Face to Face with... Light Surgeons

Do you really know who you are, why you're here or what anything really means? You may think you do, but there's always room for a bit more solidarity and philosophical debate surrounding identity, so it's a good job Christopher Thomas Allen (TCA), founder & creative director of Light Surgeons, and Tim Cowie (TC), collaborating audio visual artist, are around - to present an immersive show to ponder the subject set in a culturally diverse location through the use of film, light and sound.

The two East London-based audio visual artists have teamed up to create a unique live cinema performance, SuperEverything*, set in Malaysia that aims to make its audience contemplate a shared human story and to reveal a collective commonality in one of South East Asia's most culturally diverse countries.

The immersive show, which has been funded by the British Council, will take viewers on a journey through Malaysia’s past, to understand its present and to question its future as it approaches its most pivotal general elections in 2013. The performance and show will incorporate unique musical aspects and light features as well as the film content to seek to discover how our sense of identity is formed through our collective participation in everyday rituals and life.

Below, Allen (pictured, left) and Cowie (right) offer their insight into the project and production in Malaysia, what we can expect from the live show next month and what it is that inspires their work as individual artists as well as collaborators for projects such as this one.

How did the idea for SuperEverything* come about?

CTA: SuperEverything* was a response to the invitation to create a new collaborative performing arts project in Malaysia with the support of the British Council. We visited Kuala Lumpur and met a lot of different people from the arts and cultural scenes there and began to develop ideas about a project that would explore the subject of identity in a way that would transcend Malaysia's boarders and communicate with an international audience.

TC: Identity was the only stimulus we were given as a starting point for our project in Malaysia. We created a triangle of people, ritual and place and then created a journey from the least populated wilderness to the metropolis of Kuala Lumpur and used this as our way of gathering subject matter.

What was it like to shoot there and had you ever been before?

CTA: I’d visited Kuala Lumpur once before so I had an idea what it was like. I'm very into sci-fi writers like JG Ballard and William Gibson, and had been reading their novels at the time, so my memory of KL was affected by that. It’s a very futuristic city with its subway system and monorail, built up with modern architecture with Islamic motifs incorporated into it. With its humid climate and sudden bursts of rain, it feels like a crazy sci-fi metropolis in the jungle. We had some great Malaysian producers on the project and managed to get permission to shoot in some fantastic locations.

TC: I’d never been to Malaysia before our scoping trip. We were welcomed into people’s homes, villages and communities with such warmth and openness, and even managed to attend three weddings while we were there.

How did you get all the artists involved and was/will it be hard to get them all involved/transported for the UK tour?

CTA: We wanted to work with a range of artists and musicians from Kuala Lumpur, from those that work with electronic technology to the more traditional South East Asian instruments. We were really excited to meet the group Rhythm in Bronze http://rhythminbronze.wordpress.com/, and immediately knew we wanted to work with them.

The British Council introduced us to another ensemble called HANDS Percussion http://www.hands.my/ who are a Chinese drumming group from KL. We knew it was going to be tricky to develop a touring project that relied on two very large ensembles, so we captured their contributions as audiovisual samples.

The music was then developed further through file sharing between London and KL, with Light Surgeon Tim Cowie collaborating with KL artists flica and composer Ng Chor Guan. For the initial shows in KL we worked with live players from both ensembles, but Ng Chor Guan is the only Malayisan performer who has continued to collaborate on the project and will be coming to the UK for the performances this year. We are also excited to be adding a new layer to the music through collaboration with the amazing string musicians from the Heritage Orchestra.

TC: It was a real challenge working with so many different musicians and artists. We were very keen to create a soundtrack with many different voices that was still cohesive. It would've been a lot easier to divide the show up between the different collaborators giving each a different set of tracks to work on, but we really wanted to create something much more interlaced, with input from all the musicians throughout the show.

What can we expect from the performance and screening?

CTA: It mixes poetic documentary material from a range of Malaysian voices with design, motion graphics and live and electronic music. Parts of it are edited, but there's a lot of improvisation that happens during the show. We are conscious of bringing this type of cross-disciplinary work to new audiences, not preaching to the converted.

