Michelle Lhooq
Article
Michelle Lhooq is a recurring person in the Collected Agenda archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between October 21, 2024 and October 28, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as “Michelle Lhooq of Rave New World presents a double screening”; “a short film by Michelle Lhooq on an underground rave”; “a short film by Michelle Lhooq on an underground rave in Singapore”. It most often appears alongside Brooklyn, Canal Projects, Chengdu.
Metadata
- Category: People
- Mention count: 2
- Issue count: 2
- First seen: October 21, 2024
- Last seen: October 28, 2024
Appears In
Related Pages
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- Brooklyn (2 shared issues)
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- Canal Projects (2 shared issues)
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- Chengdu (2 shared issues)
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- China (2 shared issues)
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- Chloe Pingeon (2 shared issues)
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- Flatiron (2 shared issues)
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- Singapore (2 shared issues)
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- Sovereign House (2 shared issues)
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- 12 Questions (1 shared issues)
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- 27 Club (1 shared issues)
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- A Tale of Autumn (1 shared issues)
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- Abigail Yaga (1 shared issues)
External Links
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- Instagram: https://instagram.com/michellelhooq
Source Context
Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.
From 7pm at Canal Projects — Michelle Lhooq of Rave New World presents a double screening of a short film on Singapore’s nightlife underground, and a feature film documentary depicting rave culture in Chengdu, China. After party to follow.
There’s the Rave New World screening at Canal Projects tonight; two back to back films on rave culture in Asia - a short film by Michelle Lhooq on an underground rave in Singapore, followed by Ben Mullinkson’s feature documentary The Last Year of Darkness documenting alternative nightlife in Chengdu, China. The first is more of a traditional documentary, chronically one night out in a country that is not very conducive to going out - Singapore has the strictest drug laws in the world. The second screens like a narrative movie, the third wall breaks only once, a drag performer stands in a ball gown on the street at dawn, they get undressed, they get ready in the mirror, they meet online, they meet in a club, they meet in a warehouse, the night ends, the nights end, the years end, etc.
There’s a lucidity in both films that I appreciate. Raving is lucid in many senses, more so than the realms of nightlife I typically frequent. More explicit in its transgression but less explicit in its hedonism, maybe? I’ve only been to raves sober, only in Berlin, only with my sister or more often alone, and I remember those nights very clearly. Buildings like mazes and whimsical gardens and a recollection of those evenings as all very wholesome, even though the contents of the parties were explicitly, not. Regardless, that was Berlin, and when I ask Michelle Lhooq if she sees a nihilism in raving she says that yes, a bit, in places like Berlin and New York, but not really in Asia - where rebellion and novelty and stories of tradition and folklore and myth in the art of it all, gives life to something profoundly optimistic.
I’m interested in drugs as something that I Cannot Do, not for lack of desire but really for sheer lack of sanity. I’m interested in California Sober as something I kind of wish was for me, but which is definitively not. Michelle Lhooq coined the term, and she describes its virality as a sign of the shifting paradigm away from alcohol but not necessarily towards asceticism, towards instead, something else. I’m interested in partying if nothing is at stake. This sounds didactic, but I mean it so sincerely - the stake of things often do give them their value, the depth of escapism lies on what you are escaping, this isn’t necessarily political but it definitely can be, etc etc etc.
Inline links: Michelle Lhooq coined the term