Procession of Dystopia

Procession of Dystopia is the result of a collaboration by three artists from different disciplines—author Kanatorn Khaosanit, director Wattanapume Laisuwanchai, and composer Khetsin Chuchan—whose works complement and influence each other. Kanathorn’s short story Let Them See Us, Let Them Fear Us, Our Love Is a Rebellion They Cannot Crush takes place in a dystopian future in which (as in George Orwell’s 1984), love is illegal. This inspired Wattanapume’s two-channel video installation and the sound design by Khetsin that accompanies it.

In Wattanapume’s video The Body Craves Impact as Love Bursts (ร่างกายอยากปะทะ เพราะรักมันปะทุ), images of a man and woman are shown on two sheets suspended on ropes, tantalisingly close and facing each other, yet separated. As the director explains in his artist’s statement, the installation was made in solidarity with the rapper Elevenfinger, who is serving a prison sentence for possession of ping-pong bombs used in anti-government protests: “Throughout the trial, I became acquainted with his girlfriend, who, like him, was an active member of the Thalugaz group, fighting for democracy... I have visited him and witnessed the despair not only affecting him and his partner but also their families and relatives. This situation mirrors the plight of other political prisoners”.

The video ends dramatically with flashing images and footage of fireworks, filmed at Thalugaz protests in 2021. Dry ice is pumped into the gallery, simulating the tear gas used by riot police to control the demonstrators. At this point, the audio created by Khetsin, Garden of Insignificant Things (สวนสิ่งไม่สำคัญ), features the sounds of fireworks exploding and rubber bullets fired by riot police. Khetsin’s ironic title is similar to that of Tanwarin Sukkhapisit’s film Insects in the Backyard (อินเซคอินเดอะแบ็คยาร์ด).

Procession of Dystopia opened at Bangok Art and Culture Centre on 2nd July, and closes today. The gallery’s bland introduction to the exhibition doesn’t mention politics or protesters, referring only euphemistically to “contemporary issues and situations”.

‘Guilty Landscapes’

The Dutch artist Armando coined the phrase ‘guilty landscapes’ to describe tranquil spaces that bore silent witness to past violence. Thai artists and directors have produced work that echoes Armando’s concept, even though they were not directly inspired by it. For his Anatomy of Silence (กายวิภาคของความเงียบ) exhibition, for example, Pachara Piyasongsoot painted bucolic landscapes with traumatic histories linked to the Cold War. (Pachara was not initially aware of Armando’s concept, but when we discussed it, he immediately identified with it.)

Several Thai films also depict guilty landscapes whose violent legacies are connected to the Cold War. Taiki Sakpisit’s Seeing in the Dark, Thunska Pansittivorakul’s Santikhiri Sonata (สันติคีรี โซนาตา), and Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s A Letter to Uncle Boonmee (จดหมายถงลงบญม) were filmed in Khao Kho, Santikhiri, and Nabua, respectively, all of which are locations previously associated with anti-Communist violence. (Thai Cinema Uncensored includes an analysis of guilty landscapes in Thai films.)

Other films by Thai directors have evoked sites of more recent state violence. Taiki’s A Ripe Volcano, Thunska’s Homogeneous, Empty Time (สุญกาล), Panya Zhu’s White Bird (นกตัวนั้นยังสบายดีไหม), and Weerapat Sakolvaree’s Zombie Citizens all include shots of the Royal Hotel in Bangkok, which was used as a field hospital during the ‘Black May’ massacre in 1992. Taiki’s Dark Was the Night and Chulayarnnon Siriphol’s Planking were filmed at Thammasat University, where a massacre took place in 1976. Weerapat’s Nostalgia, and Chai Chaiyachit and Chisanucha Kongwailap’s Re-presentation (ผีมะขาม ไพร่ฟ้า ประชาธิปไตย ในคืนที่ลมพัดหวน), refer to multiple guilty landscapes.

The artists and directors discussed so far have all used the concept of guilty landscapes to draw attention to state violence against pro-democracy protesters or suspected Communists. Charit Pusiri, on the other hand, is an artist from the opposite end of the political spectrum: his work promotes a royalist-nationalist ideology. For his Remembrance (รฦก) exhibition in 2013, he created composite photographs that show carefree present-day scenes juxtaposed with historical images of warfare and fallen soldiers. These split-screen compositions are the most direct illustrations of the guilty landscape concept in Thai art.

รวมผลงานคัดสรรจากเพจ อยู่เมืองดัดจริต ชีวิตต้องป๊อป พ.ศ. 2557–2554(‘living in a pretentious city, life must be pop:a collection of selected works, 2014–2011’)

Prakit Kobkijwattana used to work in advertising, but now he uses commercial techniques in his art, to satirise Thailand’s militarism and materialism. Like many Thai artists, Prakit experienced a political awakening—known in Thai as ta sawang—after the 2010 massacre of pro-democracy protesters in Bangkok. Prakit was profiled in the Bangkok Post in 2021: “Ever since the Ratchaprasong intersection incident in 2010, the 57-year-old has radically changed his point of view toward art and society”. Sayan Daenklom coined the term “Post-Ratchaprasong art” to describe works produced in response to the massacre, in the journal Read (อ่าน; vol. 3, no. 2).

