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Countdown to Charter Day

Started in 2004, the Countdown is a giant street party with live bands as the city keeps vigil for its 72^nd year celebration.

72 seconds to midnight of October 18, or the eve of October 19, the party counts down and at 12 midnight, city officials lead by Mayor Evelio Leonardia, and the people partying at the New Government Center, sing “Happy Birthday, Bacolod!”

It’s 72 seconds because Bacolod ushers into its 72^nd year as a chartered city.

The party at the NGC will be beamed through giant screens at the old City Hall, where there will also be a simultaneous partying.

It can be said that the traditional Countdown to Charter Day has brought street parties to Bacolod.

Electric MassKara

Now on its ^4th year, the Electric MassKara has successfully earned its own distinction as another mardi gras of the festival, apart from the Street Dance competition.

With the bright innovation of converting the Lacson St. (from the 5^th St. to North Drive) into a Tourism Strip as an alternative party venue to the public plaza, the birth of Electric MassKara has added glitter to the evenings of the festival.

For two nights from October 15 to 16, starting 8 p.m. the Electric MassKara will showcase colorfully lit dancers and carnaval-like features.

While the dancers are performing on the ledge, the audiences enjoy a comfortable view from their vantage points, which are actually a long line of kiosks of food and drinks from two sides of the street.

Majica Masskara

The 7^th installation of Majica MassKara (magical mask), just like last year, will take art out of the four walls of the gallery, and into the streets.

Project directors Dennis Ascalon and Manny Montelibano said they will introduce “public art” into the consciousness of the masses and hopefully provoke sensible discussions among ordinary people with the 7th edition of Majica.

As an installation work, it will feature a tent surrounded with several artists doing painting works on interested revelers. There will be projected lights that will shine on the tent and on the painting works.

“The idea for this year’s Majica is that the audiences can walk around the tent and actually see how artists work,” Ascalon said.

Beside the tent is a projection work that is a video installation titled “Adventures of a Masked Man” by Montelibano. The video will show artists wearing masks, going around to different public areas in Bacolod, and the shots will focus on the expression of the people who encounter them.

Majica will be held simultaneously with the Electric MassKara on Oct. 15- 16, starting from 6 p.m.

Since it started in 2004, more than 100 Negrense artists have collaborated in the Majica MassKara. Majica is a challenge for artists to make people see things differently through their art, Ascalon said.

Last year, Majica MassKara created a float that was the artists’ vision of what the MassKara festival can evolve into the future.

Majica MassKara was conceptualized to tap the vision of the Negrense artists as a way to bring them back to the MassKara Festival.

With an overall vision to reengineer the MassKara Festival into the global festival that it really is, the organizers launched Majica to address the perception that the festival has lost some of the real spirit of the celebration to commercialism.

Aside from that, Mayor Evelio Leonardia told the festival organizers that the MassKara Festival  needed an artistic shot in the arm and he said among the measures that needed to be done was to  bring back the focus on masks, says festival director Eli Francis Tajanlangit.

MassKara is, after all, a festival of masks, the mayor said, thus to bring in fresh perspective into the festival, it needed to be seen from the prism of artists who see things that most people don’t.

It turned out the organizers were looking at the right direction. And since then, seven years ago now, there is no turning back for Majica.

Concept

The original concept of Majica MassKara at its inception is to elevate mask-making back into the level of art form and dignify the symbolism of a festival that owes its roots to the irrepressible optimism of a people in the face of tragedy.

The local artists in Bacolod took a deeper take on the icon and recaptured its diverse emotional realities in works of art.

Majica MassKara is a visual arts exhibit, spearheaded by internationally-known Bacolod artists led by Charlie Co. The exhibit is known for its daring, forward-looking vision, playing around the idea of “magical masks.

This exhibit is usually a collaborative exercise of Bacolod’s installation artists, writers, filmmakers, fashion designer, stage directors, and social entrepreneurs who all want to exhibit an art show that will challenge the mindset and provoke discussions about the socio-cultural dimensions of our way of life.

