 Hello, hello everyone. Welcome to Mapping Philippine Material Culture and Overseas Collection. We are very excited to be part of this project. First, I'd like to acknowledge the attendance and the support of Philippine Ambassador to the UK, Antonio Lagdameo, who has been very supportive of this project and of Deputy Speaker Lorna Nagarba, who gave this project its head start through a grant to advance Philippine studies at SOAS and the UK. I'd also like to thank and acknowledge the presence of the members of our Digital Mapping Research Group, a combination of graduate students and research fellows, myself included, both in the UK and the Philippines, who have been working together to basically geomap and georeference the objects onto our database. A big shout out to Jessica Manuel, who coordinates the team at UP, along with Ana Robles, Francesca Liana, Lou Viri, and Chiara Martinez, all the way from San Carlos University in Cebu. Also, we'd like to thank the curators for Southeast Asian collections from a range of institutions, who are hopefully also here, and to establish collaborative links with SOAS and the project. We especially say hello to Francine Brinkgrava at the Ethnology Museum in Leiden, here to give the go ahead for including one of the most important collections of Philippine material culture in Europe, outside Spain. We'd also like to acknowledge Sinta Kraha, Professor at the Universidad Autonomada de Madrid, who will coordinate the research team for phase two of the project, the monumental task of adding Philippine collections in Spain into the inventory. Along with Alberto Vela, Manuel Coselas, Ana Gutiérrez, and Father Jesús Folgado Calcia. So, without further ado, I'm going to turn the screen over to Cristina Juan, who is the project head of Philippine studies at SOAS and lead researcher of this project. So, Cristina, onto you to launch the archive officially. Thank you, Nixie. Good afternoon, everyone. So, I come to this project with both humility and ambition. When we began with mapping Philippine objects in the UK for our initial grant. We just could not stop. We just couldn't stop in the board within the borders of the UK. It just became harder to not include whatever else was out there. The object lists were just so amazing. And we felt like we needed to go beyond the UK. So, as soon as we got the ball rolling and the database tool was already set up, we continued to slowly expand to Europe, mostly looking for digital collections and using data under the Creative Commons license. The terrain is is vast and almost endless, but walking through it is very addicting and meeting Marian certainly did not help my addiction. So, as soon as we sent out feelers to institutions, we've been inundated with spreadsheets listing Philippine objects. Some have slim data, some have no photos, but they are there nevertheless and you know, some of these objects have actually been never displayed their whole life, almost hundreds of years in the collection. So, I'm basically saying we are deciding to launch the beta version of the site now, even if we know that it is completely so very incomplete. But we did want to do this because we wanted to begin the journey of mapping the landscape of Philippine material culture, and to ask people to come along with us in this journey. We want to open up a discursive space where we can begin to reclaim cultural memory. So, whatever it is worth the database, the tool is set up we have made it very open ended and very inclusive of data. Yeah, for whatever it's worth on pushing the button and declaring the site live from here on, we will take down the passwords and and will give you the link at the end of the of the event. So, thank you for listening and back to Nixie. We're going to move on now to a brief presentation by Marianne Pastor Rosses who is literally a legend in this field. She's an independent curator and critic working from her base in Manila in the Philippines from where she takes up global art and cultural circuits as a critic of institutions, and so on. The most recent book in 2019 is an anthology of 45 years of writing entitled gathering political writing on art and culture by MCAD the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design in Manila and Art Asia Pacific. Without further ado, let us switch to Marianne Pastor Rosses. Magandang umaga hapun ugabi, whichever one may be in your part of the world. Thank you, Christina Ambassador Lagameo and Representative Lauren Lagarda. Thank you for supporting this project. It has been a long time coming. And so the first thought that entered my mind when Christina said it's on we're going live is a bit of a shock that there was a tremendous amount of interest now. Even the participants today actually has been a bit of a shock to me. But I think you'll know why when I tell you that this thing has been going on for a long time and there's been very little interest over the last decades, and suddenly boom there's interest. But having said that I'm surprised at the interest. I'm also a little bit worried, because I know that all of you here who come here have come for for different reasons. And that there's very little that a speaker can do in about 30 minutes an hour of packing things from. I mean I can't describe the extent of this this field, this material cultural field it's impossible to give it an adjective. So yes, all you people there so you're my friends who are interested in weaponry. You're not going to see 100 weapons tonight I'm sorry we can't put it in. And those who are who are interested in textiles you're not going to see too many textiles either because we've, I've had to put all sorts of things here. So, having said that, what I can promise you in my brief presentation is a bit of a map, and it's a rather good metaphor to navigate a vast and scattered resource. I won't be the only person to do a navigational tool. This is precisely why this is an institutional effort, and it's an effort to countries as a matter of fact and universities in different places in the world and museums in different places in the world so a map therefore let's use it as a metaphor I'll end with mapping as a metaphor, and I am now going to share my screen. I am disabled can you help me, Christina my screen. I can't share my screen. Not yet. Okay, sorry. Well, if it's taking a bit of time. Why don't you run my slides. That might be easier. Okay, actually. Yeah, you can now do that. Thank you. Sorry. I thought I did that. Thank you. Okay, I can share here. Here it is. So we begin with a question why why on earth, why are we doing this. A huge part of the reason is personal. It's, it's a research interest of mine it's been an enduring one. But now it's institutional so I'm going to try for an institutional response to the question of why. All right. In some, there's a real urgent need for comprehension and I, I don't usually use words like urgent without being deliberate. And I hope to be able to convey that to you this evening. Because of the scale of loss. Emphasis on the word scale. It's vast. It's a vast and knowing. The scale of the impact of this loss on the Filipino. There is an emotional register, the elusiveness of joy. We, we, we, I think we're missing on a lot of delight and joy. The one that the, that Tina here mentioned about you get addicted. And I think you get addicted to it because there's a lot that is joyful and delightful. And, and it would, it is obviously to be hope that Filipinos will feel that joy. Together, instead of us museum mice and people who do nothing but archive things so it is to be hope that this elusive