The Great Life is pointing me to a predominant direction—the field and creating art out of it. In the field (not just when walking), I am confronted by myself, my kapwa, lipunan, the trinity of these, and sansinukob that includes the more-than-human world. This pattern continues to present itself in whatever shape or form of walking is done, whether it is a pilgrimage, a fieldwork, or even a tour. To go out and engage with space is religious. The spaces of the developing world are even more important here because these are no longer spaces for neoromantic walks. They are divided spaces, specially suburbs, where the “rural” and the “urban” are constantly in tension, where capital and lack of it always present themselves. How do I turn the field into a church, much like I did in the past, but not a field of proselytization, but one of encounter, a witnessing, not of an invisible God, but of the assumed “creation,” which is none other than myself, my kapwa, lipunan, and sansinukob—an encounter possible without a supervisor.
To do: Process the following notes from deCentral
Monsoon School 2
distance, scale, and positionality shape what we observe, know, and are able to act upon
Leaving the classroom and moving into the field, how do we direct our attention when there is so much to encounter?\
How close, or how far, do we position ourselves in relation to what we observe?
At what scale do we choose to look, and what becomes visible or remains overlooked through that choice?
field not as a bounded site to be documented, but as a dynamic constellation of ecological, political, social, and more-than-human relations that continually exceeds the boundaries of any single place.
Moving through this field continually repositions the practitioner, requiring constant negotiation of distance, scale, and positionality.
participants begin by examining their own standpoints through a session
By placing personal histories alongside broader socio-political histories, the session reveals how each participant’s lived trajectory shapes what they notice and how they interpret it.
Before entering the new field, participants are invited to reflect on the perspectives, expectations, assumptions, and possible blind spots they bring with them and to make these part of the inquiry itself.
“transcalar” framework—which draws on the shifting perspectives of cinematic framing, from wide shot to medium shot to close-up—participants will move between the intimate, the territorial, and the planetary.
Transcalar thinking is not a matter of zooming in and out, but of moving across different frames of reference, across interconnected scales, from the micro (soil, water, insects textures, sound) to the territorial (villages, river systems, infrastructures, borders) to the planetary (monsoon cycles, climate systems, hydropolitics).
Participants begin from a specific-scale reference, then translate it into a site-specific observation protocol to produce three fragments across various scales. These are developed through different media and later assembled collectively using principles of sequencing and montage.
local communities become active producers of knowledge rather than objects of study,
community-generated knowledge becomes a political instrument through advocacy, campaigning, and collective action in response to ongoing ecological transformations and political challenges
how a site informs what we see, how the field asks from where we see.
how a place comes into being as knowledge—from where, at what scale, through whose position, and with what responsibilities is it encountered, interpreted, and acted upon.
Rather than attempting to capture the field in its entirety, participants are invited to attend to its limits: what remains unseen, unheard, or resistant to capture?
Who or what exceeds the frame, and how might we respond without claiming to fully know?