After dark, the laneways and heritage facades of Downtown Kuala Lumpur will transform into immersive storytelling spaces through light, sound, and motion. Warung Terang by Filamen brings projection mapping out of large-scale building facades into a mobile, artist-led experience.
Unfolding from 8th to 17th May, six artworks will move across locations including Jalan Tun H.S Lee, Jalan Sang Guna, Muzium Telekom, and River of Life, inviting the public to explore light, sound, and cultural stories up close as the experience appears, shifts and re-emerges across the city.
Curated by Filamen, Warung Terang is developed as an ongoing exploration of how contemporary digital art can exist freely within the city, moving beyond fixed installations into formats that invite closer interaction between the public, the artworks, and artists. With support from Think City, Warung Terang is one of the programmes under the KL Fest. The initiative also seeks to draw audiences back into overlooked urban spaces, reactivating areas that often fade after dark.
Guided by the theme of pasar, Warung Terang takes cues from Southeast Asia’s marketplaces – places defined not just by goods but by the constant exchange of ideas, conversations, and cultural encounters. Taking place over two weekends, Warung Terang brings together daytime workshops and evening street activations, where projection mapping comes alive alongside Reavang, an open platform for artists and creatives to experiment with visuals and sound in a live urban setting.
As night sets in, Downtown KL shifts into pockets of colour, sound and activities, encouraging people to slow down, walk through the city and rediscover spaces they would normally pass by. Artists remain on-site, allowing visitors to get a behind-the-scenes look, have conversations and engage directly with the work as it happens – breaking the usual distance between projection mapping and audience.
The inaugural edition of Warung Terang brings together Southeast Asian artists, including Malaysian artists Fairuz Sulaiman of Sekolah Main Wayang, known for blending traditional storytelling with contemporary media, visual collective Fonetikar, multimedia artist Tan Ji Kean, and Indonesian collectives and artists featuring The Fox, The Folks, Story of Karana, and Hue, drawing from the lived experiences and everyday exchanges found in the marketplace, where stories will be reimagined through light, visuals, audio and live interaction.
“In a pasar, it’s never just about what is being sold – it’s about the people, the conversations and the shared stories that move through the space,” said Abdul Shakir, Co-Founder of Filamen. “With Warung Terang, we wanted to bring that into Downtown KL, where audiences are not just watching, but becoming part of the experience – rediscovering familiar places and forming meaningful new memories along the way.”
KL Fest runs from 6th to 31st May, 2026, across Downtown Kuala Lumpur, activating heritage buildings, streets, and public spaces through more than 80 events and over 700 hours of programming, the majority of which are free to the public. Organised by Think City in collaboration with Kuala Lumpur City Hall (DBKL), the festival forms part of a broader effort to reimagine the city through culture, with activations like Warung Terang bringing audiences closer to the streets through more intimate, ground-level encounters. The festival is held in conjunction with Visit Malaysia 2026, Warisan KL, and Kuala Lumpur’s designation as a UNESCO Creative City of Design.
For more information, visit Filamen’s Instagram.
