I have never thought of the BagongPinay site itself as a performance act but when Eileen invited me to speak, I was compelled to look at the work I was doing. That was when I realized that if art is a creative act, a form of self-exploration and self-transformation, then the site has been exactly that to me and to varying extents it has also been that for the visitors of the site. If performance art is a creative piece or creative body of work that is initiated by a creator and at the same time something that is an ongoing project through continuing interaction with an audience, then the endeavors of this online community web site truly makes for a performance act. The following statement I found attempts a definition by covering not only what performance art could be, but also by what it is not: "Performance Art covers a wide spectrum of performance, both public and private, multi-cultural and multi-lingual. It challenges traditional notions of theater, visual art, presentation"

When asked by Eileen to speak on the topic of Filipina Arts and Literature in the Diaspora, this became an opportunity to look back on my life and ask my self some questions. Why have I started this work and what is this work leading to? What do I want to say about the interactive creative energies that exist on the Internet?

I will be presumptuous and assume that you people might actually want to know what I have found out. What I found out gave words to what, in the past, I could only feel and not exactly identify clearly all these years. Not until yesterday.

I found out this: There have been 5 instances of personal awakening within me that have taken place in my life's journey. Four of these took place during my student days in the Philippines and came in the form of sudden onsets in how my mind worked. These were triggered by encounters with the ff. concepts: 1) The question of "Who am I", 2) The Ateneo motto of "A Man for Others," 3) the Culture of Questioning and Seeking Answers and solutions, and 4) the Search for the Filipino Identity. The fifth instance of awakening was a more gradual realization and is now a guiding vision--- and that is concept of "the Culture of Healing." This slow process of realization began when I decided to start the web site.

I was born and raised in the U.S. until my widowed mother moved our family to the Philippines. I grew up there between ages 11 to 23. The experience of Philippines roots, culture (ethnic/native appealed to me more than hispanic), language, friends, and family life within a very big clan in Bacolod City is essential to who I am now today. In addition to this were those 4 gems of understanding I gained in high school and college.

The first came when I was in my high school senior year in St. Scholastica's Academy, Bacolod City, I had a terrific philosophy teacher, Mr. Medel or "Chuck," who brought me and my classmates face to face with the very life-size question of "Who am I?" Before this class, I didn't even know that I had a psyche.

The second came when I went to college at Ateneo to study management engineering. There I encountered the University's motto of "A man for others" and this was earth shaking for me. The concept astounded and captivated me. For the first time in my life, I felt opened up by this idea of existence to help other people. I felt that whatever work I did from then on had to do ring true to that motto. In my freshman year, I began to explore topics and do research on student activism. This is how I first encountered the counter-culture of the culture of silence that of the culture of questioning and seeking answers. This was my third awakening.

After two years in Ateneo I changed courses and I transferred to U.P. Diliman. There, I pursued a course much more fitting to who I was to become. (Although, at that time, I did not realize that yet.) I decided to go back to my first love, which was art so I pursued a degree in Fine Arts, majoring in Visual Communication.  VisCom btw is just a fancy word for "graphic arts". Classmates who went on to major in Painting and Sculpture scorned VisCom, saying it wasn't really fine art anymore because of the element of commercialism, calling viscom "commercial" art. But VisCom was divided into two focuses, one was advertising (which is geared to selling goods) and the other was editorial design (which is geared to communicating ideas). The latter focus appealed to me immensely so Editorial Design in VisCom became my major.

The true jewel I took away with me from U.P., though, was not my degree. Rather it was my burning experience in a personal quest for the Filipino Identity. At Diliman, I discovered that there was a lot of dialogue on "the Search for the Filipino Identity" and this triggered my third big awakening. A new dimension was added to the work I wanted to do. Throughout my 4 years at Diliman, all my projects were personal attempts to somehow search for Filipino identity --- a paper on "Colonial mentality in Philippine Advertising... a mini-thesis on creating a publishing company for Filipino children's books...  an emotional and eye-opening slide-show called "Stokwa" which was about Manila's children of the streets... and a graduating thesis which was an editorial campaign on agricultural diversification in Negros Occidental, once the prosperous Sugar Bowl of the Philippines.

During my Diliman days, I was your normal U.P. student/martial law baby. My interest in activism was no longer through research and writing because I had begun to march and protest against the Marcos regime and imperialism and did so all the way up to the times of the Edsa Revolt (AKA) People Power Revolution.

