https://www.98-b.org/esc-biennale

ESC Biennale, Escolta Street, Binondo, Manila (2026)

21/01/2026

expr~ #3
3.1: Tagiliran (Dec 9, Martes) | 3.2: Kantuhan (Dec 10, Miyerkules) | 3.3: Labasan (Dec 11, Huwebes) | 3.0: Looban (Dec 13, Sabado) | 5:00pm onwards
Escolta St & Dome, First United Building

In the third iteration of our experimental performance program, expr~, we brought our screens, speakers, and instruments out at the mercy of Escolta's hectic streets.

Musicians Poser Cat, Mudskipper, RAMBO, r00ted, bower gra, and Jade Fake played as they listened to every passing car, tricycle, truck, and kuliglig. The muddy strides of passersby congregated around our makeshift stages, coming and going, tuning in and out as they please. Some lingered to listen some more. Younger audiences stopped by the performance tables and screamed at the presence of a microphone, took a portrait, or witnessed themselves dancing in front of the screen.

We positioned the street as a visual score, with an installation of screens made by does not kompyut Studio. It grappled with everything it tried to see with its three cameras, the eye to the ear of the same passing car, tricycle, truck, and kuliglig. The same passersby, friends, and those who reside in Escolta. The large micromatic umbrella, in all its utilities, not only shielded us during the unpredictable rainy December weather, it invited us to gather in the meantime, or linger some more.

The last performance was held inside the Dome. The screen cart was taken in as another signal to tambay, and then followed a poetic prompt reflecting on the past three outdoor performances. It recounted the streets' loudspeakers, screechings of metal, wood, and candy wrappers--and its whispers, the faint calls of a bat, the swooning low waves of the Pasig river, or an occasional cry of a balinsasayaw. The sounds from the musicians followed, harsh like metal then gentle like a minor wave.

Supported by Goethe Institut Philippinen. This event is part of ESC Biennale 2025 “Tambay Lang”, supported by the British Council’s Biennials Connect Grant.

Photos: Reanna , Kiel , Shara

20/01/2026

Walking in Between with Alisa Oleva
Dec 14, 2025 | Linggo | 4:00pm onwards
Escolta St

Led by Alisa Oleva, the session opened with mapping how each person arrived at 98B, grounding the group in the idea that while we come from different places, we meet in the same point in the city.

From the First United Building, we walked to the Escolta street sign and back, with each segment shaped by a simple prompt. As Alisa shared, “walking offers a space of the in between—of being on the move and the potential that comes with walking together.”

The activity was a collective walk through Escolta, inviting participants to experience the street through shared movement and attention. Participants moved as one using an elastic band, traced surfaces they wished to be remembered, looked at Escolta through small mirrors, and marked spaces with chalk. Through these gestures, the walk became a reflective way of listening to the street and re-imagining how public space is experienced and held in common.

This event is part of ESC Biennale 2025 “Tambay Lang”, supported by the British Council’s Biennials Connect Grant.

Photos: Isaiah Omana , Lk Rigor

20/01/2026

Escolta Street Radio Walk with Alisa Oleva
Dec 12, 2025 | Biyernes | 7:00pm onwards
Escolta St

Radio Walk moved from Manila to Iceland through a live broadcast along Escolta. Beginning at the gate of the First United Building, sounds captured on a phone were transmitted in real time to Seyðisfjörður Community Radio. It started 7:00 PM in Manila, 11:00 AM in Iceland. The walk invited participants to pay attention to the street, listening from their own positions.

With the only instruction being to hold the phone, the walk followed a simple route: from the First United Building to the Escolta street sign near the Chinatown arch, then back alongside the Pasig River through Plaza Yuchengco for a brief stop overlooking the Post Office, before returning to where we began. When the phone was passed to Istifen Dagang Kanal, another ESC grantee, the broadcast shifted into an impromptu radio show: narrating what they see on the street, sharing greetings, reflecting on the city as it unfolded.

Listen to the broadcast here:
https://m.soundcloud.com/seydisfjordur/escolta-street-radio-walk

This event is part of ESC Biennale 2025 “Tambay Lang”, supported by the British Council’s Biennials Connect Grant.

20/01/2026

Lakwatsa with Alisa Oleva
Dec 9, 2025 | Martes
98B HQ, Escolta St

Lakwatsa invited participants to walk the streets of Escolta on a rainy afternoon, slowing down with the city. Led by Alisa Oleva, the UK grantee for the ESC Biennale, the walk brought together Spore Node and Para Sa Sining, creatives under HUB Make Lab’s Open Sesame: Collective Residency Program.

Moving through the area with prompts from Alisa, the group walked despite the rain, thinking about their relationship to the city differently -- how they navigate it, respond to its conditions, and situate their practices within its everyday flows.

