“Thank you, Frances An, for clearly articulating some of the issues and concerns we discussed at the Congress. We appreciate your impressions of the Philippines, which lends us all more food for thought”
PEN Philippines recently marked its 66th anniversary with its biggest event for the year – the National Congress attended by members, teachers, and students as well as some members of PEN Centers abroad who were here for a workshop conducted by PEN International.
Some of the PEN members from abroad were here in the Philippines on their first visit.
One of them, a young member from PEN Perth (Australia), was so struck by her experience that she wrote about it.
Here is an excerpt from Frances An’s essay of her Manila trip. Some information is redacted for privacy:
“Arriving with questions: A cheese-yellow taxi with a round roof took me from the airport to [a small hotel in Manila].
“The streets seemed to be a combination of a modern American city and Spanish heritage.
“There were fluorescent buildings and street vendors cooking huge pots of fried food or pressing juices and ladling them into plastic cups.
“The taxi driver beeped at crowds of cars, tuk-tuks, and motorcycles that almost switched lanes into us. Even in the safety of a closed vehicle, my fingers pressed into the seat cushion. Lane markings, it seemed, were a social construct.
“My [hotel] room … on the sixth floor overlooked the multi-layered city.
“Towards me were flat rusty roofs, stray dogs, and street sellers wheeling their wares in hand trolleys.
“Further away, colorful shirts hung from the balconies of tall apartment buildings. The whole structure appeared like a block of rainbow-sprinkled nougat with liquorice windows.
“During a rainy first evening, [a PEN International member] and I had a long discussion about PEN’s changing relevance and relationship with other free speech debates.
“We sat in the lobby that played jazz piano remixes of Christmas songs despite it only being October. “In addition to attending as a PEN delegate, I had my own questions to bring about the politics surrounding freedom of expression and polarization […]
“My questions coincided with some of [their] concerns about PEN’s changing relevance in the realm of advanced cyber and information wars, and how PEN’s aged profile hindered its capacity to keep up with new literary and technological trends.
“PEN International’s struggle was between maintaining a reasonable middle ground by avoiding clickbait-y issues […] while trying to stay contemporary and relevant […]
“Nevertheless, the discussion […] was only one of many that reinvigorated my motivation to contribute to PEN’s mission of intellectual collaboration and freedom of expression.
“The literature and dignity of Filipino people: The PEN Philippines Congress (25 October) occurred in the Cultural Center of the Philippines, a tiered concrete building that is both artistic and austere in its stark contrast to the spontaneous street stalls where owners cook and ladle food for customers passing by.
“After traveling through humid 35+ Celsius degree heat, the air-conditioned atmosphere vacuum-shut our skin pores.
“The first panel, The Filipino Writer and AI, explored the legal and professional perils that artificial intelligence (AI) presents to the creative industry.
“[AI and technology expert] Dominic Ligot focused on the legal and logistical consequences of AI.
“He started with the fact that it is not constrained by the same copyright and slander laws as humans are and that training an AI system to, say, eliminate disturbing material requires sweatshops (many based in the Philippines) where workers experience mental stress from constant exposure to graphic material.
“In addition, there was the fear of AI taking many of the white-collar jobs based in the Philippines (e.g., call centers, technical support services).
“Some like [educator] Clarissa Militante saw AI, which only regurgitates existing information, as the antithesis to writing which is about resistance and originality.
“She discussed the struggle to maintain a trust system among creative writing students in hoping they would not resort to using AI for class exercises.
“Against the backdrop of a social media algorithm programmed to segment and polarize us, the speakers floated the idea of social media companies requiring regulation under some kind of convention.”
Thank you, Frances An, for clearly articulating some of the issues and concerns we discussed at the Congress.
We also appreciate your impressions of the Philippines, which lends us all more food for thought.
PEN Philippines, founded in December 1958, aims to promote free expression and speech in literature and other written works. Writers, poets, journalists, please visit https://thephilippinepen.wordpress.com/membership/ to sign up to join.