On 19 February 2025 UP Tacloban’s Division of Humanities hosted a symposium on “Art and Ecology” by Prof. Flaudette May V. Datuin of the Department of Art Studies of UP Diliman. The symposium, which was held at the AS Conference Hall, was the first in the (GE)n Z: The General Education Experience for Generation Z and Beyond Ideas Festival for 2025. It is also part of UP Tacloban’s National Arts Month celebration.
Prof. Datuin’s talk highlighted the role of the arts and humanities in a proactive approach to disaster risk management. She proposed three perspectives in this approach, namely, the psychosocial, sociopolitical, and ecocritical. The ecocritical perspective, which is the most difficult according to Datuin, aims to surface “largely unconscious narratives that shape our positions and views about our relationships to the environment.” Datuin advocates going beyond anthropocentric conceptions of the environment as a resource for human beings to exploit, and instead nurturing an informed coexistence with the environment and the more-than-human world. Art has “powerful resources that make us sensitive to our surroundings,” says Datuin, and “the ultimate aim of learning about the [environment] is [changing] the way we think about [it].”
Around 150 UPTC students enrolled in Arts 1 (Critical Perspectives in the Art) and Phil Arts 1 (Philippine Arts and Culture) attended the symposium.
