Taiwanese sound artist Chang Hsin Yu will perform alongside Euseng Seto and Toru Izumida at the Tekka festival at KLPac on Dec 21. Photo: PublicVisual
Kuala Lumpur’s experimental arts scene takes a confident step forward with the Tekka festival at the Kuala Lumpur Performing Arts Centre (KLPac), from Dec 19-21.
The inaugural event brings together sound, light, code, performance and visual design, positioning itself as a new platform for artists working across the evolving field of audiovisual art.
At a time when such practices have often existed on the fringes of the city’s cultural calendar, Tekka signals a growing appetite for experimentation – both from artists and audiences.
There is also a warning accompanying the event: “The show may contain loud noises, strobe lighting and haze effects” – perhaps a reminder that Malaysia has yet to see many large-scale experimental arts productions.
The programme features live A/V performances, workshops and a dialogue session. Its first edition gathers artists from Malaysia, Taiwan, Japan and Myanmar, including Euseng Seto, Cerikapak, Anis Haron, rEmPiT g0dDe$$, Vasflow, Angqasa, Mulan Theory with Cr.telur, Chang Hsin Yu, Huang Wei (Taiwan), Chappie (Taiwan), LnHD (Myanmar) and Toru Izumida (Japan).
Euseng Seto, after a busy year in audiovisual arts, welcomes Tekka for shining a spotlight on the experimental music and arts community. Photo: Euseng Seto
For those in search of new sonic experiences, Tekka presents an opportunity to explore uncharted auditory territories.
While the line-up may not feature mainstream acts, it does offer performances capable of reshaping expectations.
Attendees can anticipate live-coding experimentation, noise, loops, and analog/digital modular exploration, featuring South-East Asian sonic hybrids and immersive ambient soundscapes.
Opportunity to explore
Although new to the calendar, Tekka has actually been years in the making.
The festival’s co-founder and creative director Wee Jia Foong, better known as Foong, describes it as something that emerged organically from conversations and shared experimentation within the community.
“Tekka was born from a shared need to gather, listen and experiment. We did not aim to build a conventional festival, but rather a living audiovisual space where sound, image and system move together in tactile, honest ways,” says Foong, a KL-based artist-curator whose passion is technology and the arts.
He sees Tekka less as a fixed event than an evolving process shaped by those who participate in it.
Three full days – and concert nights – of experimental music and arts at KLPac is a rare plunge into immersive sound, but it also signals the arts venue’s commitment to celebrating its 20th anniversary this year with forward-looking, future-focused events.
“What drives us is curiosity and care, embracing risk and openness to listen differently. Ultimately, it is also about people who create, take risks and imagine new possibilities for audiovisual culture,” says Foong.
For producer Maggie Ong, Tekka also reflects KLPac’s growing openness to audiences beyond its usual theatre-going crowd. Having observed audiovisual festivals and performance models abroad, she saw an opportunity to adapt those ideas to a local context.
“Tekka did not appear overnight. Initially, it was just having one or two performances, but now it has grown into a mini festival with over 20 artists joining,” says Ong, who is also KLPac’s assistant general manager (publicity and marketing).
“We travelled to Taiwan and Japan to observe how people organise audiovisual performances and festivals, how they run workshops, talks and performances, even standing there and seeing how their technical turnovers work. We are starting small and still learning,” she adds.
Ong adds that Tekka closes KLPac’s 20th anniversary celebrations while offering a fresh way to experience its historic building.
Myanmar-born sound artist LnHD, from the female-led Wayang Women troupe that performed in KL in October, returns to the capital for this weekend’s Tekka festival. Photo: Nietze
“I wanted to create something beyond KLPac’s usual productions, something that lets the public see its 123-year-old heritage home in a new light and imagine new creative possibilities.”
As both platform and testing ground, Tekka aims to connect artists working across disciplines while giving audiences an entry point into a regional movement that is slowly gaining visibility in KL.
“Whether you’re new to the audiovisual genre or already a fan, there’s something here for you as each day showcases a different curated programme with different vibes and artists,” says Ong.
An engaging line-up
Within the line-up, artists arrive with different trajectories shaped by experience, instinct and experimentation.
Japan-born Toru, a visual artist, composer, and live A/V performer, takes a multidisciplinary, multimedia approach to explore contemporary culture, and he is set to give Tekka a global edge.
Among the more established names is Malaysian producer and sound artist Euseng Seto, also known as Flica. With nearly two decades in the scene, he sees Tekka as a milestone for KL’s audiovisual community.
“It has been an incredibly busy and rewarding year for me performance-wise, but I am genuinely excited about Tekka. I believe this might actually be the very first dedicated audiovisual festival of its kind in KL, so it feels special to be a part of that history,” says Euseng.
Vasflow is an audiovisual artist merging generative systems and consciousness, using real-time visuals, sound, and EEG interaction. Photo: Moses Tan
“I will be presenting a set centred around the theme ‘Breathe’. It is an evolution of a sound and light show I originally performed back in September. I am currently reworking the arrangements specifically to fit the energy at Tekka,” he adds.
For younger artists like Naqib Idris, better known as Cerikapak, the path into new media has been less formal and more intuitive.
“The scene is relatively small and close-knit. Everyone pretty much knows everyone in the creative scene, which sort of amplified my sense of being an outsider,” he says.
Working across interactive installations, VJing and custom-built systems, his practice centres on audience participation.
“This naturally pushed me toward building my own systems using depth cameras, sensors and controllers, allowing performers and audiences to interact and influence visuals in real time.”
Recent theatre collaborations have expanded that scope.
“I have also done some theatre work as the multimedia artist for the 40 Or Not production by Lee Wushu Arts Theatre. We recently performed at the Wuzhen Theatre Festival in China by invitation, which was also my first time performing my visuals overseas.”
For Victoria Yam (rEmPiT g0dDe$$), sustaining an experimental practice means balancing touring with periods of focused creation. Her projects, including Viktoria, move fluidly between club settings, audiovisual performances and collaborations rooted in South-East Asian narratives.
The Malaysian is also part of Wayang Women, a female-led troupe blending Kelantanese puppetry with contemporary storytelling and performance.
“I plan my year by balancing two cycles. Months dedicated to touring and months reserved for creating. European summer and late-year festivals are usually the busiest, so I protect the quieter periods for writing music, developing my album and building new A/V material,” she says.
“As a new media artist, I approach projects like Wayang Women by treating sound as cultural storytelling. I collaborate closely with filmmakers, performers and designers to build worlds where tradition, futurism and politics meet.”
From an outside perspective, Myanmar-born producer and sound artist LnHD (Lynn Nandar Htoo), who is now based in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, sees Malaysia’s scene as particularly open-minded. Named Goethe’s Talent 2024, LnHD describes KL as fertile ground for experimentation.
“From the outside, Malaysia’s scene appears vibrant, experimental and community-driven. Artists work across disciplines such as sound, film, coding and performance, and they create their own platforms when institutions fall short.”
Her exchanges with Malaysian artists often revolve around shared South-East Asian experiences such as colonial histories, displacement, queer and feminist struggles and a desire to reconnect cultural memory through new forms.
“There is a real generosity in sharing knowledge and supporting each other, which makes collaboration feel like a long-term cultural conversation rather than a one-off project,” she concludes.
Tekka takes place at KLPac from Dec 19-21. It is presented by Rhizo and KLPac, and supported by ArtsFAS, Yayasan Hasanah, The Japan Foundation KL, Chirpybird, Taiwan’s National Culture & Arts Foundation, Blackbody Emission, Derivative, and Fluid Noise as programme partner. More info here.
