”We need more audiences!”

If you’re the in arts, you would have heard this a gazillion times before. The problem of building up art audiences is a perennial one here. Even at sold-out shows like “M! The Opera” (2006) and “Puteri Gunung Ledang the Musical” (2006), audiences told of rows of corporate sponsor block-booked seats that were empty. And while you do see new faces among the audiences at theatre shows, it’s always the same faces you see at art exhibition openings, even if the host gallery has already sold or secured bookings for most of the artworks on display.

Truth be told, the arts community is still pretty much preaching to the converted. We may have more arts schools than just one decade ago. Our artists may have improved on their skills and global exposure. Musicals like those abovementioned may have pulled in the kind of corporate sponsorship never before imagined by local arts initiatives. But our “arts people” have a long, long way to go before they can enjoy the kind of numbers and variety of audiences that arts people in neighbouring cities, not to mention developed countries, have.

Enter “Let Arts Move You” (LAMU), an arts project where 11 artists from Malaysia and Southeast Asia are creating, and performing works in gloriously full and free view of ordinary folk who travel on the KTM Komuter trains that ply urban, and suburban areas stretching from Kuala Lumpur to Seremban, Negeri Sembilan! A veritable first of its kind, LAMU is what you would call a “public” as well as “mobile” arts project -- something that fits what the doctor would order for our arts scene struggling for a lifeline from none other than the humble man-on-the-street.

Opening up

One of the main reasons for the audience development problem here is that most artworks -- no matter how good they are in terms of thought, skill and sometimes even impact -- are shut away for viewing in formal theatre or gallery spaces, or for studying at tertiary education level.

In terms of visual art, there are murals and sculptures that have been erected in almost every state and town. However, senior artists say that only a few of these are of the intellectual and aesthetic level that catch the eye and, in the words of a late champion of the public art cause Redza Piyadasa, inspire in viewers “a sense of history and pride”. Plus, visual artists making public art have to work against “the essence of Malay traditional culture, both before and after the advent of Islam” which arts academic Dr

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Zulkifli Mohamad has found to have preferred not tangible impressive monuments but “ephemeral arts such as ritual, dance, music, pantun poetry, or wood carving in a sensitive response to the numinous forest and ocean environment in which the Malays lived” (“Seeking Langkasuka”, edited by Alex Kerr and published in svarnabhumi.blogspot.com in 2005).

So real is the lack of arts audiences that outreach programmes, ranging from the well-funded “Kuala Lumpur BBC Proms” (2002 and 06) and Laman Seni Kuala Lumpur (2005-06) to the lesser-funded “Prima Selayang Community Outreach Project” (2004), and “Circlesongs” (2007), have become a must for a number of arts bodies today. These programmes help show more Malaysians that the arts -- as apart from entertainment like television and cinema -- can be about them and thus bring value to their lives.

Meeting the past

Ironically, taking the arts out of formal arts spaces is like a future-meets-past thing; research is increasingly showing that peoples of the Malay peninsula and (now Malaysian) Borneo were traditionally more aware and appreciative of the arts than now. Although many old art forms grew under the patronage of the royal courts until the early 1900s, Zulkifli also writes in “Seeking Langkasuka” that “The arts and culture of the old Malay world were part of everyday life.”

Today, however, performances of Malay court-grown dances or healing performance rituals of indigenous peoples are few and their relevance to society rendered almost void by changes in economic priorities, and religious practice. Aside from performances in a few local art schools like ASWARA, public showings are mainly tourist show-versions tailored to strict interpretations of Islam and short attention spans of modern audiences.

But would going back to the former way of doing things, in terms of relating to the masses, help build up audience numbers? It seems as though outreach programmes have had some measure of success. When arts enthusiast Lydia Chai visited a Laman Seni Kuala Lumpur fair at the National Art Gallery, she observed (among other stormy details) in her very frank article “Don’t Rain on My Painting” (Kakiseni, 2005) that “The turn-up at the said Laman Seni event showed that many Malaysians are interested in art.”

Going public with LAMU

It was about a year ago when artist, educator and cultural worker Lim Kok Yoong (also known as Wing) first set about contacting several public transport companies in the Klang Valley with the aim of creating a mobile public art project.

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As an audience development initiative, Wing’s idea attracted help from two other artists, Goh Chai Shaen and Liew Kwai Sei in November 2006. Kwai Sei dropped out in January this year but by April, the “alternative” artists’ initiative Rumah Air Panas (RAP) enlisted in the cause and LAMU was formed with a curatorial team of Wing, RAP artist-educator Yap Sau Bin and San Francisco-based artist-educator-researcher Roopesh Sitharam.