joy, because of the scale of impact of loss and the scale of the loss. To comprehend this and do something about it collectively. But to comprehend it, I would like to share with you what have always been a reality check for me. So we'll begin with the reality check. This global inventory of the materials will not do many things. And it will not discover civilization or glory in the past. A lot of people go into this digging to try and find some kingdom, some great things, something that will make us feel proud. It will make us feel proud, but not in that sense. I think once we get past this, I've discovered something great I've discovered Parthenon I've discovered Borobudur underneath the soil of the Philippines. Once we get past that, then then we can enjoy the things I'm talking about. The inventory will not find evidence of cast like social hierarchies, there's hierarchy, but nothing like India, nothing even like Indonesia's cartoon. We will have to understand our materials. Anyway, the inventory will not support the idea of non materiality, non materially inclined cultures as primitive. So, there is a habit amongst us that if a person or a group of people and ethnolinguistic group does not have monumental traditions, and don't have this big, big things. No monumentality. As a matter of fact, most scholars believe that the Philippines did not have monumental art and I believe that we did not. But just because of that does not assign people like this into the category of the primitive. There's a huge amount of literature on this and so I don't need to rehearse that literature has been going on for 50 years. I wish I could speak on just that thing alone, but I need to move on to another will not. The inventory will not overturn in my belief the findings of anthropology, archaeology and linguistics, and other related fields. These disciplines in the Philippines have said that the Philippines did not produce kingdoms we had no kings we had no queens we had no royalty in a technical sense. And we will not find anything including the gold from but one to merit the use of words like royal or princess or King. I'm not. I'm only summarizing what the sciences have said about us. It will not support retroactive construction of protoforms of modern forms. In other words, if you're looking for the precedence of contemporary sculpture or modern sculpture it is best not to look for protoforms, because there was in the past may not, and in my view does not come together as a linear and I hate the word evolution. All right, so having gone there. I'm happy to answer questions if if you're appalled by my statements, but let's go to the fun parts. This is our story. Well, unfortunately, this is not the fun party. All right. These sounds like vast assertions. But anyone who's worked in this field there's very few of us we hope there's more of us will know that the material culture heritage of the Philippines is in large measure overseas outside the Philippines. And this could be as much as 90% of anything that survives from from thousands of years to today, even to today, as a matter of fact because there's collecting of Philippine cultural material right now by foreign museums. So that's not an exaggeration my first sentence. My second sentence is the result of the first that Filipinos do not have access to much of the material evidence of knowledge systems that existed in the Philippines. Mainly because if they're in storages in museums abroad, or in private homes of collectors, then access is niggeredly. And thirdly, among the outcomes of this vast and knowing is an abysmal loss of measures of quality that Philippine people enjoyed until about a century ago. Now the measures of quality are not the measures of quality in kingdoms are not the measures of quality in Europe, or China, or Japan, but you will see in the materials that are in my slides and it's just a handful that there was exquisite quality within the terms of our own traditions and within the terms of our own knowledge systems. And it takes a shift of the imagination to understand that the loss is not the loss of civilization material, but the loss. I mean we could argue what the word civilization means. But let's just use it in its popular sense right now. We can answer questions later. But yes, we have stopped enjoying things over the last century. A big part of it is because we don't have access. We haven't seen these things. So we need to keep a few matters in mind that the collection of the National Museum of the Philippines was totally nearly totally destroyed during the Second World War. And so what's left at the National Museum was really what Henry Otley Bayer physically moved out of the National Museum during the bombing of Manila. And I'm sure you all are aware that Manila was the second most destroyed city on earth of the Allied powers. Amongst the allies to the Allied powers, it was nearly totally destroyed and so was the National Museum. So just by way of numbers, there are 350 Bagua Botextas at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. And there's about a dozen of pre-World War II materials at the National Museum. So it is an unfortunate part of our national life, that this has not become part of the imagination of the Filipino. The second thing is that material cultural studies were not a significant area for Philippine studies during the post-war period. I'd love to discuss this with anthropologists. I'm not an anthropologist nor a historian, but there was no focus on material culture in the shift of focus to let's see kinship systems and of course language. Thirdly, Philippine material cultural collections started to be an activity in the 1970s by Filipinos. There's more matters to keep in mind. The status quo. So let me just give you a sketch. The Nayung Filipino ethnographic collection is in a precarious state. It's an important collection. It's a small collection. I believe that as a few months ago, people are trying to do something about it, but something has to be done because it's among the very few that remain in the Philippines outside private collections. The National Museum was not enabled by the state to compete with bullish antiquities trade between the 1970s indeed to today in terms of collecting money. So whatever was left was not possible for the National Museum to collect it from the 1970s. As a matter of fact, sorry, I did say 1970s here because that's when all of the buying was happening, but in effect ever since 1945 with the destruction of Manila. But the nice thing is the Philippine Archaeological Gold Jewelry remains intact at the Banco Central of the Philippines and the Ayala Museum. So this archaeological gold jewelry did not in fact leave the country except for a few pieces from archaeologists who are working in the Philippines, American archaeologists and at least one Frenchman Alfred Marsh who managed to find gold jewelry in a cave in Marinduque in the middle of the 19th century. So yes, this gold has not left. The Philippine colonial material culture remains in the Philippines in private collections, not necessarily in state collections, but the Central Bank of the Philippines has a collection. The Museo ng Kaalamang Katutubo which is a private museum is actually succeeding at gathering the Philippines reference collection for ethnographic materials. It's an ongoing project right now. Philippine modern art has been substantially collected by private parties, notably at the Manila University. And that collection has been going on since the 1950s. It's a fabulous collection. Philippine contemporary art has been substantially collected by the Singapore Art Museum. This is what's been going on for the last 20 years. So Singapore actually has the reference collection for contemporary art of the Philippines and the region. The Central Pancultura ng Pilipinas is a cultural center of the Philippines. The private collections both in the Philippines and abroad have the contemporary art reference collection collectively. 