“An intriguing February”

INQ7 columnist Sylvia Mayuga writes about "An intriguing February" on a full moon-inspired week last week marked by invitations to events commemorating the 20th anniversary of the first people power revolt that toppled the Marcos dictatorship. Among Mayuga’s stops was the PCIJ photo and podcast exhibit at the Glorietta mall (ongoing until February 26). She writes: 

Full moon week was not quite through with us last Thursday, the 16th, when the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) opened its ten-day multi-media exhibit “EDSA 20/20” at the Glorietta.

An invitation to the Ayala Center to rediscover the meaning of EDSA ’86 in sober black and white portraits, partnered by searching interviews with their subjects on that newfangled medium called “podcast,” was a nervy experiment. Not only was there a larger EDSA ’86 photo exhibit in full color around the corner, 20/20 had also entered the subtly desensitizing ambience of commercial gloss. How does one focus on our, uh, intriguing reality in an upscale mall still dressed to the nines for Valentine’s Day?

To PCIJ’s pleasant surprise, EDSA 20/20 turned out to be a risk well taken. After quickly discovering the larger photo exhibit to be a scattered display of eye-catchers hung with no particular design, the crowds found their way to PCIJ’s smaller corner on the same subject.

Here was realization that not only is this story still being told, it is also still unfolding. Here, too, one sees that scanning the horizon more widely and deeply for that story can only benefit its unfolding. This is reflected in PCIJ’s own 20 subjects, all of them heroes/ heroines to their own constituencies in their own moments of history. From open perspective, not only can yesterday’s villain/ villainess well become today’s hero/heroine and vice-versa. Where there is 20/20 vision, there, too, is shadow in the light and vice-versa.

And so Imelda Marcos follows after Cory Aquino, Teresita Ang See follows Nur Misuari, the “Father of the Philippine Internet” William Torres precedes the urban poor heroine of Leveriza Nanay Mameng, and the story of the controversial military man turned NPA friend Raymundo Jarque becomes as touching as news that activist musician Jim Paredes is migrating to Australia on EDSA’s 20th anniversary.

Portraiture in the classic discipline of black and white by young Lilen Uy becomes a powerful element in limning 20 lives to in turn tell the larger story of nation. The interviews can be listened to on podcast — audio files that can be transmitted over the Internet, mobile devices and personal computers. Meanwhile a special issue of PCIJ’s “i” magazine carries the articles interpreting each interview.

All three together tell two more stories. One is how to begin breaking away from history as déjà vu by looking deeper and really telling it like it is. The other is how one of EDSA I’s greatest successes liberated the best in the Philippine media to new insight and creativity limited only by the imagination. But don’t take my word for it. The EDSA podcasts and articles are a click away at: http://www.pcij.org/blog/.