Meet Shing Yin Khor of Three Eyed Rat in View Park/Crenshaw

Today we’d like to introduce you to Shing Yin Khor.

Thanks for sharing your story with us Shing Yin. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
I’m a theatre-trained installation artist and cartoonist, after years of dabbling in lots of different art forms, I found myself happiest building large ridiculous structures and making comics for kids. I founded Three Eyed Rat as an umbrella for my production design work after several years of building art installations at Burning Man and other places – we are a crew that builds strange immersive art in deserts, forests, and really – wherever we can. We build universal narratives that envelope the audience-participant in immersive alternate realities, largely with a science fiction or fantasy bent – my goal is to put a little bit of magic in unexpected places.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
I am a 5′-0″, 100lb, femme-presenting person working with large power tools and leading crews of mostly men – of course there are challenges, although none have been related to my own skill or experience, just the pervasive sexism that permeates any male-dominated industry.

Part of why I left theatre to run my own projects was because I could surround myself with a crew of outstanding and talented women and non-binary people and feminist men. I just felt like there were ways for us to work and build giant structures and have a good time, without subjecting ourselves to the masochistic and misogynistic environment I experienced in so many shops, that isn’t great for anyone!

Please tell us about Three Eyed Rat.
Three Eyed Rat is the immersive installation art production crew I helm. We are especially interested in the intersection of science fiction and fantasy, new human rituals, and collaborative worldbuilding and we build universal narratives that envelope the audience-participant in immersive alternate realities, largely with a science fiction or fantasy bent. We’ve built a junk boat on a flatbed truck, a space apothecary in a desert, an abandoned post-apocalyptic outpost, a lumberjack themed bar, a roving oracle cart, and collaborated with Beam Camp to put a two-story space salvage station in a forest. The greater collective of collaborators consists of a motley bunch of theatre designers and educators, carpenters, mechanics, welders, game designers, programmers, filmmakers, and various other maker types.

I am most proud of how distinctive and detailed our work is, every drawer, every cabinet has something new to explore and find. That happens because of the way our collaboration develops – all our installations are the outlines of the universe, and everyone in the crew is invited to contribute not just to the build but to the story – we all make and contribute props and characters to the art, which makes our installations look exceptionally lived in and whole.

Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
I grew in Malaysia, and I’m still chasing the high of successfully catching tiny longkang fish in drainage pipes.

Contact Info:

• Website: threeeyedrat.com
• Phone: 2133993685
• Email: shingkhor@gmail.com
• Instagram: @sawdustbear
• Twitter: @sawdustbear

Image Credit:
The image with people in it is credit to Trisha Harrison, the rest are to me(Shing Yin Khor)

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