With RAP’s regional network of like-minded artists, LAMU had on its side choregrapher Donna Miranda (Philippines), digital print artist Li Cassidy-Peet and video artist Ulrich Low (Singapore), and fine art photographers Wok the Rok and Sa Dewa (Indonesia) who were more familiar with public arts projects.

Besides these regional artists, LAMU attracted local digital print artists Kok Siew Wai and Muid Latiff, performance artist Lau Mun Leng, video and sound artist Kamal Sabran, muralist Kamal Sabran, and installation artist Goh Lee Kwang.

Nevertheless, so new was the idea of LAMU that there were so many administrative, logistical and funding obstacles, and all except one public transport firm -- Keretapi Tanah Melayu Berhad (KTM) -- bravely agreed to the venture. The company allowed LAMU members the use of one train and all the komuter stations along four track lines leading to Rawang, Sentul, Port Klang and Seremban.

KTM’s patronage also meant valuable insights from Ganad Media which owns exclusive concessions to outdoor advertisement space for Komuter stations, the KTM Mid Valley Station and KL Sentral. In working with Ganad Media to identify where visual artworks could be exhibited in Komuter train coaches and stations, Wing’s team were exposed to know-how of outdoor advertisement space -- something which Piyadasa, at a talk on public arts in Wisma Kebudayaan Sokka Gakkai Malaysia some years back, described as a very strong contender for outdoor space that could (or should) be allocated for public art.

LAMU has also garnered support from Arts Network Asia, Jabatan Kebudayaan dan Kesenian Negara, the Krishen Jit Astro Fund, Matahati as well as Kakiseni.com as official media.

On the other side of the tracks

With LAMU now underway, the participating artists are discovering for themselves what engages ordinary folk on the KTM Komuter lines and are getting a better idea of how to reach out to people who would not voluntarily go to a gallery or theatre.

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When LAMU began on Monday, Donna (a former Rimbun Dahan resident artist) and RAP artist Yap Sau Bin boarded a Komuter train at KL Sentral, headed to Seremban and back. Along the way, Donna showed stumped but rather cooperative passengers photos of graffiti in train stations, got them to talk about it while Sau Bin recorded these conversation in photos and videos. Donna also read aloud a passage about the various races in Malaysia from her Lonely Planet guidebook.

By the next evening, a huge (9 feet x 26 feet) mural had begun to be created "live" on one of the walls at the KTM Komuter ticket counter foyer at KL Sentral. Led by Shieko, the mural will completed in stages from 5 pm to 9 pm everyday until Saturday and exhibited until LAMU ends on 4th November. As far as public visual artworks are concerned, this is a very rare opportunity for people to see an artwork being created in the public eye.

On the programme’s official launch at the same foyer this Saturday afternoon, train passengers and passers-by will be treated to another of Donna’s performances, and Lee Kwang’s artwork which, by the sounds of it, includes a karaoke set in a shopping trolley! After this, guests are going to be taken by train to the old KTM station nearby where artworks have also been put up. A short feedback session will follow.

Huffing along

Whether LAMU will create new art audiences in public spaces and, by “lucky” extension, formal art spaces remains to be seen. But what it is likely to do is get under the skin of more Joe Publics who we need to see in our art galleries and theatres.

And while “Joe Public” here doesn’t exclude the Montblanc-carrying sorts who never stop to read about the luxury house’s arts patronage activities, LAMU’s focus on the KTM Komuter trains and stations means it is taking the arts to the masses who depend on public transport everyday. For these people, train rides for the next one and a half weeks will be anything but routine.

If KTM and Ganad Media get positive feedback from enough passengers, the project may be another example of how it pays -- in terms of customer relations, publicity and profits -- for corporate sponsors to invest in the arts and work with socially-conscious artists.

For now, it seems to be a good deal of fun. And sometimes, that’s all that is needed to get people interested in something that they have unfortunately come to see as being separate from their daily lives.

Support LAMU, as how we at Kakiseni are doing, and let the arts move you, again.

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LAMU officially opens on 27th November 2007 (Saturday) with a launch at 1:30 pm at KTM Intercity arrival hall (opposite KFC) in KL Sentral, Kuala Lumpur. The project runs until 4th November. More details here.

Cover and article photos by Yap Sau Bin are courtesy of LAMU.

Veronica Shunmugam edits Kakiseni. She began researching on Malaysian public arts from 2003 in her previous capacity as an arts journalist for StarMag, Sunday Star, and an Australian Cultural Award Scheme grant awardee. In 2006, StarMag published her pioneering three-part series of articles on public arts in the Klang Valley.