Since its inception in 2008 as Fete dela Wasaque, the festival had a particular focus around performances within the field of sonic arts and innovative music. For this year’s edition, we have decided to rename the festival WSK!—as three cryptic letters, which can only provide as much as the sum of the parts. We decided to widen the focus on “parallel voices” that throughout history have worked alongside the sonic arts. Theater, dance, poetry, cinema, television, radio, and even religious and spiritual purposes have integrated the use of sound in almost every process. However, the sound world is a bit hermetic. It happens, then it’s done. It doesn’t have the same library of information that you have in the other arts. So we hope, among other things, WSK! would be a chance to explode people’s misconceptions about what contemporary music is.
The path of music evolution is never straight, god forbid. Curveballs, odd combinations, and juxtapositions feed the rich variability of production, fuel the creativity of producers, and aggravate and agitate listeners toward new territory. Artists cross-pollinate and fertilize, expanding their reach and deepening their productions with the increased richness that comes with drawing new and unexpected connections. Get carried away by a program that straddles between live video manipulation (live cinema) against a backdrop of powerful club and textured home listening; connects experimental and pop, electro and rock, classic and futuristic; exploits contrast; digs up unexpected links; and builds spontaneous bridges into the unforeseen.
In short, this year’s festival consists of live performances, an exhibition, and a digital album + book anthology of mission statements, buckshot manifestos, postmortems, essay fragments and short interviews documenting the vicissitudes of sonic life off the radar in Manila, Asia and beyond.
