Lawrence Lek 陆明龙 is a filmmaker, musician, and artist who unifies diverse practices—architecture, gaming, video, music and fiction—into a continuously expanding cinematic universe. Over the last decade, Lek has incorporated vernacular media of his generation, such as video games and computer-generated animation, into site-specific installations and digital environments which he describes as ‘three-dimensional collages of found objects and situations.’ Often featuring interlocking narratives and the recurring figure of the wanderer, his work explores the myth of technological progress in an age of artificial intelligence and social change.
He has exhibited internationally with recent solo exhibitions including Black Cloud Highway, Sadie Coles HQ, London (2023); Nepenthe (Summer Palace Ruins), QUAD, Derby (2022); Post-Sinofuturism, ZiWU the Bund, Shanghai (2022); Ghostwriter, Center for Contemporary Arts Prague, Prague (2019); Farsight Freeport, HEK House of Electronic Arts Basel, Basel (2019); Nøtel, Urbane Künste Ruhr, Essen (2019); AIDOL 爱道, Sadie Coles HQ, London (2019); Nøtel, Stroom Den Haag, The Hague (2018); 2065, K11 Art Space, Hong Kong (2018); Play Station, Art Night, London (2017). His work has also featured internationally in numerous group shows, biennales and film festivals including 5th Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Kochi (2022); Leeum Museum of Art, Seoul (2022); Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney (2022); IFFR International Film Festival Rotterdam (2020 and 2018); 17th Venice Architecture Biennale, Venice (2021), among others. Lek composes soundtracks and conducts live audio-visual mixes of his films, often incorporating his open-world games; his soundtrack releases include Temple OST (The Vinyl Factory, 2020) and AIDOL OST (Hyperdub, 2020). Lek has been recognised with the 2017 Jerwood/FVU Award and the 2015 Dazed Emerging Artist Award. In 2021 he was the recipient of both the 4th VH Award Grand Prix and the LACMA 2021 Art + Technology Lab Grant. Lek lives and works in London.
LUCIJA ŠUTEJ: How did you enter the world of gaming?
LAWRENCE LEK: I really liked drawing and building things as a kid. I became interested in reading, gaming, architecture, and philosophy only later. It’s invisible when you’re growing up, but ultimately you realise that the entire industry is geared toward entertaining children. So toys, entertainment, cartoons, gaming, and snack foods are all geared towards turning children into consumers. One of the big cartoons in the 80s was Transformers, the pre-Hollywood version. I was in Hong Kong then and was conscious that it is an Americanized version of Gundam and other different anime and mecha traditions from Japan. Companies invent a cartoon with a cast of characters to sell toys. Nintendo is an excellent example because it started as a playing card company and evolved into its modern incarnation of video games. But it’s all to do with this idea of interactive instead of more passive forms of entertainment.
Literature and reading are active because you engage with it as a reader and visualize things in your head. But books have linear temporalities that go from beginning to end, whereas video games, to some extent, bring you into the world differently. Of course, I did not know this then, but it became clear to me later.
I was interested in drawing, and I clearly remember when a cousin taught me how to draw a single-point perspective, and I was like: “Wow, that’s amazing!” (laugh) I was curious and entered this space between witnessing a world seen in films and creating a world through 3D. Drawing was my entry point. The cinema you would get in the 80s and 90s, not just the cartoon side but also the mainstream entertainment, was fantasy-driven instead of realism. The 70s was a transition between realism and fantasy with special effects, both in terms of mainstream cinema, as well as science fiction, and even architecture. It is almost a cliche, but the aesthetic of the 80s was a heightened reality, so much so that it became like another world, and I became interested in inventing things.
LŠ: Your educational background is in Architecture – what attracted you to the discipline? Were you more drawn to design or the theoretical aspect of the field?
LL: I grew up in Hong Kong and Singapore in the late 80s and early 90s. On an intuitive level, I felt there was no real difference between lived experience and what is formally called architecture. I clearly remember when the Bank of China skyscraper in Hong Kong was being built. Seeing that building develop, watching things on TV, playing video games, and drawing were different things in my mind, but they’re all part of the same world of inventing the city – which is also creating society. And also, of course, it was of political significance, the Bank of China being built in Hong Kong in the late 80s. And even at a young age, I realised something was happening. Architecture was not separate from lived experience – it was changing in front of me.
In Europe, the proportion of contemporary modern architecture to traditional architecture is smaller. Take London, for example, and you get all these planning regulations and so on. But in Singapore and Hong Kong, it’s the other way around. I suppose I did not know architecture had a capital A.
In architecture, I felt close to the conceptual ideas that were not grounded in theory but more drawn from lived experience. I found the stories of how buildings or cities got made much more compelling than the theories. It made much more sense when I understood how a civilization was founded or why people moved from point A to B. For example, a wandering tribe might find a river and a resource, which later develops into a particular way of living. These patterns are not quite theory nor history (laugh).
LŠ: You also worked in the field — (for example, for Norman Foster) — how did this practical involvement shape/ translate into your artistic practice?
