igk^s

R2: monumentED

Performance and Dialogue in the Philippines

September 15-20, 2019
Bangan Project Space
177 Maharlika Highway Sto Cristo Sur, Gapan, Nueva Ecija

September 17, 2019
Juan R. Liwag Memorial High School

September 21, 2019
M Gallery
2131 Taft Avenue, Pasay City, Metro Manila, Philippines

September 26, 2019
Kanto Gallery
2nd Floor, Makati Central Square, Chino Roces Ave., Makati City

Responding: International Performance Art Festival and Meeting is a new challenge of facilitating critical dialogue between art and society. Through a combination of research, creation, and performance, we will shed new light on social issues from multiple perspectives.Since its first festival and meeting (R1) at Tokyo/Fukushima in Japan in 2018, Responding has explored new horizons for the mutual understanding ofspecific social issues beyond national borders.

In 2019, we are currently pursuing a research-based art project “monumentED” (R2) in Japan and the Philippines. As current international controversy overso-called “statues of comfort women” exemplifies, a monument functions asa site of political contestation over the meanings of the past. R2 monumentED explores small stories of lived experience (proto-monument) that may drop out of dominant narratives represented in capital-letter Monument. Furthermore, by focusingon a critical moment in which these small stories are materialized into a formal monument, the project also illuminates social, political, and artistic implications drawn from the process of monumentalization.

R2 monumentED continues as a series of interconnected projects that extend between Japan and the Philippines. In June 2019, R2 Osaka Project was launched in Japan.The project illustrated the challenges of the multicultural city through the practice of performance art inspired by local history and culture. In the course of the twentieth century, the city of Osaka has continuously attracted various groups of people beyond national borders. But their lived experiences have been often omitted from the “official history” the local government endorsed. Based on qualitative research in collaboration with local residents, the project collected voices of these minority groups and created performance artworks disclosing the multicultural past and present of the city.

R2 monumentED is now embarking on a new project in the Philippines. R2 Philippines Project addresses the question of monument related to the wartime violence of the Japanese military in World War II.During the war, the Japanese military invaded the Philippines. In the final year of the war, over 100,000 civilians were killed in the Battle of Manila. The wartime atrocities by the Japanese military left lasting traces on the Filipino lives across the archipelago. Traumatic memories have intermittently burst to the surface in Philippine society, materialized often in the form of monument. Based on intensive research of wartime military violence and its long-lasting impact on society, the project demonstrates the intersection of history, memory, and present social issues in the Philippines.

By highlighting critical issues of monument, R2 Philippines Project seeks new methodological possibilities for dialogue between art and society through the practice of performative acts. For the last few years, so-called “statues of comfort women” were erected and removed again and again at various places in the Philippines. Rather than simply protesting against Japanese war crimes, these monuments in fact embody more complicated realities of sexual violencein the past and present. Responding squarely to this complexity necessitates a new mode of performance, which transcends simplistic dichotomy of victimizers/victims, male/female, and oppressors/the oppressed, yet at the same time maintaining postcolonial sensitivity to the asymmetric nature of our positionality. Through igk^s, a leap for the liberation in performative acts, we will pursue other criteria for the creation of a new linkage between art and society.

RSVP

Secretariat:

Daisuke Takeya (Director, Responding: International Performance Art Festival and Meeting)
Yoshiya Makita (Advisor, Responding: International Performance Art Festival and Meeting)
Jie Zeng (Executive Coordinator UPON International Live Art Festival)
Mideo M Cruz ( Philippine coordinator R2 monumentED, director igkAs)
Racquel de Loyola (coordinator/curator for Bangan Project Space)
Eghai Roxas (coordinator/curator for M Gallery)
Sinag De Jesus (Coordinator/curator for Kanto Gallery)

Artists:

Nicolas P. Aca Jr. (Philippines)
Jef Carnay (Philippines)
Mideo M Cruz (Philippines)
Bong Dela Torre (Philippines)
Racquel De Loyola (Philippines)
Dzeli Del Mundo (Philippines)
Martin De Mesa + Joee Mejias (Philippines)
Bon Labora (Philippines)
Christina Lopez (Philippines)
Mineki Murata (Japan)
Arnel Ramiscal (Philippines)
Eghai Roxas + Django (Philippines)
Daisuke Takeya (Japan)
Takumichan (Japan)
Tanya Jizelle (Philippines)
Sidney Valdez (Philippines)
Yeonjeong (South Korea)