A world beyond spiral
A room lit brightly at night. Weary eyes were looking outside. Nothing was visible beyond the glass windows, only the reflection of the eyes and the ghost of movements outside. All four eyes were seeing themselves closely. They sparkle in a circle, automatic like a washing machine.
A rose blossoms, a wall falls, water evaporates, things happen; all are events. Understanding an event is to understand what makes an event an event. Last month someone asked to meet in front of 7-11 near Silpakorn University at 5 pm. It makes absolute sense. Discounting action, composing an event needs time and location of space, both of which are inseparable conditions. We move around space anyway our hearts' desire. However, we speak differently about time. I could not go to the 7-11 at 5 pm when it was already half past midnight. We are incapable of travelling to yesterday nor to the far future when we all became particle dust. We are forever stuck in the moment of presence.
Time does really exist, or merely measurements of the passage of time exists. We might be unable to fully understand within a short time. Nonetheless, what we do acknowledge is the 'arrow of time'. Perhaps it is linear like a cigarette or cyclical, like clocks or seasons. But what about a spiral? Things are repeating while moving forward, mirroring the past in the future again and again and again and again and again. We are all caught moving along in the middle of this spiral flow of time.
a leaf
falls
onto
a stream
The Stream flows and converges into a river before flowing into the oceans. Ocean currents flow continuously. All seems random but naturally directed, creating an uninterrupted loop connecting things in between.
Centuries ago, the oceans connected colonial modernity to many places, including Siam. The tides brought foreign ideas here. At the same time, French artist Théodore Géricault painted Scène de Naufrage (shipwreck scene). The over-life-sized painting depicts the aftermath of the French frigate Méduse's wreck two years prior. Drifting on an unstable raft without any means of navigating, it rapidly turned disastrous. Let us imagine how it went down. The frigate ran aground. Imagine 147 people from the likes of naval officers, soldiers, sailors, and workers on board a 20 meter makeshift raft, which was briefly towed by a lifeboat. High-ranking officers on the lifeboat decided to cut loose, leaving the raft to its own faith with hardly any supplies. People on the raft were confused about what had happened, leading to brutal fights breaking out between groups. Some desperately committed suicide.
Imagine a storm was looming onto the scene; the currents were getting stronger. The waves washed some men into the sea, while many fought each other lethally to get to the centre of the raft, which was the most secure spot. Supplies were extremely scarce. Consequentially and in despair, some resorted to cannibalism to survive, consuming the flesh of fellow men to prolong their own lives. The end of one was a continuation of another. The fittest men threw the weak and the wounded to their demise, leaving only 15 people on board, lying helplessly at the centre of the raft. Days later, they were found and saved. The frigate's captain was absent from this story since he had sailed to safety on a lifeboat at the beginning of the disastrous event, leaving these poor people to struggle for their lives.
The painting Scène de Naufrage was later called Le Radeau de la Méduse (the raft of the medusa). It was praised as a timeless social commentary and a critique of modernity. The acclaimed painting sadly remained unsold until Géricault passed away. His artwork has since been on view in Paris, echoing a strong sentiment in the stream of time.
All the things we see, read, watch, hear, investigate, ponder upon, imagine, squeeze, touch, smell, feel, taste, collect,
we recollect to construct
The sound of nothing echoing in a chamber. White noise becomes silent. The sense of presence is emphasised. The objects, the viewers, the artists are present before everything has gone their own way.
Tibetan monks grind stones into grains and dye them with natural pigments, preparing colourful sands. A tabletop shows a trace of a complex geometric drawing on its face. The monks gather around the table, meditating. They steadily use a scraper and a funnel called Chak-pur to discharge sand granules onto the drawing. As light and fragile as the particles forming an image, one sudden breath could distort it and disrupt the meditation. It takes hard work and days to complete the depiction, but it merely takes seconds to erase the motif away.
Erasing an image or reverting a depiction is like the end of art exhibitions when artworks are removed and stored. It was not the actual end. It is the continuity of possibilities for further investigation and interpretation of ideas. Does sweeping sand into the centre of a Mandala destroy itself or complete it? Does the Mandala table become an empty vessel after the deletion, and what about the raft? The end is not yet the actual end. The vessel still carries ideas and thoughts, despite its physical form.
The colourful grains of sand become dull when they meet together at the centre after the sweeping. The sand rests in a jar wrapped in silk. Then the jar is set to travel to a river with flowing water, where the sand will be distributed and released back to nature. Consequently, each of the blessed grains of sand reaches as far as possible to benefit all sentient beings. The river carries the blessing to the ocean. It begins to flow again, to move continuously and reach the world.
There is merely a little substance in this text I am writing, just a glimpse of bits of ideas and thoughts retold. How we process the transmissions and connect things for a construct is up to us. Like sand Mandala, representing ideas and thoughts in an art context physically shimmers and is gone. And yet, the early copy of Le Radeau de la Méduse was discovered in another continent carrying its story in a different format. All ideas are to be recollected and reincarnate in other forms like ripples in time. Perceiving a world beyond spiral is a view from nowhen, where bits of knowledge constantly flow, mirroring the previous while reflecting the next.
