Political Arts Urbanization: A Malaysian Case Study

This article explores politically oriented artistic production in Kuala Lumpur (KL), the capital city of Malaysia. Over the last several years, KL has become home to an expanding network of individuals who employ art as a vehicle to directly and indirectly challenge the country’s socio-political status quo and its ruling regime. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with a range of political artists living and working in the city, we find an aggregation of individuals generating similar but differentiated products with the overarching goal of advancing a more equitable, tolerant, and democratic society. We thus consider if this urban-based network represents an alternative way to mobilize the concept of a ‘cluster’ beyond mainstream academic and political narratives that emphasize the economic benefits accruing from developing a ‘creative’ class and workforce. We find that the process is not entirely different from what one might expect from traditional deployments of the concept of a cluster, but the objectives are different – rather than being principally geared towards financial gain, these individuals are primarily concerned with political objectives. We question, however, if this political arts urbanization can indeed be described as a ‘cluster’ given that, for a number of logistical and political reasons, the artists and their work are spread out over a sprawling capital city.