The Ordinary

Prapassorn Konmuang’s The Ordinary (คนธรรมดา) will be restaged on 19th September at Thammasat University. The play, a monologue about resistance to coups and authoritarianism, is directed by Thunratram Cheepnurat. The performance will take place at the Faculty of Liberal Arts, with tickets priced at ฿112.

19th September

19th September is a significant date, being the fifth anniversary of a protest at Thammasat in 2020, one of the largest student-led demonstrations since the 2014 coup. The play’s revival is one of a series of events organised by the United Front of Thammasat and Demonstration, and the Democracy Restoration Group, collectively titled ทบทวน 5 ปี 19 กันยา 2563 (‘looking back 5 years since 19th September 2020’).

The date also marks another anniversary, as the coup against Thaksin Shinawatra took place on 19th September 2006. That date appears in the titles of two books published by Same Sky: รัฐประหาร 19 กันยา (‘19th Sept. coup’) and 19–19.

112

The ticket price for The Ordinary is also symbolic: ฿112 refers to the lèse-majesté law, which is article 112 of the Thai criminal code. Similarly, the catalogue for Wittawat Tongkeaw’s exhibition Re/Place cost ฿112, and two poetry books — เหมือนบอดใบ้ไพร่ฟ้ามาสุดทาง (‘we subjects, as if mute and blind, have found ourselves at the end of the line’) and ราษฎรที่รักทั้งหลาย (‘dear citizens’) — were also sold at that price.

There have been other subtle references to 112. Another play, Wilderness (รักดงดิบ), included a recipe stating that food should “dry in the sun for 112 hours”. Elevenfinger’s single Land of Compromise was released at 1:12pm. Vichart Somkaew’s documentary 112 News from Heaven features 112 headlines from a 112-day period, and 112 photographic portraits. The Evidences of Resistance [sic] (วัตถุพยานแห่งการต่อต้าน) exhibition was held in room 112 at Thammasat’s Museum of Anthropology.

SWU Through PosterThailand Postlitical Fiction

After its launch in Bangkok last year, and subsequent events in Khon Kaen and Phayao earlier this year, the Thailand Postlitical Fiction exhibition will take place at Srinakharinwiwot University from today until 2nd September. (The exhibition’s dates were originally advertised as 1st–5th September.) SWU Through Poster features poster designs for imaginary movies commenting on Thai politics, including some new submissions.

Marisa Nagaoka’s poster 2553 shows a red chess piece defeated by a yellow one, symbolising the massacre of red-shirt protesters in 2010. (2553 in the Buddhist Era calendar is equivalent to 2010.) Natcha Threekul’s poster Who Put That Bullet In Their Hand? superimposes a large bullet over a photograph of the 6th October 1976 massacre at Thammasat University. Both posters address the issue of who is culpable for the violence committed.

Manga: A New History of Japanese Comics

Frederik L. Schodt’s book Manga! Manga! first introduced Japanese manga comics to Western readers more than thirty years ago, and since then there have been several coffee-table books on the subject. But Eike Exner’s Manga: A New History of Japanese Comics, published this month, is the first complete narrative history of manga.

Based on archival research in Japan, Exner’s book is a revisionist study that deviates from the standard account of other manga historians, who have characterised manga as the culmination of a thousand-year history of inherently Japanese visual culture. Exner previously challenged this myth in Comics and the Origins of Manga, and his new work is a significant expansion of that earlier book’s scope.

As he writes in the introduction to Manga, “this book seeks to provide a coherent account of how comics were established in Japan, how comics have changed over the decades, and how an entire industry arose around Japanese comics and turned the country into the world’s largest exporter of comics.” The book also includes a manga chronology, detailed endnotes, and an extensive bibliography.

Exner’s book is likely to become the standard history of manga, though there are other useful books on the topic. Manga Design (revised as 100 Manga Artists), by Amano Masanao and Julius Wiedemann, profiles mangaka (manga artists). Schodt translated Toshio Ban’s The Osamu Tezuka Story, a biography of the most influential mangaka. Helen McCarthy’s The Art of Osamu Tezuka is a monograph on Tesuka’s manga and anime.

