Articles

Letting the toilets come clean

“The seriousness of the thinking man with an image of toilet in mind can eclipse whatever seriousness can be attributed to the instructions.” Image via Wikihow.

I was thinking of the appearances of the toilet bowl in Philippine art or literature and risked easy desperation in concluding that there was nothing much to think of. The closest I could think of involve soft-porn movies where it is the bathroom at large, not the toilet bowl, which figures prominently. Pandering to the voyeuristic and buoying the audience’s anticipation of the superficially naked, bathroom scenes usually feature the female feigning innocence — she is aware of the performance; she knows she is being watched — as she bares herself.

Art serves the masses by abolishing itself

Philippine poetry and institutional critique in a time of protracted people's war

The author performs ‘Chairs and Table Event’ with choreographer Donna Miranda, commissioned by Za-Koenji Public Theater, in Tokyo in 2018. Onstage, they assemble chairs and a table from which they talk about the conditions of their production, the wood they use, the Philippines’ import-dependent and export-oriented economy, and the mass movement for national democracy that informs the very work they present. Photo courtesy of Za-Koenji Public Theater.

[I]nstitutional dismantling now also involves dismantling myself; I am part of the problem — Mel Ramsden

Archive of detainee artwork

Editorial note: The 228 paintings and drawings that appear in the link below are published in Jacket2 as part of “FOIA Request #SC 15–102-S: The Detainee Library,” Jordan Scott and Stephen Voyce’s feature devoted to obtaining a list of contents held at the library at the US Guantánamo Bay detention camp on the coast of Guantánamo Bay in Cuba.

Guantánamo Bay library catalog

Editorial note: The six hundred unclassified pages included in the link below appear in Jacket2 as part of “FOIA Request #SC 15–102-S: The Detainee Library,” Jordan Scott and Stephen Voyce’s feature devoted to obtaining a list of contents held at the library at the US Guantánamo Bay detention camp on the coast of Guantánamo Bay in Cuba.

Letter from the Department of Defense

Editorial note: This August 6, 2018, letter from the Department of Defense appears in Jacket2 as part of “FOIA Request #SC 15–102-S: The Detainee Library,” Jordan Scott and Stephen Voyce’s feature devoted to obtaining a list of contents held at the library at the US Guantánamo Bay detention camp on the coast of Guantánamo Bay in Cuba. The 2018 letter accompanies the two archives that appear in this feature. — Julia Bloch