About
Image Credit: Fan Yi Traditional Contemporary Dance Show 繁漪 传统现代舞展 (1986)
MY Art Memory Project is an archive of Malaysian performing arts. The site offers a collection of archival material, production data, personal recollections and critical resources about performing arts and culture in Malaysia.
Initiated by the Five Arts Centre Malaysia, the pilot project was funded by a grant from Sime Darby Foundation, Halfmoon Bay Capital Limited, Think City, Jabatan Kebudayaan dan Keseniaan Negara and Five Arts Centre.
A database of Theatre and Dance productions, sourced from programme books, play bills, press clippings, posters, and other ephemera. More material, covering other genres, will be uploaded in the future. We acknowledge that many works are multidisciplinary in nature, particularly productions staged from the early 1990s. The conventional division of genres here offers a way to manage the collection and uploading of material.
Oral History Project, Remember When…, comprising a series of one-on-one conversations with pioneering Malaysian theatre practitioners. With each voice we hope to capture a reflective, complex and highly personal history of the local stage.
A Censorship Chronology, is an ongoing chronological list of verified arts censorship in Malaysia, including detailed incident reports, to record and monitor the frequency and shape of arts censorship.
Articles, a repository of articles, essays, reviews and interviews covering a wide range of arts and culture. The majority of these were commissioned and published on the online arts magazine Kakiseni from 2002 – 2010.
We are plagued by absences and institutional amnesia. Without a sense of the past, we are unable to chart a path forward.
There is not a single institution that archives and documents the performing arts history of the country in a comprehensive way. The struggles, philosophies and conflicts, which drove the growth of Malaysian performing arts in its early years are held in the individual memories of art makers. Too often, they are irrevocably lost before they can be recorded.
Artists, programmers, producers, researchers and audiences, few of us have a real sense of the performing arts history of our nation. MY Arts Memory Project provides the raw material, data and critical resources to help us understand the trajectories of development, the competing artistic movements, the experiments of form and the thematic concerns of the practitioners.
MY Arts Memory addresses this problem through a process of research, collection, digitalization and public access:
- We conduct research into arts practice against a wider historical, political and social context
- We collect production ephemera, articles and other documents
We ‘collect’ memories and knowledge from individuals through recorded interviews - We digitalize the material collected, preserving archival documents and historically significant voices
- We upload the information, creating a rich archive that is accessible to anyone
Our Team
Kathy Rowland
Lead Researcher
Kathy Rowland is the co-founder of ArtsEquator Ltd in 2016, a charity dedicated to supporting arts criticism in Southeast Asia. Kathy has worked in the arts for over 25 years, running arts and culture programs and arts media platforms. She has written extensively on censorship of arts and culture in Malaysia. She was a member of the International Programme Advisory Committee of the 8th World Summit on Arts and Culture, held in Kuala Lumpur in 2019.
Ivy Josiah
Producer
Ivy Nallammah Josiah, a women’s human rights advocate is the former Executive Director of Women’s Aid Organisation (WAO).
She is a member of Five Arts Centre (FAC) and has produced several plays not only for FAC but for other theatre companies.
She is currently creating a WEBSITE/BLOG on women’s movements in Malaysia. She remains active in regional and national women’s organisations.
Fasyali Fadzly
Researcher, Theatre
Fasyali Fadzly is an educator, director, playwright and writer. He is an MFA graduate from University of Calgary, Canada. He wrote and directed his own play – Teater Juta-Juta which won for Best Director, Best Original Script and Best Ensemble Performance in Boh Cameronian Arts Award 2014, Berani Mati, Kotak Hitam, Kawan-kawan Yang Kita Suka and directed several play from other playwrights such as Oedipus, ‘Art’ and Jebat.
He also writes theatre-related articles and reviews.
Bilqis Hijjas
Co-lead Researcher, Dance
Bilqis Hijjas runs the arts residency at Rimbun Dahan, which supports the development of Southeast Asian contemporary artists. Currently Secretary of MyDance Alliance, the non-profit organisation that supports dance in Malaysia, she is also editor of Malaysian arts criticism platform Critics Republic. She is keen to support the documentation of Malaysian contemporary dance, as well as helping emerging contemporary dancers with opportunities to create, present and discuss their work.
Hii Ing Fung
Co-lead Researcher, Dance
Hii Ing Fung is a freelance dancer, choreographer, dance educator and occasionally a production committee or backstage member. She is a Sarawakian who is now based in KL-Selangor and active in diverse dance events across borders. She was the recipient of Best New Talent (Female) at Short+Sweet Dance Malaysia (2009), founder of Dance Body Project (2012), and graduated from University of Malaya’s Master of Performing Arts (Dance) programme (2014). She is dedicated to projects relating to dance education, research, and documentation.
Loh Kok Man
Content Manager (Mandarin)
Loh Kok Man is Artistic Director of PENTAS PROJECT THEATRE PRODUCTION and an established theatre director, actor, lighting designer, set designer and theatre lecturer. He has won The BOH Cameronian Arts Awards for Best Director, for Best Set Design and for Best Lighting Design multiple times.
Loh founded Pentas Project Theatre Production in 2005 to produce critical and collaborative contemporary theatre. He is known for his unique way of integrating theatrical elements such as visual imagery, lighting, sound, physical movement and dramatic structures while exploring the concept of space and time.
Ann Lee
Researcher, Censorship (2021-22)
Born in Tawau, Malaysia, Ann Lee is a playwright, and a researcher of political humour in theatre, television and social media, including contemporary indigenous satire. She earned her PhD in Southeast Asian studies at the National University of Singapore. Ann is a past Fellow of the Asia Leadership Fellow Program (Japan Foundation and International House of Japan). She is currently working on two independent research projects; the first concerns ‘freedom of expression’ and faith-based texts; the second as supervising researcher for the Censorship section of online Malaysian arts archive www.myartmemoryproject.com. Her latest play is available in Southeast Asian plays (Aurora Metro, 2016)
The other contributes to the project include Jerome Kugan, Azwan Ismail and Hazri Haili