Batang No. 1 forms part of The Coconut Tree Methodology, an ongoing body of work by Martha Atienza examining how environmental change reveals the relationships between people, place, and time. Rooted in more than a decade of collaboration with coastal communities on Bantayan Island in the central Philippines, the work explores how landscapes become living records of ecological transformation.

The video follows Renante Batusbatusan, a fisherman and long-time collaborator, seated inside a glass aquarium placed on the shoreline beside one of the last remaining coconut trees along a rapidly eroding coast. Over fifty-three minutes, the work unfolds through subtle shifts in light, weather, and the movement of the sea.

The title refers to batang, a local Bantayanon term for large pieces of driftwood washed ashore after storms. These fallen trees often arrive without a known origin, carried by tides and currents from distant places. Along the coast of Bantayan they have long been woven into local stories, beliefs, and ways of reading the sea. For Atienza, batang have become witnesses to environmental change. As coastlines erode and sea levels rise, coconut trees lose their footing, collapse into the sea, and begin a new existence as drifting forms, carrying with them the memory of the landscapes where they once stood.

The aquarium reverses its conventional function. Rather than containing marine life, it encloses a human body against the backdrop of the sea. Renante becomes both observer and observed, inhabiting a space that evokes protection, vulnerability, preservation, and adaptation. His diving mask reflects the surrounding landscape, merging body and environment into a single field of observation.

At the centre of Batang No. 1 is a question of witnessing. What does it mean to remain present within a landscape undergoing transformation? How do people continue to maintain relationships with environments that are becoming increasingly unstable? Rather than offering explanation or resolution, Batang No. 1 creates a space for sustained observation. As time passes, the shoreline, the sea, and the solitary coconut tree quietly reveal the slow processes of environmental transformation, allowing the landscape itself to become both witness and record.