NeoNationalism:WakeUpThai!

[GWR]

'Neo-Nationalism' is the name of an exhibit at Chulalongkorn University's 'The Art Centre' that closes on 17/12:-

http://search.netscape.com/ns/boomframe.jsp?query=neo-nationalism+exhibition+chulalongkorn&page=1&offset=0&result_url=redir%3Fsrc%3Dwebsearch%26requestId%3Da 07cd1d09e0134c3%26clickedItemRank%3D3%26userQuery% 3Dneo-nationalism%2Bexhibition%2Bchulalongkorn%26clicked ItemURN%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.car.chula.ac.th%2 52Fart%252Fcurrent%252F%26invocationType%3D-%26fromPage%3DNSCPIndex%26amp%3BampTest%3D1&remove_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.car.chula.ac.th%2Fart% 2Fcurrent%2F

7th November – 17th December 2005
Neo-Nationalism

We live in interesting times. Globalisation, as practiced by transnational capitalists, relentlessly expands its empire and overwhelms local economies. The War on Terror, as waged by the leaders of the United States of America, along with suicide bombing by international terrorists, spreads like an epidemic across the world. In the three troubled Southern provinces of Thailand, innocent lives are being sacrificed in daily acts of violence. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Thaksin and his Thai Rak Thai Party have become all-powerful as they adopt a CEO administrative style and pursue a neo-nationalist agenda; as the battle rages between this representative of Thai capitalist interests and royalist conservatives over the people’s hearts and minds.

Now is the ideal moment for reflection; for us to pause and reexamine, to explore our own ideas and understanding of the concept of ‘nationalism’. What is nationalism, really? We should do this lest we fall prey to nationalistic consumerism, or start running around accusing other people of being “traitors to their nation”.

As Vasan Sitthiket, one of the artists represented in this exhibition, says:

“I want to give us pause. I want to say: please, I don’t want to be a nationalist like you, if nationalism means having to be narrow-minded, prejudiced or hateful towards people who think differently… How can we be more accepting of our differences? [Our ability to co-exist]—this is the thing that speaks of culture and civilisation. We should be seeking to become more civilised and develop human wisdom. Our rulers shouldn’t be working to keep people ignorant and docile and easy to exploit for the rulers’ own selfish interests.”

This is the well-meaning intent behind ‘Neo-Nationalism’, an exhibition of contemporary politically-engaged art that I and seven fellow artists are staging for your benefit. We’d like our viewers to brainstorm with us; to help us all find a way out of this false and narrow-minded myth-making. Let’s not become anybody’s tool; let’s not fall prey to opportunists. So we can live in peace together in our society.

Manit Sriwanichpoom
Curator
September 2005

[GWR]

From Bangkok Post's Outlook, 15/12/05:-

http://www.bangkokpost.com/en/151205_Outlook/15Dec2005_out02.php

Waving the flag - Bangkok Post - Outline - 15/12/05

'Neo-Nationalism': A contemporary political art exhibition

David Teh

Will flag-waving ever go out of fashion? Many of today's political scientists think it might be on the wane, under pressure from supra-national forces like terrorism and globalisation. But in some places, including Thailand, nationalism is alive and well, taking new forms and creating new symbols to stay relevant and potent. "Neo-Nationalism" assembles eight artists intent on tracking its evolution, who point the way to a more subtle investigation of nationalism.

Through flags, we can trace the history of art's intimate relation to power. This peaks with the advent of democracy, as artists were enlisted to record and dramatise the foundation of popular power, the pride and optimism of the modern nation - Washington crosses the Delaware; Liberty leads the People; and so on. The relationship soured, though, when the 20th century sent nations - and nations sent their people - to brutal and bloody deaths in two world wars. By the 1960s, pop artist Jasper Johns was able to treat the Stars and Stripes with the cool, ironic distance that characterised his milieu.

Since then, contemporary art has drifted even further from the official line, preferring to dissociate itself from the fervour of national symbolism. In a recent Internet artwork called Netflag, by US artist Mark Napier, viewers can combine elements of their favourite flags to create their own hybrids. As for our cultures, so for our symbols: Globalisation often means dilution.

