Visitors:
Singing Plants (Redux)

Co-Presented with Evergreen

Featuring the work of Jo SiMalaya Alcampo

June 3rd–25th, 2017
8am-5pm, Saturdays and Sundays
Weekday viewings by request

In the Children’s Garden Greenhouse
at Evergreen Brick Works
550 Bayview Avenue, Toronto

Getting to the Brick Works »

A series of interactive sound art installations situated in the greenhouse of the Brick Works, Alcampo’s singing plants are potted banana plants that respond to human hand gestures to emit soundscapes of Aboriginal chants, songs and spoken words.

The project’s title “Visitors” calls attention to the insertion of these foreign flora into the otherwise completely native gardens of the Brick Works and raises important questions around responsible horticulture, embedded forms of knowledge and the importance of asking the land for permission to access its resources.


PERFORMANCE

Singing Plants (Live)

Jo SiMalaya AlCampo
Amy Desjarlais (nee Tabobandung)
Ester Dulawan Tuldague
& Members of Kapwa Collective

Sunday June 25th, 12-1pm

In the Children’s Garden (Chimney Court)
at Evergreen Brick Works
550 Bayview Avenue, Toronto

Admission is free. All are welcome.

In celebration of National Aboriginal Day, Jo SiMalaya Alcampo and friends will give a performance that features her Singing Plants installation as a live instrument. The afternoon’s activities will include traditional prayers, chants, and a participatory jam session with singing plants and indigenous instruments.

PROGRAMME

  • Amy Desjarlais (nee Tabobandung) will open the event with an acknowledgement and prayer/drumsong. Amy will share the EarthTALKER Water Project and music from the Sacred Water Journey album.
  • Ester Dulawan Tuldague will share a solidarity statement and talk about the Hudhud, one of the songs that the plants sing. It is a epic chant indigenous to the Ifugao People.
  • Jo SiMalaya Alcampo will talk about the Singing Plants and demonstrate how to play them. Kapwa Collective members will engage the audience in an interactive activity that embodies the elements of wind, water, air and fire.
  • Kapwa Collective will introduce a set of gongs and teach rhythms passed on by Mamerto “Lagitan” Tindongan and other Ifugao Mombaki’s (shamans) from Bayninan, a village of Banaue in Ifugao.
  • Kapwa Collective will invite Jo, Ester, Amy and the audience to join in a group jam session with singing plants and indigenous instruments.

PERFORMER BIOGRAPHIES

Waabaakakazhe zhaashkeezgokwe (White Raven Woman with Turquoise eyes) Amik Dodem (Beaver Clan) Wasauksing First Nation—knowledge keeper. Ojibwe/Potowottmi Anishinaabe. Learn more about the EarthTALKER Water Project at:
earthtalker.wordpress.com/about/about-amy/

Ester Dulawan Tuldague is the Municipal Coordinator of Kiangan in the Ifugao Association of Canada, an association of Ifugaos working or residing in Canada, especially in the Province of Ontario.

Kapwa Collective is a group of Filipinx-Canadian artists, critical thinkers, and healers who work towards bridging narratives between the Indigenous and the Diasporic, and the Filipinx + the Canadian. We facilitate links among academic, artistic, activist, and other communities in Toronto. The Kapwa Collective functions as a mutual support group based on a Philippine core value. Virgilio G. Enriquez, known as the founder of Filipino Psychology (or Sikolohiyang Pilipino) initially proposed a concept of personhood centered on the core value expressed in the word kapwa. As described by the scholar Katrin de Guia: “Kapwa is a Tagalog term widely used when addressing another with the intention of establishing a connection. It reflects a viewpoint that beholds the essential humanity recognizable in everyone, therefore linking (including) people rather than separating (excluding) them from each other. Enriquez felt that this orientation was an expression of ‘humanness at its highest level’.” – from Kapwa: The Self in the Other, Worldviews and Lifestyles of Filipino Culture-Bearers. kapwacollective.tumblr.com


This project is supported through Toronto Arts Council Strategic Funding.