Retro Bangkok, Imagined Bangkok

In case you haven’t been to Bangkok’s new Art & Culture Center BACC yet, seize the opportunity: The center features the exhibition KRUNGTHEP 226 – ART OF YESTERDAY, IMAGE OF TOMORROW, tracing the life of Bangkok from the beginning in the late 18th century through the present into the future.

Curated by Luckana Kunavichayanont and Apisak Sonjod, this formidable display of works of over 100 artists, photographers, architects and filmmakers reminds you that, maybe, you yearn for the past Bangkok full of peacefulness, still kind of adore the present chaos – and can’t await the future.

There’s the present with life amidst concrete buildings, sprouting shop houses, increasing huge department stores, newly cut roads and exceeding numbers of cars and growing pollution and … There is the past, where everything was better, the as unbearable as pleasant now and the future, where everything will be even more dark. Or else?

The exhibition is more than a visual art trip, it’s a vibrant, powerful Bangko portrait. Presented as a political, social and cultural course. You’ll get to know a Bangkok you’d otherwise never had been made aware of. The nostalgic monochrome past, the revolutionary modernization, the new turbulent skyline with the detached Bangkok of dreams.

I don’t want to tell you everything here. Some tidbits: You’ll see two – socialist? – sculptures of an ideal Thai couple with child. The perfect family. Dating back to 1940. The sculptures well describe the changing political climate of Bangkok from the period of patriotism and the war with France, when Thailand won over France in the Indochina battle.

Or the early Victory Monument. Related again to France. The Thai government built the monument as an evidence of uprising patriotism and the victory over France from the conflict of the right over territories in Laos and Cambodia.

If you follow the exhibition carefully and read the excellently compiled book sold for 200 baht guiding you through the exhibition’s four zones you might want to revisit some Bangkok places you thought you knew. Or did you know about the circular bas-relief plate nearby King Rama V’s Equestrian Monument?

The plate reads: “Here, on June 24th, 1932, at dawn, Khana Rasadorn introduced the constitution for the sake of the nation’s development.” The brass plate has been laid there until today, but is ignored and rarely recognized by the public, we’re told.

You may live in Bangkok since decades, but you’ll have to dive into this exhibit for a deeper, fuller understanding of this tremendously rich place. Not only culturally, but tremendously rich – and torn – in terms of history, struggles, achievements, setbacks and the beyond.

I could go on and on, but why bore you? Go see for yourself, embrace this other, hardly known Bangkok of also vice and grand aims.

KRUNGTHEP 226 is open until February 15th, 2009, at Bangkok Art & Culture Center.

Some teasers here, from the past, starting with self-coronated King Taksin, to the future – don’t you love that lonely Victory Monument and the overgrown MBK:





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January 6, 2009 | Filed Under Culture & Arts, History, Truly Bangkok 

Comments

3 Responses to “Retro Bangkok, Imagined Bangkok”

  1. Philip Rowell on January 6th, 2009 11.06 pm

    Nice. Real nice. Will check it tomorrow.

  2. 'Pong on January 7th, 2009 11.33 am

    I wish I were there. :(

    BTW, do they allow photography in the museum? How civilized!

  3. BangkokDan on January 7th, 2009 11.46 am

    ‘Pong – just flash photography is not allowed.

    All shots here were taken with my humble iPhone’s petty cam.

    Nobody raised an eyebrow, an additional pleasure indeed.

    BangkokDan

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