Date & Time: Friday, 10 June 2016 @ 8pm
Venue: Findars Art Space, No. 8, 4th floor, Jalan Panggong, 50000 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Admission by suggested donation: RM20
https://www.facebook.com/events/1564107890550597/
Serious Play Improv Lab is 2 years old! Come celebrate with us! There’ll be a special 2-year anniversary lab with 4 international guests! Catch SPIL 024, featuring guests from Japan Makoto Oshiro, Mizutama Araki and Keita Yoshihara; from Singapore Yuen Chee Wai, and our very own Sudarshan Chandra Kumar, Yong Yandsen and Kok Siew-Wai. See you there and bring your friends and your favourite snacks! J
ABOUT THE MUSICIANS:
YUEN CHEE WAI is a multidisciplinary and intertextual approach to music-making is the foundational ethos upon which Singapore-based artist, musician and experimental sound composer. Chee Wai has established his prolific and internationally recognised portfolio. His improvisational sound work encompasses the musical idioms of drone, ambient, noise and field recordings, and the use of a spectrum of electronic analog instruments and guitar. His conceptualisations and collaborations, which span the realms of visual art, dance and film, explore relationships between sound, image and word. Often inspired by ideas drawn from philosophical and literary texts, and by perspectives glimpsed through the filmic eye and photographic lens, Yuen’s stylistic oeuvre is marked by reflections on memory and loss, invisibility and indeterminacy. In 2008, Yuen teamed together with fellow musicians Otomo Yoshihide (Japan), Ryu Hanki (Korea) and Yan Jun (China) to form FEN (Far East Network), an experimental and improvisational music quartet focused on cross-disciplinary collaborations within the Asian region. Following a welcomed debut at the Mimi Festival (Marseilles), FEN has presented widely in both Europe and Asia. In 2014, Yuen took on the role of Curator for the Asian Meeting Festival helmed by Otomo Yoshihide and held annually in Japan. He continues to be instrumental in engendering new collaborations between musicians from South East Asia and around the globe based on their musical affinities. In fostering the cross-pollination of ideas and influences, and the development of new affiliations, Yuen has contributed towards a more vibrant and heterogeneous landscape of experimental music practices in Asia. Yuen is also a member of the esteemed avant/experimental quartet rock band The Observatory (Singapore), with whom he plays guitar, synth and electronics. With eight album releases to date, including the most recent August is the cruellest (2016), The Observatory has performed and toured worldwide. As an independent ensemble, The Observatory has conceived of vanguard initiatives such as the project Playfreely, which gives artists new creative avenues for performing and working together, in the spirit of venturing beyond more familiar musical territories.
MAKOTO OSHIRO (b. 1978, Okinawa) is a Tokyo-based performer and artist. His primary medium is sound, but he also combines other elements including light, electricity and movement of objects. In live performances, he uses self-made tools and instruments that are based on electronic devices, every day materials, and junk. His installation work handles sound as a physical and auditory phenomenon, and focuses on characteristics such as vibration and interference. He has recently released his first solo CD Phenomenal World on Japanese label Hitorri. He is also a member of the the live installation / performance group The Great △ with Takahiro Kawaguchi and Satoshi Yashiro.
Mizutama Araki was born in Okuyama Prefecture in 1985. Currently resides in Osaka City. He started making music in his teenage years. Joined the shared atelier “Konohana Media” in Konohana- ku, Osaka in 2011 and took part in exhibitions. He creates taking inspiration from daily life continuing to work closely with ordinary items, finding beauty and interest in them, and creates works using samples of a mix-up of things. Araki has played at Re_processor (Konohana Media, Osaka), “Stolen Names” (Kyoto Art Center, Kyoto), Miwa House (Nara) amongst others.
Keita Yoshihara was born in 1981, Osaka City, Japan Lives and works in Osaka, Japan works concerns about the man himself and life, society and the environment, human work, is each of the relationship. Explore content, human beings living in the modern, and the image that is projected on the man himself, are you interested in the human handling. The results of the inquiry is, and actions to the surrounding people and the environment, objects and using off-the-shelf, installation and performance. He’s graduated from the Department of Fine Arts, Faculty of Art, Kyoto Seika University in Japan. Yoshihara has exhibited at Squash Domain, Gallery Parc, (Kyoto), Tower Apartment Triennale (Osaka), HANARART (Nara), NAMA_MEDIAS (Osaka) amongst others.
SUDARSHAN CHANDRA KUMAR is a musician. He has contributed vocals and live electronics to bands such as HKPT, T!T!T!, and Takdir. His live setup is comprised of loopers, synths and effects pedals that are used to create improvised soundscapes. https://soundcloud.com/sudar
YONG YANDSEN is an improvised saxophonist. He has played at the Kuala Lumpur Contemporary Music Festival, Asian Meeting Festival (Japan), Mosaic Festival Singapore, Choppa Eclectic Improvised Music Festival (Singapore), Turn Around Free Jazz & Improvisation Festival (Singapore), Music Matters Festival (Sri Lanka) amongst others. Yandsen, together with Darren Moore and Brian OíReily, form an improvised trio called Game of Patience. They have toured to Japan, Singapore, Sri Lanka and Thailand. They released debut CD ìTrial and Errorî on Herbal International and self released debut LP “The Bad Sleeps Well”.
KOK SIEW-WAI started out as a video artist, now more active as an improvised vocalist and independent artist-organizer from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. She has performed in festivals such as Kuala Lumpur Contemporary Music Festival, SoundBridge Contemporary Music Festival, Choppa Experimental Music Festival (Singapore), Playfreely Festival (Singapore), Asian Meeting Festival (Japan), E-Poetry Festival (USA) and more. Siew-Wai is the co-founder, co-curator and festival director of the Kuala Lumpur Experimental Film, Video & Music Festival (KLEX) since 2010.
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ABOUT SERIOUS PLAY IMPROV LAB (SPIL) SERIES:
SPIL is a project of the Kuala Lumpur Experimental Film, Video & Music Festival (KLEX) launched in May 2014. It aims to create exposure and understanding, and to facilitate local, regional and international collaborations and exchanges for experimental and improvised music in Malaysia.
More info: [email protected]
https://klexfestival.com/spil/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/klexfest/
