We say NO political harassment of the arts and stand in full support of Arts-Ed and the myBalikPulau newsletter.

by Sharon Chin

On 1 Aug 2009, I joined 20,000 other Malaysians in a peaceful protest march against the Internal Security Act, a law that allows for detention without trial for indefinite periods of time. Here are two videos documenting the day.

by Mark Teh

Sudden Death, performed as part of the final Improv Lab @ Findars’ Space, took place on Thursday 6 August 2009. We hoped to get different waves of people to perform this simple act of protest, remembrance and paying respect.

by Zedeck Siew

Obituary: Yasmin Ahmad, 1958 – 2009

The dreamer, her films I didn’t like, and why we will miss her.

By ARTERI

There are a number of art dictionaries / glossaries / thesis cheat-sheets– but they are painfully boring. So, ARTERI presents the Malaysian Art Dictionary, a communal effort to list everything arty! Come on, you know you’ll love it!

by Yin Shao Loong

Find R2-D2 and C-3PO too cutesy and straight? Like your robots murderous, nasty, and existential? We love killa robots, don’t we? Read on to find out about their origins, influences, and what it all could mean for us. Quick! Before they get us!

by Zedeck Siew

On 4 June – or was it 3 June? – two gentlemen walked into Valentine Willie Fine Art KL. Their target: Fahmi Reza’s Najib’s Head Stolen From Billboard.

Fahmi’s Najib was behind yellow police tape. “So, basically it means that our PM is behind a crime scene, is it?”

oleh Yin Shao Loong

Kebelakangan ini, kita telah menyaksikan pergadohan hangat di laman ini. Tapi untuk mereka yang kurang minat bergadoh ‘seni’, bolehlah anda rilek dengan menonton filem baru Nam Ron dan Brenda Danker – Gadoh. Filem ini tidak dapat ditonton di pawagam awam, cuma di teater HELP sahaja, kerana topiknya menyentuh pergadohan perkauman di sekolah kebangsaan Malaysia.

by Simon Soon

Paiman’s drawing installation begins with the discipline of a daily exercise, routinely selecting a verbatim from a published mainstream media source that would best represent the political development of the day. He then types them on the entry page of the appropriate date from an Islamic diary and pairs them with a doodle of his mutant comic figures that are largely devoid of any political commentary.

by Zahirah Suhaimi

In light of recent arrests under the name of ISA (Internal Security Act), the launch of Singaporean publication, Our Thoughts Are Free, could not have come at a more apt, or darker, time. The book is a collection of poems and prose written by victims who have suffered under the draconian enforcement of the Singapore Internal Security Department and/ or forced to live in exile, dragged and casted away from the country they lived for, fought for, faced internment for and willing to die for.

by Yin Shao Loong

In conjunction with last weekend’s Art for Grabs fair at the Central Market Annexe political scientist and historian Farish Noor delivered another of his occasional lectures on Southeast Asian history. This time on ‘Batik as a Trans-Cultural Signifier.’

by Zedeck Siew

Finding myself at a loss one afternoon during the Umno general assembly, I decided to take a stroll through PWTC. I passed the entrance to Merdeka Hall, where speeches and sycophancy continued, rounded the corner – and, lo and behold, discovered a painting exhibition.

by Simon Soon

Marion D’Cruz’s lecture performance takes a new generation of arts supporters back into the heyday of theatre/dance/visual art/literary/education collaboration, reliving the Five Arts recipe that was borne from a sincere drive towards a multidisciplinary approach in art practice.

by ARTERI

Well, not really. But we’re excited by the mere possibility that our new Information, Unity and Culture minister Datuk Seri Dr Rais Yatim will debate with former de-facto law minister Datuk Zaid Ibrahim on national TV. As reported in Bernama, Dr Rais challenged Zaid Ibrahim to a debate over certain allegations made against our current premier, Datuk Seri Najib Razak, on 24 April 2009. Zaid Ibrahim replied later that day with ‘anywhere, any place, any time’. (*insert big ‘wwoooooooooooo’ from invisible crowd here*) The gauntlet has been thrown down and the challenge accepted.

by Yin Shao Loong

Amir Muhammad’s Malaysian Gods (MG) offers an amalgam of two strands of Malaysian life. The first being a history of the genesis of Malaysian reformasi relayed in English text. The second is interviews in Tamil or Tamil creole with a variety of Tamil speakers. Like an amalgam these two strands have different properties but are nonetheless juxtaposed in the hopes of exerting a useful effect on each other. Street politics is matched with life from the streets.