A jailed Filipino artist who claims to be a political detainee has been nominated for the 2011 Imprisoned Artist Prize awarded by a Singapore-based group that promotes freedom through creativity.
Ericson Acosta, a poet, actor, singer, songwriter and journalist currently detained at the Calbayog City subprovincial jail, was cited on Monday by the group Freedom to Create for making his art and music heard despite the most pressing of circumstances.
A raw recording dubbed “Prison Sessions” featuring Acosta singing his original compositions in jail recently recorded thousands of hits and followers online. The songs can be accessed on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/user/prisonsessions).
He also maintains an online journal, Jailhouse Blog (acostaprisondiary.blogspot.com), whose latest entry dated November 13 reads: “Nine months ago today, the state took from me the following: 1. a cellular phone the make and features of which my wife once described to be impossibly antediluvian; 2. a computer notebook blamelessly Chinese and functioning; 3. and one particular non-gadget belonging in fact to the category of the non-object yet whose loss can be so dreadfully concrete you’d swear never again to spell it in small letters—FREEDOM.”
A founder of Concerned Artists of the Philippines (CAP), Acosta was arrested by the military on February 13 this year in Bay-ang village, San Jorge, Samar. He was charged with illegal possession of explosives. His lawyer filed a petition for review of his case before the Department of Justice on September 1.