Emancipromise

The Emancipromise project is a visualization of a phrase from a speech by Jose Marie Borja Viceral, professionally known as Vice Genda (Beautiful Vice), an influential television host and comedian from the Philippines. They are best known for their stance against gender oppression and are also the first openly gay endorser for Globe Telecom. In a moving speech at “Keri Beks: The First Gay Congress” held in Manila, the capital of the Philippines, Vice Genda proclaimed and reiterated that the LGBTQ community has an identity and a voice of its own. This particular phrase – “We have a voice. You and I have a voice. And to hear it is their only choice”, went on to become a lauded and popular identity-defining moment for the LGBTQ community in the Philippines. I envisioned revealing this phrase, through visual and material representation as for me, this call for gender inclusivity needed to appeal to not only the sense of sound but also the senses of sight and touch. The larger objective of this critical-making project, however, is ‘remediation.’ Through remediating the digital soundbite into a more material form, the project participates in archiving voices from the global LGBTQ+ community, whose voices are increasingly being eliminated.