Face with Tears of Joy:A Natural History of Emoji

Keith Houston’s Face with Tears of Joy: A Natural History of Emoji, published last month, is the first comprehensive history of emoji. As its back cover claims, the book “tells the whole story of emoji for the first time.”

Shigetaka Kurita is credited as the inventor of emoji, as he designed a set of pictograms for the Japanese telecom firm Docomo in 1999. But, as Houston explains, Kurita had several predecessors: similar icons were created for a Sharp PDA in 1988, and for a Pioneer cellphone in 1997.

Face with Tears of Joy is not the first book to cover the history of emoji: The Story of Emoji, by Gavin Lucas, was published almost a decade earlier. (Houston’s book doesn’t mention Lucas at all.) With almost fifty pages of notes, Face with Tears of Joy is more detailed than The Story of Emoji, though The Story of Emoji is significant as it includes an interview with Kurita.

5 ปี #ธรรมศาสตร์จะไม่ทน: ย้อนรอยข้อเรียกร้องจาก ปฏิรูปสถาบันฯสู่ยกเลิก112(‘5 years of #ThammasatWillNotTolerate’)

The exhibition 5 ปี #ธรรมศาสตร์จะไม่ทน: ย้อนรอยข้อเรียกร้องจาก ปฏิรูปสถาบันฯสู่ยกเลิก 112 (‘5 years of #ThammasatWillNotTolerate: tracing the demands for institutional reform and the abolition of section 112’) opened yesterday at the Social Complex Building on Thammasat University’s Rangsit campus. Organised by the Museum of Popular History, it features photographs, newspaper front pages, and other materials covering the recent student protest movement.

The exhibition (which closes on 19th August) features a copy of a speech read by Panusaya Sithijirawattanakul at a 12th December 2021 protest calling for the abolition of article 112 of the criminal code (the lèse-majesté law). The paper is stained with Panusaya’s blood, as she carved “112” into her arm at the demonstration. It has previously been on display at the Bangkok Art Book Fair in 2021, and at Thammasat in 2023.

Poor Archive:A Prologue to Parallel 2

Komtouch Napattaloong’s No Exorcism Film will be screened at Noir Row Art Space in Udon Thani on 2nd August, on the opening day of the Poor Archive: A Prologue to Parallel 2 (อีกหนึ่งกิจกรรมพิเศษในวันเสาร์ที่ 2 สิงหาคมนี้) exhibition. In Komtouch’s experimental short film, a robotic voiceover narrates a dream in which a brutal warlord kills villagers with a sword because they disrespect him by not addressing him as their king.

No Exorcism Film was previously shown at BEFF7, The 28th Thai Short Film and Video Festival (เทศกาลภาพยนตร์สั้น ครั้งที่ 28), Wildtype 2024, and in the online Short Film Marathon 28 (หนังสั้นมาราธอน 28). It will also be screened next week at the Phimailongweek (พิมายฬองวีค) arts festival in Phimai.

Toxic Remains: Parasites of a Betrayed Dream

Thasnai Sethaseree’s new exhibition Toxic Remains: Parasites of a Betrayed Dream (เศษพิษ: ปรสิตแห่งฝันทรยศ) opened at Gallery VER in Bangkok on 20th July and runs until 20th September. (His previous exhibitions include Cold War, in 2022.)

The centrepiece of Toxic Remains is Parasites, a vast collage depicting the pixelated faces of fourteen former prime ministers — many of whom have military backgrounds — surrounded by parasitic worms. According to an introductory text on the gallery wall, these creatures symbolise “the enduring toxicity of militarism embedded in the national body.”

The Bouquet and the Wreath

The Bouquet and the Wreath (ข้อมาลา), a retrospective exhibition covering Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook’s entire artistic career, opened at MAIIAM in Chiang Mai yesterday. The exhibition runs until 25th May 2026, and a second phase (إكليل باقة الأزهار) will be shown in Dubai later this year.

Another Side by Another Side

Kant Kantawat, known as Mr Halfman, has his first solo exhibition at GalileOasis in Bangkok. Another Side by Another Side runs from until tomorrow, and features an art style that he describes as Cu(te)bism, a portmanteau of Cubism and ‘cute’.

