The City & The City: Divided Senses, Bangkok Exhibition

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Exhibition Journal

From 5-14 November 2020, Bangkok International Performing Arts Meeting (BIPAM) in collaboration with Festival/Tokyo (F/T) organized an exhibition “The City & The City 2020 Edition: Divided Senses” at The Jam Factory Gallery to present the results of our collaboration project between Bangkok and Tokyo. In this project, we selected three artists from each city and asked them to research deeply to find “five unique senses” of their city, and exchange and collaborate through digital platforms. Both cities then present the results of the collaboration in the form of an exhibition in their cities.

Earlier this year in July, BIPAM announced an open call for young, emerging artists from all creative practices, and finally selected Chatchavan Suwansawat (Chut), an architect and writer whose book “Architect-jer” (What an Architect comes across) was recently launched in the recent Book Expo Thailand 2020, Chanapon Komkham (Time), a visual artist working across multiple art disciplines, and Pakhamon Hemachandra (Much), a contemporary dancer with interest in multidisciplinary work. Additionally, Piyawan Sapsamreom (Ning) was selected from the open call to act as Thai-Japanese interpreter, bridging the two groups of artists through her expertise in the language and culture of both cities.

Throughout the collaboration, which began in August 2020, the artists and organizers of both cities met and exchanged entirely through online platforms such as Zoom or Facebook. The artists were challenged to work with limited means of communication and differences in language and culture. Each team’s primary conclusion of the five senses was consequently arrived at through different perceptions and processes, which, in turn, were exchanged and applied by each team to re-discover their own city more deeply. Finally, the results of such process have been displayed through mixed media art installations using paintings, photographs and multimedia to provide the experiences about their selected 5 senses in the exhibition. The artworks are displayed in 5 parts divided by senses with the following concepts.

High Hole

is the sight of Bangkok through the artists’ lens. It started from a deep hole located next to one of the most high-end department stores which reminded the artists of Bangkok as the city where the most flamboyant and the filthiest of things coexist. Everywhere you go in Bangkok, you can find inequality. To make it more ironic, all the ad billboards pasted on the skyscrapers across Bangkok, repeating itself endlessly, are interpreted as one kind of mental, deceptive black holes. Glimmering products show themselves in billboards from high above, seducing the grassroots to look up high and dream of them – as if to promise that they would be taken away from the deep holes that they’re standing in if only they could possess these materials one day.

Noise Junc.

Close your eyes and listen to the sound of Bangkok. The first things you’ll hear will most definitely be rushing engines from the streets. From when the Bangkok artists went on the survey trips in many parts of Bangkok, they found that each intersection in Bangkok has its own unique energy and yields an interesting aural experience. The most unique element can be found in those with the worst traffic jams. As soon as the light turns green, the long-repressed frustration explodes simultaneously across the road. First to rush forward are the motorcycle, then car engines follow immediately after. Resonance of chaos bursts and fills the air, compensating for the urban creatures’ suppressed annoyance. And not soon after, the light turns red again. The engines calm down, wait for the next time to explode against the sound backdrop of clicking traffic light countdown. Therefore, the artists chose to record the sounds from those junctions, mixed them and created the cassette tapes with those sound to provide the audiences such hearing experiences and to reflect the city that values the cars over its people.

Fruity Mingly

‘Tum Polamai (spicy fruit salad)’ is the taste that the artists chose to represent Bangkok, where you can find all kinds of fruit from all over the country cheaply. To present these different types of fruit, a Thai (and Southeast Asian) cooking method was chosen – Tum (spicy salad). It’s a mixture of diverse ingredients like garlic, chili, dried shrimps, tomatoes, fish sauce, lime juice, and sugar, making up the “Tum” juice that is at once sour, spicy, salty, and sweet. When it’s used to mix with different kinds of fruit, and topping it all off with some nuts, the dish is turned into one that staple Bangkok’s tongue. The key to any Tum dishes is to coat all ingredients equally and thoroughly with the “Tum” juice. Moderating and balancing the different flavours of fruit that come from different places is just like people in Bangkok, each coming from a different place but trying to coat themselves as a true Bangkokian and live as happily as they can. Meanwhile, the coating juice continues to drip off their skin. The artists performed cooking the Tum Polamai on the opening of the exhibition and recorded the performance of how people gathered and ate the dish together to show the concept ‘Fruity Mingly’.

