The Silicon Barangay and the Spectral Archive: Philippine Art in the Infinite Loop of Extraction, Arrest, and Refusal
The Silicon Barangay and the Spectral Archive: Philippine Art in the Infinite Loop of Extraction, Arrest, and Refusal Amiel Gerald A. Roldan™ November 16, 2026 In the humid interstice between the unfinished ancestral domain claim and the gleaming speculative render of an AI manufacturing zone, Philippine art finds itself once again tasked with the impossible: to make visible that which power prefers to keep spectral. The proposed Pax Silica hub in New Clark City, the contested Aeta territories of Capas and Bamban, the barricades of Dupax del Norte, and the mass arrests of 15 November 2026 form not discrete events but a single circulatory system—an infinite loop of extraction, computation, capital accumulation, and the subsequent criminalization of those who interrupt the circuit. This essay examines that loop as both material infrastructure and aesthetic condition, arguing that contemporary Philippine art, particularly practices rooted in Indigenous epistemologies, social ...