Prakit created a Facebook page, อยู่เมืองดัดจริต ชีวิตต้องป๊อป (‘living in a pretentious city, life must be pop’), in 2011, posting memes and graphic art commenting on the Ratchaprasong massacre and the following four years of Thai politics, culminating with the 2014 coup. In 2015, these were collected in the book รวมผลงานคัดสรรจากเพจ อยู่เมืองดัดจริต ชีวิตต้องป๊อป พ.ศ. 2557–2554 (‘living in a pretentious city, life must be pop: a collection of selected works, 2014–2011’), edited by Kasada Satayahurak. (Note that the date range in the title is in reverse, to show the country’s political regression during that period.)

Photography Never Lies

Photography Never Lies (ภาพถ่ายไม่โกหก) opened on 30th May at Bangkok Art and Culture Centre, and runs until 8th September. The exhibition explores the impact of technology on the authenticity of images.

Photography Never Lies features a selection of works from one of the biggest names in AI photography, Boris Eldagsen. Eldagsen coined the term ‘promptography’ to describe the results produced by generative AI software based on prompts typed by the artist.

The Macht (‘power’) series, by Patrik Budenz and Birte Zellentin, is another highlight. Photographs of each country’s heads of state are superimposed over each other, with the longest-serving leaders dominating each composite portrait.

A set of postcards is available, featuring some of the key photographs from the exhibition. The set’s stylish packaging reproduces the camera aperture motif of the exhibition logo.

Orbiting Body

Orbiting Body (รูปโคจร) opened at Bangkok Art and Culture Centre on 13th June, and runs until 8th September. The centrepiece of this sparse exhibition is Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Blue Encore (ออกแบบในใจ), large-scale landscape paintings by Noppanan Thannaree and Amnart Kankunthod suspended on motorised rails, opening and closing like theatrical backdrops or curtains. Blue Encore was previously shown at the Thailand Biennale in Chiang Rai.

Gallery Movie Night: A Night of Cinematic Exploration

A retrospective of short films by Taiki Sakpisit took place this evening at SAC Gallery in Bangkok, followed by a Q&A with the artist. Gallery Movie Night: A Night of Cinematic Exploration featured four of Taiki’s previous films—Shadow and Act, A Ripe Volcano, Seeing in the Dark, and The Age of Anxiety—and one new production, The Spirit Level. Like Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s A Minor History (ประวัติศาสตร์กระจ้อยร่อย), The Spirit Level tackles the tragic discoveries of the bodies of murdered political dissidents in the Mekong river.

Shadow and Act

Shadow and Act—like Sorayos Prapapan’s Prelude of the Moving Zoo and Anocha Suwichakornpong’s Come Here (ใจจำลอง)—features sequences shot at Dusit Zoo, which was closed by royal decree in 2018. Shadow and Act also includes shots filmed at another prestigious institution from a bygone age, the Chaya Jitrakorn photography studio, panning slowly around the studio’s fixtures and fittings, settling upon dusty portraits of Cold War dictator Phibun Songkhram and other kharatchakan (‘civil servants’).

A Ripe Volcano

Similarly, in A Ripe Volcano (ภูเขาไฟพิโรธ), the camera prowls elegiacally through the empty corridors of the Royal Hotel, another example of Bangkok’s faded glory. The hotel became a makeshift field hospital in 1992 during ‘Black May’, and its lobby was stormed by the military. A Ripe Volcano evokes the violence of the event through indirect signifiers, such as a fire engine (several of which were set ablaze in 1992), creating an uncanny sense of foreboding. Weerapat Sakolvaree’s Zombie Citizens and Thunska Pansittivorakul’s Homogeneous, Empty Time (สุญกาล) also evoke Black May with shots of the hotel.

Seeing in the Dark

Seeing in the Dark opens with contemplative, static images of Khao Kho, a mountainous region in northern Thailand with a potent political legacy: Phibun hid the country’s gold reserve—and the Emerald Buddha statue—from the Japanese there during World War II, and the area was a base for Communist insurgents throughout the 1970s. There are shots of the Sacrificial Monument compound, which memorialises the ‘sacrifices’ of the soldiers who fought the Communists, rather than the thousands of insurgents who were killed.

Thailand’s Ministry of Tourism website notes that Khao Kho was once “a red area smoldering in the smoke of war from different political ideologies. Khao Kho was considered a forbidden land that ordinary people should not get too close to because it was considered extremely dangerous. But as time passed, the conflict ended and Khao Kho transformed into one of Phetchabun’s most striking and beautiful tourist areas.”

