Colomboscope

The eighth edition of Colomboscope was held from 19 to 28 January 2024, bringing together interdisciplinary artistic approaches from around the island, South Asia and beyond in characteristic venues of Colombo.

Colomboscope together with the Geoffrey Bawa Trust and Kälam supported by EU National Institutes for Culture launch a two part residential workshop initiative. Scheduled to take place in June and September 2023. 

The seventh edition of interdisciplinary arts festival Colomboscope titled Language is Migrant took place from 21 - 30 January 2022. Spread across five venues, including new exhibition spaces that speak to the conceptual framework of this edition of the festival, Language is Migrant unfolded in chapters from the Colombo Public Library, to the Rio Cinema Complex, the WA Silva Museum, Barefoot Gallery the Lakhmahal Community Library and Lak Café located in the Viharamahadevi Park.

The festival has worked with a range of intergenerational artists, writers, musicians, filmmakers, social theorists and scientific researchers from Sri Lanka and internationally delivering a focused programme with each festival edition held at key historic sites in Colombo. Several of the cultural practitioners participating in Colomboscope have gone on to show their work within regional and international exhibitions.

This initiative focuses on artistic research, site-responsive production and durational approaches within contemporary cultural practice through month-long residencies for artistic producers hosted in two different coastal and rural regions of Sri Lanka. 

As a reaction to the pandemic, Colomboscope turned to several visual artists, musicians and filmmakers who have been associated with the festival’s network with the wish to sustain primary acts of reading, listening and viewing.

Taking its title from Édouard Glissant’s Poetics of Relation (“one way ashore, a thousand channels”), this four-part online radio programme features conversation, poetry, music, specially commissioned sound works and guest radio projects in the lead-up to Colomboscope 2021, and will also form part of the festival’s listening space in Colombo.