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Philippines Adventure Intramuros and José Rizal

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Manny Pacquiao Media Workout Interview SHOWTIME PPV

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【World Heritage】Baroque Churches of the Philippines | フィリピン バロック様式教会群

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Filipinos care about festivals very much, They have very interesting traditions on new year.

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Filipinos who leave their country to work abroad send Balikbayan Boxes to their families in the Philippines. These boxes come in different sizes, and often filled with items that cannot be found in the Philippines.

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Mano Po is a way for younger people or children to respect elder people. It is also for the elders to give blessing to the younger person. But, because of change of culture, many younger generations don't do this traditions anymore.

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Rice Terraces is included in the list of world heritage from UNESCO

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Rice Terraces is included in the list of world heritage from UNESCO

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Private sector, volunteers, local government unite to restore the Banaue Rice Terraces

An example of rice fields destroyed by erosion and neglect can be seen by tourists stopping by at the viewing point and souvenir shops the Banaue Rice Terraces. This photo of a tourist taking a selfie was taken in October last year. Photo by author

Not only the beaches of Boracay, Bohol, and El Nido in Palawan, among other world-known tourist destinations, are in need of a major reboot. Up in the mountains, the Banaue Rice Terraces have also raised the red flag.

Often referred to as the Eighth Wonder of the World, the Banaue Rice Terraces in Ifugao province covers 1, 670 hectares of agricultural land. Now, recent data revealed that a total of 600 hectares have been abandoned and need to be restored.

The main headache here is erosion. Add to that, the loss of interest among the younger generations to farming. They'd rather go down to the cities and try their luck for a more stable income in call centers, real estate and other salary-based careers.

But they're not to be blamed.

"The (monetary) return of (working) in the rice terraces is not enough. Work has become a sacrifice," admits Banaue Mayor Jerry U. Dalipog.

"The average age of farmers in our town is 57 years old," added Dalipog, who still goes to the rice fields he inherited from his ancestors. Banaue, he pointed out, has a population of 22,000 and about 50 percent are farmers.

"But according to the Department of Agriculture, if you have one chicken or goat, you are considered a farmer," he noted, seriously. "So even if you're a lawyer and you own a chicken, you are considered a farmer."

Farming for some long-time residents who have regular jobs has become a chore, something that needs to be done because the rice fields they inherited from their parents are there. The rest simply abandoned the land to work in the bigger cities.

"I am a farmer. I started farming when I was 10 years old. My grandparents, my mother and father were farmers and they sent me to school to earn a bachelor's degree in civil engineering. I worked for 15 years as municipal engineer and up to now as mayor, I still continue to work in the field," he said.

Dalipog is just one of the few who stayed and despite the efforts of the local government, the Banaue Rice Terraces continues to deteriorate. Climate change has speeded up the erosion.

In 2015, Dalipog said the number was about 332 hectares of abandoned land that needed restoration. In three years, the number has doubled. If less efforts in restoration are made, how much more of the 1,607 hectares in the coming years will remain? he asked.

"We can only do so much in terms of manpower and resources," he noted.
WORLD HERITAGE SITE
A quick Google search gave us a brief backgrounder. The Banaue Rice Terraces covers two barangays, Batad and Bangaan. It is part of the 2,000-year-old Ifugao Rice Terraces or what the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) called the Rice Terraces of the Philippine Cordilleras. The other towns in Ifugao province that also have rice terraces are Mayoyao, Kiangan and Hungduan.

But tourists often flocked to the more accessible rice terraces in Banaue town, which sits at the foot of Mouth Amuyao.

Ifugao elders earn a living by posing for selfies with tourists at the viewing point near the souvenir shops overlooking the Banaue Rice Terraces. Photo by author

In 1995, UNESCO gave the Rice Terraces of the Cordilleras the honor of being included on its list of World Heritage Sites, up there with the likes of Angkor Wat, Galapagos Islands and the Great Barrier Reef, among others.

In the Philippines, those who made it under the World Heritage Site's list under the cultural category are the historic city of Vigan and the many Baroque churches spread across the archipelago. Under the Natural category, there's the Mount Hamiguitan Range Wildlife Sanctuary in Davao Oriental, the Puerto Princesa Subterranean River National Park in Palawan and the Tubbataha Reefs National Park in the Sulu Sea.