This event is part of ESC Biennale 2025 “Tambay Lang”, supported by the British Council’s Biennials Connect Grant. Additional support by HUB Make Lab.

20/01/2026

Fold, Staple, Gather
Library Una
Dec 7-14, 2025
Unit G4, Burke Building

For the weeklong ESC Biennale in December 2025, Library Una took over Unit G4 Burke Building in Escolta, into a space for reading, listening, creating, and gathering.

This is an invitation for the Escolta community and larger network of ESC Biennale friends and participants to reimagine what a reading and listening space can be. The space transformed into a library featuring independently published materials from Library Una and the 98B collection. Throughout the week, the library shifted and reconfigured, at different times, a copy center, a meeting place, a workshop studio, or a listening room.

The Library:
* became a site for co-creation and experimentation where visitors and invited artists can transform reading and listening into active, collective gestures — from stand up comedy activated by visual slides from a zine, to improvised performances, listening sessions, and small publishing experiments that unfold throughout the week;
* had an open catalog for anyone to contribute and annotate materials — expanding the library’s collection through shared references, new zines made during the week, or recordings that trace the ongoing conversations and encounters within the space;
* became a shared space for collectives and initiatives with a DIY/DIWO ethos — a temporary home for those working at the intersections of sound, publishing, and everyday cultural practice to meet, collaborate, and imagine new forms of gathering.

Library Una - a reading & listening space. Established for the love of physical media, the D.I.Y., and the ephemera.

Shared, curated & cared by: Tita Gulaman, Sorry Sampaguita & Tainan Boy

This exhibit is part of ESC Biennale 2025 “Tambay Lang”, which is supported by the British Council’s Biennials Connect Grant.

Photos: Isaiah Omana

19/01/2026

AMBAGAN with ESC Projects Grantees
Dec 12, 2025 | Biyernes | 4:00-6:00 PM
98B HQ

The session began by asking everyone what wish they would want to be granted, framing the conversation around the opportunities and possibilities that grants can enable. Istifen Dagang Kanal and Alisa Oleva, grantees for the 2025 ESC Biennale, together with 2024 ESC Projects grantees Mae Aguinaldo and Mica Cabildo, took part in a shared conversation with the attendees about site-responsive artistic practice in Escolta.

Through chikahan, the group talked about how ESC Projects and the ESC Biennale started, why artists propose projects to ESC Projects, and what they think about Escolta as a location for artistic work.

Mica, Mae, Alisa, and Istifen also shared their own ESC projects -- from proposal to implementation -- discussing challenges, navigating limited resources, and what to do when funding is not available.

The conversation also touched on the First United Building as an artist center and a site of intersection for many people, while emphasizing that the work should not be confined within its walls. Participants explored ideas of community, the building’s role beyond being a “white cube,” and activating spaces outside the building to engage with the larger Escolta area.

The last Ambagan of the year offered a moment to reflect on ESC Projects and 98B’s work in fostering artistic practice.

This event is part of ESC Biennale 2025 “Tambay Lang”, supported by the British Council’s Biennials Connect Grant.

19/01/2026

Salu-Salo with British Council
Dec 11, 2025 | Huwebes | 11:00am-2:00pm
Dome, First United Building

Salu-salo at the ESC Biennale brought together insights, reflections, and lived experiences shared by artists across disciplines and generations. Taking cue from the biennale’s curatorial theme "tambay", the gathering created space for presence without pressure, time that stretched, and conversation without a fixed agenda.

Over food and open exchange, the discussion centered on how artists and cultural workers sustain their practices: the challenges they face, the conditions they work within, and the ways they navigate and overcome these realities.

We were grateful for the contributions of Shelagh Wright and Peter Jenkinson OBE, alongside Katherine Nuñez of 98B and Jodinand Aguillon of HUB Make Lab, both based at the First United Building, and representatives of other creative spaces in the building and our wider community.

This event is organized by HUB Make Lab and is part of ESC Biennale 2025 “Tambay Lang”, supported by the British Council’s Biennials Connect Grant.

Photos: Isaiah Omana

19/01/2026

Hilata with Matereality
Dec 13, 2025 | 3:00–5:00 PM
Dome, First United Building

Hilata, Matereality’s tambay program, invited participants to rest together through intentional stillness. From the Filipino word meaning to sprawl or lie down with limbs relaxed, the gathering centered on doing nothing as a shared act of care.

The session opened with kamustahan among artist and pariocipanrs, followed by a collective lying down beneath the projection of Lostalgia (Lull a bye)—a ceiling video layered with humming lullabies by Annie Pacaña . A second video by Pauline Despi accompanied the quiet viewing. Titat Ledesma closed the space with a brass bowl sound bath for contemplation and release.

