Korakrit Arunanondchai at C L E A R I N G

Artist: Korakrit Arunanondchai

Exhibition title: with history in a room filled with people with funny names 4

Venue: C L E A R I N G, Brussels, Belgium

Date: April 20 – May 26, 2018

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and C L E A R I N G, Brussels/New York

«It’s an architectural icon recognized in every nation on every continent It rose from the ashes of two catastrophic wars
It stands as a symbol of hope that a union of nations can come together in one place to make peace
60 years ago the founders of the United Nations would have to assemble a team of world renown architects Their goal? To design the headquarter that would express the vision of the future without wars»
-Workshop for Peace (Un atelier pour la paix)

The fuel to the capitalist ideology that America pedals is hope. The hope of transformation, mutation, metamorphosis and interchangeability.

Since the Thai military Junta took power in 2014, the subject HISTORY was removed from the curriculum.

I grew in Bangkok in the 90’s, under a epoch that will be written in “HISTORY” as “the reign of king rama 9.” It was a time when it was common for the CIA to meddle with politics in South East Asia for the symbolic fight against communism. Also a time pre-the arrival of Internet, pro-globalisation and pre-market crash of the 1997. The US, then feels friendly, superior and advanced in the same way the Buddhist Gods feels friendly but also wrathful at the same time. My thought about the UN then was that it was akin to a total work of humanity, to keep peace on earth. A “Hope” that was accessible to everyone.

New scars build upon the old, information fills the spaces of mystery magic. I can now start to understand the gods as tools or even propaganda. The narrative of the old and the new, the pre crypto-colonialism and the post, the primordial era of Buddhism and the story of the 10 lives of Buddha as different animals practicing “good human values”, undo themselves under the question of “how was this history recorded?” and “who’s subjectivities were these?”

So in the year 2018, we will not teach history in Thailand.

But after this break of “No History”, as the flow of information collapses linear time, and as the authority continually fails to keep up with the current methods of representation and 4-dimensional thinking, perhaps one can hope that there is a new coming of a new state of becoming, and in a psychological sense, there is forward movement towards becoming democratically something, again.

The old metaphor that people of Siam together in the 90’s was that we were a family. The King is the father. The United Nations organizes itself as 6 different organs that form a body, while Donna Haraway talks about the interconnectedness of species and systems as forming kinship.

With all these ways of thinking about the subject of “togetherness” considered, IN A ROOM FILLED WITH PEOPLE WITH FUNNY NAMES, bodies of animals, species, ecosystems, subjects, ideas and even Gaia, need to and wanted to be held together, for reasons other than hope.

I have been documenting my grandparents with digital video since 2011. It started when my grandfather was starting to lose the ability to recall short-term memory.

The stable ground is at times gently vibrating and at other times abruptly exploding. The only stable thing left in a world could be the recognition of your own breath. I would like to think that this recognition will exist past the point where you could breath, when your body no longer exist. All living things breathe something or another and while ghosts breathe information, you Chantri may breath people’s feelings.
Even if the systems that established the connections that hold us together are corrupted, bodies will continue
to breathe together, molecules will form unions;
unity in entropy.

Accumulation as resistance

And for our “Body”, as the organs start to fail. As the funny names are forgotten. History prevails in the form of a noise that becomes a sound and finally music. Negative becomes positive and scars layer into mounds. The pus becomes nutrients for a new species of poisonous plants that don’t welcome human hardwares, in crumbs of architectural bodies that were organs that form buildings held together by an idea. The same genetic information prevails but it will mutate or die.

Some names of bodies to represent the idea: Naga, Gaia, Leviathan, Manusiha, Garuda, Akupāra, Pan. Today I want to tell you about Pan. Pan is the root word for Panic and Pan plays a song on his flute. A Panic song

It’s the same song my grandfather plays on his Casio Electone everytime I ask him to play something. I don’t remember the name of the song but I know it’s French.

Chantri, you develop over the years from a void to become, a drone, a naga, the subjectivity of a collective, a reality membrane, the voice of my grandmother, the liveness within this present and now a sound

I hear music

from a place not so familiar

but relatable

through the sound

of its breath

Korakrit Arunanondchai, Workshop for Peace, from a place/ not so familiar/ but relatable/ through the sound/ of its breath, 2018, 21 clay model of United Nations Secretariat building, cast of Boychild’s head, cast of artist’s grandfather’s hands, clay, wood, metal armature, banana leafs, soil, resin, 122 x 236 x 181 inches (310 x 600 x 460 cm)

Korakrit Arunanondchai, with history in a room filled with people with funny names 4, 2018, exhibition view, C L E A R I N G, Brussels

Korakrit Arunanondchai, Workshop for Peace/Oceans of trauma, Rivers of dried up hopes and dreams = the joy of being human-being, 2018, Clay model of United Nations Headquarters architecture, oarfish made out of silicone with artist face sculpted on, deceased tree root system, dried flowers, dried orange peel, dried durian shell, blown blue glass, dried mushrooms, lobster shell, led lights program after breath algorithm, neon lights, resin, plexi encasement, 72 1/4 x 71 x 47 inches (183.5 x 180.3 x 119.4 cm)

Korakrit Arunanondchai, Workshop for Peace / Death of Pan, 2018, Clay model of United Nations Headquarters in New York, deceased tree root system, blown red glass, plastic model of Dhammakaya Temple Pa-goda, used ceremonial candles collected from wat Buddha Thai Thavorn Vanaram Temple in Queens New York, fiber optic cables, led lights pro-gram after breath algorithm, goat horns, plastic, taxidermy rats, various species of bird eggs, resin, coconut, neon lights, plexi encasement, 72 1/4 x 71 x 47 inches (183.5 x 180.3 x 119.4 cm)

Korakrit Arunanondchai, with history in a room filled with people with funny names 4, 2018, exhibition view, C L E A R I N G, Brussels

Korakrit Arunanondchai, with history in a room filled with people with funny names 4 (house) 2017, 7 Objects made by Tipyavarna Nitibhon (b. 1927) in 1979–2017

Korakrit Arunanondchai, with history in a room filled with people with funny names 4 2017, HD Video + 7 black pillows, 23’31’’, looped, Edition of 5 + 2 AP

Korakrit Arunanondchai, Workshop for Peace/ Cry Pan Cry, 2018, Clay model of United Nations Headquarters architecture, deceased tree root system, blown red glass, clay, clam and oyster shell, tissue paper, res-in, neon lights, led lights program after breath algorithm, plexi encasement. 72 1/4 x 71 x 47 inches (183.5 x 180.3 x 119.4 cm)

Korakrit Arunanondchai, There’s a word I’m trying to remember from a feeling I’m about to have (let the song hold us), 2018, Giant rat costume, cast of artist’s grandfather’s hands, denim jacket, fog machine, metal armature, 79 x 35 x 81 inches (200 x 90 x 205 cm)

Korakrit Arunanondchai, To experience the vertigo of the world and see it dissolve into light Hand carved Naga sculpture rubbed with ‘Dad’s dirt’ 20 x 14 x 4 inches (52 x 36 x 10 cm)