For some strange reasons, despite such international accolades, Banaue remains a fourth-class municipality. It is 14 kilometers from Lagawe, the capital of Ifugao province that is not even a city but also a fourth-class municipality. The Banaue Rice Terraces is under the supervision of the local government and the National Commission for Culture and the Arts.
HELP FROM PRIVATE SECTOR
In April 2016, the Banaue Rice Terraces Restoration Project was launched to raise funds, awareness and renew interest in farming. It is headed by a volunteer, retired General Jaime delos Santos.

He said the Banaue Rice Terraces Restoration Project is a public-private partnership to restore and conserve, preserve the rice terraces in its diversity in a sustainable manner.

"Lots of funds have been brought by the government in the past years but nothing happened," said Delos Santos. "Yes, there's erosion and lack of interest of the community in farming. We know these are the two major setbacks."

"So we volunteered and we created a possible solution and that is from the scientific point of view. The root cause is environmental and socio economic."

Early this month, they brought two Japanese scientists to the affected areas. They got soil samples brought back to Japan for proper studies.

Dalipog said with the help of Dr. Milagros Ong-How, president and CEO of Universal Harvester Inc., as part of her company's social responsibility program, there was an initial funding of P3 million in June last year. How is also founder of ToFarm, an advocacy organization behind The Outstanding Farmers of the Philippines awards, the annual ToFarm Film Festival and ToFarm Songwriting Competition.

This year, ToFarm launched the first-ever Banaue International Music Composition Competition (www.banauemusic.org) with a prize money amounting US$24,000.00. The aim is to create awareness on the plight of the rice terraces.

Banaue Terraces Restoration Project advocates and supporters (from left) Luz Corazon "Luchie" Roque of NAMCYA, composer-conductor Chino Toledo, Dr. Milagros Ong-How of ToFarm and Universal Harvester Inc., Jaime delos Santos of Banaue Rice Terraces Restoration Project; and Banaue Mayor Jerry U. Dalipog. Photo by author

"We've rehabilitated about 16 hectares. We've cleared another 13 hectares, planted on three hectares and nine hectares will be completed by end of April," reported Dalipog.

"We want to show to the young people that farming, planting rice can sustain a living," added Delos Santos. "Kung walang nakukuha sila for the longest time, let's change that. If they see more harvest after a year, 'pag nakikitang kumikita, we change the mindset."

Of the 600 hectares, based on the manpower and other resources, their aim is to rehabilitate about 69 hectares in the next couple of years.

He emphasized that a major factor is for the young people to be more interested in rice terraces. Dalipog said the Ifugao State University has been offering free education for those who want to earn a degree in Agriculture.

General delos Santos added: "Banaue Rice Terraces will come to life again but it can't be restored by one person, or one group. We cannot do this alone so we are inviting other corporations, NGOs and kind-hearted individuals to help us in rebuilding the terraces. Like we said, it's not only Boracay that needs rehabilitation. We can't let that happen to Banaue."

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not just boracay: banaue rice terraces also need help | abs-cbn news

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Not just Boracay: Banaue Rice Terraces also need help

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Private sector, volunteers, local government unite to restore the Banaue Rice Terraces Not only the beaches of Boracay, Bohol, and El Nido in Palawan, among other world-known tourist destinations, are in need of a major reboot. Up in the mountains, the Banaue Rice Terraces have also raised the red flag.

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The life of Ifugao living in Rice Terraces

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The life of Ifugao living in Rice Terraces

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Soar Over the Lush Rice Terraces of the Philippines | National Geographic

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The Rice terraces in the Philippines Cordilleras is an outstanding example of an evolved living cultural landscape. The rice terraces are in Luzon. The people are called Ifugao. They retain habits and cultural traditions. For example, they worship bulul (rice god) and traditional sacrificial rituals about harvest.

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Includes
Hinduism, Judaism, the Baha'i Faith, Indigenous Beliefs, Other Christians, and Atheists.
Indigenous traditions-animism:
Non-living things such as tree and plants have spirits

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Origin:

Introduced by Islamic cleric-Karim ul' Makhdum

Reached Philippines in the 14th century by Muslim traders from  Maritime Southeast Asia.

existed in the region for about a century before the spread of Christianity

Manila Golden Mosque

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Origin:

Was Introduced by Americans missionaries in the 20th century

The second largest christian group

Protestant church organizations was established during the 20th century

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Origin:

Introduced by an Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan in the early 1500s. He arrived in Cebu in Philippines.

Cebu Metropolitan Cathedral:

The first church built in the Philippines.

