Friday 21 January
THE TAMILIZATION OF AHILAN RATNAMOHAN
Performance
Ahilan Ratnamohan has been learning Tamil for the first time in his life these past few years over skype conversations with his mother, communicating in their natal tongue for the first time. As an extension of his performances that treat language learning and linguistic codes as material, this process by the artist from the Sri Lankan diaspora, resulted in the script, The Tamilization of Ahilan Ratnamohan, written collaboratively with his mother. This script will be performed for the first time as an intimate exploration of his diasporic identity and second generation amnesia.
Lakmahal Community Library
5.00 pm - 6.10 pm
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ARTIST ENCOUNTERS & TRANSLOCAL SOLIDARITY
Conversation
Artist Encounters is a series of dialogues among artists and cultural organizers who are part of Language is Migrant elaborating on their artistic processes, material research, and infrastructures that have sustained their imaginative substance through these relentless times. The second part of this session stems from the platform Translocal Solidarity Networks set up to develop alliances between socially committed artists and arts initiatives across South Asia engaging in cultural advocacy, collaborative production, and experimental arts models in the region.
Part I with Areez Katki, Hema Shironi, T. Vinoja, Omer Wasim and Anushka Rajendran
Barefoot Gallery
6.30 pm - 7.15 pm
Part II with Palash Bhattacharjee,
Lavkant Chaudhary, Natasha Ginwala
and Kirubalini Stephen
Barefoot Gallery
7.30 pm - 8.15 pm
CLICK HERE TO REGISTER FOR THIS EVENT
Saturday 22 January
MIGRANT FABULATIONS
Reading And Discussion
Cultural anthropologist, Omar Kasmani asks, “What transpires when the strange pervades the familiar, dispossession becomes ordinary, or when home, to quote an artwork, is a foreign place?” In a hopscotch across languages, geography and beliefs – to follow Slavs and Tatars – this reading pursues an ethno-historical fabulation across the personal, the political and the sacred. It fabulates the felt and enfleshed modes by which we long and be/long in migration: Imagine a world bigger than ourselves, touch histories, feel futures. It speculates on how individuals and communities on the move mobilize distinctly affective ways of being and belonging in time. It turns to personal memoir, Islamic-religious history and Sufi inheritances to think through and arrive at an alternate lexicon of be/longing in postmigrant worlds.
Lakmahal Community Library
3.00 pm – 4.30 pm
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Saturday 22 January
(cont.)
FRAGILE INHERITANCE
Artist Tour
A walk-through and critical discussion with Megara Tegal and Aamina Nizar on the disappearance of Gundul (the Malay script), familial stories, and the evolution of the pockets of Sri Lankan Malay communities around the island.
Rio Cinema Complex (Third Floor)
4.00 pm - 5.00 pm
CLICK HERE TO REGISTER FOR THE TOUR
THE FOREIGNER
Performance
The Sri Lankan iteration of Ahilan Ratnamohan’s ongoing performative series, The Foreigner, uses atypical performative and interactive methods to respond to the specific linguistic and cultural fabric in the country through a series of language-based games. Audiences are invited to come and play specific games with learners of Sinhala who have no conventional performance training, and question their own assumptions related to the role of proficient language use in communication.
Rio Cinema Complex,
Poolside (Ground floor)
5.00 pm - 6.15 pm
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ONCE REMOVED
Film Screening
Lawrence Abu Hamdan’s video Once Removed is a portrait of the time-traveling life and work of Bassel Abi Chahine, a thirty-one-year-old writer and historian who has managed to obtain the single most comprehensive inventory of extremely rare objects, photographs, and interviews associated with the PLA (People’s Liberation Army) and the PSP (Progressive Socialist Party) socialist militias led by Walid Jumblatt during the Lebanese Civil War. His obsessive and unprecedented research and analysis was initially undertaken to find materials that could reconstitute what he describes as flashbacks and unexplainable memories from a previous life. Since the end of the war, details pertaining to sectarian conflicts in Lebanon have been suppressed in the interest of national security so as not to incite further tensions between formerly warring parties. Therefore, for Abi Chahine’s generation, very little is known (or can be verified) about what happened during the conflict.
Rio Cinema
6:30 pm - 7:00 pm
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AARANIYAM
Performance
Aaraniyam has multiple meanings in Tamil from sacred royal jewelry to a disguised identity and a magical forest full of hidden secrets. Aaraniyam is a collective of four contemporary performers and dancers Srikannan, Ragaventhan, Shalini, Yalini, who use improvised choreography combining Baratham with theatre and narrative elements, responding to poems by Packiyanathan Ahilan. Over an evening at the Rio complex, the collective will plot visualization elements in collaboration with Lalindra Amarasekara, focusing on light and shadow as well as literary fields of loss and injustice.