By the time, I left U.P. I had instilled within me the practice of asking questions and seeking answers. As my life later proved, you can take the student out of U.P., but you can't take U.P. out of the student. Now, that I look back on my years in the University of the Philippines, I realize that I underwent a major development in my psyche as a Filipino. I had begun a personal process of what Leny Mendoza Strobel calls "decolonization" and discusses in her recently published book Coming Full Circle. This is a scholarly term for the process of the healing from colonial mentality. I feel that I had found some measure of the healing/completion process to my psyche as a Filipino.

A few weeks after People Power, I graduated, went to the U.S. and I found my way to New York City. My first 10 years back in the U.S. were more ordinary years of personal and family life. My activist tendencies and dream to be "a woman for others" took a back-burner during these times. I met and married Kenneth, a great guy who so happened to be non-Filipino, a guy of Irish/Italian heritage, 4rth or 5th generation American. I and Ken started a family and today we have three sons. During these times I was also working on getting a career in graphic design. I started out in a NYC stock photography house, and eventually I got a job at an advertising agency and worked my way up to Art Director. There, it wasn't the work I did but rather what I learned that was fulfilling to me. I picked-up a lot of computer skills in digital graphics, computer generated painting, typographical design and layout during these years. 3 years into it, I was still not content with working in advertising, so I started to take courses on the new graphics field (at the time) called interactive multimedia. learned more computer interface design and new software in computer graphics. Soon I freelanced on several teams that created interactive CD-Roms for learning and for fun. For me it was exciting and a great new form for the "editorial designer" in me.

In 1994, I was asked to interview for a full-time, freelance job at IBM to design web sites. At this time, the WWW had just appeared on the horizon of the Internet. I was eager to learn and to be part of developing something new in interactive communication interface. But this new job was out of the question since I was pregnant with my second child and we were shopping for our first house much farther away from NYC.

It is funny, though, how a person's path through life always leads back to his or her life's purpose. As fate (or synchronicity) would have it, my pagka-pilipino and my interest in the Internet would finally intersect down the road 2 years later.

With the new baby and a new home, I ended up quitting work in 1996. But my old boss encouraged me to learn and explore designing for the World Wide Web. I like to work and learn as I go, so as an exercise in learning web design and because it was 1996, I created a set of web pages that I called "I Remember People Power 1986." It was sort of an online scrapbook of my photographs that were taken at Channel 4 and EDSA along with a journal of my experiences during that time. In 1996, there were not yet many people on the World Wide Web or for that matter that many Filipinos. Still, I sought them out. I emailed as many Filipino Netizens as I could find and invited them to come to the People Power web site and to share their experiences and comments of those times. The responses were few and in between. I assumed that this was a factor of the numbers of Filipinos on the Internet and how much attention or use Filipinos gave it at the time. But this is exactly how my pagka-pilipino and how I began web work for Filipino presence on the Internet started.

It was during that time that I was learning web design, that I looked up www.filipina.com and I found out that it was a mail-order-bride site. I was deeply offended, dismayed and angered to discovered that the representation of Filipinas on the Internet was direly lacking in quality and scope. In 1996, a query done on the word "filipina" at major Internet search engines resulted in the appalling amounts of 1) Filipina mail-order-bride sites, 2) pen-pal services sites, 3) personal web pages of Filipina women looking for men-friends, and 4) porn sites that overwhelmed the number of very few web pages that mentioned Filipinas in alternative ways.

It took me 2 years of being an at-home mom and breaking into web design, before I finally took it upon myself to try to counter the narrow representation of Filipinas on the Internet. This is when I approached my U.P. Diliman friend Elke Aspillera. She was a successful creative director at a high-end international NYC advertising agency and I asked her to help me create a web site for Filipinas created by Filipinas. So she helped me brainstorm like crazy.

I decided to get the domain name of "New"filipina.com as a counter effort against the limited use of Filipina.com. NewFilipina.com flowed into "BagongPinay." From the beginning, I envisioned it to be an online community for Filipinas so that any Filipina who visited the site could also inject into the site their own views, opinions and experiences. The site contains Open Forums and message boards, Art and poetry, web pages on Filipina achievers, self-improvement articles, tips, books, links, book recommendations'

The goal of BagongPinay was to help redefine the identity of Filipinas on the Internet and in the world, but to also redefine it in Philippine society and Filipino communities. Most importantly of all it attempts to open up doors to ideas and options for Filipinas so that they can create their own identity and better decide who they can be for themselves.

Well, one good thing leads to another.

During the first year of its existence the BagongPinay web site at www.newfilipina.com received an immense and enthusiastic response. More people wanted to get involved and join the effort. Because of the tremendous feedback, www.newfilipina.com gave birth to the formal not-for-profit organization of NewFilipina, Inc. The org mission is Filipina empowerment through multimedia.

