Via UST Center for Creative Writing and Literary Studies:
12 February 2013, 11:56 p.m. – HAVING LAUNCHED its revived literary journal only last week, “Tomas,” the University of Santo Tomas’ Center for Creative Writing and Literary Studies has just announced its latest happening: “Making: Love in 14 Collaborative Acts.” But, before disapproving eyebrows can be raised, the event announcement contains an explanatory description: “An Interdisciplinary Celebration in the Arts and Sciences.”
Scheduled for February 11 to 15 at the Main Lobby of the campus’s historic Main Building, the happening takes off from where the old Center’s project, “Brushes with Words and Chords,” left off. The difference is that, while “Brushes” involved three arts (literature, painting and music), and three colleges, “Making” involves 11 colleges – including the College of Science and the Faculty of Medicine and Surgery — plus the UST Publishing House.
Fourteen literary works – poems or excerpts from stories, essays or plays, all dealing with love – will be rendered in other art forms, scientific experiments, or other unique collaborations, all celebrating love in the month dedicated to love. The artists will take turns making themselves available at the exhibit, to interact with the public and pose for photos.
On the closing night, there will be a special program, featuring the writers reading from or performing their work, along with their collaborators.
This project is spearheaded by writer and performance artist Nerisa del Carmen Guevara, who conceptualized it, personally approached all the college deans she could find, and convinced them to send representatives from love, among their faculty members to the initial brainstorming session. And so began what is now ready for presentation to the public, a most unusual love-in, put together by academics from the arts and the sciences in the country’s oldest university.
The exhibit goers can witness stellar collaborations from stellar collaborators. This week-long “love-in” features animation by Bon Labora based on a story by Chuckberry Pascual, photo-poetic conversations between Joselito D. Delos Reyes and Jay Javier, spontaneous theatre performances by Artistang Artlets on the intense fiction of Eros Atalia, the viral nature of love in paper structures based on the work of Joanna Parungao and Dr. Karen Santiago, the sad physics of Love in an installation on gravity based on the memoir of Nicole Marfil, spontaneous performances of ethereal art songs composed by artists of the Conservatory inspired by the poems of Michael M. Coroza, Rebecca T. Anonuevo, and Ralph Semino Galan, fiction by Cristina Pantoja Hidalgo. This is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. A special performance by the great performance artist Vim Nadera awaits us all at the closing event. Check out our programme of events. This art exhibit is curated by Prof. Mary Ann Venturina-Bulanadi. Eleven Thomasian Colleges, fourteen collaborations, thirty new friendships.
This event is open to the Thomasian community and the general public.