Yet back in the real world, flags continue to be potent signifiers of national identity, notwithstanding art's indifference. And when the two are forced together, like ex-lovers, there's still a spark. "Neo-Nationalism" may not start any fires, but there are certainly plenty of sparks flying here.

A wall of graffiti greets visitors on entry. An age-old medium for anti-authority scrawling, graffiti has more recently been commercialised by artists and advertisers. But it can still arouse the popular will to self-expression. This becomes all the more pressing as the space for political debate shrinks. With the mass media ever more wary of defamation lawsuits, contemporary art becomes an even rarer channel for asking questions of our leaders.

Spearheading the protest here, and as feisty as ever, is veteran political artist Vasan Sitthiket with his work Are You Thai or Not? Framed by a TV monitor, the artist responds that he is not Thai, if being Thai means taking advantage of one's status and privilege for personal gain. He recites a litany of political misdemeanours, whilst behind him hang portraits of their perpetrators, arrayed in a red, white and blue grid. The use of video recalls Martha Rosler's work of the 1970s, but without the grating tone of her political partisanship. Vasan's litany is more of an incantation, patient and stripped of sentiment.

In Thailand's usually polite public sphere, such strident criticism can seem a bit heavy-handed. But as their policies in the troubled South (and in the courts) show, our politicians can also be heavy-handed. Of course, the flag is still something people fight and die for. But these days, nationalism is put to more everyday uses - rallying us to cheer for sporting heroes and beauty queens, to go shopping, or even to eat longan.

Santi Thongsuk presents powerful drawings of football crowds as a sea of faces. His aggressive mark-making, at once fluid and controlled, captures the monstrous energy of the crowd that so intoxicated the Italian Futurists and other, more notorious fascists. The title, Sightless, could be a metaphor for the wide-eyed blindness of mass patriotism; and this is reinforced compositionally - the crowded canvas offers no space, no horizon, no perspective. But Santi is not anti-nationalist. He aims to capture the peculiar energy of people uniting for a common cause.

For nationalism is an ambivalent thing, a tool of deception, but also a source of dignity, a means for preserving cultures threatened by the march of global capitalism and its homogenising forces. This ambivalence is borne out by the exhibition's bilingual catalogue, in interviews with the artists by curator, Manit Sriwanichpoom. These afford a refreshing critical perspective on how national identity is exploited by the powerful. But they are not diatribes - most of the artists admit to having mixed feelings. Nationalism can still be a source of hope, it seems, if only it can be rescued from the cynical PR campaigns.

It follows that political art is no longer about fringe-dwellers making straightforward attacks on the powers that be. These days, the target is just as likely to be the populace itself, the critique to come from within, using the tools - and the language - of popular culture.

Imprint, an installation by Sutee Kunavichayanont, borrows its form from the cinema, a privileged site for the dissemination of national ideology. Viewers enter a completely dark room through a heavy red curtain. Thanks to a strobe light, the Thai flag flashes momentarily before their eyes; its vivid after-image throbs in the blackness. It's hardly controversial to point out cinema's role in the politics of nations - from D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation to Black Hawk Down and Pearl Harbor, film has been the patriot's medium (and propaganda tool) par excellence. With today's "embedded reporting", the link is so obvious as to be banal. But it has a special resonance in Thailand, where movie-goers still stand before every session to honour their revered King. With characteristic sarcasm, Sutee reminds us of the cinema's role in sustaining the traditional social order.

The latest instalment of Manit's Pink Man photographic series also jams the traditional formats of sentimental nationalism.

For Western viewers, there's a contradiction between the smooth photographic surface and the ornate, faux-gilt picture frames. But again, the combination is not unusual in Thailand, where most shops and homes display a portrait of the ruler, often generously framed.

In Repeat After Me, Pink Man is pictured with a troop of flag-waving scouts, gathered around him in a classroom and bathed in the pink glow radiated by his satin suit. The scout movement played a powerful symbolic role in Thailand's modern political history, especially during the social upheaval of the 1970s, exploited in the name of the nation by key political operators. In Follow Me, the scouts have fallen in, single-file, behind a new leader: Pink Man with his trusty pink shopping trolley, the model "aspirational" consumer.