The biggest thing that stands out for me now about this initial body of work is that there is a driving desire to connect Filipinas to other Filipinas around the world, to connect Filipinas to ideas old and new, and to connect Filipinas to the means to take action for themselves and for others.

Without a doubt, I now realize that the personal awakenings of my youth was being injected into the site in a transparent yet deep way---the questing to know who one was, the questing to form a Filipino identity, the quest for truth through forming answers and finding questions, and finally the arriving to the point where one could channel oneself to help others.

When asked by friends to write a description of what a "new" Filipina was, I was inspired to write:

It's not an age, its an attitude

It's not a college degree

It's a degree of self-awareness

It's not net worth, it's self-worth

It's not what you do for a living

It's what you do with your life

It's knowing where you come from

And where you're going

And it's doing something with what you know.

So far, as a performance act, I see in the web site many things that makes me borrow heavily from the words of performance artist Jenny Straus when I say the following: It does seems that the web site has become a tool that has brought about opportunities for Filipinas of different ages and backgrounds from around the world to question their own assumptions, participation and perhaps even, belief systems. The site has posed opportunities for visitors to also provide material of very specific meanings in hopes to elicit strong responses. Visitors who contribute material or participate in discussions interact within an online community and they too influence any empowering experiences at the site such as healing, discovery, sharing, venting, inspiration...

The site has also been an ongoing process for myself as the creator. Somehow my work has effected spiritual exploration and growth in my own life.

Like Ms. Strauss in her own work, I, too, through the site's work, hope that people who become part of the online community of BagongPinay continue to tackle their own personal thoughts and meanings as well, and that through this process, transformation occurs on both a personal and cultural level. I have witnessed visitors actually crossing their own self-imposed boundaries. In many cases the site has brought up some strong self-realizations for visitors and I am honored to receive responses at the site or email from women who share their experiences and revelations with me. For me, this is the most intense element of the site, that make me think about my own tendency, in real life, toward "rescuing others" or healing others' hurts or problems.

So, this is when my latest personal awakening comes in. Last year, at the Fil-Am Women's Network FAWN 2000 conference in San Francisco, I was one of 7 women who was given the Babaylan Award. The award was to me a cosmic gift because it made me realize that there was  a deeper meaning to the work of newfilipina.com. And that meaning was leadership, community and most importanty healing. Only lately have I found the words to articulate what I want to accomplish with my work and I believe that it is creative within what is recognized by others today as the Culture of Healing.

It is important to me that the site does something within the online community of Filipinas--- that at its core it somehow brings us back to OUR center, calms us down in the midst of agitation... heals us. As preposterous as it sounds, the ability of activities such as this is what I believe makes the Internet a potential vehicle for spiritual exploration, expression and growth.

Creativity within the Internet is as much about the process of living as it is about the commotion we create within it.

The site as an evolving community is not about being a commodity or product. And it is important to realize that the Internet is not just about porn, profit and personal ads. The bigger picture that I hope that newfilipina.com brings to the Internet is that we Filipinas and people in general are awake to the reality that we are creators of our lives.

I feel that as an artist my intention is to inject into the Internet vehicles of expression that people can use to effect transformation. Transformation on a social level can only be achieved when enough individuals themselves effect personal transformation.

Today, we must realize that we are connected with all of humanity. This fact is underscored by the existence of television, radio, phones, faxes, cell phones, text messaging, email, the World Wide Web' Civilization is at an ever-rising pinnacle of ever-progressing technology.

At this moment, humanity is progressing at an accelerating rate because the tools of communication are increasing our connections worldwide and enhancing the relationships within those connections. Within the connections there is the potential for empowerment in real lives. This is the highest purpose that the Internet offers civilization. Don't doubt this just because the mass media doesn't talk about it.

The quote of the visionary Hubbard guides me further. He says: "My purpose is to seek a new image of humanity commensurate with our new power to shape the future."

My work is leading me into new directions and now I have more new projects in mind that want to deal with the whole Filipino community's healing process.

May I venture to say that the Internet itself, at its best is a performance act...Other performance artists have attempted to define around performance art saying that performance art has so many possibilities at creativity... it's essence tends to become creativity... it is unprecedented... it is an ongoing engagement.... hey--- that sounds a lot like the Internet. Doesn't it?

The Internet is just waiting for you, too, to imbue it with your email, your message board posts, your discussions, your ideas, thoughts, feelings, experiences, your work... your humanity... your spirit.

The collective effect of conscious people using communication technology has the capacity to transform the world. And it has started. Look around you. Do your research and read. Ask questions. Seek the answers for yourself... Be healed and heal.

Thank you.