A similar reputational whitewashing took place at other sites of anti-Communist violence, such as Santikhiri and Nabua, a process examined in Thunska’s Santikhiri Sonata (สันติคีรี โซนาตา), Apichatpong’s A Letter to Uncle Boonmee (จดหมายถงลงบญม), and Pachara Piyasongsoot’s exhibition Anatomy of Silence (กายวิภาคของความเงียบ). Khao Kho, Santikhiri, and Nabua are, to use Dutch artist Armando’s term, ‘guilty landscapes’: tranquil spaces that bear silent witness to historical violence.

In Seeing in the Dark, an ominous rumble on the soundtrack hints at the continued presence of this past menace. The film ends with footage of anti-government protests from October 2020, a reminder—to quote the Ministry of Tourism again—that Thailand is still “smoldering in the smoke of war from different political ideologies.”

The Age of Anxiety

The retrospective concluded with The Age of Anxiety which, with its rapid-fire editing and screeching soundtrack, captured the anxious atmosphere during the twilight of King Rama IX’s reign. The film’s English title reflects the national mood while Rama IX was hospitalised, though its Thai title (รอ ๑๐) has an additional resonance, with a reference to his successor. The film is also streaming on the Kortfilm website, which links it to Thai politics: “Made in response to the government’s merciless obliteration of the Red Shirt protesters in the 2010s, the music and flashing images are a reflection of a traumatized and anxious mental state.”

Dark Was the Night

Yesterday’s event was part of Taiki’s Dark Was the Night (ผีพุ่งไต้) exhibition, which opened on 9th May and runs until 6th July. The exhibition features a two-channel video installation, also titled Dark Was the Night, projected at opposite ends of the gallery. On one side are shots of the Thammasat University campus, which initially seem to contrast with the theme of the exhibition. But these images are metaphorically rather than literally dark, reminders of the 6th October 1976 massacre that took place at Thammasat, making the campus another ‘guilty landscape’. The exhibition also features three photographs from Taiki’s Thammasat University series, including an image of the notorious red lift in which sheltering students were shot during the massacre. The lift was also featured in the horror film Haunted Universities (มหาลัยสยองขวัญ).

Comics and the Origins of Manga: A Revisionist History

Many Western readers were first introduced to Japanese manga by Frederik L. Schodt’s seminal book Manga! Manga! in 1983. One of Schodt’s chapters was titled A Thousand Years of Manga, situating manga within the entire tradition of Japanese visual culture. This approach is also adopted by Japanese manga scholars, and by the country’s cultural institutions, as it establishes manga as both artistically significant and inherently Japanese. Similarly, recent books such as Eric P. Nash’s Manga Kamishibai and Adam L. Kern’s Manga from the Floating World link manga to earlier, largely unrelated forms of Japanese art for commercial reasons: putting manga in the title sells more copies.

In his book Comics and the Origins of Manga: A Revisionist History, published in 2022, Eike Exner challenges this concept of an apparently unbroken line from ancient scrolls to modern manga, debunking the “tradition of historiography that for nearly a century has sought to establish a continuity between present-day narrative Japanese comics and centuries of domestic visual art preceding them.” Exner argues that manga represents a break from traditional Japanese art, and that it developed instead as a result of innovations adopted from American comics. He shows how early US comic strips utilised new devices such as speech bubbles, which were later employed by Japanese mangaka: “Japanese and American comics came to rely on transdiegetic content like speech balloons instead of external narration to tell stories. Such audiovisual comics first developed in the United States and from there moved to Japan.”

Specifically, he cites the Bringing Up Father comic strip, which was first serialised in Japan in 1923. This American comic was popular in Japanese translation, and the following year it inspired the Japanese strip フキダシ (‘easygoing father’) by Yutaka Asō, which shared Bringing Up Father’s use of transdiegetic devices. Schodt also identified the link between these two strips, noting that フキダシ was “a direct spin-off of Bringing up Father, but its everyday-life situations and the self-effacing character of its hero had a quality Japanese readers naturally warmed to. Initially, the American influence was obvious”. But Schodt saw this as a fad rather than a paradigm shift: “Japanese newspapers realized the power of comic strips to attract readers and began hiring Japanese artists who used American styles. Foreign comics were exotic but, in the end, alien. Japanese comics were a smash hit.”

Exner is careful to avoid accusations that manga is a mere imitation of American comic style: “It would be simplistic to say that modern comics were “invented” in America and “copied” by the Japanese.” Instead, he argues that the relationship between the two cultures is one of cross-fertilisation, as the creator of Bringing Up Father was himself inspired by Japan’s ‘floating world’ woodblock prints: “The influence of Japanese ukiyo-e prints on George McManus, whose Bringing Up Father in turn became the most influential and longest-running graphic narrative in prewar Japan, exemplifies the complexity of transnational cultural influence.”

Exner’s research represents a ground-breaking approach to manga studies. Rather than “portraying manga as something both older and more specifically Japanese than it really is”, he demonstrates that manga as a Japanese multipanel comic format has its roots in the 1890s, and that manga in the modern sense—with its transdiegetic speech bubbles—is exactly 100 years old. He suggests that the impact of American comics on manga has previously been downplayed as it “complicates the popular account of contemporary manga as the culmination of domestic popular art, which may explain why few have been interested in the recovery of this foreign influence.”

