UGNAYAN '05: The 4th Philippine Performance Art Festival (September 17-22, 2005)

Wawi Navarroza
performs on 3 dates and in 3 venues for this year's
Philippine International Performance Art Festival (PIPAF):

#1
Archiving The Wonderful World of Judy Sibayan's SCAPULAR GALLERY NOMAD Exhibition and Performance
September 17, Lumiere Gallery

Wawi Navarroza is one of the invited artists to re-perform Scapular Gallery Nomad. She re-exhibits Martin Kaltner's Tranz Dance Dancer (Vienna) and Thomas Baumann's Exchange Around The World (Vienna), guest-curated by Herman Seidl for the Gwangju Biennale 2002.

The Scapular Gallery was the 5-year performance project showcasing portable art specifically made by artists for the Scapular Gallery and worn by Judy Freya Sibayan and exhibited everywhere she went as a walking gallery.

The opening will feature ten artists re-performing the Scapular Gallery Nomad as Judy Sibayan had originally intended.

This event is also "Ugnayan '05" opening salvo.

#2
original piece: "Truth Is Many And Lies In Between"
September 19, Dance Forum Space

solo 15-minute live art performance

ARTIST'S CONCEPT:

In the kingdom of the Betrayed, flakes of truth and scraps of lies hang in the air together like perfect mirrors. They drift, tumble and fall in the same wasteland of Distrust. One seeks, asks, investigates, meditates on the hows and the whys and when Belief finally dies, the soul disintegrates driving a person mad, eye-less, suspicious, destitute, bereaved, angry, vulnerable, swimming in a syrup of doubt. What is Truth? When is Lie? To tell the truth? Or not to tell? To tell but omit? Or not omit but lie? To be quiet? Or ask more questions? The lies evade and cut. The truth does the same. To me, this presents a solid case to experiment how we grope and cope trying to see through the cloud of Un-Knowing. Could it perhaps be pierced by listening closely to the silent din in the chest for that glimpse of, at least, a personal truth? A pocket-sized satori?

For this performance piece, I shall attempt to dance and strum the broken c(h)ord of shattered beliefs to the accompaniment of live soundtracks consisting of a cacophony of voices: Truth and Lies told by willing members of the audience on site, privately conveyed to me thru a crude apparatus of assembled cans.

- Wawi Navarroza

#3
original piece: "Custodian of End-Of-Affairs"
September 22, Raja Sulayman Park

solo 15-minute live art performance

ARTIST'S CONCEPT:

I have always been intrigued, cheated, nauseated, and continually amazed by the many intricacies of the heart and its sticky linkages to memory. We drag around our hearts with the weight and baggage of the past...this tale as old and tired as time, ancient and contemporary all the same, claimed by everyone at one point or another, connecting all of us. We have been made and undone by a trailblaze of broken hearts. We are one in our tragedies as we write the best of ourselves in the ink of our blood, the wound of our dreams.

I have chosen the labyrinth as a venue and a representation of the rosette of emotion because unlike the maze, the labyrinth directs movement leading to a specific center. It reveals the passages to the sacrosanct heart of hearts.

In the guise of a veiled mysterious female figure, I have created and personified an archetypal character: the one who comes after the lovers have fled, after doors have been slammed shut, after the bridges have been burnt. She cleans up the mess surviving the aftermath of break-ups, falling outs, detachments, estrangements. She is alone and tasked to re-tell the story backwards. She is the Custodian of End-of-Affairs, and also the herald of renewal.

The performance piece is an illustrated animation and allegory of the slow and dark journey of the heavy heart on its way to emotional liberation. It is, in the end, a progressive exhibit of the magnanimous capacity of the heart to stitch itself over and over again.

- Wawi Navarroza

“UGNAYAN” is a Pilipino word which means inter-relation or connection. The root word is "Ugnay" (verb, to relate or to connect). UGNAYAN is also an acronym for UGali NAtin YAN which means: Our (own) way of doing things.

“UGNAYAN'05”, is a-five-day-performance-art-event with 3 components. The 1st component is the live art performances. The 2nd component is the EDUCATIONAL Component where participating local and international artists visit selected Art Schools in Metro Manila. And the 3rd component is the FORUM (Art Talk / Art Discussion). “Engaging the Public Sphere” will focus on how government art institutions and alternative / artists-run spaces address their “audience” in contemporary art scene keeping in mind the context of shifting Asian identities in contemporary art. The collaborations between and among art institutions and artists collective, as well as the “support system” in place in terms of propagation, promotion, research and development of contemporary art practice would be discussed. “Live Art as Cultural Strategy” will be the other topic for discussion: its practice, its “liveness” and its many parameters; plus selected live performances by International and local performance art practitioners.

“UGNAYAN’05”, the 4th PIPAF was conceived, as an "event" for artists, to reconstruct through their performative actions the "invisible in the visible". As a "venue-for-exchange", a "meeting point" between and among national and international performance artists, “UGNAYAN’05” bolsters that urgent desire to reintegrate art and life and reaffirm and re-identify with own cultural roots. As a "platform" for artists, it is to redefine contemporary, theoretical and conceptual art making processes - to reclaim lost values and denigrated methods and codes that re-create new cultural systems.

Kanlungan ng Sining, the home of the Art Association of the Philippines at the Rizal Park, Kuquada Art Gallery and the Raja Sulayman Plaza will be the venues for the live performances. Far Eastern University (F.E.U.) in Manila and the University of the East (U.E.) in Caloocan City will be the art schools to be visited by the international and local artists participating in the festival. The forum will be hosted by the Ateneo Art Gallery (Ateneo de Manila University Loyola Heights, Quezon City through the kindness of its curator Mr. Ramon Lerma).

For the 4th PIPAF, we have invited 5 Australians (Mr. Nick Tsoutas, Mr. Thomas Berghuis, and plus 3 more Australian Performance art practitioners, France (Andree Weschler), 2 from Indonesia (Mr. Yoyoyo Gasmana and Mr. Mugiono Kasido), 2 from Japan (Ms. Sakiko Yamaoka and Ms. Akiyo Tsubakihara), 2 from Singapore (Mr. Lee Wen and Mr. Kai Lam), Taiwan (Yeh Tzu-chi), Thailand (Mr. Chumpon Apisuk), U.K. (Ms. Lois Keidan), U.S.A (Ms. Marilyn Arsem) and from Wales (Mr. Andre Stitt). We will take this opportunity to feature 22 “home-grown” Performance and time-based art practitioners: Alan Rivera, Bogie Tence Ruiz, Bryan Lonop, Buddy Ching, Danny Sillada, Felimon Blanco, Gary Chong, Jeho Bitancor, Jethro Jocson, Jevijoe Vitug, Marlon Magbanua, Mideo Cruz, Metong Espinosa, Mitch Garcia, Noel Pama, Sr., Patrick Chong, Ronaldo Ruiz, Teza Cornes, Vim Nadera, Wawi Navarroza, Wire Tuazon, and Yuan Mor’O Ocampo.

“Performance Art is an infinitely varying, enormously wide-ranging and yet an enigmatic activity. It may be read as an endless permutation of an individual action; a subtle equivalent of the spoken and written word. Performance Art is one of the most potent, intuitive and yet highly evolved strategy that can be used to comprehend the unknown. Performance Art is an expressed desire and a declared ACTION with a singular intent of heightening the consciousness of its audience."

- Yuan Mor’O Ocampo, Artistic Director – UGNAYAN’05, the 4th PIPAF

Special thanks to designer Yvonne Quisumbing.

Photo credits: Mannet Villariba & Inigo Simpliciano