Rio Cinema
7.30 pm onwards
Sunday 23 January
NEIGHBOURHOOD MOVEMENTS
Walking Tour
This Walking Tour led by Phusathi Liyanaarachchi and Zul Luthufi around Wellawatta narrates a history of labour unrest, feminist engagement through the The Polytechnic (earlier known as the Shorthand and Typewriting Institute) as well as memorializing the Black July 1983 pogrom, traversing neighbourhood stories from residents’ perspectives and migratory histories from the colonial period into the present day.
Meeting Point: Dharmarama Road, opposite Kingston Academy
10.00 am - 11.00 am
The tour will be repeated on Sunday 30 January
REGISTER FOR THE TOUR ON 23 JAN
REGISTER FOR THE TOUR ON 30 JAN
READING FOR LIFE BEYOND TEA
Workshop
This workshop led by cultural anthropologist Mythri Jegathesan asks participants to think about the language, labor and Malaiyaka Tamil estate workers that make Ceylon tea possible. It will feature select readings from Jegathesan’s seminal book Tea and Solidarity: Tamil Women and Work in Postwar Sri Lanka, alongside photographs from her research. Complementing the readings will be an open discussion about the politics of writing beyond the story of Ceylon tea
and in line with workers’ desires for justice in Sri Lanka.
Lakmahal Community Library
11.00 am - 12.00 pm
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KACHA KACHA
Performance
KACHA KACHA IX brings together poets, rappers, singers, remixers and VJs for a night of uncensored, original, trilingual expression at a working class bar. Returning to the Government Service Sports Club in Narahenpita, the night invites folks of all social strata to come together and revel in the spirit of holding space for our complexities.
Featuring: Owl Tree-O, The Packet X Bo Sedkid, Anar, Tashyana Handy, GaaPiNk, and Rathya.
Government Sports Bar, Colombo 6
6.00 pm onwards
CLICK HERE TO REGISTER FOR THIS EVENT
Monday 24 January
THE STRANGE LIBRARY
Screening And Live Reading
This event with the Mantiq of the Mantis invites book lovers to connect across two reading rooms in Colombo and Lahore, savoring the meditative, embodied, and dialogical nature of reading together. The Strange Library is a walkthrough of weird fiction, poetry and literary history with rare titles like The Voynich Script and The Red Book by C.G. Jung along with Naqoosh Ghalib Number.
Lakmahal Community Library
1.00 pm - 3.00 pm
CLICK HERE TO REGISTER FOR THIS EVENT
Saturday 29 January
READ THE READING ROOM
Workshop
***We regret to inform you that due to health issues this event is postponed momentarily. We will let you know the rescheduled dates as soon as we can.***
Read the Reading Room is a zine-making workshop by The Packet at Reading in Tongues, the reading room at Language is Migrant, where artists’ publications including zines, poetry and journals are presented for browsing and activated by a cycle of rhizomatic programs and live performances. This workshop creates a space to read the reading room together and take part in a playful session of associative meaning-making. You are invited to work/steal/copy/swipe/lift with members of The Packet as you put together your own handmade, unique zines. During the course of this process, artists from The Packet will engage the participants in conversation about the zine making process and guide them in their journey.
kal RITUALS / The Many Headed Hydra Magazine #4 Launch and READINGS FROM SCROLL:
Projects on Paper
Readings And Conversation
***We regret to inform you that due to health issues this event is postponed momentarily. We will let you know the rescheduled dates as soon as we can.***
kal RITUALS is the first in a series of publications emerging from the transoceanic platform, which takes inspiration from a language where yesterday and tomorrow are the same word. kal, RITUALS proposes queer and trans feminist ecologies, embodiments and mythmaking. The contributions trace and disrupt cross-colonial legacies through bodies of water lapping at the shorelines of the Arabian Sea, the Indian Ocean, and the Atlantic. The book launch will feature the co-makers of the publication: Sadia Khatri, Sandev Handy, Sharika Navamani, Shahana Rajani & Zahra Malkani, Aziz Sohail, The Many Headed Hydra, and Vicky Shahjahan.
The evening will commence with a series of readings from SCROLL: Projects on paper by co-editor Syma Tariq and artist Areez Katki. The latest SCROLL issue is a special edition in partnership with Colomboscope for Language is Migrant.
