And so the flaneur in me started to walk. It is something I don’t usually do (or more so, I cannot do) in Manila. But then, my friend Oscar, who accompanied me in Paris, informed me that I should be taking care of my belongings. He even remarked: “You’re in Paris!” Me musing: “huh?” Then,…
Author: SAP Tiatco
I am Sir Anril Pineda Tiatco. And yes, Sir is really part of my name. I was not knighted - I wish I were. I am a Filipino academic from the University of the Philippines Diliman. I am interested in cultural performances - rituals, festivals and theatre performances. I am also a World Heritage Site enthusiast and an advocate of inscribing UP Diliman and Corregidor Island as World Heritage Sites. For more about me, visit: https://pages.upd.edu.ph/sptiatco/introduction
Nope, it’s not only about the Geisha, but something more in Kyoto! (Part 1 of 3)
“Oh, you are going to see some Geisha?” asked by a friend when I told him I could not go on the tour that our hosts at Osaka University prepared. (I told our hosts, I already had a tour of the city on the day of my arrival. On my first day, I already visited…
Vigan! or entanglement of the “foreigns” and the local in a Southeast Asian City
In 2021, the Philippines will commemorate 500 years of Hispanic colonial “legacy” in the archipelago. The most celebrated Hispanic legacy in the islands is Catholicism. Hence, in 2021, the Philippines will also commemorate 500 years of Catholicism in East Asia. Up north in the Ilocos region, Spain’s legacy remained intact through the preservation of…
Paris, moi aussi, je t’aime, mon amour (Part 1 of 2).
When we think of Paris today, we often think of it as the most romantic city (read here as lovers posing before the Eiffel Tower and smooching as they pose before the camera) and one of the most picture-perfect colossal pieces of architecture (also read here as posing before the Eiffel Tower). Several people I…
Jaipur City, finally a UNESCO World Heritage Site
This week is the 43rd annual convention of UNESCO World Heritage Committee. Baku, the capital and largest city of Azerbaijan is this year’s host city. For over 10 years, I have been following and documenting the proceedings – as if a participant or a delegate representing the Philippines in this important convention about cultural preservation…
San Sebastian Minor Basilica in the Philippines: Politics of Space and Heritage (Part 2 of 2)
In the first part of this post, heritage was argued to have become an important aspect of the tourism industry. It was used as a brand – an industry marker. In fact, the day me and my colleagues visited San Sebastian, there were also domestic tourists who were amazed by the grandiosity of the complex. As stated…
The Photogenic City that is Bruges!
Fall 2017, I represented my University at the Frankfurt International Book Fair. The trip was official but I made sure to have time to explore the city plus Cologne, the closest heritage city to Frankfurt. Back then, the only city I wanted to see outside of Germany was Brussels for a very practical reason: lack…
San Sebastian Minor Basilica in the Philippines: Politics of Space and Heritage (Part 1 of 2)
In my almost two decades of being a resident of Metropolitan Manila, I confess I have not yet fully explored the city. One of the places that I have always wanted to explore was Quiapo and the University Belt where the majestic San Sebastian Minor Basilica (or most popularly known as San Sebastian Church) is…
The Month of May and the Season of the Queen in the Philippines
The excerpt below is from my essay “Panata, Pagtitipon, Pagdiriwang: A Preliminary Contexualization of Cultural Performances in the Philippines” published in Humanities Diliman: A Journal of Philippine Humanities, a Scopus-listed journal published by the University of the Philippines Diliman. The journal is open-access, please click here for the current issue. To access the full essay,…
Performing Heritage / The Intramuros Project (The Project Brief)
On 1 April 2019, the project “Performing Heritage/The Intramuros Project” commenced. Funded by the University of the Philippines Diliman Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Development, the project is both an ethnographic study and a performance of ethnographic data about cultural heritage development. The goal is to problematize the concept of heritage via…
