Work title: Slither No.1 - 3
Medium : metal and mirror
Dimension : 120 x 244 cm.
Exhibition : PARALLEL : The Ramasun Station Art Trail , June 8th - 30th 2019
My practice usually concern with the notion of imposed, adaptive , pastiche identity the metaphysical, syntactical meaning of things.
Slither No.1 , No.2 and No.3 reflex my practice in term of exploring and excavating my own identity as an analogy to my research and investigation of under-represented, undisclosed and alternative identities of my hometown Udonthani. In this case is Ramasun Station or presently Ramasun Historical Museum. The site which now shredded its own historical contents and instead imbued with the sense of touristic mode of production and filled with souvenir objects of the past with curious taste and meaning. That is to say while the present of itself undoing its own existent, its symbolic and cultural value has been naturalized, fading and slipping away.
Through its surviving of time, The Ramasun Station stands as if it was a monumental reminder of the untold relation between US and Thailand while Udonthani had played its part as a mediator of this very relation.
In this set of art pieces my intention is to respond to the physicality of the site especially in this case the Ramasun Station Operation Building (AKA the Box). The architecture once was operated in multi aspects of sound ; intercepting sound , spying sound , receiving sound , decoding sound , translating sound , transmitting sound and so on. Through the passage of time this wartime construction is existing as military ruin , stripped off its previous function , shredded away its former life as if a snaking molting it skin while those former auditory operations had also been discharged as though sound itself has been inhabited by its state of silence.
Along the narrow corridor of the building one can notice that all steel poles within the structure wall had been deliberately carved away. After the US army was discharge and before the Thai army took over , the station was invaded by local scavengers raiding for metals.
As a respond to such circumstances ,the quietness, the stasis , the non-existence of place and its materials , I had chosen to work with steel( steel come back to the place in a form of artwork). Each sheet of steel had been cut into a pattern of soundwave. There are 3 differences sound source for each piece :
(all 3 are voices interview I had conducted with 3 subjects)
Slither No.1 is David Butler’s voice he is a retired GI , he used to station at Ramasun during 1972 – 1974 his work place was Operation Building ,his duty was a Morse Code interceptor
Slither No.2 : Grandfather Tong Aon a Laos teacher he live in Vilabouly ,Savanaket Middle of Laos , he live through the period which B52 was bombarding his residential area. At the present he still live among those bomb craters.
Slither No.3 : Miss Chuleeporn (my mother) an Udonthani’s merchant , now 66 she was born and grew up on Posri Road , Old downtown area. She opened a shop selling clothes and small gifts. Most popular among GI is scarp. GI usually bought it for for their partner ladies she claimed.
