Centre for Urban Mythologies

Introducing... Ashly Nandong + Charles Rentap Mclean

Ashly Nandong ( ) is a practising independent artist and cultural researcher currently based in Kuching, Sarawak. In his artistic pursuits, he branches out into various fields including contemporary art, Sampe’ Borneo Boat Lute music, and performance-making. A strong sense of his Iban-Kayan culture and heritage binds him to his artistic pursuits and independent cultural research endeavours. Nandong holds an MA in Traditional Arts from The Prince's Foundation School of Traditional Arts in 2018 where he was the recipient of a British Malaysian Society scholarship.

Half Irish, Half Iban Dayak, Charles Rentap Mclean ( ) has a broad educational background that includes a Diploma from Cinco Ranch High School, Katy Texas and a Sound Engineering Diploma from SAE, School of Audio Engineering, Singapore. With his unconditional love for his mother’s native land Sarawak, Charles is constantly documenting stories to preserve Sarawak’s culture, lifestyle, heritage and history after the Brookes.

In , Ashly and Charles will be presenting materials from their collaborative project, 'Dream Wanderer: Young Keepers of Tradition' (2021 - ).

Introducing... Albert Bansa

Albert Bansa ( ) is a documentary filmmaker from Dalat, Sarawak. Passionate about indigenous narratives, Albert uses the documentary form as a way of telling the stories of marginalised communities.

In , Albert will be presenting an excerpt and documentation material from his current research, 'River of Life' (2022 - ).

Introducing... Mariane

Mariane ( ) is an artist based in Kuala Lumpur. Coming from the Kelabit tribe of Sarawak and growing up in Semenanjung, her work is mostly inspired by her current environment, culture and diversity in Semenanjung, with a focus on rediscovering Kelabit language and culture. Her research interests include cultural imperialism, processes of marginalisation, and the erosion of land rights experienced by the minority tribes within both east and west Malaysia. In her current works, she is experimenting with moving images and sound, particularly with recordings of tribe members narrating their story, culture, and origin, with the aim of creating an archive of voices surrounding their life experiences.

In , Mariane will be presenting a study from her current artistic investigation, 'Lun Beken Teh Kiko' (2022 - ).

Introducing... Jesse Joy

Jesse Joy ( ) is a Sabahan embroidery artist currently based in Kuala Lumpur. His involvement in the Sabah art scene—organising exhibitions, events and running a space and a collective—paved his way to pursuing his own artistic path. His embroidery works are responses towards events happening around him, reflections on the inner self, and aspects of Sabahan life. His contemporary embroidery style often includes the use of used, pre-owned, and found objects to reduce the environmental impact of art-marking. Joy has shown in numerous exhibitions across East and West Malaysia, with his first solo show held at APW Bangsar in 2019. He is a member of the Society of Embroidered Work.

In , Jesse will be presenting excerpts and materials from his current research and body of work, 'Finding Bundusan' (2021 - ).

Introducing... Tiyan Baker

Tiyan Baker is a Malaysian / Anglo Australian artist who makes video and installation art. Tiyan examines sites of contemporary cultural crises, and uses documentary techniques and digital processes to question established discourses and reveal bias, frailty and failure. Tiyan’s practice also engages with her Bidayǔh heritage, piecing together language, landscape and story to celebrate Bidayǔh knowledge and explore its radical potential to upend Western ideologies. Tiyan was born and raised on the Larrakia lands known as Darwin, and currently lives and works on the Awabakal, Worimi and Gadigal lands known as Sydney and Newcastle. Tiyan is also most recently the winner of the MAMA National Photography Prize 2022, organised by MAMA - Murray Art Museum Albury .

In , Tiyan will be presenting two works: 'Tarun' (2020) and excerpts from her ongoing research for a new body of work ,'untitled crocodile series' (2021 - ).

Working amorphously across different registers of narrativity, the works of Filipino filmmaker and artist elude categorisation with both a lurid sincerity and a wry slyness that take their roots from his constant reworking of sounds, images, and texts that fluctuate between the deeply personal and the largely public.

Often characterised within a certain poetic mode, Torres' practice has not only provided a sort of alternate textural archive to the notion of a Philippine modernity but also dislocated its wrought publics by situating not within the confines of a geo-temporal context but a psychosocial one. In addition to this, Torres also works tentacularly through Los Otros, a Manila-based audiovisual studio, platform, and space that champions experimental filmmaking. In this public presentation, Torres will discuss his artistic journey, his encounters and slippages within different technological ontologies of the cinema, and the state of the experimental filmmaking landscape in the Philippines.

This conversation will be moderated by curator Alfonse Chiu and culminate in an open Q&A session.

This conversation is convened on the occasion of the Malaysian premiere of Todo Todo Teros, which will run digitally from 27 November to 5 December 2021. For more information and to register for the screening, please visit https://cum-2021-parafictions.peatix.com/.

