Every year, COSMOS - our hybrid platform highlighting independent music scenes from around the world - links up with new partners, inviting them to grant us a glimpse into their unique musical environments. In the coming weeks, we’re rolling out the visual component of these partnerships: short but powerful mini-documentaries, by the scene, for the scene.
You can find all previous COSMOS films on our YouTube playlist. This time we’re spending a night in the Malaysian region of Penang, where members of ALIGN.ONLINE have been invited to throw a DIY event at an art space called Ritual. The interview questions below were answered by Victoria Yam aka rEmPiT g0dDe$$ and filmmaker Syukri A. Rahim.
Victoria Yam is a leading figure of Southeast Asia’s experimental electronic scene. Navigating between the two dynamic projects VIKTORIA and rEmPiT g0dDe$$, her work is a bold exploration of industrial club, deconstructed sounds and the intricate layers of Southeast Asian tunings. As a co-founder of ALIGN.ONLINE, Yam champions female and queer voices in the region’s cultural and sonic movements.
Syukri A. Rahim wrote his first poem at 10, made his first film at 20, merging poetry and storytelling to explore the space between cinema and abstraction. His film and audiovisual works have been showcased in Osaka World Expo, Singapore Biennale and Kenduri Seni Pattani. He is also a part-time lecturer focusing on filmmaking. He founded Binatang Bintang Works where he explores the audiovisual form and experiments with the medium as well as poetic filmmaking.
When you were first tasked with making a short documentary for COSMOS, what was your thought process like? Did you know right away what the concept would be?
Syukri:
The initial approach was to just go ahead and shoot an event. It felt only appropriate to capture what and how it is like to run an underground event in Malaysia.
Who created the film with you?
Syukri:
The film is a collaboration between ALIGN.ONLINE & Binatang Bintang Works. We have been friends for more than 10 years! So the creative spark has always been there, just waiting for an opportunity to come. This is our first major collaboration together.
You ended up capturing one specific night, which creates a special atmosphere. Can you set the scene a bit? Where are we, and who are the people we‘re spending the night with?
Syukri:
Ritual {the venue} was very welcoming to us in Penang. To us, it is a city where we barely know anyone. The film captures our first meeting, our time together and the ending of the night. Ritual helped us organising the event and to see it immortalised in the film is precious to us, with people from different regions coming together. We got a lot of support from friends as well, namely from Ruang Layar and Arja films. It’s a very passionate collaborative effort!
The DIY spirit of self-organising safe spaces and events is beautifully transmitted here. Are you part of a bigger network across countries?
Victoria:
For example, Wei and Julin run Ritual in Penang, which is an experimental art space and café, ambii organizes Core Values, a rave platform in Kuala Lumpur, and Syukri, who also edited our documentary, runs Binatang Bintang Works, a queer-founded film production house. These are just a few of the people connected through our shared DIY practices.
On that note, how important was it to create ALIGN.ONLINE as a community-building tool? Are there other platforms / online destinations and tools that help bring the underground music scene in SEA together?
Victoria:
Platforms like NONNONNON run by Mae Happyair in Bangkok, Asian Core run by Laeti Muong in Paris, and HER by Cloudy Ku in Melbourne are also cultivating cross-border networks that hold the underground queer and femme scene together.
Side note: food seems to play a big role here (in many COSMOS films actually)… community really does go beyond the act of clubbing / performing, doesn’t it? It’s a whole communal experience from dusk til dawn.
Syukri:
Anything else we need to know about the making of this film, or additional context for the viewer?
Syukri:
We designed the film to be welcoming. To take the audience with us, to experience the event and the community with us, smoking cigarettes, setting up the event and of course, a post-party meal with the people involved in the event. We purposely leave any background and context of the performers, because we want the audience to experience rather than being verbally told any information about the performers. That’s kind of not the point.