19th and early 20th century paintings are in private hands, but substantially collected by Banco Central ng Pilipinas. So you can see that Banco Central actually has been a trustworthy trustee of Philippine culture, and that we have a lot to be grateful for to the Central Bank of the Philippines. But there are many gaping lacks in so far as reference collections are concerned. For example, we do not have a Philippine design collection designer chairs, etc. We do not have a lot of fashion, very little. And a few Filipino and foreign collectors own substantial bodies of Philippine art and by substantial, I mean exquisite and extraordinary. That's the sketch. A number of key pieces that embody the most sublime levels of cultural expression in material form by specific Philippine peoples is what is lost to the Philippines. And when I say a number, it's actually a large number. There are a number of key pieces for which there are no equivalents in the Philippines, or there are pieces in museums abroad I'll show you some of them that have a singular. There's only one of it in the entire world. We also lost the full range of variations of certain traditions as expressed by artists of specific communities, meaning to say you might have one bagobo piece or one blank piece or one if you go piece etc. here there and everywhere. But the range to become a reference collection does not exist in the Philippines, except for what is being built by the museum. The Institute study continuities or commonalities between and among parts of the Philippine experience that are normally separated. We normally separate colonial art, ethnographic art, modern art, etc. These are normally separate collections as you can see they're all separate collections, but to actually look at pieces from this various and divided areas of cultural production in the past. This is, this is hard to do. Especially if you're only examining, let's say one bull in one private collector's hands and maybe 10 bulls in another private collector's hands and you can't see the range. You can't really make comparisons unless you're a dealer or a private collector. Basically what is lost to Filipinas is an accurate analysis of what is Philippine and thus to inform policy. And this is my personal heartache that government policy, corporate policies, NGO policies and programming are not based on an accurate analysis of what the ancestors produced, to reference what the ancestors produced. There was an earlier global inventory, I was in charge of it. It was an idea that I had, I pitched it to the National Centennial Commission for the birthday, the 100th birthday of the Philippines. And so the late Senator Lauren, sorry, the late Senator Leticia Ramos Shahani allowed me to have an office at the Department of Foreign Affairs and to work with the Secretary of Foreign Affairs to have a global inventory done by the Department of Foreign Affairs through the ambassadors. So it was in 1995 to 2000, the Philippine Centennial was 1998 to be exact. The inventory consisted, can you imagine, it was hard copies of accession records that were delivered to the ambassadors. And very few photographs, it was not digital, even the Smithsonian was not digital at that time. And so it was done. But it's very hard to put it online. It's impossible to put it online. And so 20 years past before interest, again, was generated around the global inventory task. Now, I'm going to show you some slides that have red letters. And the red letters are like my own devices to remind me to tell you to request you to look into it. Because no one, no one individual or institution can look into these things. For example, even before the Centennial Inventory Project, there were many, many other efforts to track Philippine materials and where they had gone. And so it didn't begin with the Centennial Project, there were others, not that institutional, of course, and how these left the country, but the foci of this, what we now really regard as antiquarian efforts through most of the 20th century. Where exceptional historical documents, people loved historical documents and especially when it comes to this great interest in things like Husserysal collected, did field collecting. So here's a documentation of materials sent by Husserysal to the Royal Zoological Museum in Dresden. It's Saxony from his exile in the Pitan. So this is, this was the stuff of interest, even before the Centennial Project. It still is the focus of interest. I find it to be curious as an analyst. Well, for one thing we have to acknowledge that anthropological field collecting was a foundational aspect of the discipline. And this photograph of what Husserysal was looking for does show what his peers were looking for. The spoons, the spoons and the forks from Ifugao, and brassware from Mindanao. You will find these items repetitively all over the collection. So the 19th century was actually very much into particular forms. But the collections in Europe are full of these forms and the collections in the United States. So my interest is not on Husserysal. My interest is why Husserysal seems to be one of those who are, well, we know that I mean there's this big thing about Husserysal and what he represents about as a nation, but it deserves more analytic inquiry. But here are a few things that we all know about. I just want to breeze through it. Of course the Manila manuscript or the Boxer Codex is in the Lilly Library of Indiana University in the United States. It's the earliest images of inhabitants of the Philippines. This, there are three volumes, the Doctrina Cristiana, one in Spanish, one believe it or not in Baybayin and one in Chinese. Printed, nobody knows which one was first, it was all 1590 by Silo Graphic Methodo. This one is in the Library of Congress, it's never lent. The University of Santo Tomas for its 400th anniversary of its library and it was the Dominican priest who actually printed the Doctrina Cristiana were unable to borrow it from the Library of Congress of the US. You see this one is the one in the Library of Congress, it has Baybayin. So it is absolutely important. So even if I have my own reservations about an over focus on heroes and heroic things and because there are other things to be excited about. But in this case, this is quite exciting and it's out of touch, out of reach, but we do have circulating copies. This is the one that is in the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid. It's the Chinese version and it does give us an idea of what the Dominican priests were intending to do when they arrived in the Philippines which was actually to use the Philippines as a jumping off point to evangelize China. So yes, I appreciate the excitement of historians. There's also this which makes people rather proud. This is the Batalla de la Panto, which is a massive painting by Juan Luna, which is hanging in the Sanado of Spain to this day. And it was, well, it's kind of fairly unknown to Filipinos, but it was commissioned by the King of Spain at that time. So just going through the famous ones. But those are only five of what's here. There are two lists. This is not a complete list. Tina and I and the team are putting together a more comprehensive listing. But each one