Searching for Urbanscapes

Swinging …

The first time I had real traffic coming into my original blog, harisrahman.com was after my entry on Urbanscapes 2009. It was even linked in the event website. A beautiful Saturday afternoon spent at KLPAC with friends from KLickr, and we had a whale of a time. KLickr was involved in some of the programs and back then if was community orientated and most of the artists on the show were about to break through into the mainstream - Yuna included.

It was a gorgeous sunny afternoon, and it was great fun. In 2011, the event expanded, and the venue was moved to accommodate a bigger crowd at Padang Astana, PJ. We had a great time as well. Since then, it had become more commercialised but somewhat managed to retain its identity. I enjoyed Prakash’s stand-up session, bringing Anita along for the show at Medan Pasar. That was when the hub of the event was at Ruang, dubbed Urbanscapes House. They had satellite events scattered around town, so depending on your interest, they were plenty to indulge.

Last year, I enjoyed the Riuh event along River of Life. Excellent music, great food. I had a chilling time.

This installation was sponsored by Nippon Paints. The colours was OK, but it had already been broken …

This year’s Urbanscapes was a mystery. The information was slow to trickle out, but if you look hard enough, plenty was going on. Held from the 16th to 24th November, unlike in the past years, it did not have a real hub. There were installations at Medan Pasar, plus an exhibit at Ruang - Project Monyet with the great Jane Goodall making an appearance.

From the interweb, I learned that there were events at Godown KL - a new art centre near Muzium Telekom, REXKL and Publika. REXKL hosted the BMW Shorties - short movies - last weekend. There were music at Publika as well as URBN.SENI being held at Godown. I missed all that due to work. Then the big finale party was held at Sentul Depot, featuring several international acts. But to be honest, they were not precisely mainstream for me.

This probably looks better in the evening

Clearly, Urbanscapes had moved on, to cater for the current crop of youth. The cultural elements certainly have shifted, more of the events felt like a typical festival rather than locally or participant-generated contents. Perhaps, KL is yearning for a different kind of Urbanscapes. Or, I should just get on with things ...