Between Eyes and Ears: Tamil Crying Songs and an Experimental Visual Anthropology of Imagined Community in Malaysia

Dec 20, 2025

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Between Eyes and Ears: Tamil Crying Songs and an Experimental Visual Anthropology of Imagined Community in Malaysia

This talk explores the enduring tension and attraction between anthropology and audio-visual culture. It asks how anthropological modes of inquiry can contribute to audio-visual practices concerned with the human condition. Grounded in the hypothesis that ethnographic work can critically engage with the philosophical “myth of the given,” the study draws on sustained fieldwork among Tamil communities in Malaysia to examine how human beings are formed through lived sensory experience. Central to this inquiry is aluvuhira pattu, the “crying song”, a unique expressive form through which Tamil individuals articulate their way of being in the world.

Through deep immersion in fieldwork, the speaker encounters a productive tension between anthropological experience and audio-visual reflection. Rather than adhering to a fixed or linear tradition, the study suggests that understanding the human condition requires multiple trajectories grounded in cultural specificity and lived practice. Ultimately, the talk argues that anthropological questions emerge from experimental ethnographic engagement, offering a renewed mode of inquiry that connects embodied experience with conceptual reflection.

About the speaker

Sorayut Aiem-UeaYut is an anthropologist and writer based in Chiang Mai, Thailand, who has dedicated over two decades to working with the Melayu people in Southern Thailand. He trained as a visual and media anthropologist in Berlin from 2016 to 2020 and was a visiting scholar at the Harvard-Yenching Institute, Harvard University, from 2019 to 2020.

Sorayut has authored numerous books exploring identity, selfhood, and sensory perception in contexts of crisis and conflict. His work particularly examines the tensions between ethnic identity and nationalism through both ethnographic research and creative non-fiction. In recognition of his contributions, he received an Honorable Mention in documentary writing from the Office of Basic Education Commission, Ministry of Education, in 2017, as well as Second Best in Documentary Writing from the Seven Book Award the same year. Some of his non-fiction works are currently being translated into English and Malay. In addition to his writing, Sorayut is a columnist, specializing in visual culture, and serves as an assistant professor in the Department of Media Arts and Design. Currently, he is engaged in ethnographic film and photography projects that explore the complex intersections of public memory and personal experience, particularly within the context of Thai political violence.

When

Thursday, 23 April 2026 at 19:00

Where

Lecture Room, 4/Floor, The Siam Society

Admission

Members and Students (to undergraduate level) — Free of charge
Non-Members — THB 300

For more information, please contact

Tel: 02 661 6470-3 ext 201

or e-mail: lectures@thesiamsociety.org

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