clueless about philippine culture

The Role of Avant Garde in Developing Countries

Avant garde art in the Philippines?
avant garde design in the Philippines?
DIY movement/ culture
Pre Colonial Revivalism/ Pre Colonial Pragmatism

in the Philippines:

Design & Development
(design becomes the appendage for development work? instead of sustainability principles embedded in development and design practices)

• sustainable design = implicit?
• sustainability principle =implicit?
• sustainable development = explicit

Education, Business & Social enterprise
(do we have integrated systems built for education, business and social enterprises? is there a need for integrated systems?)

• community cultural development = implicit?
• cultural content development = implicit?
• community telecentres, eSkwela, microventures = explicit

traditional community development + community cultural development = sustainable development?

cultural mapping + avant garde art + avant garde design + DIY practice + lateral thinking & informal learning in grassroots communities + precolonial revivalism/pragmatism = CULTURAL CONTENT DEVELOPMENT?

The Role of Cultural Content Development in Philippine Education



What is cultural mapping?

theory is to application
physics: applied physics :: cultural & media theories : cultural mapping


I'm from the "Third World", why should I bother about concepts?
Because romanticism, fatalism, overratedemotions rendered us Filipinos as comatose beings.

Tama na kasi ang emote mag-isip at magtanong naman kahit minsan.

Philippine National Treasures need not be romanticized

It was almost a year since the permanent exhibit of Gold of Ancestors had opened. I have been meaning to go ever since.

I saw the tv feature, Gintong Pamana, on abs-cbn. I can vaguely remember a resource interviewee saying "we have been searching for what is the Filipino identity... this is it."

What?! I was expecting they could enlighten us by sharing some archaeology-related insights. I think they should not gear towards deifying the objects.

Shouldn't there be a technical-yet-narrative documentary for these treasures? Reconstruction could do a lot to uncover things. Archaeologists, artisans, designers, lateros, engineers and anthropologists should jump in.

What kind of tools, materials and equipment were available to our ancestors during those times? How did they develop techniques out of these resources? What are the typical professions (artisans, craftsmen, alchemists) during those times? Why were they making such exquisite designs? What were they really for?

Well, this might be going too far... wishful thinking. I should just accept the verdict that we will never get past viewing national treasures as static objects on a pedestal.

More than the oooohs and the aaaahhs, we need the whys, hows, whats, whos.