Pratchaya Phinthong
Soi Saeng Arun, middle of a night in May
A rose blossoms, a wall falls, water evaporates, things happen; all are events. Understanding an event is to understand what makes an event an event. Last month someone asked to meet in front of 7-11 near Silpakorn University at 5 pm. It makes absolute sense. Discounting action, composing an event needs time and location of space, both of which are inseparable conditions. We move around space anyway our hearts' desire. However, we speak differently about time. I could not go to the 7-11 at 5 pm when it was already half past midnight. We are incapable of travelling to yesterday nor to the far future when we all became particle dust. We are forever stuck in the moment of presence.
Time does really exist, or merely measurements of the passage of time exists. We might be unable to fully understand within a short time. Nonetheless, what we do acknowledge is the 'arrow of time'. Perhaps it is linear like a cigarette or cyclical, like clocks or seasons. But what about a spiral? Things are repeating while moving forward, mirroring the past in the future again and again and again and again and again. We are all caught moving along in the middle of this spiral flow of time.
a leaf
falls
onto
a stream
The Stream flows and converges into a river before flowing into the oceans. Ocean currents flow continuously. All seems random but naturally directed, creating an uninterrupted loop connecting things in between.
Centuries ago, the oceans connected colonial modernity to many places, including Siam. The tides brought foreign ideas here. At the same time, French artist Théodore Géricault painted Scène de Naufrage (shipwreck scene). The over-life-sized painting depicts the aftermath of the French frigate Méduse's wreck two years prior. Drifting on an unstable raft without any means of navigating, it rapidly turned disastrous. Let us imagine how it went down. The frigate ran aground. Imagine 147 people from the likes of naval officers, soldiers, sailors, and workers on board a 20 meter makeshift raft, which was briefly towed by a lifeboat. High-ranking officers on the lifeboat decided to cut loose, leaving the raft to its own faith with hardly any supplies. People on the raft were confused about what had happened, leading to brutal fights breaking out between groups. Some desperately committed suicide.
Imagine a storm was looming onto the scene; the currents were getting stronger. The waves washed some men into the sea, while many fought each other lethally to get to the centre of the raft, which was the most secure spot. Supplies were extremely scarce. Consequentially and in despair, some resorted to cannibalism to survive, consuming the flesh of fellow men to prolong their own lives. The end of one was a continuation of another. The fittest men threw the weak and the wounded to their demise, leaving only 15 people on board, lying helplessly at the centre of the raft. Days later, they were found and saved. The frigate's captain was absent from this story since he had sailed to safety on a lifeboat at the beginning of the disastrous event, leaving these poor people to struggle for their lives.
The painting Scène de Naufrage was later called Le Radeau de la Méduse (the raft of the medusa). It was praised as a timeless social commentary and a critique of modernity. The acclaimed painting sadly remained unsold until Géricault passed away. His artwork has since been on view in Paris, echoing a strong sentiment in the stream of time.
All the things we see, read, watch, hear, investigate, ponder upon, imagine, squeeze, touch, smell, feel, taste, collect,
we recollect to construct
The sound of nothing echoing in a chamber. White noise becomes silent. The sense of presence is emphasised. The objects, the viewers, the artists are present before everything has gone their own way.
Tibetan monks grind stones into grains and dye them with natural pigments, preparing colourful sands. A tabletop shows a trace of a complex geometric drawing on its face. The monks gather around the table, meditating. They steadily use a scraper and a funnel called Chak-pur to discharge sand granules onto the drawing. As light and fragile as the particles forming an image, one sudden breath could distort it and disrupt the meditation. It takes hard work and days to complete the depiction, but it merely takes seconds to erase the motif away.
Erasing an image or reverting a depiction is like the end of art exhibitions when artworks are removed and stored. It was not the actual end. It is the continuity of possibilities for further investigation and interpretation of ideas. Does sweeping sand into the centre of a Mandala destroy itself or complete it? Does the Mandala table become an empty vessel after the deletion, and what about the raft? The end is not yet the actual end. The vessel still carries ideas and thoughts, despite its physical form.
The colourful grains of sand become dull when they meet together at the centre after the sweeping. The sand rests in a jar wrapped in silk. Then the jar is set to travel to a river with flowing water, where the sand will be distributed and released back to nature. Consequently, each of the blessed grains of sand reaches as far as possible to benefit all sentient beings. The river carries the blessing to the ocean. It begins to flow again, to move continuously and reach the world.
There is merely a little substance in this text I am writing, just a glimpse of bits of ideas and thoughts retold. How we process the transmissions and connect things for a construct is up to us. Like sand Mandala, representing ideas and thoughts in an art context physically shimmers and is gone. And yet, the early copy of Le Radeau de la Méduse was discovered in another continent carrying its story in a different format. All ideas are to be recollected and reincarnate in other forms like ripples in time. Perceiving a world beyond spiral is a view from nowhen, where bits of knowledge constantly flow, mirroring the previous while reflecting the next.
Pratchaya Phinthong
Soi Saeng Arun, middle of a night in May