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Asia

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Asia

Article

Asia is a recurring place in the Collected Agenda archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between October 28, 2024 and October 28, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as “two back to back films on rave culture in Asia”. It most often appears alongside 12 Questions, 27 Club, Adeline Swartzendruber.

Metadata

  • Category: Places
  • Mention count: 1
  • Issue count: 1
  • First seen: October 28, 2024
  • Last seen: October 28, 2024

Appears In

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.

Indulging in the Eschaton
October 28, 2024 · Original source
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.
Inline links: Rave New World, Canal Projects, Michelle Lhooq, The Last Year of Darkness
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.

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