Cu(te)bism is one of a handful of new ‘isms’ created by Thai artists. Pan Pan Narkprasert’s 2011 Gagasmicism exhibition was inspired by Lady Gaga. (Pan Pan is now Thailand’s leading drag queen, Pangina Heals.) Noshpash Chaturongkagul’s exhibition Roboticlism From Unconscious Mind was held in 2016. Three young artists showed their work at the Neo Thaiism group exhibition in 2020.

Local Myths: The Intrinsic Aesthetic

For an arts fair at various locations around Thailand last month, 24 มิถุนาวันประชาชน (‘24th June, people’s day’), artist and musician Pisitakun Kuantalaeng designed a stencil of a board game that highlighted the various methods of suppression used against protesters and activists. A reproduction of the board game is currently on show at Bangkok Art and Culture Centre, as part of the Local Myths: The Intrinsic Aesthetic (ความงามตามพื้นเพ) exhibition, which runs from 17th July to 10th October.

Remnants of Fading Shadows

Remnants of Fading Shadows, a retrospective exhibition of installations and video works by Wantanee Siripattananuntakul, opened at Silpakorn University Art Centre in Bangkok on 19th June, and runs until 31st August. It includes The Web of Time, which was previously shown at the Bangkok Art Biennale (บางกอก อาร์ต เบียนนาเล่) in 2022.

The exhibition also includes Freeze-TV, a 2015 video in which a speech by Prayut Chan-o-cha is played on a television placed next to the artist’s parrot, Beuys. The TV screen is covered with felt, though the sound of Prayut’s voice can be heard, and the piece was inspired by Felt TV (Felz-TV), a Fluxus performance by Joseph Beuys. (The parrot is named after the Fluxus artist.)

As the video progresses, the felt begins to peel away from the screen, partially revealing the news footage, and the parrot eventually breaks out of its cage and flies away, seemingly unable to bear the TV broadcast. Of course, the caged bird is a metaphor for the restrictions imposed by martial law. Tanwarin Sukkhapisit made the same point in her short film I’m Fine (สบายดีค่ะ), as she sat in a cage next to Democracy Monument.

Wantanee discussed the concept behind Freeze-TV in a 2023 interview with the Ground Control website. She explained that the video’s title came from the fact that TV was effectively frozen by the coup-makers: regular programming was suspended when the coup took place, and coup leaders always seize control of the airwaves, just as they take over the government. Although the video features Prayut’s voice, she noted that his name is not mentioned, so it represents the idea of a coup itself, rather than specifically referring to 2014, and therefore it could also represent a future Thai coup.

One on One SeriesKisho Kurokawa: Nakagin Capsule Tower

The Nakagin Capsule Tower in Tokyo, designed by architect Kisho Kurokawa and completed in 1972, was an icon of the Japanese Metabolism movement. The building was comprised of movable, connectable, and replaceable capsules, and it epitomised Metabolism’s focus on expandability, flexibility, and adaptability. In his new book on the tower, Evangelos Kotsioris calls it “one of the most discussed and written about modern buildings of the 20th century”.

Each capsule was a tiny, self-contained studio apartment, complete with a built-in entertainment console. A single porthole-style window provided natural light — though not fresh air, as the windows didn’t open. The concept was unique and original, and although no more capsule towers were built, Nakagin continues to influence current architectural trends such as capsule hotels and micro apartments.

Sadly, exactly fifty years after its construction, the tower was demolished in 2022. By that point, it had fallen into disrepair — its capsules were never replaced, as had been originally envisioned. (When I visited the building in 2016, it was largely unoccupied.) The Museum of Modern Art in New York purchased one of the project’s 140 capsules, which went on display this month.

Kisho Kurokawa: Nakagin Capsule Tower, published next month, is the first English-language publication on the tower. It’s part of MoMA’s One on One Series, monographs on individual works of art from the museum’s permanent collection. (Project Japan by Rem Koolhaas and Hans Ulrich Obrist, a comprehensive history of Metabolism, is also essential reading.)

