because we have so many friends who are doing this.
01:02:40 As much as there are evil people abroad in the Philippines, we have circles and circles of friends,
01:02:46 how we are really trying our best under the circumstances.
01:02:51 I would like it to be remembered. Why? Why is memories so important?
01:02:56 Because if your memory is incorrect or imprecise, if you, let's say, you're overly focused on the heroic figures,
01:03:06 you're overly focused on the grand narratives of history, you forget that people like you and me survived this time.
01:03:14 The picture is not who we have become through all of this, who we have created ourselves in the middle of all of these conflicts.
01:03:28 That's to me worthwhile thinking about 100 years from now, not because it's you and I, but because the methodologies,
01:03:40 if you use just a very cold word, the ways we managed to create lives.
01:03:50 I think it's important for people who are going to create their lives in the future.
01:03:56 It's probably going to be a worse situation than ours.
01:03:59 The next one has to do with what you began with before I think the reporting began, which is climate change.
01:04:06 It's going to be a bad time. There's no doubt about it. People are going to die by the hundreds of thousands.
01:04:13 We know that already. Philippines is going to go underwater for the most part.
01:04:17 There's going to be a water crisis. Wars are going to be created because of water.
01:04:23 Yeah, as my final theme, Marianne, I want to rewind a little bit.
01:04:27 We just came from 100 years from now about what we should be remembering and displaying and exhibiting.
01:04:33 But now, because there's a Pinapanong Martial Law Museum, it hasn't been built, it's been delayed.
01:04:39 It's in the law. But I understand that there are a few obstacles left.
01:04:47 Anyway, martial law was declared more than 50 years ago.
01:04:50 We're talking about you had your first job during the early years of martial law.
01:04:54 So you have memories of this time.
01:04:57 So what should this martial law museum contain?
01:05:02 Well, you and I, Howie, are part of the Democracy and Disinformation groups of people.
01:05:08 And what I'd like it to contain, aside from details, because exhibits can have a lot of details,
01:05:15 whatever details are available, details of lives, details of recordings, etc., etc.
01:05:22 But I think curatorially, if there has to be one curatorial point that is to be made to the future,
01:05:28 I think it's about our democratic project, the democratic project of the Philippines,
01:05:33 which forever the flaws of our 1898.
01:05:38 And I have already painted it a sloth because it has all the undertones that we talked about today.
01:05:46 And even Rizal as a figure from that period should be really rethought in terms of the birth of nations.
01:05:57 How Latino was our nation and etc., etc.
01:06:02 But however flawed it was, I think it was a democratic project.
01:06:10 And that democratic project was severely tried during martial law.
01:06:16 It's being severely tried now.
01:06:19 And I think that the message should be, let's get down to the facts because we need facts.
01:06:28 We need scientific accuracy to be able to determine where, what, wherefore democracy.
01:06:38 You can't have a democracy without accurate data. Right.
01:06:41 And so the link between accuracy, which I've been on and on about this entire interview,
01:06:47 scientific accuracy, updated records, updated analysis and democracy.
01:06:53 I mean, that is sine qua non, that without which, right?
01:06:56 You can't have democracy without this, without that secularized understanding of data.
01:07:03 And so martial law has to be shown for what happened.
01:07:08 Not anymore for us.
01:07:11 Yes.
01:07:12 It's just to pursue democracy.
01:07:16 Yes. So when you say that, and this is related to what we want the future generations to know,
01:07:23 and even present generations, when you talk about what happened to the democracy project,
01:07:28 I mean, you're referring to the loss of freedom, people being imprisoned for speaking out,
01:07:35 for being critical, all of the forms of dissent, the censorship, what we lost.
01:07:44 But there may be a segment of the population, maybe some curators themselves who will argue,
01:07:52 you know, that's not the complete picture of martial law.
01:07:56 If you're talking about a museum that's going to depict that period accurately,
01:08:02 you know, you should also include, you know, large photos of the cultural center and,
01:08:07 you know, all the bridges and roads that were built under Marcos and, you know,
01:08:12 all the Imelda projects and, you know, the Nutribans and Masagana 99,
01:08:17 all of these hallmarks of what people call the Golden Age.
01:08:24 Would you, as a curator, would you agree to include those items?
01:08:30 The reason I won't is because of the definition of curatorship that I gave you at the beginning of our discussion,
01:08:36 where I said it's an ethical practice, or it's a practice, to be very clear,
01:08:39 it's a practice that grapples with ethical questions.
01:08:42 All right. So what is the ethical question about martial law?
01:08:47 You cannot compare. You have to have a really sharp political imagination to be a curator
01:08:54 because you will have to answer those questions about the cultural center,
01:08:58 because those are apples and oranges.
01:09:03 A good thinker will not compare apples and oranges.
01:09:08 No, you will find the zeitgeist of a period and you will find out the destructive nature in culture.
01:09:18 I mean, you know, the most destructive things are diffused through populations, through culture.
01:09:26 That this, that what happened to us is not just a theft.
01:09:33 It's actually struggling today with this confusion.
01:09:38 The confusion today, the ability of certain actors, very bad actors in our political life,
01:09:44 to just spend gazillions of dollars on disinformation campaigns.
01:09:50 This is an effect of martial law. This is part of the summa total that we have to make.
01:09:56 And part of it, if I were, and I have done this work, is to analyze the cultural center and what's the answer to that question.
01:10:06 And my answer to that question, personally, is that the cultural center wasn't worth it.
01:10:13 It wasn't worth the money that we spent on it because of everything else that happened to us culturally.
01:10:20 The brains that got fried, the brains that are being fried right now is still part of martial law.
01:10:26 It's still part of the cultural legacy of martial law, which means that this kind of analysis is what needs to be there.
01:10:34 It's not apples and oranges. No, I mean, no critic is going to do that.
01:10:40 I personally have gone out of my way to measure the impact on the Filipino imagination of Imelda MartÃnez's idea of culture.
01:10:54 And part of it is Kasaysayanan Lahi, imagine. That's a very nice little thing to analyze.
01:11:01 Again, it's like the evolution of the species, like from primitive to sophisticated, which is like really nasty stuff.
01:11:10 It's fascistic and it's Hitlerian. I am not averse to using extreme words because it is extreme.
01:11:23 No, no, curatorship is not about that. Curatorship is not about this so-called objectivity.
01:11:29 Curatorship is asking the ethical questions and trying to answer them.
01:11:34 OK, that's clear. And on that critical point, I think we can call it a day in this conversation.
01:11:44 I like your questions.
01:11:45 Yeah, yeah. Thank you. Well, you had some brave insights there, Marian.
01:11:50 Thank you for doing everything that you do, the museums and reminding us of what we should value.
01:11:57 So, long live Marian Pastoroses, curator, critic, thinker, museum founder, activist, and many more.
01:12:06 Thank you so much.
01:12:08 All right. Thanks for having me.
01:12:09 Thank you so much for your time.
01:12:10 Thank you, Howie.
01:12:11 Hi, I'm Howie Severino. Check out the Howie Severino Podcast, an original for GMA News and Public Affairs.
01:12:18 New episodes will stream every Thursday. Listen for free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, and other platforms.
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