The architecture is the typical Spanish colonial churches.

Cebu Metropolitan cathedral

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Works of art by artist from the Philippines

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Manila (CNN Philippines Life) - At the beginning of 2018, there was already talk about this so-called Southeast Asian renaissance, mainly due to the continuous rise of contemporary art institutions in the region. In the Philippines, if the number of people going to Art Fair Philippines is an indicator of the Filipinos' increasing consciousness in art, then it appears that there might be indeed a growing art-going public.

Perhaps art's place in the Philippines has become important, especially in these conscientious times. Maybe Filipinos have seen art as a way to escape the drudgery of the everyday or maybe Filipinos have seen the need to make sense of how seemingly ludicrous our country has become. In this list, a curator, an artist, a critic, and an art patron share shows, art works, and even art collectives that have, in one way or another, shaped the way we see and interact with our surroundings, and ultimately, our nation.
Ricky Francisco, curator at the Lopez Museum and Library "Higa sa Hangin" by Leslie de Chavez, Finale Art File
For me, I like this exhibit because it is powerful, poetic, and gritty. It situates us amid the many controversies which we find our lives embroiled in - the rice shortage, the drug war, the culture of violence transforming the basic fiber of the Filipino, and the consenting silence with which the majority of us give in reaction to it. In one work, we are made to look at a mirror and asked to choose between "bayan o sarili"?

"Higa sa Hangin" is in reference to the torture that many dissenters to the Marcos dictatorship had to endure. One is made to lie down between two chairs kept apart, the head lies on one, the feet on the other. Aside from the physical impossibility of the act, many have been punched on the stomach as they tried to suspend themselves on air. The exhibit appears to poetically give form to the futility of what we find ourselves in, but gives a glimmer of hope in one work, suspended above the exhibition space,the question of when we act is posed.
"Back to Nature" by Oca Villamael Finale Art File
Oca Villamael's body of work consists of installations made from foraged material. "Back to Nature" follows this pattern. A gigantic installation called Black Forest is the centerpiece of this installation. More than 5,000 individual nails, taken from demolished homes and used wood yards, have been welded together to create eerie, dead-looking plant like sculptures. These were situated on a bed of charcoal taken from several communities which make a living from it.

On the walls were colorful feathers placed in small bottles and arranged in rows. All the works were testaments to the cyclical nature of things. How things wear down and transform. What I loved about this whole show was that it highlighted the power of art to focus our attention on an idea. The magic of Villamael was to express the idea in a grand scale, capturing our attention, and allowing us to pause and think it through. What I love about Villamael as an artist though was how consistent he was in the social dimension of his practice. His work always needed assistants.

