The 14th Malaysian general election, held on 9 May 2018 for members of the 14th Parliament of Malaysia, marked the first regime change in the country’s history. The long-ruling Barisan Nasional coalition, in power since independence in 1957, was voted out. I landed in Kuala Lumpur two days later.

 

Drawing from Henri Lefebvre’s writings on the social production of space and Guy Debord’s concept of psychogeography, I began documenting the city’s post-election landscape with a drone, during a two-month residency at the Kuala Lumpur Film Festival. The resulting two-channel aerial video essay departs from conventional ways of seeing and interpreting the city. Shot entirely from above, its disembodied perspective multiplies viewpoints and reveals new visual and political geographies.

 

The film unfolds as an urban drift - an exploration of how social and cultural life organize themselves in space, both intuitively and systematically. Born from days of walking and motorcycling through the city, the work becomes a double reflection: on the observer and the observed, on the act of looking itself, and on what it means to navigate a transforming urban and political landscape.

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Made in Kuala Lumpur, during a 10-week residency at Kuala Lumpur Architecture Festival 2018. Funded by PAM & GDP Architects. 

Selected by the 39th International Festival of Films on Art (Le FIFA), for the Short Films Competition, March 16 - 28, 2021.
Exhibited/ screened at:

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Kuala Lumpur National Art Gallery (2018, MY)

The Zhongshan Building, Kuala Lumpur, Artist Talk & Screening (2019, MY)

"Forever more images?" Symposium - Onassis Cultural Center (2019, GR)

 

 

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