Iloilo artist and community arts organizer to join IMPACT22 in Germany

A yearly transdisciplinary symposium dubbed as “IMPACT” by PACT Zollverein with this year’s theme “IMPACT22: Local Fabrics – On Practices of Emergence” is happening this November 9-13 at the PACT Artist Center in Essen, Germany.

Multi-disciplinary artist Raz Salvarita is one of the selected international fellows who will travel to join the symposium, tours, and workshop with three experts Boris Sieverts, Selvagem – Cycle of Studies about Life, and Social Pleasure Center – as co-convenors who will provide thought-provoking impulses.

“Their practice encompasses, interrogates and correlates urbanism, context-bound knowledge resources and body-based resilience experiences. They will take the participants on urban walks, introduce them to somatic activism and set up various dialogue formats.”

Since 2002, PACT Zollverein has “positioned itself as an initiator, catalyst and venue for seminal developments in the fields of dance, performance, theatre, media and art at the interface of science, technology and society”.

This is the third time this year that Mr. Salvarita has joined international arts fellowships which begun with an arts immersion residential in three cities in Indonesia (Jakarta, Yogyakarta and Bandung) last June-July and was supported by the Mekong Cultural Hub and the British Council.

In early September, he was one of the main presenters during the ITAC6 Conference in Oslo, Norway (organized by ITAC and Seanse Art Center) where he’d shown his locally organized and site-specific installation art titled “Unmasking Climate Injustices: Voices from the Past, Present, and Emerging Generations” – a project through his fellowship with the International Teaching Artist Collaborative (ITAC Impact: Climate).

He then travelled to Istanbul and joined 13 other fellows for the Culture and Sustainability Lab workshop which was held at the Austrian Council Forum of the Austrian Embassy in Turkey.

He will cap the year with a three-week artist residency in Melbourne and Sydney, Australia in December as part of his fellowship with the International Future Leaders Art Program of the Australia Council for the Arts.

Raz is the founder of the Baryo Balangaw Creative Initiatives – initially and primarily designed as a creative recovery program in relation to the pandemic; while also a think tank for community arts engagements in bridging creativity in rural communities. He lives with his partner and fellow artist-writer Elle Divine Wood in Brgy. Caninguan, Lambunao, Iloilo.