of these have substantial collections. So the Smithsonian has more than 10,000 materials. The Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, of course, is very proud of having more than 10,000 pieces. But for example, the Leiden Museum, and we're very grateful that Leiden is coming in. Thank you very much, is substantial. Like I said earlier, the American Museum of Natural History has like a fabulous Bagobo collection. So there are some of these places have focused collections, but are indispensable for scholarship. Some are very curious, like why is there a Philippine collection in St. Petersburg at the Kunstkamera, the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology, but there is. And we know that the University of Michigan Museum of Anthropology is of course. All right, so here we go. A capsule history of the diaspora of Philippine material culture. First there's souvenirs from 400 years of colonization. Then pseudo scientific and scientific expeditions from the 18th to the 19th century. American modern science expeditions of the early 20th century antiquities trading in the 20th century peaking in the 70s and 80s and trafficking of what's little left, which is ongoing right now. This is continuing this piece, which is at the Felt Museum in Vienna, the former Museum for Volcanicunde of Vienna. This was collected in the 1980s, a very old piece, but you can see that there was collecting that was going on. There are very interesting pieces. This is part, this is ivory, could be Chinese, certainly collected from the Philippines. I'm going to go very fast. Now, let's go to the red letters, the world expositions remain an urgent research area. This piece is a piece like this came to Madrid because of the universal exposition, and there's multitudes of materials that came in. From an aesthetic perspective, like many of these things, but also very interesting from a historical perspective. And then for scholarly purposes, you have paintings like this. This is also in Madrid. Of course, it's not only at the Museo Nacional de Antropología, there's Museo Naval, there's Museo de Hercito, there's all sorts of museums in Spain. We did not finish the inventory in 2000, we didn't finish the inventory in Spain, it was just too much, and we hopefully this time around. This is of interest to scholars, I think, or should be of interest to scholars because of the, sort of like an elevation of what used to be the tipos del país in the hands of a trained artist. All right, very quickly, this is at the Metropolitan of New York, it's an unbelievable piece of doble calado. There's so many at the Metropolitan of New York. This is in the Museo de América, one of the earliest collections from the Philippines, including plants and animals which are in the Cardinbo Tanico in Madrid. This is from the Malaspina expedition, which was a vast undertaking, and this beautiful drawing of Negra in the mountains of Manila, is one of the earliest, aside from the Boxer Codex, of somebody looking back at us from deep time. There are really rare things, this is one of those pieces that have no equivalent anywhere, it's a piece of gold at the Feld Museum in Vienna, it was collected by a peer of Jose Rizal Mr. Schoenberg, who was going around the Philippines collecting in, all right, so now I have to wrap up. I am going to just leave you with the kind of intriguing thing that you will find, obviously this is a great weapon, it's a hilt, it's pomel, it's made of ivory, it's at the Metropolitan of New York, but there are just incisions on it. And we're beginning to find out how much of the weaponry, aside from their beauty, is talismanic, which should not surprise Filipinos. A lot of it is also unbelievable in terms of metallurgy, a lot of it has exquisite form. A lot of it is hard to now reconstruct technologically. This is steel and silver, as this one is. And this one again with the talismanic, this is in Madrid, at the Museo Naval. People in the Philippines do not know that there are, there's armor, there's all sorts of armor, this is from several museums. In fact, there's this too, another kind of armor, which is quite gorgeous. This is at the Museo Duque Brownlee in Paris. And lots of shields, which on their own should be studied for, among other things, the relationship of shields among the Kalinga and tattooing, which is a hugely important thing to Austronesian peoples. I posted this on Facebook, so I'm not going to dwell on it, but truly the talismanic inscriptions are for scholars to read. All right, I'm going to pass through everything and just show you this little something which most scholars know about, but this came from an exposition in the late 19th century, and this too. I have to wrap up, and so I am going to just go all the way to the end. But before that, I just want to show you this piece. This is the PSD Resistance of the American Museum of Natural History. It's just an absolutely, it's an incredible Bagobo Icat. And an Icat in Pennsylvania, which we have never seen in the Philippines, nor this. I'm going to go to the very, very end of my presentation. All right, mapping as a metaphor for future scholarship. I think the cartographies that are possible necessary and urgent are maps of social relations within island Southeast Asian animist societies. And when I say animus, it doesn't mean just the people who are called IP indigenous people. I'm talking about Catholics and Muslims who are also animist maps of technical aesthetic regions which run across political boundaries. They go, you can't use provincial boundaries. You can't use municipal boundaries and you can't use Philippines or national boundaries between Indonesia and the Philippines. So the technical aesthetic regions are really, really something to map. Maps of changing identities because these identities have been developing over time and have been developing because of forces, external and internal maps of indistinct borders. And maps of dismemberment, things that are just so apart, like the whole Mandaya, the whole, let's see, one, one entire ensemble of the Mandaya. The hat is in Madrid. The clothing is in Leiden. The shield is in Berlin. The spear is in the United States. So it is a dismemberment and a remembering is certainly something that we need to think about right now. Now, I know that I have to end, but I do want to go back to a little piece here. And it is unknown in the Philippines. This is in the Field Museum. The exquisite nature of work by a people who did not build kingdoms is something that we should really be working on. Why? How? And the, I suppose, the spiritual nature, although it's very hard to use the word spiritual, about how a people or a group of people in an archipelago have become, did make some of the most incredibly beautiful heartbreaking things without what other people call civilization. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mayan. That was incredibly thought-provoking and heartbreaking, as you point out. And I hope this project will go a long way towards at least raising some of the questions that will be important in reconstructing and remembering. We now turn to Christina, Christina Juan, who will give a brief summary of the framework of the project that's range and the processes that have brought it about, and that continue to populate the database. Christina. Yeah, thank you. I won't be long. This will be kind of brief. I'm really more like wanting to share with you kind of an introduction of how to navigate through these, through the site. So now it's currently live. So, as as Marianne has been saying, I think we have, we have seen kind of the, the, the amazing amount of items that need to be surveyed or catalog or at least be visible, easily accessible. In a way, we are thinking of this inventory as a sort of digital repatriation where we can give access to material. Eventually, of course, if you go more into research, you might actually be able to see the objects, although it's kind of difficult sometimes. But then we hope to see that the inventory becomes an overview gives a good overview of what's out there. As Marianne mentioned, there are several attempts that have been that are there for individual like overviews for individual collections in in Bradley and then of course, Vienna and Leiden and and Spain. But then again, these are very kind of difficult to access. So we need to. I decided to put it all online. Now the inventory features a search and mapping tool that you can use. And what we're working hard on is our collections that not only a list of collections, but overviews for each of the collections, what, what is in the collection, the provenance how it got there, how many objects what are the highlights. That would be a very important feature of the inventory. So it's not just baseline data but the second layer of content. And then we are curating digital exhibits as Marianne was saying, for example, this idea of dismemberment and trying to remember. At least we might just be doing it digitally but we are there are several exhibits now live in the site, where for example the Mandaya warrior is remembered in some sense through Marianne's essay by putting together these items in one in one essay. The second feature is we are looking at data and visualizing data. Somebody mentioned weapons for example, as we keep going with the data we will be able to figure out statistical patterns you might say like right now. I don't know if you can see it later but yeah there are there's a very there big, like word clouds for example what is frequently mentioned, a gathering everything that's in the inventory now. Let's say weapons for example is has the biggest number in the inventory. So we'll see these types of data, the statistical data, which will also help us figure out the landscape of. So once we go to, we have another feature is this open and it's an open ended inventory and we basically really want to collaborate with people as for contributors create a discursive space for this inventory. So a quick going through all of these features. When you go in the site, you will have a search tool, you can put in ivory and it will spit out as many pieces of ivory, there are some have our swords with ivory pummels in them. So, so yeah we have a Boolean search and exact match so you will be able to use those features. Of course the mapping tool will help us help people, maybe if you're in an area and you can see what museums and what they might contain in that area where you're where you are. The other feature is, as I said the collections the overviews and the highlights in each collection. The Horniman has been very generous in in giving us their API their data of very quickly we were able to input into the system. And, and they had graciously given us a very good overview of Philippine objects in their collection. And if we could replicate that with, I know, I mean curators are very, very busy. But if we can do that for each of the collections, just noting highlights. And then just, yeah, put them all in one place. So yeah, aside from that feature we have, as I mentioned the digital exhibits and this is the example of the Mandaya warrior they're talking about so you will be able to see Marianne's If you follow Marianne on Facebook and she posts these mini essays you might call we have archive this in the site and we are linking it to each of the objects in the inventory so you can tour the inventories within the essay. So there's like a digital tour you might say. The other feature is we are commissioning contributors scholars experts in the field. Chita has done a piece on ivory on ivory pieces Sandra text us and and Nina on the trousers the silken trousers in Leiden so you will see those and we will continue to add on to these digital exhibit so aside from Marianne's early regular contribution we will hopefully get some other scholars to contribute. So this contributions are basically really looking at different objects in collections or or an object in different collections and trying to surface thematic parallels or maybe historical parallels you might say. So this is the digital visualization feature of the site. If I can't go now but if you go to this page, you will see that you can play around with it. And of course this data will will change with time. You will see for example that of all the objects right now there are 1500 objects in the in the inventory and weaponry is is is the most number in the collection that we have inputted sculpture paintings and then of course ethnographic material. We looked at data on the ethyl linguistic groups, how many and where and yeah so just common statistical data and then visualizing it. And most importantly we've we've we've linked this inventory. We're making it as a discursive space you might say so we're linking it to Facebook or Twitter. Some of you might not be but it seems like the the most active place for discussion. So one of the proudest moments I had was when when we were doing this. This co production of knowledge alive on Facebook, when everyone was just giving ideas and everything. Of course there will be, you know, editorial overview, etc. But then we just want that space to open up and discuss things out there. So each time we feature Marianne's new essay for example we will link, we will upload and then link to the site, the Facebook site. And all discussions can go there and then we feedback. For purposes of GDPR we can't actually put the discussions on the website because that will create third party cookies so we'll we'll just go back and forth if. Yeah, and yes so this is the site and if you go to the site later on you will see a contribute page. There are two categories you can contribute, and you can also contact for contributing you can. It's a Google form, we're doing it as a Google form just because we can convert easily to CSV file and then upload to the inventory. And what you can do is just go through all the Dublin core categories, if you know them if not then you could, you know, you can just alert us if there are objects you're familiar with, or you know off, and then change your answers and then this goes to an administrative level where we can, we can fact check we can look at the data, and then we can upload to the inventory. So I think that would be really. I mean, if this endeavor will will succeed I think that feature would be. Another thing that we, we are hoping to do with with these collaborative space is to get more images of some objects. Some, for example, this is from. I believe it is from the Horniman. So some objects don't have photos. So we're hoping to commission some photos for some of these really rare objects but sometimes, you know if you're in a museum and you can take pictures we have made it possible to upload images to the Google contribution form. Yeah, so that's it. This is the site. If you go in you can play around and. Yeah, make suggestions. Another thing that I forgot was, aside from contributing actual objects you can also comment and this is very important for us are sort of other goal which is to annotate some of the material that's already there. The data that we have in the inventory is copied verbatim from the holding institutions. So there is a sense