Broadly exploring the sonic politics of listening and how it interfaces with greater themes of coloniality, representation, and indigeneity within the space and histories of Vietnam, artist and filmmaker ’s practice exists on multiple valencies of facts, fictions, and the amorphous boundaries between memories and histories.

Conscientious of and sensitive to the mechanism of power that goes behind the framing of the (moving) image, Nguyễn’s works have manifested in a variety of contexts such as film festivals, exhibitions, and biennials, problematising but also crystallising an imaginary of Vietnam as a site of tensions between larger forces of the world. Alongside her own artistic practice, Nguyễn has also been instrumental in creating opportunities and possibilities in the development of not just discourses but also media literacy through the founding of the non-profit moving image centre Hanoi DOCLAB.

In this public presentation, Nguyễn will share more on her artistic and research journey, her experiences setting up an experimental art space, and the development of the moving image in Vietnam.

This conversation will be moderated by curator Alfonse Chiu and culminate in an open Q&A session.

This conversation is convened on the occasion of the Malaysian premiere of Fifth Cinema, which will run digitally from 27 November to 5 December 2021. For more information and to register for the screening, please visit https://cum-2021-parafictions.peatix.com/.

Diving into the entangled nature of a historiography, and how it interfaces, interacts, and intercepts the granular narratives of personal memories, is a subtle exercise in interrogating the making of histories as a process laden with choreographies and scenographies—utilising the lexicon of the performative to sketch how the past is described and inscribed. Working with a formal essayistic register, Indonesian artist and filmmaker proposes reenactment as a way of exposing the (contra)dictions inherent to essentialising the past. By focusing on the disjointed and the discontinuous, Salmiyah posits that history is but a useful fiction, stitched together from piecemeal voices and a political will to fabulate.

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Salmiyah will make its Malaysian premiere on 27 November 2021 (Saturday) and will be available for viewing exclusively in Malaysia until 5 December 2021 (Sunday). More information and registration link available at https://cum-2021-parafictions.peatix.com/.

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Quiet and introspective, probes intimately at the materiality of social and cultural memories by locating them in a specific spatial context: a Thai video shop in downtown Los Angeles and its treasure trove of VHS tapes that recorded all sorts of Thai films, TV series, and variety shows of that era. Made at the cusp of a digital transformation that will soon mark a paradigm shift of the media landscape globally, Thai filmmaker sensitively explores how identity, history, and rootedness are products of mediations contingent on the abject reality of physical medium, their tenacities, but also their fragilities. Toying with the visuality of a (dis)located site of cultural specificity, we witness the ebb and flow of Thai sentiments, Thai nostalgia, Thai visitors finding a piece of home to take away and then to return—here Chidgasornpongse shrewdly, but no less tenderly, expands not just the definition of video, but also of home, for what is home but where we find refuge, even temporarily.

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Home Video (Made in Thai Town) will make its Malaysian premiere on 27 November 2021 (Saturday) and will be available for viewing exclusively in Malaysia until 5 December 2021 (Sunday). More information and registration link available at https://cum-2021-parafictions.peatix.com/.

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An eclectic amalgamation of poetic fragments, thwarted romantic drama, terrorist autofiction, and an almost ethnographic lens trained on Manila in the early Noughties, defies classification with a wilful, chameleon spirit that channels the enormous power that truths wield over facts. At times slyly playful, at times painfully honest, Filipino filmmaker and artist meticulously sculpted a guerilla invocation of desire that characterises the can-do zeitgeist of an era, bringing together the squishy, confessional mode of a reflexive chronicler and the cool-headed clinicality of the experienced collagist. This film is a jigsaw puzzle cut with three or more moulds, each allowing for a new whole to be made, a new picture to be seen, a new secret to uncover.

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Todo Todo Teros will make its Malaysian premiere on 27 November 2021 (Saturday) and will be available for viewing exclusively in Malaysia until 5 December 2021 (Sunday). More information and registration link available at https://cum-2021-parafictions.peatix.com/.

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Laying bare the possessive impulses that characterise both photography and colonialism, unpacks the complex dynamics of image-making, image-makers, and those whose images are made in an essay film that spans sixty-seven photographs from across the colonial history of the Philippines. Understated, but suffuse with a wry humour, Filipino filmmaker and artist ruminates in a sensible murmur over the course of the film, splicing in research findings, familial anecdotes, and personal reflections that underpin the ubiquitous impact of coloniality which shaped the natural Philippine environment and made of it a warehouse of the empire. As Seno notes, " [i]t’s beautiful and you want to take it, but you are killing it at the same time," the thousand words a picture speaks could be an inventory, a decree, a death sentence.

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To Pick A Flower will make its Malaysian premiere on 27 November 2021 (Saturday) and will be available for viewing exclusively in Malaysia until 5 December 2021 (Sunday). More information and registration link available at https://cum-2021-parafictions.peatix.com/.

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