Affinities

The group exhibition Affinities at Nova Contemporary in Bangkok closes today. The exhibition, which opened on 26th April, features twenty-eight artists, though the clear highlight is Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook’s video The Treachery of the Moon.

Araya filmed herself sitting on a bench with her pet dogs, watching a lakorn (soap opera) on TV. Just past the half-way point in the video, news footage of various episodes of Thai political violence — including the 2010 crackdown on the red-shirts, and the 2004 Tak Bai tragedy — are projected onto the artist and the TV screen behind her.

The cycle of political violence in Thailand is as long-running and as repetitive as a soap opera, a point also made in Sanchai Chotirosseranee’s short film The Love Culprit. Stills from The Treachery of the Moon were first published in the Storytellers of the Town exhibition catalogue.

LeMan

Six members of staff working for the satirical Turkish magazine LeMan were detained by police in Istanbul yesterday, after a cartoon led to protests outside their offices. They are accused of violating article 216 of Turkey’s penal code, which covers insults against religion. Images of the cartoon were shared on social media, and a riot broke out; police fired rubber bullets and tear gas at around 300 demonstrators.

LeMan’s current issue (no. 1699), published on 26th July, includes a cartoon showing two men — one Muslim, the other Jewish — with angel’s wings. The men appear to represent civilian casualties on both sides of the Israel–Gaza war, and greet each other as bombs rain down around them. The Muslim character introduces himself as Muhammed, and the Jewish figure says his name is Musa. These are the Arabic versions of Mohammed and Moses — the most revered prophets in Islam and Judaism, respectively — though they are also common Arabic given names.

Islam forbids visual depictions of its prophets, though LeMan’s editor Tuncay Akgün told the AFP news agency: “This cartoon is not a caricature of the Prophet Mohammed... the name of a Muslim who was killed in the bombardments of Israel is fictionalised as Mohammed. More than 200 million people in the Islamic world are named Mohammed.”

Censorship in Turkey

LeMan was previously censored in 2016, when an issue was banned due to its cover illustration. In 2022, a Turkish singer was also charged with insulting religion, as was a Penguen cartoonist in 2011. Two cartoonists were charged with defamation after caricaturing former president Abdullah Gül in 2008.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has a long history of filing criminal charges against cartoonists and journalists, most recently in 2022. He has filed defamation charges against the newspaper Cumhuriyet (in 2004 and 2014), and the magazines Penguen (in 2014) and Nokta (in 2015). In 2006, he sued the artist Michael Dickinson over the collages Good Boy and Best in Show. In 2020, he filed charges against the French magazine Charlie Hebdo.

In 2016, Erdoğan sued a German comedian who recited a poem mocking him. The poem was read out in solidarity in the German parliament, and The Spectator launched an anti-Erdoğan poetry competition that was won by Boris Johnson. Ironically, Erdoğan himself was imprisoned in 1999 for reciting a poem: in a 1997 speech, he had quoted lines from a poem by Ziya Gökalp — “The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets, and the believers our soldiers” — and was sentenced to ten months in jail as a result.

Mohammed Cartoons

A Danish newspaper caused worldwide controversy in 2005 when it published a dozen caricatures of Mohammed. In response, many liberal newspapers and magazines in other countries printed their own Mohammed cartoons in solidarity. (The twelve Danish cartoons were reprinted by Charlie Hebdo in 2020, and Cherian George’s book Red Lines covers the Mohammed cartoon debate in considerable detail.)

Mohammed cartoons have been censored in Bangladesh, India, and Palestine. In France, a dozen staff at Charlie Hebdo were killed by terrorists in 2015, and the magazine’s offices were firebombed in 2011, after it published a series of offensive Mohammed cartoons, beginning in 2006. Barely a week after the 2015 terrorist attack, Charlie Hebdo published yet another front-page Mohammed cartoon.