Part of ESC Biennale 2025 “Tambay Lang”
Supported by British Council Biennials Connect Grant
With additional support from Outlooke Pointe Foundation

18/01/2026

Low Bandwidth Dreams
Dec 7-14, 2025
Glass House & HUB: Make Lab, First United Building

Salawaki (Siquijor/Davao)
Rhaz Oriente (Manila)
Franco Mamaril (San Pedro)
Roan Alvarez (Dasmariñas)
Luyo_Space (Bogo)
Gab Ferrer (Valencia)
KoloWn (Cyberpurok)

The Internet Pavilion started as a way to extend our art practices beyond the traditional confines of making and exhibition. At first we even struggled to build a simple HTML page but along the way we found many collaborators who helped and guided us, and tools have become more helpful and accessible. While this exploration centers on the internet, we are glad the project has extended beyond screens. In 2024 we had an exhibition at Anima Art Space; in March 2025 we presented (0,0,0) at Vinyl on Vinyl; and in July 2025 we participated in a show at Gravity Art Space.

Going forward, we will call the project “Low Bandwidth Dreams.” Our focus is not primarily on producing outputs, products, or features, but on exploration, experimentation, and learning. Low Bandwidth Dreams will be an online, peer-to-peer exploratory project — perhaps the real art is the journey itself. The name “Low Bandwidth Dreams” was suggested by Franco Mamaril and voted on by the participants. It reflects the fact that more than half of the participants currently live in rural areas where communication infrastructure is not as robust as in cities: frequent brownouts, weak signals, and data-capped internet are common. We are also using free-tier servers with limited storage, renewal cycle of domain is annual, and the ephemerality of technologies and its topics many become obsolete in less than a year, some to extent even just months.

Read the full text through the link or the QR code below:
https://github.com/Internet-Pavilion-PH/notes/blob/main/cyber_purok_notes.md

This exhibit is part of ESC Biennale 2025 “Tambay Lang”, which is supported by the British Council’s Biennials Connect Grant.

17/01/2026

Matereality: Hilata
Dec 7 to 14, 2025
First Coworking Community, First United Building

Catalina Africa (Baler)
Cindy Aquino (Malabon)
Con Cabrera (Quezon City)
Veronica Lazo Dayrit (Cainta)
Pauline Despi (Paranaque)
Titat Ledesma (Marikina)
Potti Lesaguis (Quezon City)
Masi Oliveria (Baguio)
Annie Pacaña (Quezon City)
Tanya Villanueva and Olive Madrigal (Quezon City)
Len Len (Quezon City)
Yllang Montenegro (Makati)
Jenny Suarez (Antipolo City)
Jeona Zoleta (Taguig)

Mother refuses to stay filed in the dusty archive of blame. She becomes the art monster instead, glitching between domestic and digital realities, paint in one hand and phone in the other. The “monstrous feminine” was meant to terrify; now she is mostly under slept and buried in group chats about class snacks.

Matereality (mater + reality + materiality) gathers artist mothers resisting singular roles. First shown at Artinformal in 2022 during the pandemic, followed by a second iteration at UP Fine Arts Gallery in 2024 on work life art balance, this third chapter meets ESC Biennale’s Tambay through hilata — lying down as overflow, drift, fatigue, and making.

The artist mother invents a self beyond saint, martyr, monster, or escape. She is hybrid: art and labor, disruption and care.

Here art and life collapse into material. Thought leaks through thread, memory, milk stains, errands, lullabies. The works do not leave the domestic; they sprawl inside it. The domestic turns mythic, and myth returns gently to earth.

The mother is the artist. The material is her life. To mother and make now is to hold the sacred and the monstrous at once, to lie down and still dream creation.

Text by Masi Oliveria
Curated by Annie Pacaña

Full text:
https://bit.ly/esc-matereality

Part of ESC Biennale 2025 Tambay Lang
Supported by British Council Biennials Connect Grant
Additional support from Outlooke Pointe Foundation

17/01/2026

Ambagan tungkol sa International Artist Residencies
Dec 8, 2025 | Lunes | 4:00–6:00 PM
98B HQ

Artists Jazel Kristin, Lala Monserrat, Ralph C. Lumbres, Ness Roque, Salikhain Kolektib, and Miaochen Huang shared stories from residencies and international exchanges. We talked about the challenges of choosing and applying for opportunities, adapting to new environments, and building creative networks abroad. The conversation also explored why stepping outside the Philippines can be an important part of growth for artists and cultural workers.

The Japan Foundation Manila and JCAP were also there, joining the discussion and sharing their insights.

This Ambagan event is part of the public programming of ESC Biennale 2025 Tambay Lang, supported by the British Council Biennials Connect Grant, with additional support from The Japan Foundation, Manila and The Den.

Photo:

ESC Biennale

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