• Duration: 60 minutes
• No language skills required (lyrics in English)
• 18.09. 7 p.m. Festival Opening with poetic Keynote by Jaya Jacobo, speeches and snacks, followed by a karaoke party and Screen Printing Station
• 19.09. Artist talk afterwards
• 19.09. Touch tour and audio description
• Audioflyer (SoundCloud)

Accessibility of Event

Accessibility of Location

• Live audio description in German for blind and visually impaired viewers
• The tactile tour starts at 7 pm and lasts approx. 30 minutes. The meeting point is in front of the entrance to the auditorium.
• You can obtain the receivers and headphones for the audio description from the front of house staff at the entrance to the auditorium.
• Please let us know via barrierefreiheit@mousonturm.de or 01590 - 184 70 05 if you would like to take advantage of the audio description & tactile tour
• Audioflyer (SoundCloud)

Lead Artist, Concept & Choreography, Performance: Eisa Jocson
Artistic Collaborator, Performer: Bunny Cadag
Artistic Collaborator, Performer Cathrine Go
Artistic Collaborator, Sound Design, & Music Direction: Teresa Barrozo
Artistic Collaborator, Video Projections, & Production Management: Franchesca Casauay
AUdio description authors: Anno Kötter, Paula Elena Noack, Dana Lienert

“Sincerely Yours, the Philippines” is a project by Künstler*innenhaus Mousonturm in cooperation with the Goethe-Institut Philippines. Funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation through the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media. Supported by the Kulturfonds Frankfurt RheinMain, the Goethe-Institut and “Philippines - Guest of Honor at Frankfurter Buchmesse 2025”.

Eisa Jocson is a visual artist and choreographer based in Manila (Philippines). She is a trained visual artist and had her first dance experiences in ballet and pole dance.  Her work exposes the politics of the body in the service and entertainment industry from the unique socio-economic perspective of the Philippines. She explores how the body moves and the conditions under which it moves - be it social mobility or movement out of the Philippines through migration. In all of her creations - from pole dance, macho dance and hostess work to her studies of Disney princesses, Superwoman and zoo animals - capital is the driving force of movement, pushing the conscripted body into spatial geographies. Jocson has a close working relationship with the Künstler*innenhaus Mousonturm. The Mousonturm has co-produced or produced many of her works. She has presented many of them at numerous major festivals and regularly performs at theaters around the world; with the solo triptych: Death of the Pole Dancer (2011), Macho Dancer (2013) and Host (2015) as well as with the HAPPYLAND series: Princess (2017), Your Highness (2017), Manila Zoo (2021). The Filipino Superwoman Band (2019), a work about the affective labor of Filipino musicians overseas, was commissioned by the Sharjah Biennial. She is a winner of the 2018 Cultural Center of the Philippines 13 Artists Award, winner of the Hugo Boss Asia Art Award in 2019 and received the 2021 SeMa-HANA Award for the work TFSB2020: Superwoman, Empire Of Care at the Seoul MediaCity Biennale.

Bunny Cadag is an artist creating at the nexus between craftwork and performance art; within the tensions and transitions between theatre, film as well as installation; and through the voice as a fundamental site of creative resistance and poetic reexistence. Her practice is anchored in indigenous gender diversity and contemporary gender equality and shared through a trans approach to healing and song alongside which she nurtures a decolonial composure toward folklore and tradition. Cadag’s performances are often participatory and community-based, amplifying voices of the marginalised while thoughtfully navigating defamiliarised shapes and spaces with compassion and generosity. Cadag was one of the recipients of “Para Site’s 2021 No-Exit Grant for Unpaid Artistic Labour – Philippines”. Her work “Munimuni (Muse)” was part of the exhibition at Tai Kwun Contemporary (Myth Makers-Spectrosynthesis III) in Hong Kong from December 2022 to April 2023. Her works have been part of a group exhibition entitled “Object Orientations” at Gravity Art Space in Manila, 2023. She finished a Certificate Programme for Critical Practice in Contemporary Performance under Dance Nucleus in Singapore. Cadag lives in and works from Nasugbu, Batangas, Philippines.

Cathrine Go is a performing artist and educator from Manila, Philippines, embodying a multifaceted approach to various artistic forms. She participated in several local theater productions and international contemporary performances. In 2015, she represented the Philippines in theater at the 2015 ROK-ASEAN in Seoul, South Korea. In 2017, she joined Sipat Lawin’s LAGABLAB Idea Ignition Launchpad Artist Residency Program as an artist-in-residence, where she developed her first devised research-performance work, Ghost. Currently, Go is a lead teacher at a progressive school in Manila. She also performs as host and character performer for live events. In 2023, she co-founded Lakbay Kwento: Stories That Move, an initiative that promotes literacy literacy and cultural consciousness by reading Filipino children’s books in different community spaces.

Franchesca Casauay is a cultural worker with an interdisciplinary practice, working with performance, new media, and various hybrid formats. Wielding multiple skill sets—from curatorial to production, from administrative to creative—she often serves as the bridge between institutions and artists. In different capacities she has worked with local and international organizations, festivals, and collaborators, with previous cultural engagements in Europe and the Asia-Pacific, such as guest curator for public programs at the 22nd Biennale of Sydney (NIRIN) in 2020; festival delegate at SONICA Glasgow 2024; Manila production coordinator for the Philippine Pavillon at the 19th Venice Biennale of Architecture 2025; and fellow at the CIFAS Producers Academy 2025 in Brussels. In her spare time, she volunteers for cultural initiatives and advocacy groups in her neighborhood in Quezon City, wherein she currently lives and works.

