Spearheaded by contemporary performance company, Sipat Lawin Ensemble, “Karnabal Festival 2015: Performance and Social Innovation” will gather local and international artists this summer to develop and test new works.
“As we address the idea of the artist as a social being, the way we create performances continuously evolves,” says JK Anicoche, Karnabal head curator and Sipat Lawin artistic director. “Performance as a vocabulary is a potent form of communication. Beyond the language of theater, performance is basically action and audience.”
This focal shift from theater to performance opens up the festival as a platform to create new forms of dialogue. The idea is that evolutions in performance-making allow artists to better present, articulate or confront contemporary issues in our communities.
Asian Cultural Council Grantee and sound artist Teresa Barrozo will take part in the festival as she creates a work exploring memory and listening cultures. Meanwhile, University of Santo Tomas Theater Company Artistang Artlets is devising a new performance that investigates how digital culture affects our ways of viewing performances and everyday reality.
Unique to Karnabal is its curatorial program. Artists are regularly gathered to discuss their works during the development process. Joining Anicoche in the curatorial team are Sipat Lawin core member Sarah Salazar, performance artist Eisa Jocson and playwright David Finnigan. Other participating artists include the Anino Shadowplay Collective, KOLAB Co., Destiyero Theater Commune, Daloy Dance Company’s Artistic Director Ea Torrado and BLKD.
Karnabal also offers an exciting program for local and international artists looking to collaborate on new performances. Finnigan curates Karnabal’s Exchange Platform to develop cross-cultural collaborations, expanding the discourse of performance and social innovation.
Karnabal is also forwarding performance criticism through the Critical Condition Coffee Conversations under the Idea Platform. Viewers from different fields—social sciences, humanities, etc.—are invited to discuss in informal gatherings.
Karnabal Festival started in 2013, gathering over a hundred artists and almost a thousand audiences in several sites in Intramuros.
Karnabal 2015 will be held in various sites in Diliman, Quezon City, including UP Diliman’s Vargas Museum and partner venues in famous food haven, Maginhawa Street.
Karnabal 2015 runs May 6-17 with six platforms—Platform A (Performance and Social Innovation), Platform B (Works in Development), Exchange Platform (International Collaborations), PerYaKToi-Young Performance-makers Laboratory, Idea Platform and Gathering Platform.
Karnabal is co-presented by the Vargas Museum in UP Diliman, the National Commission for Culture and the Arts, the Japan Foundation Asia Center, and Teatro Papet Museo.
For more on Karnabal, visit www.karnabalfestival.tk