Sulog. Filipino Architecture at the Crosscurrents

Contemporary Filipino Architecture is at the nexus of interconnected and intersecting forces. Once imagined as limited within the confines of the Philippines as a geographical setting, Filipino Architecture is recast as the continuous flow of people, places, and processes. “Sulog”, a Cebuano term that refers to “water currents”, encapsulates the dynamic ebbs and flows of Filipino Architecture that is born of an archipelagic setting and whose sense of becoming is enmeshed within crosscurrents of multiple flows and network exchanges.

The exhibit is inspired by anthropologist Arjun Appadurai’s conception of “Global Cultural Flow” (1990) as an intersecting transnational network of exchange between people, goods, economics, politics, and ideas. He suggests that we need to understand these cultural flows across geo-political boundaries through the five dimensions of ethnoscapes, technoscapes, financescapes, mediascapes, and ideoscapes.