&lainlain Lab
&lainlain Lab (read: dan lain lain) is conceived as a space in between.
A space for reflection and continuation.
A place where looking back becomes a way of moving forward, and where unfinished thoughts are allowed to remain unfinished.
This introduction arrives at a significant threshold: sōydivision is approaching its tenth year of practice. Over the past decade, we have shifted form many times — from an artistic group to an ensemble, from a collective to a constellation. These transformations were never the result of a master plan, but emerged through relations, urgencies, invitations, and moments of alignment that accumulated over time.
What does “&lainlain” mean?
The name &lainlain comes from the Indonesian phrase dan lain-lain, which translates loosely to “and others,” “etcetera,” or “and so on.”
It is a term that resists closure. It gestures toward multiplicity, incompleteness, and the presence of things that do not need to be fully named to exist.
This idea mirrors the way sōydivision has operated over the years:
across disciplines and formats, across geographies and contexts, moving between sound, performance, radio, zines, workshops, meals, exhibitions, and forms that don’t always fit institutional categories. What began as individual projects gradually transformed into a collective artistic platform, and later into a constellation of practices held together by trust, long-term collaboration, and shared questions rather than fixed identities.
From growth to grounding
After nearly a decade, &lainlain Lab marks a conscious shift.
Rather than continuing to pursue expansion for its own sake — the familiar pressure to become bigger, more visible, more productive — this space proposes a different orientation: staying grounded. It acknowledges how even within the cultural sector, artistic practices are often pulled into capitalist logics of growth, output, and constant innovation.
&lainlain Lab is a response to that pressure.
For the next two years, the room will function as a site for collective study — not as a temporary project, but as an ongoing method. Study here does not mean formal instruction or expertise-driven learning, but a shared process of listening, testing, unlearning, and thinking together across differences.
As we often phrase it now:
we are many — but probably not a thing.
A living infrastructure
This approach takes material form through the long-term activation of two core infrastructures that will remain present and active within the space:
- ASOY Radio — a platform for process-based broadcasting, open studios, listening sessions, and mediated encounters that foreground artistic processes rather than finished works.
- Soy & Zine Lab — a space for self-publishing, archiving, and low-threshold knowledge sharing through printed matter, zines, and collective editorial practices.
Together, these form the backbone of &lainlain Lab: a living infrastructure that supports continuity, experimentation, and slow engagement rather than event-driven production.
An open constellation
&lainlain Lab is not a closed program, nor a fixed identity. It is an invitation to remain in relation — to artists, thinkers, neighbors, and collaborators who are interested in practicing together without the pressure to resolve everything into outcomes.
It is a room to pause, to listen, to stay with complexity.
A space to practice being many — without needing to become one thing.
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