by Rachel Ong Shu Ying (Doctoral candidate, Univ. of music and performing arts Graz)

This talk explores the relationship of music and spaces through the concept of queer(ing) spaces in Malaysia. Inhabiting the margins of social cultural borderlands, the queer community is often caught in ethnoreligious and political discourses in Malaysia, and is constantly traversing the boundaries of race, religion, and class while navigating the politics of in/visibility. In Malaysia, anti-LGBT laws—manifested in archaic British colonial-era penal codes and Syariah law (which applies to Muslims)—are often unequally and selectively enforced against those deemed gender- and sexually transgressive. As a result, queer communities are systematically denied and rendered invisible. This talk highlights how music, through its complex systems of social practice, serves as a site for the expression of queer identities and as a space of resistance. It foregrounds the ways in which musicking affords possibilities for creating and imagining alternative worlds, as exemplified by how queer communities navigate and contest the politics of in/visibility.

Tuesday 7th April 2026, from 2pm until 4pm

Room S.H3244
Building H3
ULB - Campus Solbosch

Free entrance