4th–7th September 2025
Our Keynote Speakers
Shaq Koyok, ‘Awas Mawas: A Puppetry for Indigenous Empowerment’
Shaq Koyok is an award-winning Indigenous artist and activist from Malaysia. His art emphasizes the inequalities that exist between modern consumer-based lifestyles and traditional sustainable ways of life. His works is refection of the people and the rainforest in which he grew up and captures a contemporary view of the struggle faced by Malaysia’s indigenous people. He has exhibited all over the world including la Biennale di Italia, Venice in 2022, and as an Artivist-in-residence with Artivist Network for COP28, Dubai, 2023.
Awas Mawas: A Puppetry for Indigenous Empowerment
The ever-changing technology and the thirst for progress have left many vulnerable minority communities, such as indigenous peoples, behind, with their rights being violated. Numerous poorly conceived efforts by various projects often fail to provide adequate space for the indigenous community to explore the critical issues they wish to address. Land rights remain the primary concern among the indigenous community, particularly in Malaysia. Many indigenous lands have not been recognised by the state government, leading to numerous cases of land grabbing. The pursuit of net-zero carbon also adds more pressure on the indigenous customary lands. Drawing from the work with the Awas Mawas, a puppetry art project with Malaysian indigenous communities, the project represents a transformative process of collaborative indigenous storytelling and puppet creation using cardboard boxes that addresses urgent climate issues while honouring cultural narratives. This eco-conscious puppetry serves as a powerful medium for environmental storytelling and community empowerment.
Shaq Koyok is currently working with Dr Ivan Tacey and John Kilburn on Resilient Landscapes: Co-Producing Orang Asli Visual Narratives of Climate Change and Environmental Transformation. The Orang Asli, the Indigenous peoples of Peninsular Malaysia, face mounting challenges due to climate change and environmental degradation. The rapid expansion of deforestation, mining, quarrying, and palm oil agriculture has dramatically altered their ancestral landscapes, threatening their ability to collect food, access clean water, and obtain medicinal plants from the forest. These transformations have profound impacts on health and cultural practices, disrupting traditional knowledge systems and livelihoods that are deeply intertwined with the environment. This project addresses a critical need to document and understand the lived experiences of Orang Asli communities as they navigate these challenges. Using community-based participatory creative research and co-production, the project offers a unique opportunity to explore the intersections of health, environment, and culture to visualize and articulate Orang Asli experiences of environmental change. The project will create a much-needed platform for emerging Orang Asli voices in broader discussions of sustainability and climate action. The project aligns with the SEI interdisciplinary challenge themes, specifically those of Life on Land, Climate Action and Cities and Communities, by foregrounding the human cost of landscape change and highlighting the need for more inclusive, culturally sensitive approaches to environmental policy and conservation.
Tim Knowles, ‘Paper Landscape’
Tim Knowles lives and works in Bristol. His work has been exhibited widely in the UK and internationally and he has been commissioned to present temporary works, events and permanent public works in major cities around the world.
Exhibitions include: The Dynamics of Drifting (solo) at Hestercombe House, Somerset, (UK), And what, for example, am I now seeing? Galleria Continua, Les Moulins, Paris, (France) and Precarious Nature, COCA, Christchurch, (New Zealand).
Other projects include: Dispersal Zone, a large scale temporary public work commissioned for Nuit Blanche Toronto (Canada) and Force-Fire, a project commissioned by Timespan for the 2015 Helmsdale Highland Games (Scotland). He was chair of the board of Trustees for Artspace and played a key role in the development of Spike Island, was a member of the Board for Chisenhale Art Place [of which Chisenhale Gallery, Chisenhale Dance Space and Chisenhale Studios were represented].
He played a lead role in negotiations, planning, curation and realisation of Centre of Gravity 2020 at Soapworks, Bristol.
Tim’s talk discussed a number of his projects that utilise paper and cardboard in the context of his wider practice, his use of paper as material; the folding and manipulation of paper to create structures that act as landscapes and his current experiments with tracing paper.