It’s about Time:Performing between the Past and Tomorrow in Chulayarnnon Siriphol’s I a Pixel, We the People

Chulayarnnon Siriphol’s exhibition I a Pixel, We the People (ข้าพเจ้าคือพิกเซล, พวกเราคือประชาชน) will close later this month, and the artist took part in a Q&A session with Sam I-shan at BangkokCityCity Gallery yesterday. The event was titled It’s about Time: Performing between the Past and Tomorrow in Chulayarnnon Siriphol’s I a Pixel, We the People, named after an essay on Chulayarnnon’s work published by the gallery.

Chulayarnnon spoke about the two phases of his artistic career. His early short films were more personal, whereas his work became more overtly political following the Ratchaprasong crackdown in 2010: “it quite changed my life when the Thailand political crisis came, about 2010”. This aligns him with the “Post-Ratchaprasong art” movement identified by the journal Read (อ่าน; vol. 3, no. 2), and he made a similar comment in an interview for Thai Cinema Uncensored, explaining when he “turned to be interested in the political situation.”

In the Q&A, Chulayarnnon also discussed the consequences of the political climate for artists: “self-censorship is still existing: for me, sometimes I did that.” He contrasted the student protests of 2020 and 2021 — when Thai artists were more blunt in their political satire — with the current atmosphere: “for now, we need thought-provoking [art], but no need to be hardcore”. He also highlighted the threats that “hardcore” artists face: “I don’t want to be in jail, but I respect them.”

Sam I-shan’s essay booklet is twenty-four pages long, and has been published in a limited edition of twenty-four copies (each with a unique cover photos), reflecting the twenty-four-hour duration of Chulayarnnon’s video installation. The author identifies subtle political metaphors in the exhibition: she notes that the day-long running time “might parallel the cyclical nature of Thai politics,” and she argues that the piles of clothes in the gallery space “stand for all people disenfranchised by... Thailand’s political system, with some of these bodies literally absent, having been imprisoned, exiled, disappeared or killed.”

Pain(t)ing

Today is the final day of the Pain(t)ing thesis exhibition at Bangkok Art and Culture Centre, featuring work by students from the Poh-Chang Academy of Arts. The exhibition opened on 27th May.

One of the highlights is Narissara Duangkhun’s No War but the Class War no. 4, a satirical commentary on contemporary Thai politics. The painting includes a depiction of a Reuters photograph taken thirty years ago during the notorious Tak Bai incident in 2004. Narissara’s work resembles that of Navin Rawanchaikul (albeit on a smaller scale), with its dense, brightly coloured collage of wide-ranging visual references. Her painting also features a slot machine displaying ‘112’, a reference to the lèse-majesté law, which is article 112 of the Thai criminal code.

Screenprints: A History

Screenprinting is a relatively recent technique, when compared to other forms of printmaking such as engraving, aquatints, monotypes, and lithography. Even the term ‘screenprint’ itself has not yet been standardised, as it’s used synonymously with ‘serigraph’ and ‘silkscreen’.

There have been several general histories of printmaking, including Six Centuries of Fine Prints (by Carl Zigrosser, who coined the term ‘serigraph’) and Prints (co-written by Richard S. Field, who curated the Silkscreen exhibition in 1971). Also, Fritz Eichenberg’s monumental The Art of the Print has chapters on screenprinting. But it was only this year that the first history of screenprinting as an artistic medium was published.

Screenprints: A History, by Gill Saunders, traces the origins of screenprinting to Japanese katagami and French pochoir stencilling techniques. The book also covers artists such as Andy Warhol, who produced Pop Art screenprints with Chris Prater, the printer who was “almost single-handedly responsible for the metamorphosis of screenprinting into a fine art.” Eduardo Paolozzi collaborated with Prater on a dozen screenprints titled As Is When, described by Saunders as “the medium’s first masterpiece.”

Screenprints is a comprehensive history of its subject. Published by Thames and Hudson, it’s also elegantly designed and typeset. Most, though not all, of its illustrations are from the Victoria and Albert Museum collection, and the book is the first in an annual V&A series covering the histories of individual printmaking techniques. Given the high standard set by this first book, the others — on linocuts, etchings, and woodcuts, forthcoming over the next three years — are now eagerly anticipated.

ย้อนรอยแผลเป็น 6 ตุลา(‘retracing the scars of 6th Oct.’)

