“Through the language of dance and choreography, Void (25’) by Joshua Serafin narrates the creation of a new God, the birth of a futuristic deity. Serafin’s research into the making of this piece is centered around creation myth stories of pre-colonial animistic religions from the Philippines, which were suppressed by the Spanish imposition of Catholicism. Through movement, the materiality of their bodily presence and the accompanying sci-fi soundtrack, this work proposes the foundation of a queer mythology; the nascent moment of a ‘queer spiritual force’ coming out of an apocalyptic era, perhaps our current one, that has arrived to refund a new kind of humanity. Void, this speculative new God, appears on earth to live in the mortal world to better understand what it means to be a god of a new time. In the words of the artist, the impetus for creating this work is to decolonize the self and to question heteronormative ideologies that were implemented in the Philippines and across the world by the west through religion. It takes as a starting point the Filipino pre-colonial identity which is fluid and doesn’t conform to binary representation, as is the case in many other pre-colonial societies. -Inti Atawallpa Guerrero

“Pearls are the final form of all pains and hurt of society. Void gathers all of them and produces pearls and keeps them in the astral realm. Where its memories are kept in order for the gods to learn and archive humanity’s pain.”