Not all engagements with the theme are so blunt. Sakarin Krue-On's video installation, The 2005 Crisis, features digital animations of the nang kwak (beckoning lady) , the kneeling prosperity goddess whose figurine is often placed at the entrance of businesses. But her once elegant wrist is deformed, as if she has co-mutated with the Japanese beckoning cat (maneki neko). Like some demented robot, this hybrid figure proliferates, forming a rotating mandala, Bollywood colourful; then sprouting extra arms like the Hindu god Shiva.

Though his training was traditional, Sakarin has a deft touch with new technology.

Projected onto a large white scrim, cut into strips, this work is the size of an electronic billboard; its rhythm recalls the cycling of mindless advertisements. But blowing in the air-conditioned breeze, it also suggests the impermanence and flexibility of cultural signage, revisiting the centuries-old circulation of religious icons around Asia.

Just as suggestive - if more abstract - is Toi Ungkavatanapong's Bathe, a bed of fluorescent light tubes forming a Thai flag. The simplicity of the bed-frame is contradicted by the glare of neon, the symbolic beacon of the rural-urban migration that shapes Thai society. In Modern Love, Toi explores the projection of national identity through cuisine, turning five rice-cookers - red, white and blue of course - into wall-mounted lamps. Holes punched in their sides form the slogan "Love Your Country". Toi is interested in how ideas are spread unconsciously. The flag offers people a kind of default colour scheme, which they might reproduce unthinkingly.

Like much of the best contemporary art, this work questions how we invest ordinary, everyday objects with meaning. "Neo-Nationalism" proves that contemporary art can be a vital space for critical reflection upon our values, habits and prejudices.

'Neo-Nationalism' is on through Saturday at the Art Centre, 7th Floor, Centre of Academic Resources, Chulalongkorn University (Mondays to Fridays, 9am to 7pm, Saturdays, 9am to 4pm). Call 02-218-2964/5 for more information.

[GWR]

“Pink Man and Other Adventures in Photography”

Manit Sriwanichpoom

Manit Sriwanichpoom is Thailand’s most internationally established photographer. He was awarded the Higashikawa Overseas Photographer Prize in 2007. His works are held by the Maison Européenne de la Photographie (Paris), the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum (Japan), the Singapore Art Museum and private collectors. In 2002, he was named one of the world’s 100 most interesting emerging photographers by Phaidon Press in their book BLINK.

He will talk about the birth and development of his best known series, ‘Pink Man’ (http://rspas.anu.edu.au/rmap/newmandala/2007/11/13/horror-in-pink/), the fat Asian man in the obscene pink satin suit who pushes a matching obscene pink shopping cart. How did an idea for one street performance satirizing Thai contemporary aspirations become an indelible cross culture mascot of consumerism? He will also share his thoughts on other critical and controversial work such as ‘This Bloodless War’, a series of black & white photographs reconstructed from Vietnam war news photos; and ‘In-Your-face’, a series of artist portraits which has suffered from odd forms of censorship, most recently when a shipping company refused to send the print to an exhibition in Germany, due to obscenity concern.

7.30pm, Monday 31 March
Institute of Postcolonial Studies, 78-80 Curzon St North Melbourne, 3051
Charges: Waged $5, Unwaged $3, Members free
http://rspas.anu.edu.au/rmap/newmandala/

http://rspas.anu.edu.au/rmap/newmandala/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/horror-in-pink-no1.jpg
[Photo: New Mandala]

[Wisarut]

If you still remmeber the Advertisign of BankThai around 1998 - 1999, this is the theme song of "Wake Up Thai!" which you SHOULD listen since it contain the Nationalist Sentiment:

Wake Up Thai for Online MP3
http://khunnamoop.imeem.com/music/tgEIIOj2/bso_wakeup/

Wake Up Thai Music Video at YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xanguXmM44

The reference to the "Wake Up Thai!"
http://www.marketeer.co.th/inside_detail.php?inside_id=336

[Wisarut]

Sadudee Maharaja - Thailand has ONLY one leader we can trust ..
http://www.imeem.com/people/gQHQlE/music/bj5bEeBD/charhermrach_sadudimaharacha/

National Soldiers - a song for National Army - not thsoe mercenary thugs like UDD men
http://www.imeem.com/saysomething/music/K2WVeBlU//