in my last days in Khontemporary @khontemporary_ I had a conversation with dear Prajak about the importance of water for the people of this land. It made me return back to the photographs I took and the things I collected. As more questions hit, I now have more insight and connections that have emerged and come together
(2) (3) (4) Suan Yok Rong // raised agricultural field
(5) (6) Nypa fruticans
(7) (8) Champagne water tank
(11) Suvarnabhumi Airport, scary tourists!
(12) Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer
(13) Tirumala limniace
I am deeply grateful to the beautiful people who allowed me to use their handwriting in Thai; the wonderful members of the Khontemporary collective, Paengrum of Paengrum’s Books & Cafe @paengrum_book and my dear Ploy. I am also grateful to everyone who listened to my countless questions and generously introduced me to things I could never have understood on my own. I carry deep respect for their memories, thoughts, and feelings; I am only a listener, and I do not claim any space to define their worlds.
References:::::
“Raised Fields and Horticultural Landscapes in Central Thailand.” Moussons, 2022.
Koompong Noobanjong, The Passenger Terminal at Suvarnabhumi International Airport and Thai Identity in the Midst of the Globalization Era.
I also used generic entries of wikipedia for basic information, and google image search to understand what I was looking at, and chatgpt to find correct Thai translation of the terms
also I should mention that I had the chance to look through a few chapters of LO–TEK: Water (Taschen) which inspired and deepened many of my questions
behind the scenes of beyond the funky tbh it has been a journey
I feel responsible towards “others” whose voices have been silenced and neglected throughout human history. This silencing serves very clear purposes: to legalize exploitation, to normalize consuming without responsibility, to keep extracting without giving back. Capitalism, patriarchy, racism, speciesism all need an outside to exclude from their safe, curated worlds, and bodies to use for profit.
So I entertained the idea of what happens when those encounters become impossible to ignore and are shown on commercial screens in public spaces, and what it would look like if humans let nature keep “naturing” and chose to live with precarity, instability, cycles, the uncanny, the funky.
I hold onto Haeckel’s belief that the human’s imagination can hold opposites together and help heal the split between humans and nature. I still want to believe we can imagine ourselves back into the world, inhabiting, instead of above it, planning, measuring, controlling.
This is how beyond the funky came to life.
Animals who are seen as resources, those whose bodies are commodified, raped and slaughtered, those taken from the streets, locked in shelters and left to rot were represented on huge commercial urban screens in Hamburg, Milan, Hangzhou, Singapore (CDSA 2024); also in a room in Linz (Ars Electronica 2025); in Bangkok Art & Culture Center (Media Architecture Biennale 2025); and at Khon Kaen University Fine Arts Faculty and Khontemporary Artist Residency.
I keep asking what impact this really has, or what I am really doing, how, if at all, this helps, and I’m not confident I will ever find an answer. But the discussions and questions that have emerged keep surprising me in a good way.
i love fritzi
ahhh and my dear billboard
thank you for bringing all these beautiful people together
( ˘͈ ᵕ ˘͈ )つ━☆ﾟ.*･｡ﾟ PostCompost ﾟ･｡.*ﾟ☆━⊂( ˘͈ᵕ ˘͈ )
@klausfritze@christiandoeller@arnaydn 🧿🐽🧿
