WSK: The Festival of the Recently Possible together with The Japan Foundation Asia Center open deeper cultural exchange with an axis of exhibitions, workshops, fora, and concerts featuring contemporary Asian new media art at Manila’s creative hubs in a month-long tech arts festival on October 23, 2017 to November 4, 2017 at De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde School of Design and Arts.
Artists from Japan and the Philippines will come together to showcase critical perspectives on how emerging artforms and innovative applications of new technologies can respond to the cutting edge of cultural and social thought.
Featuring interdisciplinary forms of media and art such as video, sound, robotics, computer-generated graphics, and performance, the exhibition INTERSTICES: Manifolds of the In-between explores the cracks of art whose nature falls between, rather than within the familiar boundaries of accepted genres or media, and the figurative gaps of the Philippine art scene.
“The exhibition spread all over the hallways, foyers, and classrooms all over CSB-SDA, these non-traditional ‘interspaces’, act as a pop-up gallery where the usual exhibition spaces of galleries and museums are suspended. The choice of exhibiting instead within the crevices of a university building which includes a university gallery and a museum are deliberate,” WSK founder and artistic director TengalDrilon said.
The works range from Kurokawa’s vision of a molecular cloud data gathered by astrophysicists at the Research Institute in the Fundamental Laws of the Universe (CEA, France) as close as possible to the scientific truth using striking 3D representations of space. Ermitano’s vibrating cylinder of metal is a speaker the size of a small room that vibrates with the sound of the electricity coursing in the world is an animist meditation on electricity. Hisakado’s installation, a collage of hundreds of small, circular mirrors shatter reflections of the gallery interior, offers odd structural soundscapes based on a grammar of the familiar.
The Japan Foundation Asia Center’s media project entitled ref:now—toward a new media culture in asia aims to showcase contemporary media culture and creativity through art, exchange, education, and collaboration, thus deepening the collaboration with WSK Festival this year.
Shining a spotlight on the creative scene in Asia against the backdrop of the region’s rapid development and advances in information technology, the project fosters dialogue and partnership across exhibitions, workshops, symposia and performances that introduce the innovative fusion of technology and art that is new media art, as well as trends in pop culture and music following the emergence of the Internet.
The ref:now project has aspired to cultivate new platforms for media culture in Asia in cooperation with festivals and events in ASEAN countries.
“The project introduces prominent examples of dynamic culture in our networking society as well as individual creativity that is strikingly synthesized with media technology. Also, this event in Manila will continue to the next stage, with international symposia, exhibitions, and training program in Tokyo on February next year,” shares Director Hiroaki Uesugi of Japan Foundation, Manila.
“Moreover, The mission of the Japan Foundation Asia Center aims to create a new culture and give back the results both inside and outside of Asia through communication and collaboration. Through this project we would like to promote the exchange and collaboration among media creators of next generation in ASEAN countries and Japan, resulting in the creation of a new culture in the field of Media Art.”
In partnership with leading Manila electronic music record label BuwanBuwan Collective and Tokyo-based Maltine Records, the Electronic Music Showcase X-POL at Club XX XX on October 28 showcases the latest sounds from dance to pop, chiptune and electronic music, with the Philippines’ top musicians as well as special guests from Japan.
A professor at De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde School of Design and Arts, one of the new festival directors JoeeMejias revealed that the partnership with Benilde was her attempt to expose students to other uses of new media.
“Gerry Torres and I were talking about how we want the students in Benilde to explore possibilities of the medium. Through this event, we want to let the students see that they can make use of the skills that they have learned here to experiment and express themselves and contribute something new to the arts and cultural sector,” Joee shared.
MAJOR EVENTS
Media Art Exhibition INTERSTICES: Manifolds of the In-between
Partner Event with WSK Festival 2017 organized by Japan Foundation Asia Center
Dates: October 23 (Tues) – November 5 (Sun)
Venue: De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde Black Box Theatre, etc.
Exhibited Artists:
Ian Carlo Jaucian, Derek Tumala, Tad Ermitano, Pauline and Ivan Despi (Philippines)
RyuichiKurokawa, HouxoQue, KatsukiNogami (Japan).
Admission is FREE for all. For non-CSB students and faculty, please register here: https://bit.ly/WSKAxis2017ExhibitionsTicketRegistration
“x-pol – BuwanBuwan × Maltine -”
A Philippine x Japan Electronic Music Showcase
Date: October 28 (Sat), 2017 Doors open: 9:00 pm
Performers:
Similarobjects, Moonmask (fkaUlzzang Pistol), Meshua, Kashwak – (fkaZomtendo) (Philippines)
tomad, TORIENA, PARKGOLF, Pa’s Lam System (Japan)
Venue: Club XX XX,20A-20B La Fuerza Plaza – 2241 Chino Roces Ave. (Pasong Tamo), Makati, Manila
Entrance: 350PHP (1 drink)
For more information, please visit our website (www.wsk.io) and the Official Facebook Pages:
WSK AXIS 2017: Festival of the Recently Possible
MAIN FB event page: https://bit.ly/WSKAxis2017Festival
Registration link: https://bit.ly/WSKAxis2017ExhibitionsTicketRegistration
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About the Japan Foundation
The Japan Foundation was established in 1972 by special legislation in the Japanese Diet and became an Independent Administrative Institution in October 2003. The mission of the Japan Foundation is to promote international cultural exchange and mutual understanding between Japan and other countries. As the18th overseas office, the Japan Foundation, Manila was founded in 1996, active in three focused areas: Arts and Culture; Japanese Studies and Intellectual Exchange; Japanese-Language Education Overseas. For more information please visit our website at www.jfmo.org.
The Japan Foundation Asia Center, established within the Japan Foundation in April 2014, is a specialized unit with the goal to connect people, expand networks, and develop cultural programs across Asia. As the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics lie ahead in 2020, through projects in such diverse fields as music, theater, film, sports, Japanese language education and other academic exchanges, the Asia Center, in cooperation with the Foundation’s overseas offices, pursues and supports various forms of activities between Asian communities. Some of their events include Dance Dance Asia 2017 and The Asian-Three Fold Mirror 2016.
About The WSK: Festival of the Recently Possible
WSK—a modern disemvoweled form of “wasak,” which means “shattered” or “destroyed” in Filipino—is the first and only annual international art festival dedicated to contemporary electronic, digital, and experimental art.
Launched in 2009 as Fete dela WSK and rebranded as WSK in 2013, the festival explores the diverse range of cross-disciplinary artistic activities in the context of digital culture and performance, with focus on collaborative projects between the Philippines, South East Asia, and beyond. It aims to blur, deconstruct, and reimagine the preconceived notions of how art, culture, and technology diverge, merge, and work together.
It is organized by SABAW Media Art Kitchen –a not-for-profit artist-run initiative whose primary interests lie in curatorial and research-based production towards the imminent intersections of art and technology. The festival primarily runs on a Do-It-Yourself and Do-It-Together ethic and is mostly self-funded, with partial funding support from cultural organizations.
Website: www.wsk.io
About De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde, School of Design and Arts (SDA)
The School of Design and Arts (SDA) offers a wide scope of degree programs in specialized creative disciplines that meet the demands of today’s information-driven world.
The SDA Campus, a 14-storey academic complex, is one big playground for creative minds and a venue that stimulates students to think out of the box, shift perspectives, and innovate ideas.
Benilde School of Design and Arts (SDA) Campus
950 Pablo Ocampo Street, Malate, Manila, Philippines
(+63) 230-5100 local 3811 to 3815
