Colomboscope’s event descriptions rival Sajith in their dictionary rummaging. Care for "transdisciplinary, immersive performance that explores pluriversal localities, memory work, entangled temporarily, and cultural frequency through collected, imagined, and recorded sound?”
In a case of the blind leading the blind, we parsed through their schedule so you don’t have to.
Since the uninitiated like us may need a little handholding, they’ve graciously organised curated walk-throughs of their exhibitions. On Friday, at Colpetty Town House. On Saturday at Barefoot, and on Wednesday at the mausoleum that is the old Rio cinema.
Arulraj Ulaganathan’s pensive exhibit on Malaiyaha Tamil childhood and life at the Curado is a powerfully poignant lament. Catch the tour on Saturday. Tashyana Handy’s magnum opus is, of course, our logo. But her poetry may be a close second. She leads a workshop on Saturday at Radicle. Fittingly, Duran Duran’s Hungry Like a Wolf was shot there many moons ago.
Colombo university is organising a session for kids on bird migration. Be a soccer parent and throw in a campus tour — you know, for the future.
Something is rotten in the state of Dematagoda - Hiran Abeysekera as Hamlet, takes the screen at Regal on Sunday. Keeping with the quietus mood, listen to some “doom folk” at a Colomboscope concert by Perera Elsewhere. The enlightened ones tell us this is not to be missed.
On Tuesday, synthesize your teenagers’ dreams of a cool, creative career with your hopes of a financially sound one — Colomboscope is putting on a storytelling and game development session.
We may be trying to revive the press, but those before us kept it going. Remember slain journalists at the ‘January is still Black’ seminar on media freedom.
Wednesday dances with a performance by Chitrasena and reVerb. Then be a smartass, gradually getting drunker at the Colomboscope x Barefoot pub quiz.
Quickly nurse your hangover, because the next day is unmissable. The dynamic Kehelmala is putting on a film about coming of age during the economic crisis. ICES screens Neelan: Unsilenced. There’s also a lecture on design and gardens of Sri Lanka by the National Trust.
Tickets might sell and you had better save the punches for the professionals, Karma Fight League is coming up. So is the Matara arts festival, which gloriously still stands.
What to read
The island gets hazy and coughy as crop-burning kicks off in the Gangetic plain. The World Bank has some ideas for coordinating solutions at scale. Meanwhile, a Kolonnawa resident writes about how the village of Welewatta, which always flooded, now floods differently as there are no more welas.
Another ‘who guards the guardians’ problem, this time the authors of Environmental Impact Assessments. The Centre for Smart Future finds that environmental impact assessments, for the most part, flop. Tech bros will want more sensors, lawyers better procedures and policies and economists more random audits. Us mere mortals just want integrity and competence. The Smarties have been hard at work: they survey Lankan exporters and find that uncertainty arising from Trump’s tariffs (and TACOing) affects three quarters of them.
PEARL’s latest report makes the case that Sinhalisation is anti-development, retarding the economic development of Tamils, and the Sinhalese themselves. The war, as photojournalist turned academic, Shyam Thekwani reminds through pictures and words, is still a reality for many: “not every photograph must be shown. Some must remain in the dark, not because they are hidden, but because they are still grieving.”
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