"Black Forest" needed a team of welders following his design and instruction, to fabricate the installation. His bottled feathers needed the continuous employment of assistants to collect and clean the feathers until enough was amassed. When a collector buys his art, many people benefit. The artist becomes the conduit for money to flow from those who have lots of it, to those who need more of it.
"Super Robot, Suffer Reboot" by Toym Imao in UP Bulwagan ng Dangal
"Super Robot, Suffer Reboot" is another solo exhibition of grand scale. Featuring for the first time together all the three "Super Robot" installations which were shown individually at the steps of Palma Hall in UP over several years, along with new works by Toym Imao, the exhibition transported us to a carnivalesque world of flashing lights, vivid color, and epic scale befitting how a child of the 70s might remember the super robots Voltes V, Mazinger Z, and Daimos. On T.V., these super robot series presented a narrative of good versus evil contextualized in the battle for survival by humans against overpowering alien forces which invaded earth. All these were cancelled a few episodes before they finished due to censorship by the martial law government of Ferdinand Marcos. Typical to Toym Imao, the works exhibited have used the narratives of the super robot series to create historical references in our society. Beyond the idea of merely remembering, they also cautioned of parallels between the happenings of the 70s to what we are experiencing today.
"Isla Inip" by Doktor Karayom CCP (as part of the 13 Artists Awards exhibition).
Doktor Karayom's body of work is easy to identify. It is often predominantly a particular shade of red. It is grotesque. And full of the fantastic, morbid images of a very playful mind which comes up with unusual scenarios of death, dismemberment and all manners of fears, but does so with witty and hilarious humor. "Isla Inip" is no different. The installation is a giant board game, most probably a pun for a game to be played by those who are bored. It invites viewers to play as they view how someone like Gulliver could have ended up if the Lilliputians were hostile cannibals. What I loved about it is, (like Villamael and Imao of my earlier selections), Doktor Karayom is a master storyteller who transports us to his world but allows us to deal with his stories on our own terms. He usually presents the environment, and allows us, this time literally, to play and go with it our own way. The added charm of this exhibit was that it was in the CCP 13 Artists exhibition, curated by Rica Estrada. Going back, being part of the 13 Artists Exhibition, which was predominated by images of dead bodies, in direct or oblique reference to the thousands killed in the government sanctioned "war on drugs," Doktor Karayom's work can be related to it and you can have a lot of insight about it, but it does it without being preachy.
"A Million Things to Say" by Pacita Abad, MCAD
What I loved about it was how poetic it was. Everything was large, and the MCAD was the perfect venue for it. But everything allowed for even the smallest thought to have space. Despite the large works, you see how much care for details the artist had, and how consistent she was over the years, even those when she had cancer. The title of the show directly confronted her mortality, and her works stand as a testament to what we lost with her passing: an artist so attuned to her feelings and thoughts, that she is able to convey them through paint and thread so wonderfully, that we cannot help but hold our breath and smile when we see her works for the first time.
"To Tune The Listening Ear to What Cannot Be Seen" by Gerecho Iniel, Art Underground
Iniel has a fascination for science. Most of his exhibitions in recent years always had to deal with transforming an element, like the body's own electricity into another form of energy, like sound or light, through the use of gadgets which he tinkered with, and presented as interactive sculptures. This exhibit was focused on highlighting what we cannot see or hear, like gravity or electromagnetism, and transforming them to forms that we can. Iniel is a poet in highlighting these, and draws our attention to other things that we usually fail to see, or outright ignore, like our destructive behaviors which contribute to climate change, or the inequitable distribution of capital which causes widespread poverty, or even how transient memory is.
"Somewhere Else" by Don Bryan Bunag, Art Cube Gallery
Don Bryan Bunag has always been partial to the vast horizon, echoing perhaps the sensibilities of the wide plains of Bulacan where he grew up in. This predilection for the open spaces situates the viewer in a great expanse, where the viewer is solitary, and small, in relation to the landscape. In his previous solo exhibition, "Underneath the Fleeting Clouds," Bunag brought us to a vast rolling plain with an unhindered view of the sky. The sky was where he masterfully painted clouds which enabled us to project figures and stories, making the work our own, in as much as they were his. "Somewhere Else" situates us near the shore of the wide open sea, with the sky taking up the upper half of the picture plane. Using diaphanous swirls and shading, he conjures a secondary picture plane over the main image. The secondary picture, hazy and incomplete, is of a multitude of peoples seemingly preoccupied with their own daily lives. Or is it just our projection?
Christian Tablazon, artist and co-founder of Nomina Nuda "The Game of the Real" curated by Marc Escalona Gaba, Mono8 Gallery, Manila
"If we don't understand each other's artworks, can we claim to be a community? What does it mean if the artist cannot speak of intention?" asks poet and visual artist Marc Escalona Gaba, who curated the exhibition. Deftly conceived and exceptional in its reflexivity and vision, "The Game of the Real" gathers 10 artists with curious relationships with figurative representation to collectively produce impromptu paintings by playing Pictionary on canvas, with words lifted from the front pages of national broadsheets.

"Infinite number of ways to paint [a word]; limited number of ways to identify its image," says the curator, who selected the artists "based on whether the questions that involve figuration will enrich the understanding of each artist's practice." Featuring Allan Balisi, Lena Cobangbang, Don Djerassi Dalmacio, Beejay Esber, Marc Escalona Gaba, Celine Lee, Kat Medina, Jason Moss, Mai Saporsantos, and Eva Yu, the show operates as a ludic interrogation of language, figuration, and realism through collaborative painting, generating a productive tension among rendition, recognition, and the ineffable order of the real that forever eludes communication.

"The Game of the Real," Gaba writes in his statement, "discovers anew the resonance of figures outside the function of depiction, crucially during the moment of depiction," the figures becoming performative "manifestations of the figurative as gesture and operation."
"A Tripoli Agreement" curated by Renan Laru-an, Gallery 4, Al Mureijah Square, Sharjah
In one interview, researcher and curator Renan Laru-an shares, "Mindanao is framed as a place of insufficiency, a cultural ground displaced and fragmented by conflict and poverty. In other words, it is rarely approached as a source of knowledges and a horizon of diverse imaginations. I am taking Mindanao as a site for artistic thoughts that are not covered in the main discourse within Southeast Asia or the art history of the Philippines. I want to return to these rich discourses that were initiated - because they're there already."

