From the microphone and into the gloss

  • Open Space Contemporary Arts (OSCA) is an artist led, multi-year funded South Australian arts organisation dedicated to the development of new models of participation and arts engagement across city, urban and regional locations.

As part of OSCA's on-site event, Saluhan Collective was commissioned to transform a private karaoke room in Adelaide's Chinatown into a site-responsive installation.

From the microphone and into the gloss invited audiences to respond to Dodong and The Dais, a video artwork re-imagining Yoyoy Villame's 1972 song Magellan. In the original, Villame recounts the Spanish colonial "discovery" of the Philippines and the Indigenous resistance led by Lapu Lapu.

This iteration drew on the linguistic method of glossing, the practice of annotating language to reveal its structure, meaning, and grammar, employing it as both concept and choreographic framework. Taking Dodong and The Dais and the No. 9 Karaoke Bar as its points of departure, the work invited audiences to "gloss" the performance through their own embodied and vocal reinterpretations.

Exhibited on 30 April 2026 at No. 9 Karaoke Bar, Adelaide.

Supported by: Create SA and The City of Adelaide.

Photography: Sia Duff.

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Fugitive Archives: A spoken future (Dukkana)