where that's baseline research and we were hoping that people experts or if you if you if you feel like there's archaic information or there's misinformation, or even you can you are free to suggest an annotation and we will of course credit your annotation within the inventory. Once it goes through fact checking and all these reviews. So that's about it. Yeah, we'll be open for questions. Thanks. Great. Am I, could you share your screen. Yes, thank you. I do welcome or ask you to post your questions in the q amp a box, not the chat box, and we'll, and I'll direct these to the to the panelists. So our first question is to Marianne. And perhaps Christina would like to comment on it afterwards but the first question relates to foreign service posts. It's actually two questions from one from Kate limb, and one from Renita Rodriguez. So were there any efforts by the Philippine government to repatriate these items and secondly from Renita. How can Philippine Foreign Service Post support this project of mapping Philippine material culture overseas. All right. I can only go so far as my own lifetime right. So, I recall, I didn't study repatriation but I was part of certain formations that were studying repatriation around the time of the Centennial of Philippine independence when many Filipinos really wanted to repatriate. But there was a lot of noise around repatriation. In fact, the inventory that I proposed to Senator Shahani was a response to the call for repatriation because you can't even begin a repatriation initiative without knowing what's there. So it seemed like even before we begin to talk about the graduation we actually need to know what's out there. So that's the inventory. So, while I said that at the Department of Foreign Affairs in those years from 1995 to 2000, they did not. We need very far because things were not digital at that time. However, it did give certain sectors of our Foreign Service an idea of what's out there. And certain ambassadors since then in the last 20 years have now had then worked on finding out more and doing exhibitions. Now, about repatriation. It's a very dense discourse. The UNESCO has been with this dense discourse with the Foreign Service core of many, many countries, not the least Greece of course it's still trying to get its Elgin marbles from the British Museum and not succeeding. But it has been a long haul. I just want to say that the Balaminga bells were the only focus of the country. And that succeeded eventually. We took 20 years. If I can answer. Sorry, for the second, the second question from Ren, Foreign Service posts. So one of the things that would be really helpful would be photos that have been published in books that government funded books, like the, some of the books that I showed you, if there was a way we could get like low resolution copies of those photos or, or I don't know, rights to publish them online. That would be really helpful. A lot of the, a lot of the museums now don't actually have photos of the objects and the more. Well, the nicer photos are in those books. So if there was a way we could get some copyright transferred. I don't know. But of course we, we always emphasize that this is a purely academic work we're not going to profit from this. So a lot of our permissions have been based on that and we will honor that. Yeah, commitment. Great. We have a question regarding open data open source actually a couple of questions. Let me, let me, I'm scrolling through here. There are a lot of questions. Thanks very much. Keep, keep them coming. So from Randy Noblesa. Dr one mentioned open data is the inventory also open source as well. Related to that from Amira Giles or feel, since the inventory is open ended in public will there be any effort at checking the validity of information shared I think you addressed that partially, but of course, if it's open source then we have this sort of Wikipedia kind of situation where potentially there might be a contestation of correct data. Could you answer that Christina. Yeah, yeah, so yeah, in the spirit of open source. Yeah, it's definitely you can download the data, the entire data on the website and if you know for data visualization you can do that you can request an API key. And we can give that to you so you can, you know, you can download as a CSV file and create projects based on it. I mean, the data that we're gathering is basically Creative Commons license anyway. We are using Omega as the software to a very customized Omega tool. And that has features of we would actually put up an API page, which you can look through and so you can use the data as well. What was the other one. Open source, I think you answered both questions. Oh yeah, and Mary and can you answer the second question. All right, it's open source. So we don't want to obviously have a Wikipedia situation here where you're going to run after data that seems to have been misplaced somewhere or misplaced meanings. There's an editorial team that's, that's myself and Tina. And basically the, the data is exactly what is in the museums to begin with. Now, Tina also mentioned earlier that some of that data is probably old fashioned most a lot of the data. You know, they use words like Morrow, they use words like negrito. I mean obviously those are the obvious flaws of data that was encoded in the 19th century, or early 20th century. So it's odd, the data is odd, but this is carried into the inventory, including all of those flaws, if you will, because it is important to scholars to actually read the original records. There are two ways in which the general public, the user of the database can supply additional information, that's how Tina discussed the procedure. But at the end of that procedure is editorial oversight. There will be editorial oversight. Thank you. Great. We have a question from Ferris Tugade. This is such a great project. Yay, we all agree when we turn in annotations, who does the validation that's been answered by Marie Angus now. But the question I'd like to address now to the panelists is what is the involvement of indigenous communities, where these ethnographic materials emanate from for, for example, the global Maranau et cetera. It's like the rest of humanity, they have access to the data, and if in the future there will be opportunity for projects with them, that will be marvelous. That is actually something, one of those projects that you can now conceive can be done with an open source database. Yeah, and for the, for the, here in the UK, we are doing handling sessions, digital handling sessions, sorry, but with the, the, the if you go community members of Egorot UK. That would be the dream, the co-production of knowledge. Yeah, that's a dream. So, another sort of technical question is there are two questions that were related. One from Carlos Nazareno, will there be efforts to make item labels amongst museums or in the website more accurate. So that's one. And then another related question is, if there are any corrections, how would these go back to the collections or how would they go back to the collections? I want to jump in, Naz, this is my friend. Obviously part of an effort like this is the networking part. As you can see, there was a great deal of networking from 20 years ago and then now with the new people in charge of these museums all over the world, then Christina and team now know who they are and are working with them. Because of that, the annotations, if validated, can go back to the museums. As a matter of practice, in any case, museum accession records have always had a provision for annotations for further annotation