Dialekto Workshop 01: Un-holy Balikbayan with Kenneth Suico & Bea Rubio-Gabriel

When: Saturday 5 March, 1.00 - 5.00pm (including breaks & afternoon snack)

Where: Workroom 1, Siteworks [accessibility map]

Audience: Adults 18+ / no experience in performance / open to all, however themes explored will be closely aligned to migrant and diasporic identities, particularly Filipinx

Group: Up to 8 participants

Cost: Free - sign up required

Intended to be a collaborative performance in and of itself, this workshop explores process as performance as it seeks to uncover new ways of being, and create new languages to speak of how and where we are, and how we could be. 

Performance is a universal non-universal language, and it is the embodiment of resistance. Performance is un-performance. To learn together how we may be and not be. Split between a story-telling and practical performance component, together we will examine learned cultural performativities to propose how it is that we may begin to un-perform.  There is no promise to teach techniques and produce outcomes, but rather an invitation into a moment where we may begin to un-perform the performative, and to un-perform this with (and to) each other. 

Documentation (photography and/or video) will be provided during the session, but participants are welcome to bring their own modes of documentation.

You will need:

Due to the variation across performance practices, participants are encouraged to wear clothing they are comfortable moving/performing in. Participants are welcome to bring their own photo/recording equipment or any other materials/props integral to their own practices. 

Participate:

If you’d like to participate, please complete the sign up form by 10am, Thursday 3 March.

[Sign up]

Facilitators

Kenneth Suico is a visual artist residing and working in Naarm/Melbourne. Born in Cebu, Philippines, Suico jumps across a broad range of mediums, applying the modes of video, pop song performance, and installation into their practice. The act of repurposing, and the appropriation of what is considered western-based mythology narratives and imagery, and skewing it into their personal history and cultural superstitions, are common motifs in their works.

Bea Rubio-Gabriel is a performance artist, writer, and curator born in the Philippines, now based in Naarm/Melbourne. They explore the Baybayin script in how it can be activated as a gateway to rebuild cultural connections through performance, and approach writing as artform and ephemera.  Exploring systems of care and Resistance Aesthetics, their curatorial process is grounded in rhizomatic forms of care and collectivisation. Exhibition-making practices also become a medium, a subversion of current curatorial and euro-centric art models through formal and material proposals. Their research focuses on the politics of translation, pre-colonial writing systems (namely, Baybayin), and Indigenous (Ifugao) knowledge systems of the Philippines.