Evolution

Majica 1 was an invitational exhibit that brought together the art community of Bacolod—both established and aspiring new artists.

Held at Rizal Elementary School in 2004, it gave birth to an annual artistic event that made it a point to take the pulse of the city and hit right at the heart of the matter.

The following year, the artists-organizers decided to take Majica deeper into the mask’s point of view though the visual interplay of a groundbreaking fusion of videography and visual arts.

Majica 2 was held at Gallery Orange for the first time.

At a conceptual mask-based Visual Arts Video Installation Exhibition on October 5 to 31, 2005, curator Dennis Ascalon explained the exercise of fusion as another manifestation of the seamlessness of art forms.

The visual arts video installation featured 7-foot masked characters as well as huge masks equipped with a security system and video cameras that provided the frozen faces with an external vision.

The sensory-experimental nature of the experimental exhibition was a fresh attempt to communicate to an audience. Around this time, video installation was welcomed into the fold of the visual art sensibility as an emerging medium in the Visayas.

Majica 3, led by Charlie Co as project director, was a multi-media presentation that combined digital art display, installation arts, sculptures, puppetry, movement and video production.

The 2006 exhibition, held at Gallery Orange, attempted to go beyond the usual two-dimensional painting exhibitions.

Barry Cervantes’ ‘Parada de Majica’ provided a surreal entry for gallery guests with different-sized papier mache figures parading on the gallery stairway. The digital art display by photographer and digital artist RJ Lacson, depicted his interpretation of MassKara, and made use of large-format images hanging on different levels.

Majica 4 in 2007, dubbed “Club Majica @ Orange,” was a concept that was beyond gender and had neither racial inhibitions nor cultural limitations. It was anchored on structural instead of a thematic concept, says Charlie Co, project director of the event.

Club Majica was opened in a uniquely participative manner where guests became club members for a night and joined it as part of the live exhibition the minute they donned a mask.

The group exhibition was composed of large collection of 25 installation works by 25 Negrense artists, all anchored on structural theme that played out the artists’ take on humanity as expressed though the fundamental female form.

The entire body of works, along with the video installation set-up on the gallery landing and the works featured on the bridge, intended to start people thinking and questioning individual biases and perspectives which otherwise will not have a voice, used to being relegated behind the radiance of smiling masks.

Majica 5 (2008) is described by the organizers as “a powerful show on the socio-cultural realities of our place, and art show that is a thorough and thought provoking visual discussion of our migrant past and migrant present.”

Held at Gallery Orange, this fifth installation was led by Manny Montelibano as project director.

In a collaborative exercise, Gallery Orange was transformed into a multi-media installation work that can be viewed as both literal and abstract all at once.

Majica 6 (2009), on the other hand, was the first installation that went out of the art gallery. As organizers desired to bring art into public consciousness, the idea of staging the art exhibit as a float was conceptualized.

The 2009 Majica thus virtually gave birth to this year’s float parade competition of the Electric MassKara.

The “public art” display last year successfully reached its objective: to draw interaction from ordinary people and challenge them to probe deeper the things around them through the art works displayed in Majica.

The Majica float was on exhibit for four nights: in the public plaza on the first night, at a parade along Lacson St. on the second night, at 21 Restaurant on the third night, and at the New Government Center on the fourth night.*

MassKara Queen

Highly regarded as the most prestigious beauty pageant in Bacolod, the MassKara Queen pageant is home to the most beautiful Bacoleñas, many of whom, after their coronations as MassKara Queens, also compete in regional and national beauty pageants, and win more crowns.

This year’s MassKara Queen Coronation Night will be on October 10. Prior to the this grand night, the candidates add glamour to the start of the festivities by showcasing their best during the Press Presentation, Festival Costume, Swimsuit, and Talent competitions.

As in 2007 and 2009, the Search for MassKara Queen will be handled by ABS-CBN Bacolod.

The MassKara Queen will then officially join in the remaining major events of the festival, such as the countdown to the Charter Anniversary.

MassKara Queen Coronation Night

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