Traversing Southeast Asia with concerts, workshops, and talks about exploratory sound, Nusasonic has finally landed in Manila for a joint program with WSX X: Festival of the Recently Possible from October 15 to October 28. An initiative by the German cultural center Goethe-Institut, Nusasonic is a creative collaboration between YES NO KLUB (Yogyakarta), WSK Festival of The Recently Possible (Manila), Playfreely/BlackKaji (Singapore), CTM Festival (Berlin) that links music cultures from Southeast Asia to Europe and beyond.
Celebrating its 10th edition, WSK X is a thirteen-day international electronic music and arts festival, showcasing concerts, residencies, and workshops with experimental sound artists, engineers, and musicians.
“For the past nine years of WSK Festival, we have been selecting our artists ourselves. But our line up has evolved as we move beyond our own networks through Nusasonic,” WSK founder Tengal Drilon said.
The festival launches its first concert at Hyundai Hall, Arete on October 24 with a mix of performances by local and international artists: Tengal Drilon, Joee Mejias, Children of Cathode Ray, Makino Takashi and Rei Hayama, and Ken Furudate.
On October 26, following the opening concert and concurrent shows, Nusasonic and WSK will hold “Floaters Stage,” a special program that will take place along the streets and in the open public spaces of Poblacion, Makati. It will start with a musical street performance at 4PM by Joee & I with the D’Armour Drum and Lyre Band, and Samba Empress of the Philippines, Toni Bernardo. They will be joined by visual and performance artists Jeona Zoleta, Martin De Mesa, and Jayvee Del Rosario. This parade will lead to a secret final stage where musician Yennu Ariendra and producer-publisher Erik Tuban will jointly perform the results of their brief studio collaboration hinged on vernacular musical genres prevalent in their respective areas of residence: dangdut koplo and budots.
Crossing borders through Nusasonic
“Nusasonic stands for networks, connection, and collaboration between artists, facilitators, and initiatives in the field of experimental sound and music within Southeast Asia and Europe. With the cultural projects Goethe-Institut initiates and organizes, we focus on shared artistic production, reception, and reflection. This is basically what Nusasonic is all about, too. Inviting artists and practitioners to experience what practices colleagues in other parts of the world work with, and how they use them to respond to their local context,” says Anna Maria Strauss, Head of Cultural Programmes at the Goethe-Institut.
In taking the initiative to invite several platforms exploring sound art from Southeast Asia and Europe, Goethe-Institut aims to strengthen the dialogue between the people involved in creating and shaping what experimental sound cultures look like today, especially through meaningful collaborations.
This year, Laure Boer, a sound artist from Germany is taking a two-month artist residency in Manila through the support of Goethe-Institut and Musicboard Berlin to learn about Philippine sound art and get into a dialogue through her own sound practice. She has been performing in local clubs with local electronic musicians for the past month and will be collaborating with experimental sound artist Auspicious Family on October 27 at Rajah Sulayman Theater, Intramuros for the Festival Closing Concert: Spectres.
“Another important collaborative aspect that Nusasonic partners including the Goethe-Institut share, is their attention towards strengthening local talent while at the same time reaching out towards international collaborations… You can find this dual practice also within this year’s edition of WSK. WSK shares the spirit of creating platforms for artistic expressions that push boundaries, that don’t limit themselves by commercial considerations and make exploration their core interest,” adds Strauss.
True to this statement, the MusicMakers Hacklab is an open collaborative laboratory hosted by Peter Kirn of Create Digital Music together with Tad Ermitaño. In this hacklab, participants collaborate as they learn and work with experienced individuals from the arts and tech sectors, and develop new concepts, systems, and objects in response to the theme. It is organized by CTM Festival together with various partners from the fields of culture, music, and technology.
Amplifying discourse
One of the programs resulting from this collaboration with Nusasonic is the WSK X edition of the Feedback Forum, a critical platform discussing pressing issues in the sound and music culture. “While music appears to be a neutral enough medium to display a sense of neutrality, it also has the congealing power to deliver politically relevant ideas – ideas that can potentially question certain [hegemonic practices],” says Yuen Chee Wai, co-organizer of the music platform Playfreely.
For the 2019 edition of the forum, WSK and Nusasonic take a critical look at issues of representation and discrepancies of power in the Southeast Asian region, particularly in the idea that sound and music are also currency and power, which can be used to distract or pacify the public.
Curated by Merv Espina, the Feedback Forum will be comprised of six different panel presentations and discussions that examine the aesthetics and politics of Philippine revolutionary music, institutional sexism and racism rampant in the culture, and the tactics and networks that can be tapped to confront and circumvent these problems.
Speakers and panelists include Joee Mejias, Cheryl Ong, and Taica Replansky for “Agree to Disagree: Gendered Forms, Institutional Sexisms;” Cedrik Fermont, Wok, Jan Rohlf, and Yuen Chee Wai for “Balancing Equations: Networking with and within Asia and Africa, and the Spectre of Europe;” Tad Ermitaño, Verne de la Peña, Inti Guerrero, and Eileen Legaspi-Ramirez for “Jose Maceda and the Semiotics of Noise;” and Pisitakun Kuntalang, Yennu Ariendra, and Fritz Flores for “If I Can’t Dance to Your Revolution: New Dance Music for Southeast Asia.”
Happening on October 23-24 from 1:30PM until 5:00PM each day, the Feedback Forum will be held at the Ben Chan ArtSuite, Ateneo Art Gallery, 2F Soledad V. Pangilinan Arts Wing, Areté, Ateneo de Manila University. WSK X is also supported by the Japan Foundation Asia Center under the Grant Program for Promotion of Cultural Collaboration.