LET’S UNPACK THAT
BY THE PACKET
Publication Launch
***We regret to inform you that due to health issues this event is postponed momentarily. We will let you know the rescheduled dates as soon as we can.***
The Packet takes the form of a deconstructed, collaborative book that brings together a collection of Sri Lankan visual artists, writers, poets and musicians to engage in a community of making and conversation. The Packet contains posters, zines and stickers. The contents of the paper packet may fall apart when emptied. Instigated by weekly gatherings in early 2019 in the service of producing this book, The Packet has since evolved into a larger collaborative practice.
21 & 28 January
FRIDAYS WITH CURATORS
Guided Tours
On every Friday during the festival join the curators for a walk-through of the exhibition chapters of Language is Migrant at the Colombo Public Library and Rio Complex. We will converse around artistic processes, linguistic belonging and collective memory.
Colombo Public Library
and Rio Complex
3.00 pm - 5.00 pm
REGISTER FOR THE EVENT ON 21 JAN
REGISTER FOR THE EVENT ON 28 JAN
29 & 30 January
BEADING CREATURES
WITH SABEEN OMAR
Workshop
Sabeen Omar leads young adults in an interactive workshop involving hands-on making of real and make-believe creatures composed entirely from beads. The artist reflects on the history of beads that connect different civilizations and historical timelines. She also reminds us that beads are some of the earliest organic creations we have an association with as a creative species.
Colombo Public Library,
Korea Corner (2nd floor)
10.30 am - 12.00 pm
Age Group: 14 years and above
REGISTER FOR THE WORKSHOP ON 29 JAN
REGISTER FOR THE WORKSHOP ON 30 JAN
22 & 23 January
OUR LAND, INNER LAND
WITH MALKI JAYAKODY
Children’s Workshop
Artist Malki Jayakody will lead a workshop on mixed media collage making inviting young participants to join her in crafting the transformations of urban landscapes as well as inner and outer journeys from rural to metropolitan life. As the built horizon changes before our eyes, this workshop engages ways of recording the living histories we are making together.
Colombo Public Library,
Children’s Library (1st floor)
10.00 am - 12.00 pm
Age Group: 10 years and below
REGISTER FOR THE WORKSHOP ON 22 JAN
REGISTER FOR THE WORKSHOP ON 23 JAN
23 & 30 January
VISITOR EDUCATORS’ TOURS
Guided Tours
Join Visitor Educators from the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Sri Lanka and Colomboscope volunteers for spotlight tours through the largest festival venue, the Colombo Public Library. They will share their interpretation of the installations on view as well as the expanded role of a public library as a space for artistic thinking.
Colombo Public Library
11.00 am - 6.00 pm
SELECT A TIME SLOT AND REGISTER
21 - 30 January
THE HEARING VOICES CAFÉ
Conversations, Readings,
And Performance
Dora García presents The Hearing Voices Café, a project that has manifested in different parts of the world and will be realised in Sri Lanka for the first time at Lak Cafe in Viharamahadevi Park, in collaboration with performance artist Jayampathi Guruge among several guest artists and writers. Drawing from traditions of voice hearing and designated voice hearers in various cultural contexts, over each evening of the festival this series of intimate gatherings will engage contributors from the fields of literature, psychotherapy, theatre and activism. You are invited to participate in the conversations and explore methods of hearing, listening, and active exchange.
Participants include: Arka Initiative, Everystory, Harshana Rambukwella, Iffath Neetha Uthumalebbe, Jayampathi Guruge, Kanchana Malshani, Kasun Chathuranga, Kumari Kumaragamage, Logananthan Suman, Neloufer de Mel, Nipuni Sharada Pathirage, Omar Kasmani, Palitha Abeyaratne, Pemanthi Fernando and members of Stages theatre group, Ruhanie Perera, Sahlah Anees, Saman Hettige, Shehan Karunatilaka, Veenadari Lakshika, among others.
Lak Cafe, Viharamahadevi park
4.00 pm - 6.00 pm (daily)
Please pick up The Hearing Voices Café newspaper at festival venues for further details
HEARING VOICES CAFÉ COLOMBO PROGRAM
21 - 30 January
THE LOOKBOOK
Workshop
This workshop led by Fabienne Francotte calls for approaches to drawing as thinking, exploring its capacity for articulating the self, relating to fluid identities, itinerant existence, and forced displacement, continuing her practice of engaging with communities to share the transformative possibilities of artmaking. Participants are invited to draw something unusual, building on portraiture and identity, shaping maps of our spaces visited while being on the move. The lookbook is an open diary that explores drawing as a method to articulate our collective experiences and emotions that compel creative expression.
Colombo Public Library,
Korea Corner (2nd floor)
1.30 pm - 4.00 pm (daily)
Age Group: 14 years and above
SELECT A WORKSHOP DATE AND REGISTER
