SPRING 2016 PUBLIC ART PROJECT:SONGS FOR WOMEN LIVING WITH WAR

Songs for Women Living With War / Bahay ni Lola/ House of the Grandmothers is a “living” memorial/anti war monument that remembers women and children and the violence they suffer. In Spring 2016 the  Songs for Women Living with War Forum will combine public art installation, performance, presentations and discussions in a collaboration between Visual and Public Art, Global Studies Social Justice Colloquium and HCOM’s Writers From the Edge programs.  The consequence of poverty, conflict and sexual violence and how to organize against it will be informed by  Lila Shahani, an Assistant Secretary of the Philippine Government on poverty and sex trafficking and feminist activists including Gwyn Kirk of Women for Genuine Security. Evelina Galang will present her work on the WWII Comfort women, the  "Lolas" (grandmothers), the inspiration for this memorial.  Composer Theresa Wong will do community vocal improvisations in the song form of “Lamentations”. This is an anti war memorial of transcendence, empowerment and healing. It seeks to create a platform of understanding that these crimes against humanity do not begin and end on the battlefield.  Sexual violence against women knows no time or place or nationality – it is a phenomenon endemic to our culture of war, patriarchy and violence.  This will be a house of many stories, a place to contemplate the effects of war on women and children and how to transcend those effects.