The River as Endless Territory

Abstract

As an archipelagic territory of 7,641 islands, the Philippines is dealing with multiplicities of identities, resources, and risks that are pressured by a centralized and homogenizing development paradigm, fragmenting critical socio-spatial landscapes that further creates a hyper-vulnerable state in the face of the climate crisis. The project touches on uncovering the dialectics between indigeneity and modernity in space, and revealing critical values that traditional and indigenous knowledge systems have that are potentially made for evolutionary resilience with identified river basins traversing critical biodiversity corridors as sites for exploration and understanding. These critical zones - The River Interface - encompass megadiverse complex social-ecological systems, coalescing frontiers of pristine Philippine biodiversity, ancestral domains, urban domains, and the rivers that tie them altogether.

Framing the River Interface Unit’s pattern from The Source, The Confluence, and to The Mouth, with its embodied values of Extraction-Interposition-Consumption, respectively over the riverscape, then prompt envisioning of futures to be tackled more deeply and how these can be formed from cycles of memory that are present in practices of care as well as the biophysical phenomena shaping this, opening up which adaptive capacities can be enhanced and enabled. Where these cycles occur in space are then identified to see opportunities as to how they can be guided by principles of a decolonized process, embedded recognition of pluriversality, and implemented socio-spatial justice through a renewed form of governance. These shall then guide the making of space and allowing care to be the mode of an evolutionary and adaptive riverscape fabric. Projects for each part of the River Interface Unit system are then developed through a process of nostalgic envisioning.

With the identification of ‘Memory’ as the key adaptive quality that the indigenous hold, the use of Nostalgia as a design strategy aims to envision collective climatic futures through the River Interface’s capacities for memory, consciousness, and organization. These capacities are then enhanced by Nostalgia’s ability to reinforce self-continuity in moments of struggle and crisis undergoing the processes of assimilation, accommodation, and co-evaluation. Hence, this can establish through space, multiplicities of culture with a core memory system, embedding in long-term memory an evolutionary resilient and truly adaptive way of life. In the search for a solid archipelagic identity and its significance in the response to the urgency of climate change and its effects, the project aims to offer clarity and freedom for a country longing to know who it is, its potentials, and believe in its true worth. From the accumulated identities of Exoticism, Exhaustion, and Helplessness, we turn to the true and beautiful nature of our group of islands of a nation we call home that is clearly Delicate, Diverse, and Dynamic.