"A Tripoli Agreement" takes off from the foundational peace treaty of the same name that promised to establish the first Muslim state in Mindanao, signed in 1976 in the Libyan capital by representatives of the Philippine government and the Moro National Liberation Front. Brokered by Libyan leader Muammar Qadaffi and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, which comprises 57 Islamic states, this breakthrough agreement represents a key moment in the emergence of modern networks forged between Southeast Asian and Arab countries during the Cold War period. Laru-an's curatorial residency with Sharjah Art Foundation and Air Arabia culminated in this exhibition, bringing together artists and researchers from Tehran, Beirut, Mumbai, Manila, Marawi, Kuala Lumpur, and Berlin.

Their works explore the networked histories of the different regions involved; the formation of dialogues and negotiations around official documents, and how the archival can be subjected to new readings and constructions of history, allegiance and participation; and the capacity of artistic and cultural interventions to produce political subjectivities and surface other circuits of internationalisms and new political trajectories in the world.
"How we exist together" by Tanya Villanueva with daughter Olivia, curated by Con Cabrera, Bulwagang Fernando Amorsolo (Small Gallery), Cultural Center of the Philippines
"How we exist together," a multimedia collaboration between Tanya Villanueva and her 16-year old daughter Luna/Olivia, marks a significantly pragmatic and remarkable turn in Villanueva's practice, which she has started to regard as a coming-to-terms with the various questions of her person and immediate material conditions. "I am using various mediums to explore ways to collaborate and perform the specific position I have as a mother, an artist and the sole parent to my daughter," she states.

Artmaking moves away from the impetus of producing lucrative objects and the pressure and anxiety of having to be visible and relevant in the scene, and becomes first and foremost a private and intimate process of attuning to oneself that needs to be able to address their personal needs.

"To collaborate with my daughter is my way of working to care for our system as a family unit, a way to learn about ourselves together by working through our own pace and with our own learning processes." Villanueva describes her ongoing series of working with her daughter as a way of exiting and growing together and persisting in this vicious world.

To regard art as a personal and thoroughly humane technology, a modality of kindness that clears a safe space with its own internal logic and ethical economy for subjects and relationships to thrive, allows for such affective collaborations to become means of contemplating and resolving issues about one's practice, the systems in which one moves, and life at large, and "[puts] forth our body that exists beyond the part of us that peddles to be valued."

Despite its humanist concerns and the affective relations it seeks to foster, Villanueva's work remains stripped of bathos and strives to veer away from the use of metaphors. "I am looking for ways to be incorruptible and ways to explore art making that will not eventually feel like a waste of space by being too much about producing it, ways to share a personal garden where I can move with intention of tending life around me with critical care and private splendor. By working with my own experience and using my life as the source of images for my work, I can take control of my own visibility and my own space. In this installation, I am looking at a force as well as showcasing it. I am looking at my daughter's face and taking time to put her into the light, looking to answer how can I uplift the both of us."
"Softcore" by Sidney Valdez, in "Resetting the Clock" curated by Con Cabrera, Pasilyo Victorio Edades, Cultural Center of the Philippines, Pasay
Consistently characterized by their cutting irony and wit and calculating trickster rhetoric, Sidney Valdez' shrewdly conceived projects are often ingenious critiques of class, state machinery, and empire. "Softcore" comprises two monitors: one displaying a collection of videos from the artist's daily encounters and commutes, shot using his smartphone; and the other, a montage of televisual fragments derived mostly from local advertisements, noontime shows, soap operas, and newscasts. What could have been easily dismissed as a contrived, predictable, or blatant juxtaposition of social realism with the opiate fanfare of mainstream media here becomes a chilling and carnivalesque program of its own that locks the spectator in some limboid tautology. The oblique and riddling parade of video fragments makes clear a nightmarish fantasy world that contrasts and blurs the boundaries at the same time between social documentation and poverty porn, humor and horror, and the local material conditions and the perverse fiction of television. Valdez deftly and incisively surfaces the absurd and the perverse in the ritual of our everyday persistence and the already darkly comic hyperreality of Philippine contemporary life.
"Dakel Saday" by Aaron Kaiser Garcia, live performance in "Littoral Drifts" organized by saranglayap and Nomina Nuda, Dogtown Collective, Baler, Aurora
Initially produced as a senior thesis at the Philippine High School for the Arts staged in March at the National Arts Center this year, "Dakel Saday" debuted as a solo performance in Baler, Aurora as part of the one-day group exhibition "Littoral Drifts." Performance artist, dancer, and choreographer Aaron Kaiser Garcia's hybrid project of ethnochoreography builds on the Tasaday hoax of the Marcos regime and the many choreographic fabrications by dance scholars passed as ethnographic notation to be later canonized into our dance traditions. Garcia's project commemorates and critically reimagines the controversial Tasaday people while doubling as a work of fabulation and counterdocument to problematize myths of authenticity and 'nation' and the role of cultural production in assisting state power.

