MIF25 Preview: From Ancestral Visions to Sonic Sculptures

MIF25 Preview: From Ancestral Visions to Sonic Sculptures Manchester International Festival is back. Maja Lorkowska looks at the bold and eclectic programme of visual art, music, performance—and everything in between.

Now one of the world’s leading festivals for new work, MIF has its roots right here on the Oxford Road Corridor. Monkey: Journey to the West at the Palace Theatre was the headline event of its first edition was—a striking collaboration between director Chen Shi-Zheng and Gorillaz founders Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett. That fusion of music, animation and live performance set the tone for a festival defined by original interdisciplinary collaboration.

Since then, the Corridor has hosted some of the festival’s most memorable works: the David Lynch takeover of HOME in 2019; the extraordinary coming together of Gerhard Richter and Arvo Pärt across the Whitworth and Bridgewater Hall; Willem Dafoe and Mikhail Baryshnikov at The Palace and unique gigs from the likes of Elbow with the Hallé; PJ Harvey and De La Soul. In 2017, New Order recruited students from the Royal Northern College of Music for their acclaimed run at Old Granada Studios.

The Oxford Road Corridor is a vital part of Manchester’s cultural ecology, from the pipeline of young talent to its galleries, theatres and gig venues which attract around 4.7 million visitors a year. While there has been much investment in establishing Aviva Studios, MIF’s purpose-built home, there is something special about the festival remaining true to its roots as a city-wide celebration of new work.

Here’s a rundown of what’s happening here on the Corridor…

Art collective FAFSWAG take over HOME with their project FALE SĀ / SACRED HOUSE. The group is made up of Queer Indigenous creatives grappling with the fragility of ‘home’ in the face of displacement. Two years in the making, this three-part exploration has resulted in the creation of a ceremonial house inhabited by ancestral stories from the Pacific Diaspora of Aotearoa New Zealand and the wider Moana.

The journey begins with Sauniga where dance, chanting and cultural rituals combine to honour our earliest ancestors: animals from the sky, land and ocean. The next part, Fāgogo is an exhibition of digital art rooted in pressing issues facing Pacific peoples, infused with ancestral memories and traditional storytelling. Finally, Talanoa invites the public to take part in discussions and film screenings by filmmakers from the Pacific region.

At the Whitworth, you will find Santiago Yahuarcani: The Beginning of Knowledge, an exhibition brimming with otherworldly creatures, powerful animals and luminous mark-making. The self-taught painter works in a remote town in northern Peru and belongs to the Aimeni clan (the White Heron clan) of the Uitoto Nation of northern Amazonia. His work is not bound by art history or transient trends, instead harnessing the sacred knowledge and ancestral wisdom of his people.

Yahuarcani’s paintings confront colonial legacies and environmental destruction, urging us to restore our connection with nature. Along with their raw honesty, the paintings are imbued with the tales and sacred knowledge usually kept by the clan elders. The artist always uses llanchama as his canvas, a cloth made from tree bark, along with natural dyes. His process and themes come from periods of contemplation of his homeland, while Uitoto myths and spirit guardians make their way into his compositions.

This show is a rare opportunity to witness powerful, otherworldly visions that are as illuminating as they are urgent.

While the RNCM may seem like an unlikely venue for visual arts, Germaine Kruip’s A Possibility blends theatre, music, sculpture and digital media to create an experience that will leave you questioning your perception. Kruip is a trained scenographer and no stranger to creating gripping, immersive experiences using just light, shadow and reflection.

As the title suggests, The Possibility is an open-ended exploration of how we see and hear. It is split into two parts, the first of which harnesses her previous work A Possibility of an Abstraction (2014) and uses the architecture itself as a character. With light and reflections dancing around the theatre, Kruip brings to life the usually overlooked setting of the performance.

Part two is elevated by live performers: percussionists Youjin Lee, Akane Tominaga, Victor Lodeon and Gil Hyoungkwon enter the stage with unique brass sculptures designed by Kruip. These sculptural instruments were developed in collaboration with renowned German manufacturer Thein Brass, and operate both as props for the stage set and beautifully functional tools for the musicians. The score is composed by Emily Howard and Hahn Rowe (who returns after MIF19’s The Anvil: An Elegy for Peterloo).

Germaine Kruip is inspired by ‘ungraspable phenomena’, such as the passage of time and the way the light changes throughout the day. The resulting works are as impermanent and enchanting as the concepts they’re sparked by.

The home of emerging theatre, Contact, becomes a haven for Balmy Army x Balmy Ukraine, a project that invites young people to get together, get angry and get creative.

Spearheaded by artist the vacuum cleaner, Balmy Army is a movement for mental health care led by young people who have been left behind by the obviously lacking system. When the words “help is available” lost their meaning, they began to organise, act on their own behalf and Balmy Army was born premiering at MIF23. This year they’re back and connecting with Ukraine too, in a very special takeover of Contact.

After 18 months of meeting up, sharing ideas and drafting demands for support, everyone’s invited to join them during the three-day programme of events. There will be poems, performances and music, film screenings and open forums. Anybody can take part or just listen in this much needed project where ideas can take shape and communities from all walks of life can gather.

Experience an unforgettable evening of classical music inspired by Eastern traditions as MIF and the Hallé present Sounds of The East at Bridgewater Hall. Conducted by the Hallé’s new Principal Conductor Kahchun Wong, the programme features the European premiere of Chinary Ung’s Grand Spiral (Desert Flowers Bloom), Debussy’s oceanic masterpiece La mer, and a UK premiere of Wong’s new orchestration of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition featuring traditional Chinese folk instruments.

At The Royal Exchange, writer Ntombizodwa Nyoni and director Monique Touko’s new play, Liberation takes inspiration from one of the most significant moments in the city’s history, the Fifth Pan-African Congress which took place at Chorlton-on-Medlock Town Hall—now part of Manchester School of Art—on 15 October 1945. Ahead of its 80th anniversary, this groundbreaking new play introduces the people behind the movement and asks timeless questions about revolution, freedom, and what it means to be an activist.

For more information about these events and the rest of the MIF25 schedule at Aviva Studios and across Greater Manchester, visit the Factory International website.