Scent-ial Oil

What should be the Bangkok smell? When given such question, the artists went on a survey trip and agreed that the first smell that came to mind and seemed to be most memorable was that of the Saen Saeb canal, an amazingly appalling and lingering smell to the nose. In the research, the team collected a sample from the canal to try to find the true origin of the smell and discovered that the distinct smell is actually caused by the boat’s engine oil, leaking every time the boat sucks in water to cool the engine as it commutes in the canal. When the water is released from the engine and further diffused as the boat speeds up and stirs the wave, the smell of the engine and the oil mixed with the existing water smell becomes a strong odour that throws anyone’s olfactory system out of balance, and you may not be able to cover your nose quick enough to avoid it. In the exhibition they used blue pipes and rubber tubes to create the process of the boat engine and placed the tube through the centre of the exhibition to represent the commuter’s boat that runs on this canal, cutting through Bangkok from the old city to the modern downtown, which is why most people have experienced this smell, as well as projecting video art created from the feeling about this smell to share their experiences with the audiences.

Foot-punked

The sense of touch that our feet experience daily of the footpaths in Bangkok comes with a skill that everyone living in Bangkok long enough would have developed, which is the strange walking to avoid any injuries or danger caused by the footpaths that become uneven, strangely (un)leveled, with broken tiles and flippable plumbing covers. In Bangkok, you’ll step on “tile bombs” on a rainy day and wet yourself all over more often that walking on a footpath that’s well thought-out for the best pedestrian experience. And so the Bangkok artists created such experiences by copying parts of such footpaths and creating two movement performance videos where the artists using part(s) of their bodies to experience those touch to encourage the audiences to think of those feelings and their own experiences.

Exhibition opening event live performance

The City & The City 2020: Divided Senses Bangkok Edition will be developed and exhibited again as part of the Bangkok Design Week 2021 from 30 January – 7 February 2021, at the Grand Postal Building Bangrak. For more information, please follow us on our website and Facebook: www.facebook.com/biapambkk

นิทรรศการ The City & The City 2020 Bangkok Edition: Divided Senses

เมื่อวันที่ 5-14 พฤศจิกายน 2563 Bangkok International Performing Arts Meeting (BIPAM) ร่วมกับ Festival/Tokyo (F/T) จัดนิทรรศการ The City & The City 2020 Edition: Divided Senses ที่ The Jam Factory Gallery เพื่อนำเสนอผลงานในโครงการความร่วมมือระหว่างกรุงเทพฯ และ โตเกียว ที่ทีมศิลปินของทั้งสองเมืองได้ทำการสำรวจเมืองเพื่อค้นหา “สัมผัสทั้ง 5” จากเมืองที่ตนเองอยู่ และแลกเปลี่ยนกับศิลปินในอีกเมือง ก่อนที่จะสร้างสรรค์ผลงานนิทรรศการในแบบของตนเอง

โดยทีมศิลปินกรุงเทพฯ ทั้ง 3 คน เป็นศิลปินต่างสาขาที่ BIPAM ได้คัดเลือกผ่านการ open call ได้แก่ ชัชวาล สุวรรณสวัสดิ์ สถาปนิกและนักเขียนที่สนใจเมืองกรุงเทพฯเจ้าของผลงานหนังสือ “อาคิเต็ก-เจอ”, ชนะพล คมขำ ศิลปินทัศนศิลป์ผู้ทำงานกับสื่อที่หลากหลาย และ ภคมน เหมะจันทร์ ศิลปินนักเต้นร่วมสมัยที่สนใจการทำงานข้ามศาสตร์ (multi-disciplinary) ทั้ง 3 คน ได้สื่อสารกับทีมโตเกียวผ่านล่ามภาษาญี่ปุ่น ปิยะวรรณ ทรัพย์สำรวม ที่เป็นผู้เชื่อมโยงทั้งสองทีมในด้านภาษาและวัฒนธรรม

จากการร่วมกันสำรวจเมืองกรุงเทพฯ ผ่านกระบวนการที่แลกเปลี่ยนกับศิลปินทีมโตเกียว สัมผัสทั้ง 5 ที่ศิลปิน ได้เลือกเพื่อเป็นตัวแทนสัมผัสของกรุงเทพฯ ที่พวกเขารู้สึกได้ชัดเจนที่สุดก็ได้ถูกนำมาจัดแสดงเป็นนิทรรศการในรูปแบบศิลปะจัดวาง ที่มีทั้งงานจิตรกรรม ภาพถ่าย ประติมากรรมสื่อผสม และ งานมัลมีเดีย โดยงานได้แบ่งออกเป็น 5 ส่วน ได้แก่