Power systems currently in place struggle to provide electricity to 109 millioni Filipinos without ever-increasing rates. Of this figure, 13.4 million reside in Metro Manila. The energy demand is tremendous, for such a compact land area.

In the Philippines, the energy sector has been heavily reliant on fossil fuel, which has been recognized to have “negative effects on environment and public health.”ii Fossil fuel is nonrenewable, which begs critical concern in terms of its local supply.

The second main source of energy, which supplies energy needs to almost 40% of the Luzon energy grid, is expected to be depleted next year, in 2024.iii This is the Malampaya natural gas fields off the coast of Palawan Island.iv

The Philippines main source of power is coal. 90 percent of the country’s domestic coal production is found in Semirara Island, south of Mindoro. v Coal in Semirara is extracted through open-pit mining, the largest in the country.

Satellite imagery of Semirara in 2020 shows the effects of the two active mines, and two inactive mines. In 2015, church groups called for the closure of the coal mines due to destruction of nearby mangrove areas and coral reefs from 2009 to 2014.vi

Many others have also sounded the alarm. This is a power crisis.

READING, WRITING POWER

The library of power and its implications are vast. In physics, power is the rate of doing work. Work, energy, power—scientific jargon that often unfolds in a triad, but sound just as relevant to everyday life when collapsed together. Then there are expressions using exponents in mathematics, which involves two numbers. There is the base, and there is the exponent, or power. The power is the number of times the base is multiplied to itself. Numbers so vast they cannot be written down use a power tower— exponents on top of each other that they eventually form a rising image, as is the case of Graham’s number. Even with the use of a tower of powers, this number cannot be represented in the universe we know today.

Two years before his death, Michel Foucault, historian and philosopher, asks: “Why study power?” He later answers this in the same essay that expanded his earlier definition of power. “It is not only a theoretical question but a part of our experience.” To analyze power through the lens of “internal rationality” is “dangerous”. Power relations should be analyzed through “the antagonism of strategies.” That is, it is through resistance, that we may uncover power relations. vii

Understanding power through the point of view of those who hold it, such as prisons, the state, and structures of greed that upend democracy, won’t reveal its full definition. Especially if no accountability is asked from the powers that be.

According to Erik Liu, civic entrepreneur, it is important “to know how to read power, and to know how to write power.” Civic power is the power of an individual who is “ready” and “clear” to produce a “contagion” of change.

Any one of us can set social change to motion. All of us have civic power.

Reading and writing power is a matter of seeing power as text. Seeing it in everyday life, and how it affects the self and larger spheres of society. Adding to Foucault’s definition, power can be an observation of action and reaction.

POWER STRUCTURES is an inquiry on the extensive literal and metaphorical texts of power as tangible object, and power as invisible structure bound by language defined and undefined in the vocabulary of human existence. It considers power as persistent in daily life through forces that often can’t be seen, at least not immediately, but felt concretely.

One of these that hold power over us is electricity, which is used to power our very lives.

Producing electricity requires tremendous effort that is a matter of interactions following a set of conditions. In relation to this, Liu further believes that “power is no more inherently good or evil than fire or physics.”viii

Like electricity, power is distributed and controlled. It is also constantly moving towards specific directions.

Five works feature thorned electricity poles with the constant, watchful eyes of state-owned closed-circuit cameras.

“Distribution”

In dense, urban poor areas, power lines are doubled as clothing line. There are indications that power exists in intimacy (underwear); in sports (basketball shorts); and other items of clothing for the work and home. A kite hovers in the background, a marker of childhood seemingly caught in the twisted chaos—but is actually free.

“Spaghetti A”, “Spaghetti B”

In matters of familial core memories are fast food chains that offer a sense of free will. The presence of either Spaghetti A or Spaghetti B is often seen as a hallmark of shift, an upgrade even, from rural to urban. Where ruralness is seen as a disease that needs to be wiped out, in the way globalization and massive efforts to commercialization aims to make clean slate of all things with the ultimate goal of embracing capitalism.

The term ‘spaghetti wiring’ is another layer to the tongue-in-cheek tone of both pieces. It means wires that become tangled into disarray that they become an eyesore in the skies.

“Resistance”

While Karl Marx viewed the source of power through the lens of the supply and demand economy, Foucault, who began as a Marxist, viewed the notion of power in his later years as part of human experience.ix

The economic implications of producing energy benefits many, but harms all living nearest to it to varying degrees, and impacts the environment in the long run through climate change. Calls to cleaner energy sources have been around for decades, but very little concrete actions have been made due to political and theoretical inertia.

A flag waving in the wind is a declaration. But its colors are an inquiry. What opinions do you carry? What calls will you resound?

Whose side are you on?

Coaxial cable wires and electrical wires bind a largescale canvas. Its form follows the disorganization of power lines, seen across the country.

“Social Norms”

In more developed areas, power lines are hidden underground. But in many other locations, they intersect severely. This social divide also cuts across cultures where resistance is held back, or bound. The up-close entanglement indicates failing systems no longer hiding their disorganization.

It is clear everyone to see, bright as day.

One hundred mixed media pieces made of plaster of paris and electrical wires inspired from an electricity meter behind a worker’s glove.

“Consumption”

An electricity meter determines the price the consumer pays for power usage. With power production owned by public-private partnerships, constant price increase is a burden to end-consumers, showing power can be both productive and oppressive.

The main piece is made of charcoal and acrylic.

“Sources of Power”

Coal is among the world’s most important fossil fuel. It is formed millions of years ago of organic sediments and conditions that are both precise and happenstance.

Though a completely natural resource belonging to humankind, only a few hold power to control it.

In terms of status quo, the sacrifices made—environmental decimation, health issues, water contamination, environmental activist killings—in the generation of power outweigh the consequences.

From a distance, coal is seen only as resource to be used. But magnified—its power over all things encompasses. In its eventual depletion, there will be none more to give. Not even for several hundred lifetimes.

Once this happens, an interruption to power is to be expected in our own lifetime, in the very near future.