Trip of lights fantastic

Trip of lights fantastic

MALAYSIA - Take an hour-long ramble through the heart of Malaysia with Super- Everything*, a multimedia and live performance show created by London- based company The Light Surgeons.

The show, which premieres in Singapore today at Lasalle College of the Arts, uses video projections, live music and animation to document the film-makers' three-week journey from Kelantan in the north of Peninsula Malaysia down to its urban heart, Kuala Lumpur.

The performance was commissioned by the British Council in Malaysia in 2011, and premiered in Kuala Lumpur later that year.

It has since toured India, New Zealand, the United States and Britain, and is now in Singapore as part of Lasalle's public lecture series. Founder and creative director of The Light Surgeons Christopher Thomas Allen, 39, says: "This piece is sort of a telling of the human mythology, through the development of agriculture, industrialisation, consumerism and the challenges that we face as we enter a new century. All these issues are framed through Malaysia."

The show comprises nine segments: Visual collage and images juxtaposed on different screens are interspersed with interviews with residents, who speak about their views on Malaysian identity. The music, a mix of electronic, classical and kooky live sounds, is similarly eclectic.

The Light Surgeons' quirky aesthetic is influenced by its roots in London's vibrant clubbing scene.

London-based Allen graduated from Portsmouth University with a degree in media design in 1995, when the company was founded.

He explains: "When I came back to London, I had a lot of friends who were making music, who were involved in DJ-ing and the club culture there. I began by creating visual displays for them, using things such as analogue film projectors and slide projectors."

Allen also says that the equipment they used shaped their work. "Because we started working with projectors and multiple projections, collages have always been a big influence.

"It's also an idea that's very much at the root of contemporary music - collages and appropriation and sampling."

During the show, three performers will be sandwiched between two scrims which span the stage. Two of them - Allen and The Light Surgeons' audio visual artist Tim Cowie - will manually trigger video and animation segments by pressing buttons in real time, while Malaysian composer and sound designer Ng Chor Guan will play a strange collection of instruments, from a Brompton folding bike to vegetables that are being chopped.

The show's narrative arc begins in the airport, and references the traditional shadow puppet form wayang kulit.

Allen says: "The idea resonated with us. It's like live cinema, using music and film to tell stories, and performing it live. It's like the original form of film- making."

The subsequent eight segments then explore themes such as the development of the land, industrialisation, consumption, food and religion.

In order to gather footage for the show, Allen, Cowie and two Malaysian artists drove through the country in a car, visiting palm oil plantations, shopping malls and even recycling centres. They recorded more than 6 terabytes of data - videos, photos and sound - which they post-processed in London.

Allen says that what struck him the most about Malaysia during the journey was the "interesting collision of tradition and modernity".

He adds: "It's got an intensely beautiful history and tradition, but that's kind of being fought over by the formation of a nation and a country. It's got a lot of issues, issues that probably resonate in Singapore as well: freedom of speech, control, religion."

He also learnt something more practical: "Now, I know how to say 'Please may I take your picture?' in several different dialects."


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