Kp temporal intervention-the city innovation for public arts in bangkok
1. Rirkrit Triravanich’s Padthai, 2004 Spider Shack, 2008
Temporal Intervention,
The City Innovation for Public Arts in Bangkok
Khaisri Paksukcharern
Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand
2. Introduction
Based on a research paper on
The city innovation of public arts in Bangkok.
Main Findings:
- ‘Temporality’, ‘Transience’, ‘Fun’
are the innovative concepts recently employed in the
contemporary public art intervention in the city.
- New forms of ‘Participative Art’ and ‘Community Art’
- In relation to the latest urban policies of ‘inner city regeneration
especially at the scale of ‘community revitalization’.
- An increasing support of public and private sector in partnership.
- The city innovation for public arts in Bangkok is evidenced
in two types of inner urban areas;
* contemporary public spaces in the city
such as shopping malls and transit spaces
* local community and neighborhoods
3. PUBLIC ART:
varied and ambiguous definitions
- public art is the art outside conventional art spaces such as
museums or galleries.
‘site-specific’, an art created and installed in a given site
or the design of a site as an art itself
‘site-general’, an already created art object is chosen
to be placed in a site.
- the concept of ‘public’ can be difficult and makes the status
of public art become more ambiguous in the case that the
definition of public is not necessarily bounded by space.
- ‘Art in public sites’ brings about encounters and coexistence
of people and subsequently leads to urban livability.
- In this research, as art in public spaces has had a long history
from being in art institutions in relation to public open spaces of
the city, it will trace public art related to both inside and outside
conventional art spaces.
4. PUBLIC ART AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT:
the concept of ‘livable city’ and ‘urban aesthetics’
- 1980s: The concept of ‘livable city’ in relation to ‘urban aesthetic’
especially through pedestrian points of view
- 1990s: Discussions on public art and its supporting role to reclaim
the ‘public-ness’ of open spaces in cities
- In the context of urban decay, public art played a significant role to
entail a re-visioning of public spaces and how they should be used
- and by whom.
- There has been a continuous and interrelated development between
public arts and urban spaces: the solutions of how both could adapt
and make use of each other in order to sustain the right balance
of intervention.
TALA Exhibition: Central World Plaza, 2009
5. THE INITIAL DEVELOPMENT:
art institutions (museums / galleries)
as opposed to the craftsmanship society
- An initial form of public education through museum and public collection
in the Wests. National museums and art galleries had been the focal
creation of dominant and contemporary culture of Modernism.
- The indoor public art type represented strong ideologies through
the established institutions in a city and had a rather limited
spatial inter-relationship with urban spaces.
6. - King Rama IV: Krua in Khong, a thai monk who started to paint 3D murals,
identified emphatically with the western art norms
- It should be noted that as a society of craftsmanship,
Thailand have only craftsmen not artists.
(purely a collective tradition, not individual act)
- What is art for the Thais was something that has already been
in their common paths of life
- Art is naturally integrated in daily routines thus it was rather
out of touch and considered to be the elite only approach
when art museums and galleries were introduced in Bangkok
during the reign of King Rama V
7. THE ERA OF SCULTURE ART:
monuments and memorials at odds
with public spaces in Bangkok
- King Rama VI: nationalism led to the trend of monument creation,
- Corrado Feroci (Professor Silpa Bhirasri) was commissioned to come to
Thailand as artist for palaces and monuments.
- Time for major change in Thai art movement brought about art of
individual work as a creator or an artist instead of a crafter or a craftsman.
- To make art for the art’s sake not the needs of communities.
- Conflict with public spaces in Bangkok.
8. THE ASIA BOOM
art festivals, the curators
and the fail of conventional
art spaces
- A large number of art festivals were organized in major cities.
- Powerful resources connecting Asian art markets with the
international ones.
- The birth of the curator profession:
persons who set certain trends or stereotypes of art.
- Artists work within these stereotypes to be connected to the
international platform and not depend on collectors or museums.
- Public art in Bangkok was detached almost completely from the public.
- Art is considered as an unnecessary and retains an ambiguous status
in Thai society.
- Public accept but do not necessarily understand
- Museums and galleries attract very few visitors
and mostly, the educated people.
