Five Arts Centre members share sneak peeks of new works-in-process, hold conversations with fellow cultural practitioners, and reflect about their artistic, advocacy, and activist practice.
Armanzaki Azrs (Zak) is a regular collaborator with Five Arts and is stage managing our latest performance Fragments of Tuah. He is also a co-founder of sans collective, an interdisciplinary art and design collective.
He shares about how he got started in theatre, the work of sans collective, and what to consider when
managing touring projects and cultural exchanges.
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Five Arts Centre turned 40 in 2024 with an eclectic programme of projects, workshops and events - led by collective members from different generations and in collaboration with friends and partners, old and new.
Here are some highlights from our 2024.
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Video instructions on how to read, play and perform our newest publication, Tikam-Tikam: Chance
encounters with performance texts written & curated by Leow Puay Tin.
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On 14 December 2024, we launched a new publication - Tikam-Tikam: Chance encounters with performance
texts written & curated by Leow Puay Tin.
Performance maker, researcher and Five Arts
member Mark Teh served as producer for this project - read the text of his speech.
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“I dream of more Malaysian bodies spending time in shared spaces, encountering differences. To sense of
possibility of shaping how this place could be. Our collective power is more than we think. Then, the
city becomes something we experiment with, test things out, instead of a detached, out-of-reach
monument," Lee Ren Xin shares.
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"Soft-Soft (Gentleness), Curiosity, Porous, Invitation, Agency, Impulse, Activation."
Actor and producer Farah Rani reflects on participating in dance artist Lee Ren Xin's long-term
practice-as-research project on collective embodiment in public spaces in Kuala Lumpur.
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At the end of 2023, Five Arts Centre launched our first-ever crowdfunding campaign in anticipation of turning 40 this year. We are very happy to announce that we received a total contribution of RM100,043.47 from 124 donors. That's 63% of the RM160,000 target we set.
All of us in the collective are very moved, honoured and thankful to each and every person who donated - which includes old friends, new supporters, and anonymous donors (who made up 25% of all who contributed).
The generous contributions enable us to improve our studio space in GMBB (lighting, sound and technical system upgrades), and help to cover some of our operational costs for 2024 - our 40th year.
Terima kasih again from all of us at Five Arts Centre!
Radical Tenderness. Touch Me Hold Me Let Me Go. Malam Takdir. Southeast Asian Arts Censorship Database. ANGGOTA 2: Re-Member. A Notional History. ItSelf TerJadi. Contact Zones: Why Bother With Arts Archives? Krishen Jit Fund. ReformARTsi. Performances at Yayasan Sime Darby Arts Festival. Crowdfunding.
And more.
As fate would have it, the production of Malam Takdir staged across Penang and the Klang Valley
earlier this year marked Chee Sek Thim's final project as a member of Five Arts Centre.
As
the collective turns 40 in 2024, we would like to acknowledge Sek Thim's immense contributions to the
directions and questions pursued by Five Arts in the past two decades.
Earlier this year, Chew Kin Wah took the decision to withdraw from the Five Arts collective.
To
use football metaphors - he is a die-hard Liverpool supporter - Kin Wah has hung up his Five Arts jersey
and boots. It's always heartbreaking when a collective member leaves, so we would like to take this
opportunity to recognise his enduring contributions to Five Arts Centre.
A Notional History will tour to the Seoul Performing Arts Festival (SPAF), South Korea, SPIELART
Das Theaterfestival in Munich (Germany), and the OzAsia Festival in Adelaide (Australia) in October and
November 2023.
Ahead of the tour, we share here a conversation between SPAF artistic director Kyu
Choi and performance maker Mark Teh, which was first published in Korean on SPAF's blog.
Cancelling the Good Vibes Festival continues a dangerous precedent & damages cultural ecosystem in Malaysia.
Video and e-book publication on Five Arts Centre and collaborators' collaborative ways of working.
From the exhibition project 穿针引线: Threading Through the Eye of a Needle at the Art Museum
of Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, China (21 November 2021 to 20 March 2022).
36 Broadcasting students from Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman shadowed A Notional History during
its run at The Kuala Lumpur Performing Arts Centre recently.
Watch seven 3-minute videos made by
the students - capturing a day in the life of performers, designers, stage manager and director.
Faiq is part of the rock bank Terrer, and a new member of Five Arts Centre.
Over the past decade
he has performed in many projects, including those initiated by Lee Ren Xin, Leow Puay Tin, Marion
D'Cruz, and Mark Teh.
Rahmah opens up about her history with the individuals in A Notional History, and the parallels
between creating non-fiction film and documentary theatre.
She also shares why the themes of home
and displacement recur frequently in her own work.
2022 was a year of great flux in the economic, social, and political landscape locally and globally. Like everyone else, we had to adjust, improvise and navigate difficulties, uncertainties, and precarities.
A new chapter unfolded for us at Five Arts Centre - we moved to a new space in GMBB (downtown KL), new members, new works. At the same time, a greater commitment and emphasis to advocacy and supporting the larger ecosystem alongside like-minded civil society organisations, collaborators, and partners.
Five Arts Centre congratulates Fahmi Fadzil upon his appointment as the new Minister of Communications
& Digital, Malaysia.
It is a bittersweet moment for the collective as we and Fahmi have come
to a mutual agreement that he will officially withdraw from the collective, with immediate effect.
It's election season - which also means it's raiding season. This is when Malaysian enforcement agencies performatively step up harassment and policing activities on the everyday lives and existence of marginalised, disenfranchised and vulnerable communities.
One of Five Arts Centre's closest collaborators, Wong Tay Sy is pulling double duty as production
designer for both ANGGOTA and A Notional History - the first two performances in our new
space in GMBB, Kuala Lumpur.
Tay Sy reflects on her interest in the performing arts, and shares
her approach to production design..
ANGGOTA marks a return to creating dance onstage again for Lee Ren Xin, after spending several
years making site-specific performances in public spaces and researching in neighbourhoods.
Ren
Xin reflects on some of the ideas and motivations behind ANGGOTA.
Is there space to dance here? For whom?
“Saya suka dancing, tapi tak baiklah kalau orang tengok” are among many of the responses Lee Ren Xin, Malaysian dance artist gathered in her daily-walk-ritual research in an urban neighbourhood in 2018-2019. Ren Xin reflects on space, place, and practice.
After 23 years, Five Arts Centre has moved out from the 2-storey shoplot in Taman Tun Dr. Ismail where we had been located since 1998. Trying to pack during the Covid-19 pandemic and Movement Control Order provided many challenges, but at the end of September 2021, we were able to gather collectively for the last time in the TTDI studio to share memories, stories, and say goodbye to this space which has nurtured so many artists and projects.
Justin Lee is an architect and interdisciplinary artist who has been creating installations and
collaborating on live performances in recent years. Under the name Luna Macula, he also works as an
analogue projection artist, using water as a primary medium. Justin was a Krishen Jit Fund recipient in
2019 for the project Seni Tiga #10: Impermanence, which he served as the creative
director.
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The first comprehensive initiative to digitally document the history of performing arts in Malaya-Malaysia. The archive contains data on theatre and dance productions from the 1950s to the present, oral history podcasts with pioneering practitioners, critical resources, and a timeline of arts and cultural censorship in Malaysia.
An online resource tracing the development of non-formal arts education programmes in Malaysia since the 1970s. Spanning four decades, the archive contains articles, interpretations, and publications on children’s theatre, theatre-in-education, place-based and heritage education projects, as well as reflections from artists, educators, and participants.