Murdered Justice

Today marks the tenth anniversary of the 2014 coup. Just two days after the military takeover, Thai Lawyers for Human Rights was established to provide pro bono legal support for activists detained by the junta (what was euphemistically described as ‘attitude adjustment’) or prosecuted for lèse-majesté.

The Murdered Justice (วิสามัญยุติธรรม) exhibition at Bangkok Art and Culture Centre marks ten years of both the coup and TLHR. It includes casings from rubber bullets fired by riot police, the bloodied shirt worn by New Democracy Movement member Sirawith Seritiwat when he was attacked by thugs in 2019—previously shown at the Never Again (หยุด ย่ำ ซ้ำ เดิน) exhibition—and a 2016 leaflet campaigning against the constitution drafted by the junta.

The first section of the exhibition is headed “Land of Compromise”, in reference to a quote from an impromptu interview during a royal walkabout. The wall text describes the phrase as “the expression that, at least after the 2014 coup d’état, beneath the “smile” lies the enforcement of laws and violence to thwart change.” (This is also quoted in the PDF exhibition catalogue, p. 87.) At the exhibition, and in the catalogue, “Land of Compromise” is juxtaposed with a large portrait of Netiporn Sanesangkhom, a pro-democracy protester who died in prison this month after going on hunger strike.

‘Land of compromise’ has previously been quoted by several artists to make the same point as the Murdered Justice exhibition. Videos by Elevenfinger and Petchnin Sukjan both flash the words “LAND OF COMPROMISE” on screen accompanied by the sound of rubber bullets being fired. The phrase also appears in Anuwat Apimukmongkon’s exhibition A Blue Man in the Land of Compromise, and in the lyrics to songs by Paeng Surachet and Speech Odd.

Murdered Justice opened yesterday, and runs until 26th May. The exhibition coincides with the launch of a new book, Ten Years Ago (ผู้ต้องหาเสรีภาพ 1 ทศวรรษ รัฐประหาร 2557 กับการต่อสู้ของผู้ต้องคดีการเมือง), edited by Veerapong Soontornchattrawat and Noppon Archamas, which profiles some of the political prisoners assisted by TLHR. Noppon is also the editor of Dissident Citizen (ราษฎรกำแหง)

Tawee Ratchaneekorn: A Retrospective Exhibition 1960–2022

Tawee Ratchaneekorn: A Retrospective Exhibition 1960–2022 (ทวี รัชนีกร: ปรากฏการณ์แห่งอุดมการณ์) was held at Bangkok Art and Culture Centre in 2022, accompanied by a lavish exhibition catalogue signed by the artist. The catalogue includes an interview with Tawee, and essays (in Thai and English) on his art and its political context.

Throughout his sixty-year artistic career, Tawee’s work has consistently drawn attention to socio-economic inequality. Walking around the exhibition, a surprising motif became apparent: many paintings, none of which were flattering portraits, featured golden crowns. Other paintings satirise self-serving Thai politicians and military generals.

The catalogue includes an erratum slip correcting a mistake in one of its essays: both the Thai and English versions mention the ‘14th and 16th October incidents’. As the erratum slip makes clear, this should refer to 14th October 1973 and 6th October 1976, the dates of two historical massacres. Another essay in the catalogue makes a similar error—citing the ‘16th and 19th October incidents’—though this has not been corrected.

Highlighting these errors might seem like nitpicking, but they are not mere typos. Although the two massacres are among the most notorious events in modern Thai history, they have been whitewashed to such an extent that many people cannot tell them apart. The title of Aomtip Kerdplanant’s short film 16 ตุลา (‘16th Oct.’) comments on this by conflating the two dates. Similarly, the book Prism of Photography (ปริซึมของภาพถ่าย) describes “accounts which confuse the two events, often fusing them into one”.

Red Poetry

Supamok Silarak’s film Red Poetry (ความกวีสีแดง) will be shown at Doc Club and Pub in Bangkok, Lorem Ipsum in Hat Yai, and Alien Artspace in Khon Kaen on 26th May, as part of the Wildtype Middle Class 2024 season. It will also be screened at Chiang Mai University on 4th June, at dot.b in Songkhla on 6th June, at Vongchavalitkul University in Korat on 7th June, at the University of Phayao on 13th June, and at Bookhemian in Phuket on 23rd June. The documentary is a profile of performance artist Vitthaya Klangnil, who co-founded the group Artn’t. A shorter version of the film—Red Poetry: Verse 1 (เราไป ไหน ได้)—had its premiere at Wildtype 2022.

Red Poetry shows the intense endurance and commitment Vitthaya invests in his protest art. A durational performance—sitting near Chiang Mai’s Tha Pae Gate for nine full days—led to his collapse from exhaustion. In another action, he climbed onto Chiang Mai University’s main entrance, repeatedly slapped himself in the face, and jumped into a pond. Before reporting to the police to answer charges of sedition, he vomited blue paint outside the police station.

