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Affilliation
Kongreso ng Komiks (2007.02/27)
My pals and I went to the “Kongreso ng Komiks” last February 27, 2007 in Intramuros to see what’s going on. We had no idea what to expect, but we were hoping to see some some sort of exhibit on what works the local people do, as well as learn some information about what’s going on and where do we go from now. Unfortunately, our experience was dismal.
We arrived when a talk just started regarding the current state of the local comics industry. The presenter did show some local material we were not familiar with, but otherwise the presentation itself seemed a bit too general. It felt as though the whole presentation just said that the local comics industry is mimicking the problems of other fields like the medical field, you could almost substitute the comics mentioned with products/ services from another field and come up with the same content.
Given the topic, we were hoping that something more substantial regarding coming up with solutions would be discussed, but I guess it was not the within the scope of this presentation. An open-forum was to come afterwards, and while the host was stalling for time with very lengthly ad libs, we decided to go out and look at the exhibit.
The exhibit was nothing spectacular, although the old artwork was intriguing to see. While looking around the exhibit, however, we were told by the security guard that our car was towed! The “parking attendant” told us that if we parked in the shoulder without touching the gutter then we’d be fine. We even moved the car more to make sure we didn’t touch the gutter. This exercise was apparently futile as the car was towed anyway. We are thankful for the building administration for assisting us in retrieving the car. However, let this be a warning to any who would park in Intramuros, please make sure you are parking in something that is absolutely obviously parking space! Be wary of taking the “parking attendant’s word for it!
Since the car was towed, all our time was spend waiting for news regarding the car. We were not able to attend the open forum, which appeared to have finished shortly afterwards. If there was anything substantial discussed, we didn’t hear it. It seemed a bit doubtful that we’d have heard anything we were expecting to given that there appeared to be nobody around that was working on the new material in circulation. You’d think that of all the people that could make a difference, it would be those who ar still in the game. From what we’d seen, the people there were mostly people who had left the game.
Another thing that annoyed us was why was this “Supreme Master Ching Hai” so prominently displayed in the signage? The image could’ve been used to depict or iconify “komiks”, making it more obvious what the whole shebang was about! Was this person running in the coming May elections?!
After some research, I found out that she is a spiritual teacher of the Quan Yin Method of meditation. She apparently claims that she is the incarnation of God, the Buddha, and the Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara, and she goes around lecturing and promoting her method of meditation.
What this has to do with comics at all might take a bit of imagination to comprehend, but it is made easier when you consider that she is a philanthropist (among other things). Perhaps the enlightenment this Vietnamese has achieved has made her decide that supporting the Philippine comics industry was a proper thing to do.
We came to the conference hoping to see a glimmer of a more positive future for the Philippine comics industry. Confusing objectives, lack of support, and questionable sponsors, however, made the whole thing very depressing (even when you set aside the fact that your car was towed). I hope that the next time the Philippine “komiks” industry decides to have a conference, it would be nowhere near something like this.
Tags: opinionI Spy with My Eye #4
#4: I’m sure this is a great company, whatever it does. I’m also pretty sure it doesn’t provide rental service of the type that it’s name sounds.
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