and correction. Even the index card accession records from the past had them and certainly digital systems have provisions for further annotation with the name of the person who annotated and the dates and they were annotated. So it's part of general museum practice, but in this case it's now outside the museums because it now belongs to the ether, so to speak. It doesn't belong to anyone, but does belong to the stakeholders. So in that respect, what you might be able to look forward to is for annotations to become part of this course amongst museums and discourse between the museums and this project. In fact, stakeholders in the Philippines. That's true. Most museums also have a feature on their site for, you know, if there's any corrections or I think like the field museums very good at this and the British Museum so we will probably not have the labor or the capacity to to to feedback but then I guess if the inventory becomes really a very very useful space then it will become in some sense a source for information as well for museums. Like right like we, we were just Nina Capuchino Baker just there were no descriptions for the seven silk trousers in Leiden for example in the museum collection. And what she did was because she has seen them and she has and she has written about them so she has made descriptions for each of them. And this we will put in the inventory of course credit her with the name and date and hopefully maybe Leiden can see the use for this and feed it back to their own inventory. Several questions regarding the scope of the inventory. One person asked whether such a project had been already undertaken for collections in the Philippines, for instance, and another question raised the issue of potentially bringing in Indonesian and Malaysian collections. And of course there are actually several questions regarding collections in the US so one, one attendee asked about the field museum and the landing collect object. So, obviously these are huge archives. Where do you see this project of fitting in with that larger global project. The field museum is a huge, huge collection. I think Amira is around. So, we have actually been thinking about, because all of them are pro are online, I believe they have digitized everything and they have a curating. We're not sure we need to discuss it. If we are bringing it in. Ideally, we would just for, for, you know, completion statistical data. But we'll see. It is a very big endeavor. This is a whole number of questions as well, although the Smithsonian does give you API free access to their and you can download the data. And it's just very hard to navigate and look for these objects. So, yeah, it's an ongoing discussion. It's a big project, but I think with a lot of help we can. Complete it as much as we can. To the question about has this been done in the Philippines. Okay, I'm not sure that I can answer this question adequately. This is only from what I know of the projects over the past 50 years that I've been active. Certainly the national, the listed materials by listed. I mean, they're considered national treasures. They're all they're all inventory. Of course, there's a national inventory for that for total collections. It will be per museum. It's not consolidated. But the hardest part about the Philippines is that the, the huge collections are in private hands. And that, at the moment, I think that's fairly, that's a very difficult proposition at this time for people to, to get complete collections listed together. Yes, that was the subject of Eric. And this is question to this. And who says today many items are also in private collections. Some are important and exceptional pieces as my own pointed out. Will there be any move to allow those pieces to be documented databases. How are we doing Christina on getting private collections in Europe on to the database. I have been in contact with. Marian, you probably know him, milk Marlowe. From, yeah. And he is willing to, to discuss. I just saw his name because I think he did do an inventory of the weapons in. In Stockholm or was it, Marian, where is sweet? Yeah, he's in Stockholm. So yeah, he said he, yeah, he's probably he's a, he did his dissertation I believe on the weapons and did an inventory on Southeast Asian weaponry in the, in the collection. And, but he also, I believe owns the biggest collection in, in, in Sweden. So, yeah, we will, we will try. Yeah, just to contact as many people network as as many as many points of entry as we can. Some are probably, I'm not sure how willing some people are to do that. And we will of course have to do photographs high resolution copies and different things but we're open to that, of course. In the UK. One of the things I've been looking at our outside of museums like the National Trust and the English heritage, there is a varied amount of objects from that are stored in the, in the, in private collections but under the National Trust. So that's, that's another thing that I've been looking at and like Sir Richard height Parker is is willing to contribute he has given me permission to post the the, the ivories that are at Milford Hall for example. So that would be a boost to looking at how much Philippine material is in the UK outside of museums. I'd like to just, I suppose, give, come at the question for another direction, and it's technical with museums. There's hardly any deaccessioning. So when you, when you enter an object into an accession record it's there for 1000 years I mean it doesn't with private collectors the problem is how to keep track of where where the object went. So you may be able to put in an entire collection of a private collector, but in 20 years it would have been dispersed again so it's a different kind of project. Although I'd be very happy for this project to accommodate it to the extent possible, but there lies the difference private collectors private collections are fluid they shift around a lot. Thank you, Marian. That sort of next topic is with regard to the enthusiasm of museums and collection holders for this undertaking. Ramon no con asked this question but I might rephrase it to include a couple of the other questions which raised the issue of potential partnerships with specific institutions. What would motivate a, either public or private collection to voluntarily put their objects or make the objects available on this archive. Well, if it is, if it is institution, it's a national institution like the British Museum they do have a mandate for research. And with with things with that being said it's very difficult to actually like, you know, have an appointment go in the storage area and look at these things so in some sense, for me, it might, there, it might be a way for them to you know, do the mandate, but by by contributing digital information and people can do research and then perhaps go beyond that if they were really interested in one thing and then do the physical handling of the object but in some sense, it is a way for them to achieve this mandate for, yeah, for giving access to research, because a lot of these objects are according to the data. I believe it's three, five percent are on display out of the and a lot of them have never been displayed. And at a certain point you you question what they're there for right so in some sense for an institution to give access even digitally I think is a good enough reason. I'd like to jump in and say a few things about the mood of the moment museums are changing. Yeah. I belong to a generation of curators globally that we're still part of a kind of 19th century formation, which lasted until the