KAAGI

Tracing Visayan Identities is a transdisciplinary conference that will explore the various ways the Visayan Region and its peoples are constructed through cultural texts. Taking its cue from the Cebuano word for history – and the Hiligaynon word ági meaning  “traces of passing especially on water” — “Kaagi” is interested in the ways in which texts, objects and performances negotiate, mediate and translate the “Bisaya” as a collective identifier of culture, language and artistic practice.

How are the Visayans represented in photography, music, literature, the visual arts, and performance,? What is the place of the Visayas in the art and literary histories of the nation? What are its self-identifying markers for selfhood and belonging? What are the contestations involved in inter-regional wranglings between geography and identity? What are its local histories and how are these embodied in Visayan art, performance and literature?

This conference aims to bring together academics in the fields of the humanities and the social sciences, as well as artists, writers and performers that are based in the Visayas. The objective of the conference is to bring together key people in Visayan scholarship and cultural production and develop a body of discourse on Visayan cultural practices.