![“WHAT DO WE DO, WHEN THE POLICE ARE THE CRIMINALS? — PS” [Panday Singing Facebook Page]](IMG/jpg/1__5uhmb1c219stujft2fmug.jpg)
All art is meant to be seen, correct?
But it doesn’t take much to understand a threat like “Ipadidila ko sa inyo,” which, to beleaguered Manileños, offers a ‘measure of relief’ as it means that the tough-talking mayor is ‘on their side’ and will not be taking such things ‘lying down.’ The mayor obviously does not consider graffiti as art to any degree, especially if he is struggling to ‘remake’ or rather, further gentrify city spaces. But this is a discussion for another day. This is the same sentiment perhaps, that drove Filipinos to trust the tongue of a strongman, because in a society where ‘undesirables’ like drug addicts and vandals abound, doesn’t it make complete sense to pick the biggest bullies in the playground and use them as a shield?
Actually, no. This doesn’t make sense, and it never will.
Here’s what makes sense: the Philippines is literally crippled, politically and economically, by a corrupt state, a rotten military and police apparatus, and shrouded, private interests that have literally bled our resources dry. The “Chinese turn” has done nothing to undo the damage caused by the United States’ neoliberal policies and the Philippine government’s austerity measures. We are at a junction in history where the common man thinks it is perfectly fine for the poor to be maimed and killed, but it is the biggest scandal for fresh paint to be marked with calls for action across the sectors.
Panday Sining is not at fault here. If anything, this cultural group, along with other artists’ collectives in the sector, is performing ideological rectification of the most important kind: they are using art and literature to slowly humanize the populace again. When an artist struggles against the fetishistic nature of bourgeois or modern art, he frees himself from the control of the landlords, the military, the police, and people like Duterte, who not only misunderstand or even ignore art, but also wish to dismantle art’s revolutionary purpose. But the kind of art that groups like Panday Sining create, by virtue of their struggle to emancipate themselves, their art, and the people, do not and will not follow the aesthetics, mold, or texture of art in galleries or exhibits like the ones that Richard Gomez attend to sell his dick paintings. Our miseducation as Filipinos has taught us that we must gravitate toward what is “beautiful” at all cost. But this miseducation has created a bloody legacy in its wake: while we seem to understand the beauty of the contours of a pageant queen, or a showbiz personage, or a yellow dick painting, we no longer understand what makes us human, and why it is wrong for farmers to be killed, or human rights workers to be slaughtered like pigs by armed assailants in the dead of the night, while their children watch, terrified, as their parents are taken from them by state forces.
Theodor Adorno was right in saying that: “Officially this [bourgeois] education is oriented towards the realm of the ideal, towards ‘alles Schöne und Gute,’ (‘Everything that is beautiful and good’), it encourages admiration of the heroic individual and glorifies the values of candour, unselfishness, and generosity. And yet from our earliest youth all of this is only admitted on the condition that it is not after all to be taken seriously.” [1]
In short, even our understanding of the ideal is superficial and ultimately, bereft of any real value. Which is not surprising at all, since bourgeois life is built upon the superficial and fleeting.
The public’s utilitarian bent seems to be ‘justifiable’ to some circles, but such logic implodes immediately the moment it is exposed to air. That if public spaces are to be used by the public, because they are for the public, then why must we create an exception when public spaces are used for the pursuit of social justice? Paint does not spray bullets on vulnerable bodies, nor does it plant evidence at fabricated scenes of crimes. It does not allow the Chinese to take the meat and skin of our bones. It does not allow billionaire drug lords to walk free, after making a mockery of the same justice system that everyone parrots to be the sole decider of everyone’s legal fate in this benighted land. It does not harm indigenous peoples as they are driven from their ancestral lands under the guise of progress.
We are ugly, indeed. Far uglier than any graffiti can ever be.
More of Panday Sining’s graffiesta can be found below. All images from the Panday Sining official page.





Marius Carlos, Jr.
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