The story of Bikol begins with flood and fire, and it is here where I also start.

By Flood and Fire: Ecologies of Home expounds on the cultural ecologies of my home in Albay as an auto-ethnographic and decolonial way of understanding stories of people, place, and practice. As a way of responding to written histories of Albay, this project seeks out community stories and brings them to platforms that are more resonant and dynamic.

This project attempts to imagine how everyday life is constructed through the affective dimensions of fire, deluge, anger, and passion, understanding places as worlds onto which we anchor our ways of doing, feeling, and knowing. It also underscores how community plays a central role in the continued breath of this ecology. In another sense, this project also serves to document a cultural worker’s self-reflection and auto-ethnographic practice, grounded in the desire to spell out strategies for an engaged curatorial practice. Ultimately, I imagine the task of decolonialising in the creative field as an intentional act of locating and honoring beginnings, and this is precisely what this project intends to accomplish.