TC: It’s an immersive experience - we have a gauze screen to create multiple layers of video, some of which spills into the auditorium surrounding the audience. The sound is presented as a quadraphonic mix with audio coming from all angles.

What do you hope the UK audience takes away from the experience?

CTA: SuperEverything* takes people on an audio visual journey across this amazing country in order to ask some fundamental questions about who we are as human beings on this earth. How do we define ourselves? How do we affirm these ideas through ritualistic behaviour? How are these behaviours affected by our environments and how these behaviours are effecting our environments?

TC: I hope it makes people reflect on who they are - their relationship to the land; their traditions and beliefs; our reliance on modern technology and things we 'need'; the fortune and freedoms we have in the UK; and the impact we as the human race are having on the planet.

You’ve managed to drum up support from Canon and the British Council; how hard was that?

CTA: We were fortunate to be invited to develop this project by the British Council, they approached us with the opportunity to create a new project in Malaysia based on seeing our previous live cinema work True Fictions.

We were also fortunate to work with Grey Yeoh of the British Council Malaysia who did an amazing job of connecting us with the artists we worked with. He also made the connection with Canon Malaysia who generously supported the project with the loan of their Canon ESO DSLR camera and lenses.

TC: The day that we were flying out to begin our recce trip, the cuts to funding in the arts in the UK were announced. The British Council’s help and support are what made this unique collaboration and project possible.

And what did you all personally take away from your time in Malaysia, compared to your everyday lives in East London?

CTA: As a born and bred Londoner, I will always feel at home in this city, but I found Malaysia to be a truly beautiful country, with a very unique sense of its own identity and very welcoming people. This year will see a very critical general election take place and I hope the people of Malaysia vote for a government that will give them greater freedoms and protect their rainforest biodiversity.

TC: I think we take so much for granted and we forget how privileged we are in the UK. But I think there are also things we have forgotten:  our traditional crafts, culture and beliefs and our relationship with the land. I think we could learn a lot more from our neighbours if we were a bit more open to each other.

Did you always plan to do something with a political message attached?

CTA: I've always been interested in the world around me, and much of my work has focused on various social and political issues in one way or another. I feel fortunate to have been brought up in a culture and society with a reasonable level of freedom and with access to the tools to communicate. I really feel there is a responsibility for artists of our generation to engage with issues that effect society and to use their voices to make people think differently about the world around them.

TC: I’m inspired by people and the world around us, and politics plays a big part in that. I think it’s a shame that not more people are politically engaged and feel disconnected from the political world. I think it’s important to raise these issues in art and music. 

Music and film are obviously a big part of what you do; what inspires your work mostly would you say?

CTA: There are a couple of films that changed my life and one of those is Koyaanisqatsi. It says so much with out any words, purely through the mediums of film and music. Philip Glass' music in that film is just incredible. Another film that I saw is Manufactured Landscapes, a film by Jennifer Baichwal, about landscape photographer Edward Burtynsky. It’s an amazing documentary film that reveals the cycle of consumption between east and west.

TC: Visually I have very similar influences: the photographers Edward Burtynsky and Andreas Gursky as well as the film Koyaanisqatsi are all definitely up there. Chris also showed me a fantastic audio visual journey through dance, music and culture around the world film on our recce trip to KL called International by Lucky People Center. Musically, artists such as Demdike Stare, Murcof and Talvin Sing. I’m also a massive fan of John Cage and his approach to found sounds and admire Matthew Herbert's approach to making music from unexpected and everyday sources.

SuperEverything will be touring the UK through March and April at the below venues and you can watch the trailer at the top of this page. To purchase tickets click here and to see more about the Light Surgeons click here.

09/03/2013 - Warwick Arts Centre – Coventry

10/03/2013 - Colston Hall – Bristol

11/03/2013 - Studio Theatre - Brighton Dome

12/03/2013 - The Sage - Gateshead

19/04/2013 – The Barbican At Hackney Empire - London