9. Location of Art Institutions and Commercial Spaces in Bangkok
with urban attraction places
- 56 private art galleries
- 62 museums
on archeology, anthropology, history,
science, natural sciences and etc
- 2 types of art galleries:
- very few number of visitors.
* 74% has never visited art galleries
- 31% no news 31%
- 13.5% exhibition changing too
quickly
- 41.5% heard the news but
never been interested
- 11% heard the news and interested
but not available
- 3% heard the news and interested
but not confident
- All pure art galleries have less than
10,000 visitors / year
Source: W.Teerachaisuppakit, 2002
10. Situation getting worse for public art,
the creation of the western style’s public open spaces
in Bangkok
- A misunderstanding:
the real problem is that art is out-of-touch from the public
not the lacking of art space.
- The situation got worse: the imitation of the Western style’s
public spaces created in Bangkok
11. Le Fete Bangkok at Gaysorn Plaza, 2007
THE FIRST INNOVATION:
the concepts of temporality,
transience and fun
of Participative art
in CBD area
- An innovative attempt to place public arts
with the shopping malls and
transport interchange spaces
such as BTS skywalks in CBD areas
Spider Shack:
Siam Discovery Center
2008
TALA Exhibition: Central World Plaza, 2009
Overhead Nightclub,
Central Shopping, Chang Wattana, 2008 Siam Discovery Center, 2007
12. Frequencies of public art exhibitions / events in Bangkok
categorized by 2 space types (2006-2010)
The record of these contemporary public art event in Bangkok
from 2006-2010 on shows that the CBD areas of Rachaprasong
and Pathumwan, the commercial and mass transit hub of Bangkok;
* attracts most art events in the spaces attached
or en-route to shopping malls and transit stations.
* exhibits art outdoor or outside the conventional art spaces.
13. Distribution of public art exhibitions / events in Bangkok
categorized by 4 art types and 2 space types (2006-2010)
(cont.)
* exhibits art outdoor or outside the conventional art spaces.
* attracts the most participative forms of art ie, installation and performance..
15. - Art has innovated its form from the art object being
statically exhibited to more interactive practices
like live performances and installations,
drawing audiences to directly participate in the art
in order to effectively reach the public.
- As opposed to the idea that art is to be installed in a vast outdoor
space like in the Wests and out of touch to the everyday life,
it reinvents its location to be placed along the daily routes
or with the commodities.
- The innovation strategy of art form is to be just
‘temporal’ or ‘transient’ forms of art like performances or
temporary outdoor exhibitions: foods, art and craft fairs,
live installation, never a permanent form.
- Art that everyone tends to comprehend and easily enjoy
all the fun.
- Reasons:
* Temporal intervention of art needs only a one-off support
from public and private sector
* Bangkokians would never be in an outdoor space
for too long due to the hot weather
16. THE SECOND INNOVATION:
the concepts of temporality, transience and fun
of Community Art in local neighborhoods
- More recently, public art is used as a tool of inner city regeneration
process to bring people’s attention back to their communal spaces
in a neighborhood which are smaller in scale than urban spaces.
- To solve the problem of contradictory interest between artist and public
in the past.
- ‘Community art’ intentionally draws in community’s inhabitants to
part with artists
17. - These initiatives bring back a strong sense of identity and belonging
of communities that transform blight and run-down neighborhood
into a better quality of environment.
- Its main strategy is to create the art intervention in a neighborhood scale
such as placing public arts at the ancient city walls, temple grounds or
religious structures, canals, streets, cemeteries.
18. Epilogue
- The city innovation of public arts in Bangkok involves
new forms of art, urban spaces and their development strategies.
- A strong potential to reinvigorate Thai traditional artistic-practices
as well as to bring art to the public again.
- Participative Art in the CBD and Community Art in local neighborhood:
the first step to redefine art in Thailand.
- Bringing art out of galleries to streets and disrupted the flow of daily life.
- To actually connect the urban dwellers as well as the local community
to the livable city and urban aesthetic projects
through the exploration of how art can be used as an expression
of identity in everyday life.
- The innovation for public art is to engage with the public not
the didactic presentation.
- The concept of daily life, common routine, temporal but regular
intervention is surely different from the west.
- The real challenge is that how public art could be more than
a one time event, how to make the community react
and the pubic participate and become the norm than the exception.
