KUALA LUMPUR — Filamen’s seventh Immersio festival is treating the Southeast Asian *pasar* less as nostalgia décor and more as a living operating system: stalls, generators, handwritten signs and shouted bargains remade as projection, sensors, VR and interactive sculpture. The main show occupies Level 5 of GMBB creative mall through 27 September 2026, with satellite programmes at Muzium Telekom, REXKL and Ombak KLCC.
Organised by the Kuala Lumpur digital outfit Filamen and curated by contemporary artist Koh Kai Ting, Immersio 2026: PASAR brings together more than 70 works by artists and collectives from across Asia. Filamen co-founder Abdul Shakir told *The Star* the theme asks audiences to “engage with artists as they would at a market,” revisiting how culture and knowledge move through ordinary exchange rather than white-cube hush.
A floor that walks like a night market
At GMBB, visitors move from piece to piece the way they would between stalls — sound domes, political parody shops, stereoscopic photographs of Malaysian markets. Indonesian artist and filmmaker Anggun Priambodo’s *Toko Keperluan Perang* places audiences inside a sound dome near the escalators. Kelantan collective Ked.Pol (Kedai Politik) stages a makeshift *kedai runcit* stocked with parody merchandise: fake movie DVDs, cassettes of devotionals, toys and “Janji Manis” lollipops that needle Malaysian political culture.
Shakir told *The Star* that although digital media dominates the festival, the human research behind nostalgia is the point: “we immediately recognise the motifs… but recreating that sense of nostalgia requires considerable research.” Pocket News and CloudJoi materials list further threads — a video game on Indonesia’s gemstone trade, digital memories of Singapore’s disappearing wet markets, and a Malaysian piece built around the familiar “ikat tepi” drink-bag knot.
Singapore artists, Shakir noted, have described losing market feel to gentrification and minimalism, and some works imagine AI-run markets as DVD stalls migrate to thumb drives — a wry map of how Southeast Asian commerce is already digitising at street level.
Beyond GMBB: students, Chinatown, dinosaurs
Immersio spills across the city. At Muzium Telekom, free admission through 27 September, Filamen’s iNYALA programme — backed by Yayasan TM’s Digital Technology Incubator — shows new media students from MMU, UNIMAS and The One Academy. Six student “warungs” turn food culture interactive: mixing rojak that becomes language, pistachio and matcha beside classic flavours, and stories behind icons such as the Ramly burger.
REXKL hosts the festival’s final weekend, 25–27 September, with a Pasar pop-up of prints, zines and experimental objects plus artist talks. On 26 September, digital artists Ichu and K3@N present *Pulang*, a live audiovisual set at RXP. Separately, Eugene Foo’s *Saya Seekor Dinosaur* world at Ombak KLCC runs through 30 October, letting younger visitors invent dinosaurs that appear through projection.
Why Immersio matters for the region’s digital art scene
Founded in 2017 as a grassroots new-media community and now approaching a decade with a pandemic pause behind it, Immersio has become a reference point for Southeast Asia’s digital art circuit — less LED-carnival spectacle than a full-floor walk comparable, Shakir argues, to markets that also carry carnival energy. He is weighing a biennial rhythm as Filamen reshapes its next chapter.
Tickets for GMBB start at RM6 early bird / RM15 general via CloudJoi; seniors, persons with disabilities and children under 12 enter free. Muzium Telekom is free; REXKL performances and Ombak are ticketed separately. What to watch next is whether the Pasar frame travels — and whether “too pasar,” usually an insult, keeps being flipped into a design brief for how the region wants its digital culture to look and sound.
This article draws on *The Star*’s 19 September 2026 report, Pocket News’ festival summary, and CloudJoi’s Immersio 2026 listing. Quotes follow those outlets.