Dealing in Distance
Pakikipagugnayan sa Layo

Initiated by Goethe-Institut in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Jakarta, and Manila in 2023, “Dealing in Distance” brings together artists based in Southeast Asia and Germany to explore themes of migration and identity across distance.

Dealing in Distance © Goethe-Institut

About the Festival

Thinking about diasporic identities -lives shaped by immigration and displacement- is to think about becoming. It is relentless negotiation of selves through encounters. This January, after travelling across four cities Southeast Asia, Dealing in Distance will reach its final stop Metro Manila where, like a rhizome, entangled identities form a temporary community through stories, memories and sensibilities that transcend distances, languages and histories of each individual.

Initiated by four Goethe-Institutes in Southeast Asia, Dealing in Distance brings together Southeast Asian and diasporic artists based in Southeast Asia and Germany to explore themes of migration and identity in distance. A culmination of this journey, Dealing in Distance presents new works from our three residencies in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam, alongside contributions from an open call selected by a jury.

Program Overview

Taking place from January 30 to February 1, Dealing in Distance offers a wide array of artworks, ranging from exhibitions and performances to interactive and collaborative workshops.

The travelling festival brings together eight artists, presenting eight exhibitions, two performances, and five interactive engagement programs across six locations in Quezon City. Through this approach, the festival invites participants to explore another way of thinking about distance — not only as separation, but as a method that can foster connection, solace, and solidarity.

Artists

Krisanta (KC) Caguioa-Mönnich is a single working mother and a freelance artist. After studying Bachelor of Interior Design at UP Diliman and working in the Philippines, she got involved in the past eight years in the social sector fighting for women's rights in Berlin, Germany - as a language and cultural mediator at Ban Ying (Thai for “House of women”) Counselling and Coordination Center and Shelter against Human Trafficking.
As a migrant woman working for migrant women, who have experienced exploitation, violence, or human trafficking, making art helped her cope and empower herself and others. Against the background of her own migration stories, she interprets and transforms the observable ways in which the women deal with their migration experiences in paintings/artworks. Her two portrait series about migrant women in Germany have been exhibited in Berlin and are currently at the Thailand Biennale in Phuket until April 2026.
Her latest drawing series that is part of this DiD project has been inspired by Filipino women and queer persons she met during her artist residency in Cebu City and Dumaguete City.
Alvin William Collantes (b. 1989, New Jersey) is a Queer Filipino performance artist based in Berlin (Germany). Their interdisciplinary body-centered practice merges improvisation, contemporary dance, decolonial perspectives, the art of drag, and queer dance floor histories as both archival and embodied sites for resistance and transformation. Through movement and performance, Alvin explores migration, displacement, and the diasporic struggles of loss, memory, and belonging while imagining new possibilities for queer-centred worlds. They are a participant of the Performance Ecologies Residency hosted by the Goethe-Institute Philippines under the curation of Eisa Jocson and Franchesca Casauay, where they continue to deepen their artistic research. Alvin often has premiered works in Futurium Berlin and collaborate with artists such as Kiani Del Valle of KDV Performance Group; Leeroy New, RambaZamba Theatre and Alvin Tolentino of Company Erasga Vancouver, and recently exhibited at Schwules Museum in Berlin for "Young Birds from Strange Mountains." In 2026, Alvin will be premiering their solo work titled "Bibingka" at Tanztage Berlin in Sophiensaele.
Universe Baldoza is a multidisciplinary artist and independent filmmaker deeply engaged in cultural and community-based art practices in the Philippines. Her video-installation work explores the intersections of sound, video, archival material, training datasets, text, and found objects. Her previous installation documentary called Marciano was part of the Japan Foundation's exhibition Modes of Liasions (Bangkok) and Almost There (Manila). She was one of the filmmakers commissioned to create new work for the courtyard space of the Sharjah Biennale 11. Currently she is developing works around the topic of interracial dating and sexuality.
Hiền Hoàng (b. 1990) is an interdisciplinary artist working between Germany, UK and Vietnam. Her practice moves across photography, moving image, installation, and scientific research, exploring how violence and displacement leave traces on landscapes and humans, reflecting on the tension between cultural belonging and distance, between data and emotion. Her current research returns to Vietnam to investigate the ecological and psychological legacy of Agent Orange, examining how the land continues to hold histories of trauma and transformation, and how art can open new ways of sensing these entangled memories.