The film ends with Vitthaya’s most extreme action: he carved “112” into his chest, in protest at the lèse-majesté (article 112) charges he faced after exhibiting a modified version of the Thai flag in 2021. He was convicted of lèse-majesté last year, and received a suspended sentence.

Supamok’s film was screened three times as part of the 27th Short Film and Video Festival (เทศกาลภาพยนตร์สั้นครั้งที่ 27): in the online Short Film Marathon (หนังสั้นมาราธอน), at the main festival itself, and in the Short 27 Awarded Film Screening programme. It has previously been shown in Chiang Mai (most recently in February), Salaya, and Phatthalung.

Mango Art Festival 2024

The Mango Art Festival 2024 at River City in Bangkok (running from 7th to 12th May) includes a new series of paintings by Wittawat Tongkeaw. As in his exhibition 841.594, the colour blue dominates his recent work. (On Thailand’s tricolour flag, blue symbolises the monarchy.) His paintings are for sale, and each price ends with 112. (Lèse-majesté is article 112 of the criminal code.)

In Wittawat’s exhibtion The L/Royal Monument (นิ/ราษฎร์), paintings of sunsets represented a desire for transition. Displayed at the Mango Art Festival are paintings of sunrises, with orange skies signifying the rising popularity of the progressive Move Forward Party (whose logo is orange). Titles include Blue vs. Orange (showing the sky split between the two colours), Blue to Orange (in which the sun is rising over the sea, implying that the almost entirely blue sky will become orange), and Hope (a sky filled with blazing orange light).

Wittawat’s work over the last decade has been dominated by political symbolism, which has the potential to arouse scrutiny from the authorities. But another painting at the Mango Art Festival gives the artist some plausible deniability: depicting clouds in a blue sky, it’s wittily titled It’s Just the Sky, Nothing More. Wittawat used a similar painting of a sky in his provocative installation Creation-Conclusion (เริ่ม-จบ) at The L/Royal Monument.

Country Home Sheriff

Oat Montien’s exhibition Country Home Sheriff opened at JWD Art Space in Bangkok on 2nd May, and runs until 14th July. Country Home Sheriff both celebrates and questions the cowboy as a male role model in Thai culture, examining its influence on both gay and straight ideas of masculinity.

For Oat, this subject is deeply personal, as his late father styled himself as a cowboy, and was the landlord of the Country Home pub, from which the exhibition takes its name. When his father died, Oat inherited his cowboy accoutrements, which he wears in videos shot for the exhibition. This raises Freudian issues, hinted at in the triptych video installation The Exquisite Fall (อัสดง), which is the exhibition’s centrepiece.

In another video—Oasis (โอเอซิส), from his Desert Lasso series (บ่วงบาศก์ทะเลทราย)—Oat stars as a gay cowboy having a tryst with his lover in the middle of the desert. Very few Thai films or videos are as explicit as Oasis, the others being Vichai Imsuksom’s The Secret Room, Ohm Phanphiroj’s The Meaning of It All, and Thunska Pansittivorakul’s Avalon (แดนศักดิ์สิทธิ์).

What these works of queer video art have in common, apart from their transgressive content, is their participatory nature: in each case, the artist appears on camera. Oat’s appearance is more performative, as he is playing a character (the cowboy), though it’s also more multi-layered, as he is representing his late father, and both personifying and subverting an archetype of masculine identity.

Alfred Hitchcock Storyboards

Alfred Hitchcock Storyboards, published earlier this year, contains storyboards and production illustrations from some of Hitchcock’s most famous films, including classics such as Vertigo. But the main attraction of Tony Lee Moral’s book is its chapter on Psycho, with a four-page spread of storyboards by Saul Bass. Although some of the Bass drawings have been reproduced elsewhere, Alfred Hitchcock Storyboards includes more than 100 of them, some of which are previously unpublished.

The Bass storyboards for the Psycho shower scene are “undoubtedly the most widely discussed sequence in the history of storyboarding,” according to Chris Pallant and Steven Price in their book Storyboarding, which includes a chapter on Hitchcock’s storyboards. Cinefantastique magazine (vol. 16, no. 4–5) printed a set of shower scene storyboards, and the same sketches appeared on the cover of Fionnuala Halligan’s book The Art of Movie Storyboards.

Alfred Hitchcock Storyboards doesn’t address the authorship controversy surrounding the shower scene. Bass claimed that he not only storyboarded the sequence, but also directed it, though this was refuted by Psycho’s cast and crew. Cinefantastique challenged the Bass claim (in an article by Stephen Rebello), though Jennifer Bass and Pat Kirkham endorsed it in their book Saul Bass.

Once Upon a Time at Sanamluang...

