Under the current control of the military government, it is both the best and worst time to say what’s on your mind. Worst because what you casually post online today can prompt an invitation to a military camp tomorrow.
In the art scene, however, there’s never a better time.
While discontented Facebook statuses are straightforward and direct, artists’ works, in a variety of different mediums, can be subtle and elusive. Restraint, as we have witnessed throughout history around the world — take Ai Weiwei, Jafar Panahi, Nikolai Khalezin and Natalia Koliada of Belarus Free Theatre for example — is often the best recipe for creativity and imagination.
A scene from Tinnawat Chankloi's short film 329.
At home in the performing arts circle, quite a few productions reacting to the state of society we’re living in have, intentionally or coincidentally, already taken off. But while performances are relatively brief and traceless and only active among a small audience, visual art is out in the open and available to be looked at, interpreted and analysed every day, from 10am to 7pm to any set of suspicious eyes. There is an ambiguity to many of the current exhibitions on show in galleries across the capital. Rather than direct criticism, these exhibitions act as casual reflection and observation, like a cocked and locked weapon aimed at whoever happens to cross its path.
At the Speedy Grandma gallery, there is an exhibition showing a video of artist Nut Sawasdee visiting various statues around the city, both in the street and in the museums, with a boom microphone in hand. His face is intent and focused, almost as if he’s hearing and recording responses from the bronze and clay figures and even the surrounding atmosphere. Later on, composer Piyawat Louilarpprasert interprets the sound and works it into a composition, which was performed live by a quartet on the exhibition’s opening night.
This work is called Sound Of Nothing and it’s part of a group exhibition entitled “Kingdom” (until Sept 28), curated by Pisitakun Kuantalaeng.
Nut’s obvious subject is the symbolic power of these statues but his odd approach; recording and making music out of nothing, verges on glorification and satire. In the current situation where there are those with power and those who no longer have their say, it’s like the artist is a representative of the people and going around trying to make sense of the places we stand and listening to answers that never came.
The Sound of Nothing is a sound of failure — and Nut set out on a mission that can never be realised. Also reflecting the situation we’re living in, and echoing this sentiment, are installations by Makha Sanewong Na Ayuthaya in the exhibition entitled Unidentified Familiar Object (until Sept 21) at WTF Gallery. One piece, containing a chair precariously balancing on a knife-edge, seems to be a reference to those in power. Other pieces, including a perpetually spinning coin and a scale with two trays that keep bobbing up and down, seem to show Makha’s frustration with issues of justice and a stagnant society.
One of the boldest artworks addressed at the junta’s rule, intentional or otherwise, is a short film by Tinnawat Chankloi from King Mongkut’s Institute of Technology’s Faculty of Architecture, which was a finalist in the Art Forward Fund Award. On display along with the winner and other finalists until Sept 21 at MOCA Bangkok, his short film, entitled 329, presents a school in which students walk zombie-like, obeying every single order issued by someone via loudspeaker.
Each student refers to themselves by number and the film follows a group of students as the speaker introduces each of the school’s 10 rules, from “Stand by for command”, “Do not say or think anything else except for the truth given to you”, “Everything is decided by him”, and “The school gives you happiness, all students should be happy”.
The film was shot in black and white and although everything about the film felt quaintly surreal, otherworldly even, it’s something that viewers can instantly connect with, as if those students were actually us and that school was actually where we were, out here, in the real world; walking zombie-like and doing whatever we are commanded. Maybe that sums up the times we’re living in.