A display of items related to the 6th October 1976 massacre of students at Thammasat University opened at Thammasat’s Museum of Anthropology on 25th April, and runs until 30th August. The exhibition, ย้อนรอยแผลเป็น 6 ตุลา (‘retracing the scars of 6th Oct.’), is a scaled-down version of ก่อนจะถึงรุ่งสาง 6 ตุลา (‘before the dawn of 6th Oct.’), held at Thammasat last year. Both events were organised by the Museum of Popular History.

The current exhibition includes Hangman, a painted silhouette of a hanged student, displayed alongside a list of the names of the massacre victims. It also features the contents of the กล่องฟ้าสาง (‘box of dawn’), a ‘museum in a box’ released in 2021.

I a Pixel, We the People

Chulayarnnon Siriphol’s exhibition I a Pixel, We the People (ข้าพเจ้าคือพิกเซล, พวกเราคือประชาชน) is currently on show at Bangkok CityCity Gallery. The ambitious project is a video installation running for a whole day and night, divided into twenty-four one-hour episodes. The video projections are surrounded by large piles of old clothing, hoarded by the artist’s family.

I a Pixel, We the People features excerpts from Chulayarnnon’s previous work, edited to create a new narrative. It also includes footage of the recent student protest movement, filmed by the artist on 20th September 2020 (when a new plaque was installed at Sanam Luang) and 18th October 2020 (when students rallied at Victory Monument).

The golden snail motif has been a key feature of Chulayarnnon’s work over the past few years. I a Pixel, We the People begins with an extract from his short film Birth of Golden Snail (กำเนิดหอยทากทอง), before documenting the processs by which that film was banned from the Thailand Biennale. The first episode of I a Pixel, We the People likens the ban to the golden snail being “aborted while still in his shell”. (This metaphor can be traced back to a 2018 Dateline Bangkok post.)

Photographs from a meeting between Chulayarnnon and the Office of Contemporary Art and Culture, the organisation that banned Birth of Golden Snail, are accompanied by captions describing the OCAC’s criticisms of that film, followed by records of emails and phone calls with OCAC officials and exhibition curators. There is also footage of a secret 1st November 2018 screening of the film in Krabi, on the eve of the Biennale. (Chulayarnnon discussed Birth of Golden Snail, and his other work, in an interview for Thai Cinema Uncensored.)

At twenty-four hours long, I a Pixel, We the People is a wide-ranging film covering many topics, though the story of the golden snail is a constant thread. In this new version of the snail’s life story, the snail is the son of a propaganda minister in an authoritarian government (the female figure in Chulayarnnon’s segment of Ten Years Thailand).

The snail joins an anti-government protest, represented by Chulayarnnon’s archive footage of red-shirts commemorating the May 2010 massacre. The protesters are suppressed, initially with water cannon (coverage from Nation TV of Siam Square on 16th October 2020), and later by more violent means, illustrated by clips from Chulayarnnon’s documentary ชวนอ่านภาพ 6 ตุลา (‘invitation to read images of 6th Oct.’) and by new footage of dead animals.

I a Pixel, We the People also acts as a recontextualised retrospective of Chulayarnnon’s video works, and a reminder of Thai political and cultural events from the past two decades. Some of this material has not been shown for many years, if at all. Nothing to Say (ไม่มีอะไรจะพูด), for example, was an evening programme of fifty-three silent short films, shown at the Pridi Banomyong Institute on 31st October 2008. Produced by the now-defunct ThaiIndie collective, the Nothing to Say short films have since disappeared from the public record: even Chulayarnnon’s entry, เพลงของคนโง่ (‘song of a fool’), doesn’t appear on his filmography.

The exhibition opened on 26th April, and runs until 21st June. On the first day, the gallery was open for twenty-four hours, and the entire film was shown as a durational installation, with visitors staying overnight to watch all twenty-four episodes. Chulayarnnon’s previous exhibition at Bangkok CityCity, Give Us a Little More Time (ขอเวลาอีกไม่นาน), took place in 2020, and some of his satirical collages from that exhibition are on display again as part of I a Pixel, We the People.