Preecha Raksorn’s Once Upon a Time at Sanamluang... opened yesterday at VS Gallery in Bangkok, and runs until 30th June (a one-week extension of the original exhibition schedule). The exhibition explores the 6th October 1976 massacre at Thammasat University from two opposite perspectives: revisionist history and state propaganda. Preecha focuses on a single image of the event: the famous photograph by Neal Ulevich of a vigilante preparing to hit a hanged man with a folding chair.

Last year, Preecha created A Long Time Ago at..., a large, brightly coloured painting based on Ulevich’s black-and-white photo. The painting reproduces the original image meticulously, with one exception: the noose around the dead man’s neck is missing. This omission, which effectively brings the victim back to life, hints at the revisionist nature of the exhibition.

Preecha reproduced his painting as a line drawing on A4 paper, and gave copies to sixteen people representing a range of ages and occupations, asking them to colour in the drawing in their own styles. With this series, Let’s Color, the artist sought to discover people’s attitudes towards the massacre, and the extent of their knowledge about it, given that Thai school textbooks make only minimal reference to the event.

Of the the sixteen Let’s Color respondents, only five added the missing noose to their illustrations, suggesting that the state’s suppression of information about the event has been successful. One person, Kwanchai Sinpru, ignored the lines of Preecha’s template and instead overlaid his own paintings of the incendiary media coverage that led to the massacre: a จัตุรัส (‘square’) magazine interview with the monk Kittivuddho Bhikku (29th June 1976), and a Dao Siam (ดาวสยาม) newspaper headline. The most creative response was by Apisit Sitsuntiea, who cut out the drawing to create a paper sculpture in the shape of a crown.

To demonstrate how the massacre is whitewashed by the national curriculum, the exhibition includes a reproduction of a passage from a history textbook that makes only fleeting references to the event. The page (History Lesson of October 6th) has been placed on a lectern, behind which are three framed paintings of massacre victims (Hang Me, Oh Hang Me). This installation resembles a traditional classroom, although in Thai classrooms the three frames would hold portraits of kings and queens instead.

The exhibition was inspired by Quentin Tarantino’s film Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood, in which Tarantino rewrites the Manson Family murder of actress Sharon Tate, creating a fictional happy ending in which Tate survives and Manson’s followers are killed. Preecha uses similar dramatic licence, drawing a comic strip of twenty-six panels, Once Upon a Time at..., in which the hanged man removes the noose from his neck, fights back against the vigilante, and escapes. Over the years, many artists have reproduced elements from the Ulevich photograph, though Preecha’s comic responds to it in a unique and original way.

Outstanding!The Relief from Rodin to Picasso

Outstanding! The Relief from Rodin to Picasso, held last year in Frankfurt, was the first exhibition since 1980 to survey the modern history of relief sculptures. Its scholarly catalogue (edited by Alexander Eiling, Eva Mongi-Vollmer, and Karin Schick) is only the second English-language book on the subject, and the first—Relief Sculpture by L.R. Rogers—was published fifty years ago.

Outstanding! begins with an explanation of the three traditional categories of relief (bas-relief, haut-relief, and relief en creux), though the exhibition defined the relief more broadly: the impressive collection of works on display included examples of mixed-media assemblage and trompe-l’œil paintings. The catalogue was originally published in German as Herausragend! Das Relief von Rodin bis Picasso.

Eros Reinterpretation

Eros Reinterpretation was the inaugural exhibition at Ming Artspace, a new Bangkok gallery founded by Vichai Imsuksom. The group exhibition featured photography, installations, and video art from thirteen Thai artists, linked by their exploration of erotic imagery.

The show’s most daring artwork was produced by Vichai himself, with Kittisak Tongprasert. Their video installation Eros: The Secret Room consists of three videos of themselves (each around five minutes long) that blur the line between art and pornography. The only comparable works in Thai art are perhaps Thunska Pansittivorakul and Harit Srikhao’s documentary Avalon (แดนศักดิ์สิทธิ์), and Ohm Phanphiroj’s short film The Meaning of It All.

Eros Reinterpretation opened on 12th January and closed on 3rd March, though its lavish exhibition catalogue, limited to 1,000 copies, also serves as a survey of Thai contemporary erotic art. Some (explicit) sections of the book are sealed with perforations, which is reminiscent of Uthis Haemamool’s novel Silhouette of Desire (ร่างของปรารถนา) and the sealed sections in magazines such as Bizarre.

The catalogue is beautifully printed, with a debossed (and somewhat suggestive) cover design, foldouts, selected translucent pages, two notebooks, and several items of ephemera (postcards, stamps, and a flyer) laid in. Alongside other recently published works, such as Ark Saroj’s Lust and Love and Shotbyly’s Vintage Magazine series, Eros Reinterpretation signals a new frankness in Thai art publishing.

In fact, the new issue of Shotbyly’s Vintage Magazine (vol. 2) was printed by the same company as the Eros Reinterpretation catalogue, after the printer of the first issue refused to handle the more explicit imagery in the second one. The second issue of Vintage Magazine, limited to fifty copies, is a portfolio of photographs of model Theeraphat Khajornsuwan.