Teresa Barrozo is a sound artist, composer and curious listener with a wide range of work for film, theater and dance. Her compositions have been featured in the Asian Composers League Festivals in Japan and Thailand, and in the Asia-Pacific Weeks in Germany. Her film music works have been part of major international film festivals in Cannes, Venice, Toronto, Locarno and Berlin, to name a few. She was a recipient of the Ani ng Dangal Award from the Philippines’ National Commission for Culture and the Arts and has attended the Biosphere Soundscape International Internship Program. In 2014, she became a fellow of the Asian Cultural Council in New York, where she focused on sound art and design, performance, and contemporary sonic practices. She first collaborated with Eisa Jocson in the context of the piece “Your Highness.” At the festival “Sincerely Yours, the Philippines,” audiences can dive into Teresa Barrozo’s music in no less than three works: “The Filipino Superwoman Band,” the haunting film “Aswang,” and the powerful performance “The Singer”.

• smoke machine
• loud sound
• flashing lights

“Sincerely Yours, the Philippines” Screen Printing Station

Festival look to go: On September 18 and 20, there will be a small screen printing workshop in the Mousonturm foyer. Just bring a shirt, hoodie, jute bag, or anything else made of fabric - and have the festival motif (design: Art Director Stefan Neubauer) printed directly onto it.

When: Thursday, September 18, and Saturday, September 20, from 6 to 10 p.m. each day.
Where: Mousonturm foyer, 1st floor.
Important: All smooth textiles can be printed on (preferably cotton, without seams).
Screen printing artists: Andreas Diefenbach and Veronika Weingärtner

Wie wurde die „Filipino Superwoman Band“ gegründet?

„The Filipino Superwoman Band“ entstand im Anschluss an meine Stück „Princess“. In diesem Stück entdeckte ich die Stimme als einen wichtigen Aspekt von Verkörperung. Einmal freigesetzt, gab es kein Zurück mehr – und ein Thema, das ich lange gemieden hatte, wurde zur nächsten Herausforderung: die singende Filipina, ein weiterer „Arbeitsexport“ der Philippinen. Der mühsame Prozess, singen zu lernen, brachte viele Fragen hervor: Wessen Ohren bedienen wir? Wer bestimmt, was gut klingt? Welche Lieder singen wir, für wen und warum?

2018 habe ich zunächst Bunny [Cadag] eingeladen an der Arbeit teilzunehmen, die Barsängerin war und in einer eigenen Performance 24 Stunden gesungen hat.  Sie empfahl Kite [Cathrine Go] (eine Sängerin, die an vielen Wettbewerben teilgenommen hat und Interpretin von Disney-Prinzessinnen). Teresa [Barrozo] kannte ich aus meiner Produktion „Your Highness“, also bat ich sie, unsere musikalische Leitung zu übernehmen – sie empfahl wiederum Chesca [Franchesca Casauay] als Produktionsleiterin und Dramaturgin. Ich erklärte ihnen, dass wir eine reine Frauen-Coverband gründen würden, die die affektive Arbeit philippinischer Coverbands thematisiert.

Als ich sie nach ihren persönlichen Hymnen fragte, landeten wir bei dem Song „Superwoman“ von Karyn White, der auf Bunnys Liste stand. Der Text über die affektive Arbeit einer Frau gegenüber ihrem Partner berührte uns sofort, da er die Sorgearbeit widerspiegelt, die philippinische Arbeitsmigrantinnen leisten. So wurde der Song zum Kern unseres Repertoires – und zum Namen unserer Band.

Im Stück begegnen uns verschiedenen Formen des Singens. Kannst du sie für uns einordnen?

· Diva-Kontesera-Sektion – Amerikanische Powerballaden oder Standards, mit denen man Gesangswettbewerbe gewinnt (Ort: die Bühne)

· Mittags-Varieté-Musikshow – Unterhaltung zur Mittagszeit

· Intimes, persönliches Singen im häuslichen Raum – beim Erledigen von Hausarbeit und Sorgearbeit

· Worship-Sektion – Evangelikales Singen, leidenschaftliche Lobpreis- und Anbetungslieder (Ort: Kirchen)

· Pasyon-Sektion – eine Tradition der Fastenzeit, bei der über Stunden vom Leben und Leiden Christi gesungen wird. Sie ist verwandt mit dem epischen Singen indigener Kosmologien verwandt und hat dieses ersetzt. Dauerhaft, repetitiv, nasal-metallisch klingend (Ort: offene, gemeinschaftliche Räume)

Sponsor-Sektion – Kurze, eingängige Werbejingles (Ort: TV- und Radio-Werbung)

Karaoke ist eine wichtige Säule im Stück und ein wesentlicher Teil der philippinischen Kultur. Warum?

Karaoke ist ein Mittel, um sich individuell auszudrücken auch für das gemeinsame Beisammensein. Auf den Philippinen ist es ein beliebter Zeitvertreib – zu Hause oder bei gesellschaftlichen Anlässen wie Geburtstagen, Weihnachtsfeiern und sogar Beerdigungen. Es wird auch als eine Form der Therapie eingesetzt, um beispielsweise ein gebrochenes Herzen zu heilen oder aufgestaute Wut loszuwerden.

Ich denke, dass unsere tiefe Liebe zu Karaoke möglicherweise von unseren mündlichen Traditionen kommt – mit ihrem Ursprung in präkolonialen epischen Gesängen, über Kirchengesänge bis hin zu Gesangswettbewerben. Singen ist in den Philippinen seit langem ein Mittel, um Wissen weiterzugeben und das Überleben zu sichern.