With an intention to create a space that hosts listening as an act of deep reading, Kwago together with new small press Comma invited artists Datu Arellano, Jose Tong, Erick Calilan, Miggy Inumerable, Gladys Regalado, Jorge Wieneke and Vyxz Vasquez to respond to Tad Ermitaño’s A Curated Shelf through a performance of four minutes and thirty-three seconds each at Kwago Book Bar on March 30, 10pm to 10:30 pm.
A new program of Kwago, A Curated Shelf aims to create a space to instigate critical conversations on reading, writing, print and publishing. With an aim to address a wide range of questions on the relevance and scope of publishing, A Curated Shelf is composed of a series of two-month exhibitions with corollary events that respond to the shows. For the first A Curated Shelf, we invited new media artist Tad Ermitaño to give us a glimpse of the books that inform his life and work.
The invited artists will perform within the constraint of 4’33, which is a well-known work by experimental composer John Cage, where he went to the stage and performed nothing for four minutes and thirty-three seconds. 4’33 attuned the audience to listen to ambient sounds naturally produced by us and the environment, demonstrating that music is all around us and “silence” doesn’t really exist.
“Part of Tad’s collection is the diary of Brian Eno who is also inspired and influenced by John Cage. Czy and I have always discussed silence as a metaphor for close reading, so we decided to make one of his famous pieces about silence a guideline for the artists in their response to Tad’s selection and the ideas behind it,” Comma and A Curated Shelf co-founder Roy Voragen said.
“I don’t know anything about curating. But I want to create events and programs that will allow me and the community to understand possibilities in reading, writing and publishing. Through Reverb, we aim to illustrate how listening is a form of reading,” Kwago founder and Comma co-founder Czyka Tumaliuan said.
The whole event will run for thirty minutes only. Door charge is PHP 300. Sign up here for a free beer: bit.ly/rsvpreverb
Facebook Event Page: bit.ly/reverb433
Kwago
Kwago is a book bar that offers zines, a curated shelf and lit-inspired cocktails. With an aim to nurture empathy, creativity and innovation, it develops programs to make people fall in love with reading.
Part library, part bookstore, part cafe bar, Kwago Book Bar at Warehouse Eight is designed to help you discover new ideas, understand the pulse of the local literary and arts landscape, and cultivate an interdisciplinary mindset.
Website, Facebook and Instagram
Comma
Comma is a publishing platform initiated by Kwago founder Czyka Tumaliuan and poet Roy Voragen. Comma focuses on poetry, art and developing critical conversations.
A Curated Shelf
A collaboration between Kwago and Comma, A Curated Shelf is a platform for critical and playful conversations about publications and publishing as a discursive practice. A Curated Shelf wishes to address a wide range of questions on the relevance and scope of publishing. To understand the many ways we read, write and publish, the program is a series of two-month exhibitions with corollary events that respond to the selection. For the first A Curated Shelf, we invited tad Ermitano to assemble and exhibit 15 publications that has influenced his life and practice.