Through this work, he asks: "How much of the narratives in our history have been fabricated and false? How come the remains of a former dictator now lies in a graveyard reserved for heroes? What influence have artist-choreographers contributed to such insidious fictions and assisted the state machinery over the decades?" Rarely does one encounter a rigorous project that wields choreography and dance as tools of critical discourse, not to mention the commanding intelligence of Garcia's body and the utter sorcery of his movements as he blazed the ground barefoot.
"Estela Vadal" by Marlon Hacla, Roel's Bookshop, Quezon City
Poet, photographer, and programmer Marlon Hacla recently launched the physical prototype of his groundbreaking and ongoing project "Estela Vadal" at an indie book fair in Quezon City in December this year, an interactive and makeshift wooden robot touring as a street poet and photobooth rolled into one. Named after his mother, Estela Vadal is an artificial intelligence machine, a recurrent neural network trained on poems in Filipino by Hacla to generate poetic text.

Her best poems during her first several months were compiled in a chapbook titled "Ito ang Pangalan ng Aking mga Dila," published in December last year by Magpies, and from October 2017 until her incarnation this month, Estela Vadal has been an active Twitter bot that 'recited' lines of poetry by the hour (https://twitter.com/estelavadal). The robot generates with a receipt printer the photos of its subjects along with poetry vignettes prompted by the image signatures of the photos. Graceful and visceral at once, these compositions provide a glimpse of Estela Vadal's uncanny consciousness and the mysteries language can muster in the lines that seem to have emerged from some unfathomable void. Straddling and intersecting various media to mine further possibilities of the lyric gesture and create startling, new configurations of the Filipino language, Hacla's project not only serves as a landmark work in Philippine literature and in local text-based and new media arts, but also generates perhaps one of the most numinous and unsettlingly beautiful poetry that we will ever see in print in this lifetime.
Katrina Stuart Santiago, arts and culture critic UGATLahi Artist Collective
Even if you have yet to be one of those who will include going to protests in your monthly calendar, it would be difficult to miss the artistry and creativity - not to mention the discursive critique - that is in UGATLahi Artist Collective's effigies. To say that this group has upped its effigy game the past year would be an understatement, as its works have spun and rotated, unfolded and unraveled in ways that are always a surprise, and more importantly that are always in sync with the most current soundbite, the most urgent calls, the more important issues. That a bigger public now sees these effigies and asks why these must be burned down at all is a measure of the broadening resistance versus the current leadership, and the clarity with which we are now engaging with this brand of visual resistance, the power of which is in the fact that at the end of the day, it must go up in flames. No other art was as "lit" as UGATLahi's all of 2018.
"Kahayupan" by Jose Santos P. Ardivilla, UP Bulwagan ng Dangal
While there was no lack of politically-engaged (i.e., anti-Duterte, anti-Marcos, anti-dictatorship) art this year, there was one exhibit that decided to deal with the state of the nation by actually taking us back six presidents, and forcing us to contend with the fact that we have been willing passengers on this political carousel ride called "same shit, different dynasty." And this is no simpleton analysis.

Using the form of the political cartoon in seven large-scale panels, one each for every President from Marcos to Duterte (each also labelled a Deadly Sin with Duterte as Wrath, PNoy as Sloth), we are made to see an unchanging political landscape: the same anti-people policies named differently, the same pigs and crocs, boors and snakes in government, the same wealth transferring hands, the dead people sacrificed in the name of. The devil was in the details of this exhibit, as it was also in its execution: an audio recording on loop, welcoming the spectator to the carnival ride, saccharine and sinister, bogus but believable - the most credible reminder that where we are is where we've always been, and the only way out is not only to get off this ride, but to burn it to the ground.
Space Encounters Gallery & Provenance Gallery
In a time and place where a majority of artists are treated almost like contractual factory workers with no benefits, no security, and certainly no negotiating power with "employers," it is clear that the artist-gallery-collector dynamic has to change - at the very least the model needs to be experimented with, in case we are missing out on other ways in which this system might function with more compassion and kindness for those who actually make the art, without whom, well, there would be no gallery, no collector.

