‘Flip’ comes in: Whatever happened to ‘Ng’?

In the ’90s an issue or two came out of the alternative – term then in vogue – literary magazine, Ng, brainchild of former fledgling writers and artists Mike Maniquiz and Sid Hildawa. Featuring photocopied reproductions of an artist’s conceptual work or poet’s calligraphy, the magazine tried to blaze a new trail for the Philippine literary arts in the general malaise approaching the centennial of the not-yet-so-strong republic.

Now Maniquiz has long since been transplanted to somewhere in the south central state of Virginia, contributing a monthly music column to a men’s magazine while continuing to hone his craft of poetry. Hildawa, who we hear is an architect by profession, at times surfaces at poetry readings and similar sundry gatherings to spread the gospel of guerrilla art.

Ng 1 in many respects is now a collector’s item, and the same can be said for Ng 2. Both launchings were held at Penguin off Remedios Circle, several months apart from each other. Originally slated to be more or less a quarterly, or released at least twice a year, it looked like it would be more of an annual. Not that the contributors were lacking; on the contrary, being published in Ng in the mid-’90s was a signal event that one had arrived in the Pinoy avant-garde, and so we suspect contributions mailed to Maniquiz’s advertising office or Hildawa’s consultancy firm poured in. But evidently not many passed muster.

Again there was the problem of logistics – just how many copies could one put out of a compilation of Xerox art and poems and stories, most of the time painstakingly hand-crafted by the poet or artist him/herself?

In the end it seemed to be like so much pissing in the wind, the publication heralding a kind of exclusive society or close-knit circle with perhaps an inside track to enlightenment. But it was good, very good while it lasted.

Aside from the unusual works of Hildawa and Maniquiz, there were the experimental as well as conventional forays of Katrina Tuvera, Ricardo de Ungria, Bienvenido Lumbera, Anthony Tan, Nerisa Guevara, Vim Nadera, Ami Miciano, Ferdinand Doctolero, Danton Remoto, Neil Garcia, Renato Habulan, Egai Talusan Fernandez, among others in a virtual who’s who if not who-the-heck list in the ’90s art scene.

I guess parallels could be drawn with similar brave ventures in the ’80s involving the Philippine Literary Arts Council, which held a couple of exhibits at the Pinaglabanan Galleries juxtaposing both the written and visual representation of the word, which raised the hackles of art purists but had many irreverent kibitzers laughing all the way to the buffet table.

Publications like Ng were designed not to last, or else they would not be considered as collector’s items someday, which they are now, all dog-eared and frayed at the edges, yet nevertheless exhibiting a very possible world where noble intentions were enough. Is the time ripe enough again for another Ng, with the mudslinging off to a start in the runup to elections in less than 36 months?

In the weird beginning of a new century, while Filipinos are stuck in the middle of a traffic jam on the road to world domination, there might not be a better read than Flip magazine, itself billed as the official guide to world domination.

With Jessica Zafra as publisher and editor and overall one-woman wrecking crew, Flip came out some months ago with a househelper or maid on the cover. It was an undisguised message that with Pinoys all over the world holding various odd jobs, it would not take long before our often maligned country would be running things on this planet.

The second issue had the trio of Jose Isidro Camacho, Mar Roxas and Vince Perez on the cover, an economic and political excursion digging the goods on the current administration’s bright men in the Cabinet. Zafra, who interviews all three with her trusted sidekick Francine Medina, is expectedly entertaining and intelligent in her conversations with the trio not so bobos, proof enough that one can have just a rudimentary business background to become a dominatrix. One can glean that the interviewees were at the same time amused with Zafra and Medina, a welcome break in the humdrum world of power and intrigue.

Sociologist and quasi-political analyst Vince Rafael takes time out from his academic duties to contribute an article on what is fast becoming a favorite Pinoy pastime –thinking up conspiracy theories in the age of al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. Reading through the essay makes one speculate that for every terrorist there is a corresponding moron, one not necessarily being a complement to the other.

The latest issue has actor Joel Torre on the cover, star of Lav Diaz’s six-hour epic Batang West Side.

Krip Yuson, who we guess was in Ng 1, and Danton Remoto, who was in Ng 2, contribute regular columns in Flip – Yuson on sports, Remoto on gay affairs. What a long and strange trip it’s been from Ng to Flip, though you could see a thread that links the two publications, perhaps like Ariadne’s in the labyrinth trying to evade the minotaur.

Flip, intelligent and in a class by itself, has more chances of surviving than Ng ever had. Apart from a few good writers in both publications, there’s not much more in common between them.