Tak Bai 2004: 20th Anniversary

This year is the 20th anniversary of the tragedy that took place at Tak Bai on 25th October 2004. More than 1,000 people protested outside Tak Bai’s Provincial Police Station, and police responded with water cannon, tear gas, and ultimately live ammunition, killing five people. The surviving demonstrators were crammed into trucks and taken to Ingkhayuttha Borihan Fort military camp, though seventy-eight died of suffocation during the five-hour journey.

The security forces have never been held accountable for the deaths, and the Thaksin Shinawatra government prohibited the broadcasting of video footage of the incident. In defiance of the ban, the journal Same Sky (ฟ้าเดียวกัน) distributed a Tak Bai VCD—ความจริงที่ตากใบ (‘the truth at Tak Bai’)—with its October–December 2004 issue (vol. 2, no. 4). The footage is also included in Thunska Pansittivorakul’s documentary This Area Is Under Quarantine (บริเวณนี้อยู่ภายใต้การกักกัน), which led to the film being banned. (Thai Cinema Uncensored discusses the censorship of Tak Bai video footage.)

Last year, Patani Artspace held the รำลึก 19 ปี ตากใบ (‘remembering 19 years of Tak Bai’) exhibition, the Heard the Unheard (สดับเสียงเงียบ) exhibition took place at Silpakorn and Thammasat universities, and Manit Sriwanichpoom’s Tak Bai paintings were shown at the Landscape of Unity the Indivisible (ทิวทัศน์แห่งความเป็นหนึ่งอันมิอาจแบ่งแยก) exhibition. Heard the Unheard featured the personal possessions of seventeen people who died at Tak Bai—including a ฿100 banknote retrieved from the body of a sixteen-year-old boy, Imron—displayed alongside recollections from the victims’ relatives. These items are also photographed in Tak Bai (ลิ้มรสความทรงจำ), edited by Kusra Kamawan Mukdawijitra.

To commemorate the twentieth anniversary, Heard the Unheard is being restaged. The seventeen artefacts will be split between two exhibitions: Living Memories: 20 Years of Tak Bai Incident [sic] (20 ปี ตากใบ ความทรงจำที่ยังเหลืออยู่) at SEA Junction (Bangkok Art and Culture Centre) from tomorrow until 10th March, and Indelible Memory: 20 Years Tak Bai (ลบไม่เลือน 20 ปี ตากใบ) at the Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn Anthropology Centre in Bangkok between 4th March and 31st July.

Tak Bai photographs were also shown at the Deep South (ลึกลงไป ใต้ชายแดน) exhibition in Bangkok. Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Photophobia series incorporates photographs of the incident, as does the interactive installation Black Air by Pimpaka Towira, Akritchalerm Kalayanamitr, Koichi Shimizu, and Jakrawal Nilthamrong.

Jehabdulloh Jehsorhoh’s Violence in Tak Bai (ความรุนแรงที่ตากใบ) features white tombstones marking the graves of each victim, and his book The Patani Art of Struggle (سني ڤتاني چاراو او سها) shows three versions of the installation. It was first installed, a few days after the massacre, at Prince of Songkla University in Pattani, and the grave markers were accompanied by rifles wrapped in white cloth. In 2017, it was recreated at Patani Artspace and then mounted on a plinth containing Pattani soil at the Patani Semasa (ปาตานี ร่วมสมัย) exhibition in Chiang Mai.

Two further installations—Jakkhai Siributr’s 78 and Zakariya Amataya’s Report from a Partitioned Village (รายงานจากหมู่บ้านที่ถูกปิดล้อม)—both include lists of the Tak Bai victims’ names. Photophobia, 78, and Violence in Tak Bai were all included in the Patani Semasa exhibition. (The exhibition catalogue gives Violence in Tak Bai a milder alternative title, Remember at Tak Bai.)

Red Poetryยังมีจิตใจจะใฝ่ฝัน(‘still having a mind that will dream’)

After a screening last week in Chiang Mai, Supamok Silarak’s film Red Poetry (ความกวีสีแดง) will be shown in Phatthalung this weekend. The feature-length documentary is a profile of performance artist Vitthaya Klangnil, who co-founded the group Artn’t. A shorter version of the film—Red Poetry: Verse 1 (เราไป ไหน ได้)—was screened at Wildtype 2022.

The documentary shows the intense endurance and commitment Vitthaya invests in his protest art. A durational performance—sitting in front of Chiang Mai’s Tha Pae Gate for nine full days—led to his collapse from exhaustion. In another action, he climbed onto Chiang Mai University’s main entrance, repeatedly slapped himself in the face, and fell into a pond. When he reported to the police to answer charges of sedition, he vomited blue paint outside the police station.

The film ends with Vitthaya’s most extreme action: carving “112” into his chest, in protest at the lèse-majesté (article 112) charges he faced after he exhibited a modified version of the Thai flag in 2021. He was convicted of lèse-majesté last year, and received a suspended sentence.

