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With dozens of beautiful photographs and extensive text, this Malaysian art book is a testament to the skill and spirituality of Malaysia's traditional woodcarvers. Wood has always played a significant role in the Malay world, including the Malay Peninsula, as a means of shelter, livelihood, comfort and convenience. Among the living arts of Malaysia, woodcarving is one of the oldest, and for centuries woodcarvers enjoyed a prestige that few others did. A master woodcarver was not simply an artist. He had a mystical affinity with his material, and through his art he could unlock, channel and enhance the semangat, or life force, inherent in the wood. His works ere sought after not only for their beauty, but also for the symbolic power and meaning they embodied, in particular the keris, considered the pinnacle of woodcarver's art. Each of the pieces in this catalog of Malaysian art illustrates a specific motif, use of a pattern or form, or interpretation of a legend. The woodcarvings range from extremely important and rare pieces, such as royal ceremonial objects, to wood panels, household objects and elements of traditional Malay architecture.
Farish A. Noor might just be Malaysia's hippest intellectual. His gifts are on full display in these expanded versions of public lectures that he delivered at The Annexe Gallery, Central Market Kuala Lumpur in 2008 and 2009. Find out how 'racial difference' became such a big deal in Malaysia, and contrast this against the way our distant ancestors lived. Discover the hidden stories of the keris, Hang Tuah and PAS. There's also quite a bit of sex. Erudite, impassioned and sometimes plain naughty, What Your Teacher Didn't Tell You is a stimulating plunge into aspects of our past that have been kept from us. There's even a bonus chapter! Illustrated with dozens of sepia-toned photographs, many from the author's collection of antiques.
This comprehensive book explores the Malaysian form of shadow puppet theatre, highlighting its unique nature within the context of Southeast Asian and Asian shadow puppet theatre traditions. Intended for a Western audience not familiar with Asian performance and practices, the text serves as a bridge to this highly imaginative form. An in-depth examination of the Malaysian puppet tradition is provided, as well as performance scripts, designs for puppet characters, instructions for creating a shadow screen, and easy directions for performance. Another section then considers the practical, pedagogical, and ethical issues that arise in the teaching of this art.
In this critical volume, leading scholars in the field examine the performance of Shakespeare in Asia. Emerging out of the view that it is in "play" or performance, and particularly in intercultural / multicultural performance, that the cutting edge of Shakespeare studies is to be found, the essays in this volume pay close attention to the modes of transference of the language of the text into the alternative languages of Asian theatres; to the history and politics of the performance of Shakespeare in key locations in Asia; to the new Asian experimentation with indigenous forms via Shakespeare and the consequent revitalizing and revising of the traditional boundaries of genre and gender; and to Shakespeare as a cultural capital world wide. Focusing specifically on the work of major directors in the central and emerging areas of Asia – Japan, China, India, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines - the chapters in this volume encompass a broader and more representative swath of Asian performances and locations in one book than has been attempted till now.
Developed as an exploratory study of artworks by artists of Singapore and Malaysia, Retrospective attempts to account for contemporary artworks that engage with history. These are artworks that reference past events or narratives, of the nation and its art. Through the examination of a selection of artworks produced between 1990 and 2012, Retrospective is both an attribution and an analysis of a historiographical aesthetic within contemporary art practice. It considers that, by their method and in their assembly, these artworks perform more than a representation of a historical past. Instead, they confront history and its production, laying bare the nature and designs of the historical proje...
Discover these exciting destinations with the most incisive and entertaining guidebook on the market. Whether you plan to trek through the Taman Negara rainforest, kick-back on the idyllic Perhentian Islands or explore Singapore's dynamic art scene, The Rough Guide to Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei will show you the ideal places to sleep, eat, drink, shop and visit along the way. -Independent, trusted reviews written with Rough Guides' trademark blend of humour, honesty and insight, to help you get the most out of your visit, with options to suit every budget. - Full-colour maps throughout - navigate the backstreets of Kuala Lumpur's Chinatown or Singapore's downtown shopping streets without...
The engagement of communities, and the contribution made to communities, have become important features of arts-related projects across the globe. Community Engagement through the Arts is a collection of studies from academicians, independent scholars, arts advocates, artists, and directors of performing arts companies from South East Asia. The book addresses a wide range of topics of interest including arts education in schools, empowering communities through arts, cultural tourism, sustainability of community projects, and dance as therapy. Asian studies of arts-based community projects are unusual, so this collection provides an important reference source for practitioners, teachers and students of performing arts and communal works, worldwide.
First published in 2004. Civility might appear the last and least likely term to mobilise attention in the non- adjacent fields to performance. This issue recognises an expanded political vocabulary in concept of ‘sly civility’ located at the heart of the recent work drawing on a set of previously dis-colonising imagination.
Singapore's political firmament is crowded with stars who could have lit up to the island state's history, but were snuffed out by detention and harassment before they could do so. One of the brightest was probably Lim Chin Siong, who with Lee Kuan Yew, was one of the founders of the People's Action Party, but he spent more time in detention than representing his constituents. Lim Chin Siong was the most prominent left-wing leader in Singapore for a decade until he was eliminated from the political scene by the infamous Operation Coldstore on February 2, 1963. This book is an account of Lim’s significance in Singapore’s political developments in the decade preceding. It also contains tributes by his friends and colleagues in Singapore and Malaysia, an assessment of his life by many who were inspired by him. This new edition features an essay by Dr Poh Soo Kai and an extract from Lim’s posthumous manuscripts.
This book brings together a group of international scholars, inspired by the scholarly perspective of Australian philologist Ian Proudfoot, who look at calendars and time, royal myths, colonial expeditions, printing, propaganda, theater, art, Islamic manuscripts, and many more aspects of Malayan history.