These two spaces were seen to be giving that a try in 2018, not just by choosing to exhibit lesser known artists, but also by providing artists the opportunity at expansion: for Space Encounters, it's the decision to produce furniture, interiors, home accessories based on the artists' work; for Provenance Gallery it's bringing the right-sized art to captive markets within highly specialized and specific spaces. Both arguably in the hope of moving art more quickly from artist to buyer, towards making art more sustainable for artists, and actually seeing what it's like when artists don't have to worry about earning from their art. An interesting enough proposition, with great possibilities.
Jam Acuzar, founder of Bellas Artes Projects "Continuing Spirit: Alfredo Esquillo" at Ateneo Art Gallery, Manila
This retrospective of Alfredo Esquillo Jr.'s 25-year long career as a Social Realist painter is a much-anticipated tribute to his contribution to the Philippine Art Scene and his place within Philippine contemporary art. The exhibition not only shows his proficiency as a painter through 37 seminal works but also Esquillo's commitment to a deep artistic practice, consistently reflecting on the tensions between the political, material and spiritual consciousness of the Filipino people.
"Moving House, Unpacking A Life of Critical Art Making: Judy Freya Sibayan" at Calle Wright, Manila
How do you document and exhibit performance? What makes an institution? These are questions that you encounter when you visit this show, if you can even call it that. In many ways, it is more than a show. Judy greets you in this house-turned-gallery where she walks you through an archive of personal belongings and stories, taking you through private details of her life and conscious decisions in her career. The result is a fascinating journey towards understanding Sibayan's fascinating life as a thinker, artist, museum director, as she unpacks her very life in front of you. The intimacy of this exhibition is what really makes it special, as you enter a room filled with critical texts and art works, personal letters, and even shoes and clothing that she may or may not be willing to let go. You end up leaving the house with many questions, feeling very hopeful that an artist such as Judy is so committed to a critical art practice in the Philippines.

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At the beginning of 2018, there was already talk about this so-called Southeast Asian renaissance, mainly due to the continuous rise of contemporary art institutions in the region. In the Philippines, if the number of people going to Art Fair Philippines is an indicator of the Filipinos' increasing consciousness in art, then it appears that there might be indeed a growing art-going public.

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Suyat is the collective name of the indigenous scripts of various ethno-linguistic groups from the Philippines.

Was made during the Spanish colonization to the independence day of Philippines.

Suyat Scripts established various  techniques and styles.

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The Filipino weaving culture is distinct because it unites people as strong resilient communities by textile patterns, motifs and the living tradition

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Arnis (Eskrima)

The Philippine version of martial arts is Arnis. Dubbed the country's national sport, arnis is a weapon-based form of combat used for fighting since 1610. Due to the country's diverse local dialects, is it also know as Eskrima among other names.

This martial arts sport, which has been around since the 16 th century in Rizal, Philippines, uses feet rather than the hands. One distinct technique in sikaran is the "Biakid kick" move which aims to hit the back of the opponent's head.

Sipa, or "to kick" is a native sport which is closely related to Sepak Takraw of Indonesia. The game is undertaken with two teams opposing each other, with a net in the middle of a court. The goal is to kick a rattan ball back and forth until it land on the floor of the opponent's side.

Silat is an indigenous martial art which involves players striking their opponents through fixed hand positions. It is also practiced in Brunei, Vietnam, Thailand, and Indonesia. This sport has been included in the Southeast Asian Games.

Traditional wrestling in the Philippines is called dumog. Combining Filipino martial arts techniques, the aim in dumog is to pin an opponent to the ground. Strategies include pulling, grabbing, pushing and pinning the opponent down through targeting their the body parts they use for control.

During festivities especially in the provinces, palo-sebo is a common sport played by locals. It features greasy poles, usually made up of bamboo, with a bag of prizes pinned on top of it. The aim is to climb the greasy pole and whoever gets the prize in the quickest time is the winner of the game.