LL: Norman Foster was the biggest studio I worked with, but I was not there for long. I was also doing a lot of freelance work on the side. I worked for 10 or 12 different studios and firms, from very small (one-person studio) to large ones, mainly in London and Malaysia. My family is Malaysian, so I was working with an architect called Ken Yeang in Kuala Lumpur, one of the pioneers in ecological design. He was like a mentor, and even though I now work in a different field, the vision isn’t that different. Ken came from a generation of Archigram-taught architects trying to blend science fiction and material reality. He once told me how Kisho Kurokawa said to him when he started, “Ken, nobody knows where Malaysia is, so you had better publish your work!” It was almost enlightening to hear this legendary Metabolist figure give ultra-pragmatic advice.
Anyone who works in a corporate or construction environment will tell you that the creative aspect is different from what you think it would be. It is more office politics and negotiation (laugh). But what I appreciated about working with both small firms and big companies is how difficult it is for people to earn a living, doing what is essentially delivering a luxury service to very demanding clients.
With my first full-time job, it was just my boss, Luz Vargas, and me. She is a Colombian architect in London, and I saw how hard it was for her to find work, even though she was talented and had a singular style. It is tough to sustain work coming in, so I appreciated the difficulty of seeing that first-hand. The classic pattern of entering the industry is: “Oh, I did a shed for a friend or a kitchen extension for an uncle, and then hopefully, it builds up from there.” But if you are not from London, you generally do not have those opportunities. I also clearly see the difference in demographic between who gets to set up a successful firm that really takes off, and who does not – and it comes down to connections.
LŠ: What are your thoughts on the current developments in the architectural field? As an outsider (with a fashion design background), I see the fast characteristic of fashion industry – things are not made to last, yet hopefully, they should (at least longer than a decade or two). Buildings should not have a pre-determined life spans due to property development trends.
LL: That’s absolutely how it is. One of the things that they never tell you at architecture school is that the field is a property development kit. I am also conscious that in my role as a visual artist, I am part of a talent pool that has value to a certain audience.
You grow up with many illusions, such as that things might be easier than they are, that work might be easy to get, and so on. With higher education, there is a real sense of the ivory tower. It is a precious time when you can experiment as much as you want. Some universities are more job-centered, and you can see this on websites with ads such as “98% of our graduates get employed in six months.” And the RCA always says: “We are the world’s number one art and design school!” According to who, you know? (laugh) There is a huge level of fantasy and little real-world practicality. In my work experience, I was always trying to find a way to bridge both.
But this idea of architecture being fashion-driven has always been the case. Now that styles, renderings, and graphics are transmitted much faster, that feedback system of how something looks and what we want happens very rapidly. Of course, in fashion, you have the standard pattern of two collections per year, autumn/winter and spring/summer, so the entire mainstream industry obeys this development cycle. Because architecture is driven by entirely different macro and micro-economic factors (like in the UK context, we have inflation, interest rates, property rates, Brexit, how attractive London is for property investors, etc.), many factors influence what architecture is or can be. Designers who want to experiment – do it via DIY installations or pavilions at institutions such as biennales or festivals for architecture rather than through permanent structures.
LŠ: A lot of your work references non-places and places of transition. What is the attraction?
LL: Again, returning to Hong Kong and Singapore, I don’t think of non-places as necessarily bad. When you read about airports and shopping malls, the argument is they are all generic and the same. And I understand that impulse is a sense of losing a particular identity associated with a specific place because non-places could be anywhere.
But I never felt that an airport was a non-place. How can you say that Singapore Changi Airport, Kai Tak Airport, or London’s Heathrow Airport are non-places any more than Notre Dame Cathedral, St. Paul’s Cathedral or St. Mark’s Cathedral? They all obey the same language, identity, materials. Non-places are generally written about negatively. And it privileges a specific idea of an ‘authentic’ place. But that has never been the case. My interest in a video game or virtual environment is really in non-places. But even in non-places, there is still a high chance of getting a real experience within them. Many shopping centres and airports are complete nightmares to navigate, but there is not absence of things happening.
LŠ: A prominent question that emerges is the question of art when made by AI – perhaps we could talk here about how it is reflected in your work on the example of how originality is a definition of artistic work, yet with AI, we encounter a more adapt/copy system. I would love to hear more about your ongoing research into this complex relationship.
LL: When I was studying architecture, many friends were experimenting with parametric and algorithmic design. It is the genealogy of Frank Gehry and Zaha Hadid, where digital tools compute these complex forms that could only be achieved by 3D software advancements. So it is not that they could just be visualised, but were optimised and built because of technological advances. But, the challenge for architects would be choosing to curate from the created variations. And even then (15 years ago), I thought about the role of the architect – or of the original – was already deeply questioned.
Design, architecture, or programming game design are systems with increasingly automated tools. Usually, automation makes things more convenient for the creator, such as using 3D software instead of making a model. In fashion, 3D software bridges the gap between pattern cutting and the final garment.
But when it comes to originality, every individual has a shifting definition. Who came first? Does it matter? I can only talk about my work; for example, when I tried to make this plywood pavilion, I was explicitly trying to create an original. Looking at the history of the material, bent plywood, you have Charles and Ray Eames making amazing things in the 40s and 50s. And even before that, lots of people made bent plywood. How can I do it a bit differently? It is a material where the boundaries of invention are narrow. But as we see with AI, all sorts of generative design in text, image, video, and 3D – the possible boundaries need to be clarified. Of course, there is a huge economic motivation for automation. I am interested in all these aspects – the moral point of view, the aesthetic possibilities, and the question of where creative authorship lies. All those aspects are being questioned now.
