The Light Surgeons - SuperEverything*

A Closer Listen

Malaysia has significant populations of Malay, Indian, Chinese, and indigenous peoples, and as such the country embodies a diverse mix of cultures. Complicated by race, religion, and politics, the identity questions that Malaysians face are unique. The Light Surgeons examine these questions in their audiovisual (and olfactory) performance SuperEverything*, which, though focused on the unique notions of a specific country, elucidates universal truths of human identity. SuperEverything* is a live cinema performance composed of documentary footage filmed in Malaysia, “real time image manipulation,” field recordings, and live instrumentalists. The show combines “stories, sounds, images, and smells,” taking the term multimedia to the next level. 

The opening track, “Hiding in the Light,” is a soft, dark soundscape combining electronic sounds with strings. As the live show begins, performers build on this track, adding clicks and glitches and mutilated recordings of voices while the screen displays to the audience flashes of social media posts. This seems to comment on the identities formed in the one space where everyone is together– the internet, where we’re all surgeons of light, paring down entire selves into selectively edited sets of pixels. Soon, the screen switches to footage of Malaysian interviewees answering a question about where they come from. “I come from a great deal of chaos,” one says. The interviewee’s voices overlap, drowning each other out, while the live percussion becomes cacophonous. 

When the chaos dies down, “The Sin of Forgetting” begins with bright acoustic instruments fading in slowly from silence, like a sunrise. As the sound grows, the screen shows cells multiplying. At first it’s a pleasant major chord drone. Water drips in the background, and then crickets and cicadas join the idle hum. The music breaks apart into lively arpeggiated strings, and the screen settles on footage of Malaysians working happily in a field. Warm midday sunlight juxtaposes the earlier straining blue light of Twitter, and in the background the interviewees reflect on the dangers of humankind forgetting its earthly origin. 

Later on, “The Marketplace of Belonging” sounds itself like the ever-turning cogs and wheels of a consumerist society. In general, the soundtrack is fast-paced and rhythmic, imbuing a sense of urgency to its message. But it’s interspersed with soft and soothing moments of poignancy, like “A Pursuit for Purpose,” which plays over scenes of various Asian cultural and religious rituals. “It’s all the same God, it’s just we pray differently,” an interviewee explains. 

SuperEverything* is a work of art with a lot of moving parts, and, fittingly, it covers a lot of ground in its one hour. Taking a multi pronged approach to a multi pronged topic, it sheds light on numerous aspects of Malaysian identities– race, religion, technology, environmentalism– while relating these complexities to the rest of the world’s population. The musical and technical prowess is impressive, but the beauty of this piece is its ultimately simple message. If unique personal identity seems elusive in an increasingly complex world, there is solace in the undeniable fact of belonging to humanity as a whole. Culture clashes and country borders aside, the unity of humankind is absolute.  (Maya Merberg)