WSK Axis 2017 festival opens at College of Saint Benilde’s creative playground

WSK: The Festival of the Recently Possible together with The Japan Foundation Asia Center and De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde School of Design and Arts open WSK Axis 2017 festival with the biggest new media arts exhibit INTERSTICES: Manifolds of the In-between on October 23, 2017, 4Pm at De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde School of Design and Arts.

Artists from Japan and the Philippines come together to showcase critical perspectives on how emerging art forms and innovative applications affect culture and society. Composed of computer-engineered mechanisms, all artworks are meant to be experienced, not merely viewed.

“The exhibition explores the cracks and crevices of art whose nature fall between, rather than within, the familiar boundaries of accepted genres and media. It features a variety of media that emphasizes various cultural and social issues—from animist meditations of electricity to performing internet selfies and memes on the street, to fusing traditional art medium, painting with technology by literally using LED monitors as canvases. All of these are framed within the embracing concept of interstices, namely the spaces between disciplines, practices, and cultural phenomena; the fluid gaps where these intervene in each other and pause only to dynamically interact once more,” the artistic director and exhibition curator Tengal Drilon said.

At the 5th floor foyer, we see Derek Tumala’s highly political piece, “Cartography of Violence.” An audiovisual sculpture of shooting target, the piece is a meditation on the current political landscape of the country. Up in the 6th floor hallways lies three philosophical works meditating on time and physics (Ian Carlo Jaucian’s “Drawing Space and Time”), the relationship of reality with digital simulations (Tad Ermitaño’s latest version of his old piece, “Spinning Jimmy”) and how devices are transforming human behavior (Katsuki Nogami’s “Yamada Taro” project). In the same floor at the Black Box are four experimental, computer-generated works: Ryoichi Kurokawa’s “unfold.alt”, Houxo Que’s “16,777,216 view”, Tsuyoshi Hisakado’s “after that.”, Pauline and Ivan Despi’s “Music for the Impaired” and Tad Ermitaño’s “Bell.”

The Japanese works are part of Japan Foundation Asia Center’s media project entitled ref:now—toward a new media culture in asia. The initiative aims to showcase contemporary media culture and creativity through art, cultural exchange, education, and collaboration.

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 an international symposia, exhibitions, and training program in Tokyo on February next year,” shares Director Hiroaki Uesugi of Japan Foundation, Manila.

College of Saint Benilde’s Vice President for Advancement expressed his excitement for the project as the school’s key goals is to create a platform for students to make use of new media to create social impact and produce not only industry-ready media artists but also culture shapers and agents of social change.

“We are equally excited with this project as we foresee the learning and exposure of our students, and even faculty, to new media art – a discipline that need not be explained, instead should be experienced. Here at Benilde, we have the more academic exercises in the classroom, and we have a project like this as “laboratory” for our students. The space we call Black Box actually serves as a “playground” for our students,” said Robin Serrano, Vice President for Advancement at De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde, as he welcomed all the guests in the opening.

Sponsored by The Loop by Power Mac Center, the exhibit runs until Nov 4, 2017. Admission is FREE for all. For non-CSB students and faculty, just bring your ID.