Sungka is a game for two, played using a wooden block with 16 holes that can hold pieces of either pebbles, marbles, or seeds. Two of the holes (called 'heads') remain empty, each player protects their own 'head'. The goal is to gather as many pebbles etc in their 'head' as the player can in order to win the game. The game is also played in other Asian countries like Thailand, Indonesia, and Myanmar.

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Local Filipino Sports You Should Know About

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Arnis (Eskrima) The Philippine version of martial arts is Arnis. Dubbed the country's national sport, arnis is a weapon-based form of combat used for fighting since 1610. Due to the country's diverse local dialects, is it also know as Eskrima among other names.

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basketball, boxing, volleyball, football, tennis, and billiards are the six major sports in the Philippines.
Basketball:

Is the most popular sport in the Philippines

Was introduced in the Philippines during the American colonial period.

Boxing:

Philippines started from their own kind of boxing, Suntukan (Filipino boxing)

produced Olympic standouts

Professional world champions and greatest fighters in history of boxing

Suntukan-

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Arnis is the national sport in the Philippines.

It is a kind of martial arts, has movements such as , twirling, striking, swinging

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FIGHTING STICKS OF ARNIS Trailer by Empty Mind Films

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Regional language:

21 languages are spoken regionally, such as  Tagalog, Cebuano, llocano.

The majority of the regional languages belong to the Malayo-Polynesian language family subgroup.

Foreign language:
The Philippines has a large number of immigrants, so the languages are not just indigenous. Some of the Foreign languages spoken include various types of Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Korean, Spanish, Malay,  and Tamil.

Regional languages-

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History of the official and national language of the Philippines 

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History of the official and national language of the Philippines 

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Official language:
During colonial rule- Spanish
US occupation (1901)- English
Constitution (1935)- English and Spanish
1959-Tagalog became know as Filipino
Constitution 1973- Filipino and English
National Language:
Filipino-

Mostly consisted of tagalog and other mixes of Philippines language.

Teachers rely on Filipino to teach in schools.

In TV and magazines, Filipino is the chosen language.

Filipino-

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Filipino is related to the words in Spanish 

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Filipino is related to the words in Spanish 

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‘Most don’t realise they’re speaking Spanish’: The revival of the Philippines’ disappearing language

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In the Philippine archipelago, a language once cast off as the coloniser’s tongue is now being rediscovered by younger Filipinos who have English as their co-mother tongue — and the reasons might be more economic than sentimental.

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Kulintang:

1. Kulintang is a accident instrumental form of music composes by different sizes of gong chimes and drums.
2. Kulintang evolved from simple native signaling into music.

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The importance of the festivals to Filipino

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The importance of the festivals to Filipino

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There are many types of festivals in the  Philippines. National, seasonal, and religious. Many of the festivals are of religious origin. This is because  they want to honor the country's or city's province's saint. Many activities are to  express their gratitude to god.

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The dance imitates the movements of the tikling bird. The dancers perform the steps around and between bamboo poles.

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Traditional Dance of Leyte Tinikling, Philippines | Ride N' Seek Philippines S4

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Filipino food has evolved for centuries started from its Malayo-Polynesian origins. Later, there were many Hispanic cultural influences on their food. This is because many Latin-American and Spanish dishes were brought to the Philippines during the Spanish colonial period. Their food is also influenced by Chinese because there was direct trade and culture exchange between the Philippines and Hokkien China during the Song dynasty. And From 1898 to 1946, America influenced the speed and convenience of the Philippines' food culture. Because Filipinos have become consumers of American food products.

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Rationale
I am taking part in an online project individually. And I am showing what I know through Padlet. Padlet is a website for creating many boards to share your presentation with people. The reason I am doing it is because of globalization and culture imperialism. The culture of the world is being affected by influential countries like the USA, so it is very important to preserve the culture so they won't be forgotten. And I chose to do the Philippines because of their history being colonized by the Spanish effects their culture a lot. America also, Filipinos enjoy American music and clothing which I believe because of this their culture is homogenized. Spain settled the Philippines during the 1500s until 1898 America declared war on Spain. After WWI, the relationship between the US and the Philippines has become friendy. Later July 4, 1946, the Philippines has become an independent nation that was after WWII.

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Even today, The Philippine cuisine continues to evolve as new ingredients, cooking methods from the food culture of other countries  find a way into the Philippines. Because of this, Philippine cuisine is a melting pot of eastern and western cuisines.