take me to the RIVER

NOMAD PROJECTS collaborated with the DumagatRemontado indigenous people to record through frottage the marvelous limestone rock formations along TINIPAK RIVER, before their landscapes become completely submerged

- STEPHANIE FRONDOSO

VIEN VALENCIA SPREAD A LENGTH OF CANVAS OVER A PILE OF ROCKS and began rubbing over it with a piece of lumber crayon. It was raining, but the black wax impressions did not wash off. Cream-colored boulders surrounded him and above him loomed lush mountain forests. Below, the green waters of Tinipak River playfully flowed. A few members of the community living by the river looked on, at first curiously as the exercise appeared somewhat ridiculous, then later in fascination, as the rock surfaces began to take on two-dimensional textural form on the cloth. “It’s the same effect as rubbing a pencil over a piso coin,” Valencia explains. Understanding dawned on the excited spectators, and they invited others to join.

Construction of the Kaliwa Dam is underway. Projected to be completed in 2026, the 63-meter-high dam is being built primarily to solve the Metro Manila water shortage problem. The area that it will submerge has been the ancestral domain of the Dumagat-Remontado indigenous people, who have lived along Tinipak River for as long as they can remember. Many of them work as hiking tour guides for climbing Mount Daraitan, and at other jobs that support eco-tourism. It is expected that in less than 10 years, the rock formations and low-lying communities will be completely submerged by the reservoir. This affected area encompasses 300 hectares of the Sierra Madres—one of the Philippines’ last remaining forested mountain ranges and a natural barrier that protects Luzon from typhoons sweeping in from the Pacific Ocean.