HCMC – Transient Creatures Festival

Festival: 31 May – 09 Jun 2019
Various venues in HCMC (see details below)

From the organizer:

Transient creatures is a local festival of subcultures in saigon, and in 2019 connects performance art, queer culture, and food culture.

transient creatures aims to explore how these subcultures are represented in the city and what influences they have on society.

transient creatures is a series of events free of admission and open for anyone to join, who wants to dive into performance art, gender and drag performance, identity, ethnic cuisines, disgust, costumes, movement, local art, anthropological research, intimacy, corporeal interaction, art organisation, social and cultural relations, body art, performative materials….

TRANSIENT CREATURES is supported by Bosch Foundation, Mitost, USSH HCM and Goethe Institut HCM.

Festival director: Fritz Faust
Curation: Fritz Faust, Quyên D. Phạm
Workshops: Võ Thiên Sa, Trần Minh Đức, Nguyen Chung, Esta Ricardo

Talk
31.05.2019
USSH HCM – D504
18.00-20.00
Free entry

Transient Creatures will host a talk and discussion round at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities to look at the entanglement and interaction of subcultures in Saigon from three different points of view.

Quyen D. Pham will introduce her approach to curating immaterial art including performance, contemporary dance, experimental music and new media art, and give insight into the contemporary Vietnamese art scene.
Esta Ricardo will discuss concepts of queerness and gender, and present the idea of GenderFunk, a creative queer collective organising party and charity events in Vietnam, and its impact on the local LGBTQ+ scene.
Vo Thien Sa will look at the function of food as cultural representation with focus on marginalised groups in society, and how the “exotic” works as a carrier of cultural messages.

The event is free of admission.

Workshop: Costumes & Performance Art
Conductor: Tran Minh Duc
Date: 1 June 2019
Time: 10:00am – 12:00am
Venue: KAAREM Studio, 03 Mê Linh Street, Ward 19, Bình Thạnh Dist., HCMC

Born and working in Ho Chi Minh City, Tran Minh Duc starts projects of which the concepts are derived from where he was born and then developed to bring with him everywhere. In his performances, Duc works with fabric, accessories and dyes to create objects and costumes which are used in his works. The creative process becomes a large part of the work and is also considered as its conceptual aspect.

In the workshop, Duc will share his experience working with those special materials in his performance. Participants are encouraged to wear/bring a costume that has a meaning, a personal experience or a story that they want to share when participating in the workshop.

Workshop: Interact & Play
Conductor: artist Nguyen Chung
Date: 1 June 2019
Time: 2:30pm – 5pm
Venue: Salon Saigon, 6D Ngô Thời Nhiệm, Ward 7, Dist. 3, HCMC

This workshop is based on improvisation that introduces participants to a new way of exploring body movement. From there, we will start to discover the initiative points to create movement through different parts of our body. In that journey, we will also create an interactive space between body, energy and consciousness in motion to connect with each other.

Following that, we will move to a space for creativity by sensing the interaction between the body and the objects. Through this process, participants will get more conscious of the body and the objects they interact with in everyday life.

**Workshop requirement: Each participant will be required to bring their own objects used in their daily life or objects that connect to comfort and closeness.

Workshop: Revolting Bites/Edible Identity
Conductor: Vo Thien Sa
Date: 8+9 June 2019
Time: 10pm – 4pm
Venue: Goethe Institut, Deutsches Haus, District 1

Food is an essential part of people’s lives, and as such is much more than just a means of survival. It affects how we view ourselves and others. Over the past few decades, it has gained significant popularity within contemporary society and culture. Therefore, understanding food means understanding the community that acquires, prepares and consumes it. The workshops introduce to the participants a new understanding of food, how it reflects the surrounding environment and the community that creates it.

In the first workshop Revolting bites, the question is posed: What does “disgusting” mean? The notion of “disgusting food” – as controversial as it may sound – is a concept deeply influenced by culture. Participants are invited to discuss about the concept of “disgust” and therefore to understand more about the presence of culture in the individual perception of food.

Food can also be used as a means of communication and expressing cultural identity, especially for marginalized communities. The second workshop Edible Identity will discuss the role of food in the process of preserving and expressing cultural identity of ethnical minority groups living in Ho Chi Minh City.

Workshop: Beyond Gender. Beyond Human.
Conductor: Esta Ricardo
Duration: 13.00-18.00
June 2nd 2019
129 Đinh Tiên Hoàng, Phường 3, Bình Thạnh, Hồ Chí Minh

Join us fabulous Queers and Queens to explore the social construct of gender. How does this idea of gender affect our lives and in turn our Art/performance? Through the medium of music and movement we will explore gender roles/styles and hopefully deconstruct them to allow us to go Beyond Gender in our performances and in turn our lives.

After going Beyond Gender, we will navigate worlds that exist Beyond Human experience. If we could shed our human traits, what would the world we inhabit look like? Perhaps more intriguingly, what would we look like and why? Be prepared to take yourself on a liberating journey with a creative end result!
And it will be lots of fun too!

Note: This is not a dance workshop and all people of any level are welcome. It is a workshop that is best enjoyed by performers, artists, people interested in gender studies.

“IT’S GONNA BE DIFFERENT”
Mid-Festival Celebration
June 7th
Arcan Saigon, 236/43/21 Dien Bien Phu, Bình Thạnh, HCM
19.00-23.00
Free entry

More info @fb.me/transientcreatures