Zucchini* and I went to Bangkok last weekend. Since we only had a short time there, I decided to spend my time hunting down more info on Southeast Asia’s violent history (as you do).
I made a beeline for BACC’s Constellation of Complicity, a group show about violent conflicts across the world. While mainstream media would have us believe that these are “isolated crises”, the exhibition reveals an underlying global “infrastructure of arms, surveillance, trade, and silence”. Perhaps the best example of it this is Sai‘s The Regimes That Hold Hands, about the authoritarian regimes that fund, supply and profit from violence:
Research with truly spine-chilling results by Sai
As I walked through the exhibition I noticed many blacked-out words and strange empty spots. At first they’re sporadic enough to dismiss as glitches, but when I got to Doc Tenzin’s installation about oppression and solidarity among indigenous peoples, the black screens could not be ignored. (The artist has put the censored artworks online.)
Turns out, something horrid had happened here: the Chinese gov came and had the parts about Tibet, Hong Kong and the Uyghurs (“East Turkestan”) removed! That’s right. An exhibition about authoritarian oppression was subject to authoritarian oppression. Kafka could not have dreamed this shit up…
Tibetan prayer flags for Palestine at Doc Tenzin’s installation
I became quite obsessed with the Burmese curator, Sai. You can really feel his bitterness when he talked about his 2022 exhibition Please Enjoy Our Tragedies. “I want to try to reach out to people, to show them the evidence of what’s happening [in Myanmar]. Do people here give a fuck? Not really. But they give a fuck when art is rooted in tragedy, and hence the title of the show.”
The other place I visited was the Jim Thompson Art Center, at the recommendation of Thai filmmaker Chanasorn Chaikitiporn. I saw his documentary on Thailand working with the US during the Cold War to suppress communism in Southeast Asia, and it left me wanting to know more.
I wish I had gone to Bangkok in July for the Shattered Worlds exhibition, which consolidated the fragmented histories of narratives of Cold War-era Southeast Asia. The current one, On-Air, Off-Air, was maybe too conceptual for me, but it did offer some tantalising rabbit holes to fall into when the time comes: Havana Syndrome and Extrastatecraft.
For now I need to resist the urge until I finish Sam Dalrymple’s Shattered Lands. I have so many question marks in my head around Myanmar, Bangladesh, and the Rohingya and I can’t move on until I understand a little more about the region’s history.
SEA Junction’s collection of Southeast Asia books, level 4 of BACC
As usual, Bangkok depresses me. Expensive restaurants filled with laughing global elites. Luxury condos sprouting on cleaned up streets. BTS-level overhead walkways that seem like public amenities, but soon turn out to be privately funded by retail developers (“EM District”).
At the airport, our Bolt driver told us there were 400+ other drivers waiting for a job, so he paid 50 baht to get prioritised for one. On the BTS in the morning, you see painfully young girls in blue polyester polo shorts, clutching mops and IKEA bags full of cleaning gear, presumably on the way to their shopping mall jobs. Where have all the artists and the street hawkers gone? The city seems so nakedly geared towards the rich and fabulous; there is an atmosphere of precarity.
(*my partners have similar names, so for clarity/anonymity/fun, I’ve decided to use the codenames Zucchini and Avocado)