In 2024, Hoàng received the prestigious Paul Huf Award, leading to her solo exhibition at Foam Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam in 2025. Her work has also been shown at VCCA Vietnam, Les Rencontres d’Arles, CentroCentro Madrid, and other international art venues, reflecting on the evolving role of photography in postcolonial memory and technological mediation.
The House of Dirty is a local ballroom Kiki House that started from four friends who once had the same objective of finding a sugar daddy to fund their functions. In its formation, the house was brought together by the following principles: 1) the acceptance of one’s flaws or Dirt/ ‘Kalat’ as parts of an individual which should be embraced, accepted, and celebrated 2) advocacy for sex positivity and reproductive health 3) bridging ballroom culture and the queer Filipino experience.

Since debuting in 2021, the House of Dirty has become a household name in the Philippine ballroom Kiki scene. Its members have snatched trophies and made moments in the categories Realness, Face, Best Dressed, Fashion Killa, Bizarre, Body, Sex Siren, and Voguing/ Performance (Old Way, New Way, Vogue Fem). The house also organized functions such as The Kalat Kiki Ball and The Surftown Ball.

Currently led by Dirty Mother Ozkurr, a fashion designer, and Dirty Father Jaja, a performance artist, the house is composed of diverse individuals, whose presence and impact extend from the ballroom to the drag scene, dance, fashion, performance art, theater, and film. And in all of this, they have yet to succeed in finding a sugar daddy.
Jules Leaño is a Scottish-Filipino artist based between Berlin and Scotland. With a background in experimental film and visual anthropology, her work explores the relationship between visual media, collective memory, and the various social and political realities we experience. Her work engages with the materiality of the moving image, utilising analogue film, digital video, expanded cinema installation and performance. Playing with the processes of destruction, preservation and reconstruction, her work explores the parallels that these images and processes may have of the reality they portray.
Minh Duc Pham is a Berlin-based artist and performer. He studied Exhibition Design and Scenography at the University of Art and Design (HfG) Karlsruhe as well as Performance Studies and Design Theory at the University of the Arts (UdK) Berlin.

His artistic practice engages in Visual Arts and Performing Arts and explores identity at the intersection of gender, race and class. His works have been exhibited at the Museum der Bildenden Künste Leipzig, Stadtmuseum Dresden, Haus der Kulturen der Welt Berlin, the Vietnamese Women’s Museum Hanoi and most recently at the Museum Utopie und Alltag Eisenhüttenstadt and Kunsthalle Osnabrück.
Zelin Seah is a Malaysian visual artist and lecturer in Fine Arts whose practice moves through the entanglements of land, memory, and material trace. Rooted in long-term research, his work examines how extractive economies and postcolonial regimes leave their imprint—on bodies, maps, and landscapes. Working across installation, fiber art, and cartographic interventions, he often employs natural materials such as rattan and palmoil waste to unearth the silent histories they carry.

From altered land titles to forgotten grasses, Seah’s recent projects explore how nature is framed through systems of value, and how ecological residues hold the ghosts of erased knowledge. He has undertaken residencies at basis e.V. Frankfurt, the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, and SAVVY Contemporary, and in 2025 presented his solo exhibition This Land is ( ) Land at Richard Koh Fine Art, Singapore. His works are included in the collections of the Singapore Art Museum and the National Art Gallery Malaysia.
Sarnt Utamachote is a Southeast Asian nonbinary filmmaker and curator based in Berlin (Germany). They are co-founder of un.thai.tled collective, a platform for Thai diasporic artists based in Germany. They are also a part of the Cruising Curators collective. Their recent curatorial project "Young Birds from Strange Mountains" at Schwules Museum Berlin (2025) focuses on queer artists and archives from Southeast Asia and its diaspora. Their research about exiled Cambodian artists in East Germany was featured at D21 Leipzig, MDBK Leipzig, Echoes of the Brother Countries (2024) at HKW Berlin, and at Kunst Raum Mitte Berlin. Their recent short film "I don’t want to be just a memory" (2022–24) had its premiere at 74th Berlinale Forum Expanded.

This installation represents their ongoing project In Nobody’s Service which took place already at Galerie Wedding Berlin (2024), and Thailand Biennale in Phuket (2025).