Red Poetry will be shown at the Swiftlet Book Shop on 10th February, at an event titled Red Poetry ยังมีจิตใจจะใฝ่ฝัน (‘Red Poetry: still having a mind that will dream’). Swiftlet was also the venue for the inaugural Phatthalung Micro Cinema screening last month.)

Supamok’s film was screened three times as part of the 27th Short Film and Video Festival (เทศกาลภาพยนตร์สั้นครั้งที่ 27): in the online Short Film Marathon (หนังสั้นมาราธอน), at the main festival itself, and in the Short 27 Awarded Film Screening programme. It has previously been shown in Chiang Mai, Salaya, and Phatthalung.

2475นักเขียนผีแห่งสยาม (‘1932: the ghost writer of Siam’)

In the years following the 2014 coup, the military government set about removing public reminders of the 1932 revolution, when Thailand transitioned from absolute monarchy to parliamentary democracy. In the catalogue for his exhibition The L/Royal Monument (นิ/ราษฎร์), Wittawat Tongkeaw describes the disappearance of “physical components—names, plaques, monuments” commemorating the revolution. Similarly, in his chapter in Rama X (edited by Pavin Chachavalpongpun), Chatri Prakitnonthakan discusses “the destruction of significant buildings and monuments related to the memory of the People’s Party”.

Most notoriously, a plaque in Bangkok’s Royal Plaza was covertly replaced in 2017 with a new plaque honouring the monarchy. Leaders of the recent student protest movement created a new plaque with a democratic inscription, and installed it at Sanam Luang on 20th September 2020, though it was removed by the authorities almost immediately. Reproductions of the new plaque have been shown at various exhibitions, including Wittawat’s 841.594, and it appears prominently in Chulayarnnon Siriphol’s film 100 Times Reproduction of Democracy (การผลิตซ้ำประชาธิปไตยให้กลายเป็นของแท้).

The new plaque is an indication of a political awakening among young Thais—known as ta sawang—and a renewed interest in the 1932 revolution specifically. One of the groups organising the recent protests is called Khana Ratsadon, in tribute to the political party of the same name that led the 1932 revolution. A new library of pro-democracy books is called 1932 People Space Library, its name referring to the year the revolution took place. Souvenir items from 1932 were displayed at the Revolutionary Things (ของ [คณะ] ราษฎร) exhibition in 2018. Charinthorn Rachuratchata’s exhibition Museum 2032 (พิพิธภัณฑ์ ๒๕๗๕) looked forward to the revolution’s centenary.

This revival of interest in the events of 1932 is a relatively recent phenomenon. In 2010, vox pop interviews for Abichon Rattanabhayon’s short film The Six Principles (สัญญาของผู้มาก่อนกาล) demonstrated the public’s apathy towards the revolution. But a few years later, in 2013, the change in attitudes was apparent when Pen-ek Ratanaruang’s documentary Paradoxocracy (ประชาธิป'ไทย) achieved unexpected box-office success. (Paradoxocracy features an extended discussion of the revolution, and begins by reproducing the text of a 1932 manifesto railing against King Prajadhipok.)

The 1932 revolution is central to the plot of a new book, 2475 นักเขียนผีแห่งสยาม (‘1932: the ghost writer of Siam’), by Tanis Werasakwong (known as Sa-ard) and Podcharakrit To-im. The book tells the full story of the revolution in the form of a graphic novel, featuring prominent politicians of the period—and even King Prajadhipok—among its main characters. The project’s website describes the revolution as “an event in Thai history that has been erased from collective memory”, a point also made in Prabda Yoon’s short film Transmissions of Unwanted Pasts (วงโคจรของความทรงจำ).

Memes of Dissent: Thai Social Media During the 2020–2021 Student Uprising

An exhibition of satirical memes and online political cartoons opens this week at All Rise (the offices of iLaw) in Bangkok. Memes of Dissent: Thai Social Media During the 2020–2021 Student Uprising (โซเชียลเน็ตเวิร์คในท่ามกลางการประท้วงของนักศึกษาไทยระหว่างปี 2020–2021) features anti-government GIFs and other digital artwork shared via social media in support of the student protest movement that began in 2020.

The exhibition was previously held at Artcade in Phayao, where it was on show for almost two months (from 3rd August to 1st October 2023), though it will only be open for three days in Bangkok, from 26th to 28th January. Organised by the University of Phayao’s School of Architecture and Fine Art in association with the Museum of Popular History, the Bangkok exhibition will also include memes created after last year’s election (when the winning party was sidelined and the military remained in government).

Copies of คนกลมคนเหลี่ยม Live in Memes of Dissent (‘round people and square people live in memes of dissent’) will be given away at the exhibition. The booklet—limited to fifty copies—reprints a dozen cartoons from the คนกลมคนเหลี่ยม (‘round people and square people’) Facebook page, in solidarity with the cartoonist, who is facing lèse-majesté charges in relation to four cartoons he posted on the page in 2022. (Another Facebook cartoonist, BackArt, has also been charged with lèse-majesté, in relation to two cartoons he posted in 2021.)