 I would like to talk about Philippine art and culture, there are three concepts there we have Philippine, we have art and we have culture and with Philippines you know it's a country and then it's made up of islands with water around the islands and so there are people living here to see and there are those who are living inside the island and there are mountains. Because of the natural environment in this geographic configuration you will see that people live like fishermen near the sea and then in the mountains you have hunters so they eat the fish by the sea and they eat meat or animal protein inside the mountain and this would be the core of their life and they will have shelter and they will have some kind of clothing and they'll be eating, they have food so that would make up the culture. The culture would be the way of life for the people. In Philippine you are also having what we call a society and these are people or individuals living together in an area. When they do that you have what we call the psychology of the individuals but together you have the sociology of the society. Now with art, art is the expression of the people, they have a sense of beauty, they like to adorn themselves. For instance a long time ago they would wear shells and stones for the jewelry, later on they wore metal earrings and gold jewelry and then and so on. So through time art will change, the expression will change and each expression is also an experience. Art is a form of language, you can communicate ideas through the arts because the art expresses thoughts, feelings and ideas and they do things with media, with processes and they do it with technique. This is why the gold jewelry that you will see in the Metropolitan Museum for example will show you how highly skilled the art is where during those early times. We have traditional art from early times and you have contemporary art which is of modern times. Now before the art was part of life so you had rituals and they would have songs and music and dance all together but later when people started studying what they call the arts they had the isolated arts and you have now what they call the seven arts, you have the visual arts, you have painting, sculpture, architecture, you have literary arts, you have cinematic arts and you have dramatic arts and even culinary arts. Now if you live in the south for example like Bicol where there are a lot of coconuts you will notice that the food they have have coconut milk and you have laing or you have pinangat. In other areas in the Philippines also we have we share the same like for gata or coconut milk in our food. So there are also changes as history passed on. The colonial people came here, colonized the Philippines, taught us how to eat mechado, etc, etc, those with sarsas. So you see life changes as it moves along. Now with music, dance and theater these are the performing arts and here you have the red experience as a viewer and as a participant. Culture is a way of life it's either rural or agricultural or you live in the city and you have an urban life. These contain traditions, beliefs, spirituality. It also has our history and this is why we have a cultural heritage. Those buildings that were built a long time ago have history and also the cultural identity of the people is so diverse. We have different cultures in a way in the different islands and we have shelter or architecture and it also has differences according to the group you are in and then the clothing and the food. So we shelter for example in the further south in Mindanao you have the trogan. The trogan has the panolong which is the sarimano which is the like the Pangalai dance movement and in the in the cities you have the buildings you have concrete buildings skyscrapers and all that. So you will see the changes in the culture through the buildings. So in the arts you have actually different expressions and different experiences as I said. So in the 1980s late 80s there was a call for women to be active in the in life in different parts of the role of women in the arts and in life. There was a conference on women in media women in politics women in the arts etc and so a group of us attended the conference and we formed a group called Kasibulan. This would be Kababaihan sassining at Bagong Sibul Nakamalayan. There were five women there artists Imelda and Daya, Ana Fair, Ida Bugayo, Julie Looch and myself and we said how come all the men are always like considered the leader of the arts? How come we are not recognized as artists? And so we said let's find out who the women artists are and we made a survey of the artists and they wrote to us and so sent us their work pictures of their work we would share our work to each other and finally we have a body of work done by women and so we started exhibiting together we started getting into issues talking about how this issue affects our life as women and as people and so on and so we would come out with an exhibit on Kababaihan in general then we would have an exhibit on migrant workers we had an exhibit on environment and so on issues that we were concerned with. Some of us were afraid to be called feminists or feminist artists but then sister Mary Jan talked to us and said no if you are concerned with women issues then you're a feminist so we said okay we are feminists and we we just went on and every year we would have an exhibit at the CCP at the Vargas Museum at the Faculty Center of UP and so on so that we would be like having a body of work as women artists. Up to now they still meet the younger people are now leading the group and they're still meeting and they're exhibiting as usual and there are other groups younger groups younger people who are producing good art and also they exhibit in galleries and then there are a lot of festivals and fairs they join that and they join the international exhibitions also it is good to know the different artists from different regions there was a time when we had visual arts congresses where people would meet together exhibit together and you also build collegiality you know you get to know what they're doing and they get to know what you're doing so it is like a community a sense of community of artists you know so Philippine art has gone a long way but many people still don't appreciate that the strength that we have through the arts art is very important to the people it is food for the soul it also expresses the spirit of the people when we do the work the we come out with creations we speak about our life ourselves and so the more Philippine the person is the more Philippine the work is so the identity is carried by the person who did the work