Wayang PO Box 52, Bangkok 10242, Thailand E-mail: [email protected] Contact Person :Ti Chee

"Wayang" means image. However, in Indonesia and Malaysia, the term is more notably used together with another as "wayang kulit" - meaning a lively, musical, shadow play. In the Chinese language, "Waying" is closely associated with picture, image or shadow. Both Waying and Wayang, in essence, mean the same in these popular languages.

As an alternative communication organisation, WAYANG seeks to visualise that which is "shadowed" or repressed - to communicate people's experiential knowledge and local wisdom; and to share moving images that seek to move people, in solidarity, towards more balance (yin and yang), justice and creativity in the existing communication disorder...

WAYANG first engaged in community work with NGOs in the mid-1970s. In 1984, WAYANG initiated the video documentation of a series of dialogues with women from different ethnic communities in Malaysia about their work, their struggles and their hopes. Over the past 16 years, WAYANG's alternative communication work has involved a broader range of communities, organisations and contexts in various parts of Asia and beyond. WAYANG's work prioritises issues relating to gender, labour, fishworkers, indigenous peoples, culture and human dignity.

WAYANG comprehends the power of alternative video as a pivotal tool for conscientisation, empowerment and solidarity actions. A medium that poses immense potential in making the communication flow participatory with more bottom-up current and relevance.

WAYANG's work locates grassroots and marginalised or "excluded" communities as its primary focus and facilitates their participation by enabling a forum where, for instance, their local wisdom and experiential knowledge, their communitarian values and practices, and their voices and faces could be communicated.

However, WAYANG recognises that effective change could only come about with the participation of people at all levels. Thus, WAYANG also works with various public interest organisations at national, regional and international levels.

WAYANG's initiatives span a broad spectrum: from documenting excluded voices and faces in sweatshops, factories, urban slums, fishworkers at sea, peasants and labourers in the fields, and working bare-footed in remote forests and villages in many countries in Asia, to documenting protests or street rallies in major cities as well as various conferences or proceedings in universities, UN venues, even in the South African Parliament and the European Parliament.

Having engaged in, primarily, community-oriented "narrowcasting" of its videos during the 1980s, WAYANG is widening its distribution focus to include, where appropriate, "broadcasting" and internet "webcasting" options. Hence, broadcast-quality camera systems (i.e., Betacam SP & Digital DV) for production work, and professional multimedia softwares and hardwares for post-production work are being utilised.

Besides production work and networking, WAYANG also
implements alternative video training workshops with grassroots communities and PO/NGO activists.

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