Due to the project’s marathon running time, I a Pixel, We the People has been divided into six seasons, like a long-running TV series, each containing four episodes:

Season 1 — Star Wars
(สงครามอวกาศ)

1. This Is Not a Film (นี่ไม่ใช่ภาพยนตร์)
2. In God We Trust (อาจารย์แม่ช่วยด้วย)
3. Peoplization (และแล้วความเคลื่อนไหวก็ปรกฏ)
4. The Impossible Dream (ความฝันอันสูงสุด)

Season 2 — One Family One Soft Power
(หนึ่งครอบครัวหนึ่งซอฟท์พาวเวอร์)

5. My Mother and Her Portraits (แม่และภาพเหมือนของเธอ)
6. Golden Snail (สังข์ทองลูกแม่)
7. Cyber Scout (ลูกเลือไซเบอร์)
8. My Teacher Is a Genius (ส่องสัตว์สิ้นตาน)

Season 3 — The Star Light of Earth
(แสงดาวแห่งศรัทรา)

9. Comrades (สหาย)
10. Let It End in Our Generation (ให้มันจบที่รุ่นเรา)
11. Water Is Soft Power (พลิงละมุน)
12. Big Cleaning Day (แดนเนรมิต)

Season 4 — The Massacre
(ฤๅเลือดไหร่มันไร้ค่า)

13. I Am Vaccinated (คนเช่นนี้เป็นตนหนักแผ่นดิน)
14. Next Life in the Afternoon (ตนยังคงยืนเด่นโดยท้าทาย)
15. Forced Disappearance (บึงดินบุคคลให้สูญหาย)
16. The Eternity of Golden Snail (กำเนิดใหม่หอยทากทอง)

Season 5 — I a Pixel
(ข้าพเจ้าถือพิกเซล)

17. Voluntary Artist: Nopphon (ศิลปินจิตอาสา: นพพร)
18. Voluntary Artist: Kirati (ศิลปินจิตอาสา: กีรติ)
19. Voluntary Artist: Angsumalin (ศิลปินจิตอาสา: อังศุมาลิน)
20. Voluntary Artist: Red Eagle Sangmorakot (ศิลปินจิตอาสา: อินทรีแดง แสงมรกต)

Season 6 — The Internationale Shall Certainly Be Realised
(แองเตอร์นาซิอองนาล จะต้องปรากฎเป็นจริง)

21. Artist Is Not National’s Property [sic] (ศิลปินไม่ใช่สมนิติของชาติ)
22. Long Live Microcinema (ภาพยนตร์ยิงให้เกิดปัญญา)
23. How to Explain “Monument of the Fourth International” to a Dead Snail (เรารักภูมิพลิงวัฒนธรรม ละมุนละม่อมนุ่มนิ่ม)
24. House of Tomorrow (บ้านของพรุ่งนี้)

Stone: Ancient Craft to Modern Mastery

Stone: Ancient Craft to Modern Mastery, by Richard Rhodes, is one of the only publications in English to provide a general history of stone as an architectural material. The book includes an extensive glossary, endnotes, and bibliography, and it has an impressive cover that reproduces the surface texture of stone. In his introduction, Rhodes emphasises the cultural significance of stone buildings: “The ruins of stone and masonry architecture testify to war and destruction, to the rise and fall of cities and civilizations.”

Rhodes is apparently the last surviving apprentice of a medieval Italian guild of stonemasons. He stresses that this organisation is not affiliated with “the secret-handshake Masons”, though he describes it in equally conspiratorial terms. Several chapters of the book are devoted to the guild’s supposedly “Sacred Rules” of stonemasonry, and Rhodes claims that he is “sharing these secrets for the first time.” (This all feels a bit too much like Dan Brown to me.)

Stone is one of several recent books on architectural materials. Others include Concrete, Brick, Stone, and Wood (a series by William Hall); Glass in Architecture (by Michael Wigginton); Brick (by James W.P. Campbell); Architecture in Wood (by Will Pryce); Arish (by Sandra Piesik); Corrugated Iron (by Simon Holloway and Adam Mornement); and The Art of Earth Architecture (by Jean Dethier).