Severe flooding during the typhoon season is now a certainty that awaits the people of the Philippines in any given year, wrought by worsening climate impacts. When the flood control scandal erupted in 2025, wherein government officials and contractors are exposed to be pocketing billions of pesos from funds earmarked to be utilized for mass adaptation through flood control projects, Filipinos were rightfully enraged. 

Refusing to be victims, mass protests took place all around the country, with thousands of Filipinos marching on the streets for the first time. Symbolic trials and committees were formed by the national government as a response to placate the people’s anger, but they are now to be dissolved as new crises take front page news.

We are existing now in the liminal space between genuine climate accountability and lip service to placate the people as the government attemps to control the narrative. Who loses in this cosplaying of climate justice? What does it mean to seek accountability with teeth? What happens if we refuse to participate in this false theaters where the people’s voices are drowned by the powerful’s noise?

Where I’m from, it is the people who are rising will consist of sound, videography and poetry installations following the mudslinging narrative chaos and climate violence of the flood control scandal, concluding in a communal talkback in quiet, generative space.

Rage and creation are to be seen here as two inextricably connected forces, necessary to win us the world we need.