Lawrence Lek talks simulation art and his interest in the ambiguity between two paradoxes

It’s Nice That: First off, let’s talk about how your practice has been influenced by your studies in architecture. How do the conceptual and the technical aspects of it fit with your work today?

Lawrence Lek: I was interested in architecture for this idea of what science fiction writers and game designers would call “world-building”. The idea of creating an environment that isn’t as much about the experience of a place as it is about building somewhere. But one thing I realised with this (and this pervades any kind of design education, including architecture) is that, cynically, architecture is beautifying property development in its best-case scenario. But I always found the philosophical side of things very interesting. For example, the word ‘civilisation’ literally means the nature of living in cities. Or ‘citizen’ means the person who lives in the city. So a lot of ideas about society, essentially, are tied to the kind of places that humanity builds for themselves.

In general, a lot of arts education, especially architecture, is born out of a modernist idiom where architecture is essentially some aesthetic intellectual exercise as opposed to something that’s really engaged with a society, broadly speaking. So what I was interested in was different ways of creating a space which might not necessarily be a building.

INT: Wow, I didn’t know Aidol was influenced by Genting Highlands but that totally makes sense. I was wondering about the use of personal experience in your work. When you’re constructing these fictional realities, do you purposely hint to places or experiences that bear personal significance to you? I guess it also ties into the question: How does creating your own fictional reality differ from making site-specific work?

LL: Referring to the first question, like how conscious is it? Yeah, very conscious. This goes back to my studies in architecture. One point of reference was always this idea: What’s the difference between physical and virtual space? More so than that, what’s the difference between sculpture and architecture – they’re both objects, right? They’re both objects made with some aesthetic in mind. There is a history of sculptors during the 20th Century who were playing with different ideas with the objective. You get the maximalist monumental sculptors like Richard Serra, Anish Kapoor, Anthony Gormley. It’s really a dudes-making-massive-objects kind of sculpture. And then there is also the tradition of land art. Anyway, I was interested in what sculpture was trying to reinvent for itself. You know like, taking the sculpture off the base, or the idea that sculpture is not about the object, it’s about walking around a space. An experiential thing. I was thinking, could architecture work that way as well? So to answer your question, yeah, I’m always thinking, what place does this remind me of? And of course, sometimes it doesn’t remind you of anywhere, which is interesting in itself.

INT: And are the places that you want to recreate built because you want to spend time in them again? Do they feel like emotionally prevalent places for you?

LL: Of course I have an emotional connection to these places but I don’t think that’s enough to make it interesting for someone else. Personally, I’m not particularly interested in integrating too many biographical things. I’m referencing different things and things I’ve experienced, but I don’t think because it was interesting to me, it would necessarily be interesting for anyone else. It’s not just about the emotion for me, it’s about the contrast of emotions. Like how Genting Highlands, for me, is amazing and also funny, as well as happy and sad. To me, it’s not just a single register of emotion, it’s having two different things that coexist at the same time.

INT: That’s really interesting, certainly different to many creatives I’ve interviewed previously who are intentionally trying to recreate a certain memory or atmosphere. Whereas you’re more objective about it. On a similar line to your work influenced by Malaysia, I wanted to ask you about this phrase which you’ve explored in your work: “nomadic, post-colonial societies”. Can you tell us more about this?

LL: Sure. I think it’s a gradual process. It’s a huge question. Say, in relation to the last thing I said: To what extent are our biographical or personal emotions important? Because as an artist or writer, anything goes, there isn’t a rule for anything. In southeast Asia, in particular, because most countries apart from Thailand were under colonial rule at some point in their history – French, British, Dutch, Portuguese, Japanese, Chinese and so on – it’s complicated, so it totally depends on what the project is. So the video essay Sinofuturism that I made, came about when I was writing the script for Geomancer, which is set in Singapore in the future.

I noticed that a lot of things I was reading were kind of like a mirror image between how Chinese industrialisation is portrayed, as well as AI. They’re both often seen as a threat to civilisation, or like it’s going to save civilisation. So again, there’s this weird paradox between these two. The other thing that I am not particularly interested in is identity politics because, for me, it’s just not a starting point. Again, what’s interesting to me is having two paradoxical things. So in terms of the Malaysian-Singaporean context (which I probably know best), the problem with post-colonial society is: How does one deal with the benefits of being a colony?

INT: That’s very revealing, especially for me as a member of the audience and what I subjectively expect from watching an art film. It says a lot about what I expect from watching a film touching on AI (something I don’t fully understand) and what I am projecting onto the viewing experience. I’ll definitely have to rewatch your films after this interview. Can we talk about your video essay Sinofuturism and Sinofuturism as a concept? [Sino being a prefix referring to China, its people and culture.] How has the idea changed (if at all) with changing attitudes to China?

LL: Again, it’s a huge question. When I did the video, I deliberately chose to express Sinofuturism as a thing: 1839 to 2046. It’s bookended by the date of the first Opium War (1839) and 2046 which is both the Wong Kar Wai film and the end of the 50-year period after the British handover of Hong Kong back to China. There have been many other futurism movements – obviously Afrofuturism, Gulf futurism, Italian futurism and so on – so when I was doing this video essay, I was talking to some friends and trying to conceptualise: Why do I feel like there’s something very strange going on here that no one’s really picked up on when it comes to Sinofuturism? When I googled Sinofuturism (there was nothing supernatural about it) but the first thing that came up was a text written by one of my friends Steve Goodman, who’s also the musician Kode 9. I was talking to him about that and one thing he said was really interesting. Disclaimer, I am no race or colonial scholar whatsoever, this is just my interpretation. Basically, in Afrofuturism, the problem is not just the representation of Africa as a place but also the historical problem of the Transatlantic slave trade: the ownership of the body, freedom, personhood. We were talking about it and it was like, instead of appealing to Western humanism as goodwill (which is essentially part of what created slavery in the first place) some Afrofuturists would say, instead of appealing to humanity and kind-heartedness, actually, screw that, we’re beyond human, we are alien-hyper-super-beings, essentially.