middle of the 20th century. But by the time we were hitting the 1980s and 1990s museums have changed in rather fundamental ways. Part of it is because if museums do not change anywhere it is, even if it's in in New York, even if it's in the metropolitan of New York, if they do not connect with with large audiences they tend to be irrelevant. And museums have suffered for from being irrelevant. So there's a lot of the work of museum curators and museum administrators right now is to connect to publics. And those publics are exactly defined by the nature of the collections. So if they have, you know, a Vietnamese collection they will automatically try and reach the Vietnamese community in Boston, for example. So museums have to connect now. It's not just mandate it's a it's a cultural shift. It's an institutional shift globally. That's one. That's on the positive side on the negative side and this is also quite true. There are calls for repatriation from Africa and from other parts of the world. And I know that museums have have answered this calls by saying it's online anyway. So there doesn't seem to be a need to repatriate things because everything is accessible right now and they do try their best to go online. And a lot of museums have gone online already. So yes there's a positive and negative reason. And finally there's, there's a reason that might be well to be hoped for. The French government and the Emmanuel Macron has decided to actually return things. A lot of the contents of the museum is actually going to be returned to Africa. So, in that sense, knowing that this is going to happen to the world museums are actually preparing themselves. So this is a kind of gentle preparation. Another question regarding potential reconfiguring of disciplinary boundaries. The, I'm trying to find the person who asked this question about Austronesia, right, which has seemed to replace Malay as a as a nomenclature. So how do you see this fitting this project fitting into recalibrations and re mapping of disciplinary boundaries in studying material culture. Have a go at the team and then I'll follow you. I think I think having baseline, the baseline data is it would be very helpful. It just is just to get a really good picture of what's out there. And putting them all in one in one kind of sortable grid will be very helpful as well. Like right now I was just looking at the shield with the inscriptions and then you can look for other objects in different museums would have which have inscriptions and so, it would just be easier to figure out where things intersect where they shouldn't, or, you know. So yes, Marianne. All right, a lot of the, a lot of the material that have formed consensus within certain disciplines for the moment, like the consensus in archaeology about the Austronesian expansion. But at the moment there's a global consensus on that. It did not exactly, I mean, I don't think it's accurate to say that it replaced the word Malay, because Malay has actually always been a language not a quote unquote race, and and race is a totally useless construction right now or category. So it's not a question of fitting this project into this or that discursive formation, it's to fit the project into the consensus of the sciences at this time. So we are, we are really seeing the project as existing within. Well, it's a technical project, but it also exists within a historical time. And that includes the history of the disciplines. Thank you. And I, and I, sorry. Sorry, go on Christina. And I think that's why we early on decided to not just do pure data or journalistic data, you might say, but that we do have a second layer, so that we, there is a space for for shifts or for discussion which might change over time but but we we've I've always felt that we need the baseline data, and from there put on the digital exhibits the essays hopefully some some real projects artists interacting or, you know so that there's always these two layers in my mind but I do think that the first sort of baseline data should be there. We're almost out of time. So I'm going to raise a question from one of our own team. I'm Jessica Manuel, which was in the general spirit of the colonizing worth. So how, or are there any future plans put in place to get Filipino communities who might not have access to the internet, and no access to this inventory to directly engage with these objects through educational programs for instance. I'll give it a go and then I really think that it's Tina who should wrap it up. So, to me, even in 1995 to 2000. The idea was build archive build archive there's many projects that can be done if the archive is there. You don't have to start from scratch. If you want to put up an exhibit on if it was culture you, you will know where things are you will know who owns what that's that's a lot of research done already. It allows it facilitates projects on solid ground so to speak. That is what an archive should be doing in the real world archive is not an archive to be lost in the midst of time and archive mobilizes people. So in this particular sense I think it will mobilize people to do projects. That's to be hoped. So it's not just a project is possible. We, we don't have to do it anymore like we used to do. I have a little bit of anecdote. I brought an if you got sculpture to the storage of the Smithsonian once. That, of course, it would be the beginning of this remembering of this coming together of sculptor and sculpture in a foreign land. It's not really as easy as you might think. He wept. When he handled the materials at the storage of the Smithsonian. And he, he got ill. And he was ill upon return to the Philippines for about six months. So these are delicate projects. I think we have a rather defined view of what this inventory can do, which is to provide a database that to provide the foundational premises, which allows for change which allows for metamorphosis but the projects will have to be conceptualized differently. The project will have to be conceptualized with actual human beings touching things. And in the case of my friend if you got a sculptor. He did say eventually that, or it was known that he got sick because of the connection with the past. He got well. So those are different projects. Christina, would you like to provide a, you know, bang up. Conclusion, as we thank you for all your questions and unfortunately cannot answer all of them in the time allotted. So I'm going to hand it over to Christina to give her final words. Yeah, so thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for the enthusiasm. I'm going to go ahead and play with a with a with a research tool. I would. Somebody will be monitoring the questions that contribute pages, and we will get back to you. If there are any other questions that haven't been answered, I will take a note of them and answer them. Hopefully we'll, we can all work together on this. I think it would be an amazing thing to have. I just want to thank Dina and your team. Nixie. It's a long time coming as soon as I already narrated. And it will. I think it bodes well. It is a decolonization, but a very technical decolonization before I want it, which is why I think I think these things ought to happen because it's it's built on stronger foundations. Thank you, everyone. I hope to see everyone's tapping away and going into the site. Thank you for, thank you for joining our webinar. Thank you. Bye bye. Bye bye. Can I, can I save the chat? Sorry. Yes, it's all saved. How where. You can, if you recorded it, we'll save the chat as well. Okay. Oh, I should end it. Yes, please. Bye everyone.