Sak, Nong, & i (We Move The Cities), 2022

Conducted in East Asia, Thailand, this project revisited the touring exhibition Cities on the Move, whose sixth edition took place in Bangkok in 1999, co-curated by Hou Hanru and Hans Ulrich Obrist. This edition was the only one to be staged in Asia and was distinctive in that it did not unfold within a single institutional space; instead, works were dispersed across multiple sites throughout Bangkok.

In the summer of 2022, a group of artists were invited to respond to Cities on the Move by re-imagining the past exhibition within the present context. The project opened with a keynote on Cities on the Move delivered by Hou Hanru and Ole Scheeren, followed by site visits led by co-curator Manuporn Luengaram (About Café) to several former CotM locations, including the curatorial office where the team had once worked. Meetings were also held with original participating artists such as Navin Rawanchaikul and Kata Sangkhae, alongside conversations with Gridthiya Gaweewong (co-founder of Project 304).

As an outsider who had never encountered the exhibition firsthand, these encounters and conversations formed the basis of my exploration into this historical event.

What stood out for me in the keynote event was Ole Scheeren’s remark that the success of Cities on the Move lay in its non-methodological, non-confrontational approach, adopted by the curatorial team in 1999. He compared the making of CotM to an architectural project without a blueprint, one carried forward largely by local participation.

Taking this as a provocation, I moved from Nonthaburi province to Bangkok’s Khao San area, a district bustling with people, and turned the street itself into my site of exploration. I began with an open brief for myself: to work only with the resources immediately available on the street. Through walking the same routes daily, I came to know the street vendors and the regular patrons of their goods and services. These recurring encounters gradually shaped the basis of my work.

Over time, this engagement with the site-community developed into a collaborative project with a painter, a vendor, and myself. Together, we painted a black-and-white copy of the original Cities on the Move poster. Following an open studio presentation, the work was disassembled and re-embedded into the street, returning it to the place from which it had emerged.