Research projects and publications

The inclusion of Sur (soē เซอร์) reality as one of nine key themes in the 2012 exhibition Thai Trends: From Localism to Internationalism, curated by Apinan Poshyananda อภินันท์ โปษยานนท์ (b. 1956), reinforced the inclusion of 'surrealistic' works as a part of conventional histories of Thai artistic modernism. While the phonetic resonances between Sur and its English counterpart 'surrealism' might suggest European origination, Apinan's framework hinged on the nationalist premise of the uniqueness of Sur within the Thai context. By way of contrast, one may point to the dismissal by the French surrealist André Breton (1896-1966) of the limitations of language and cultural difference as an impediment to his internationalist goal of promoting surrealist practices in 'the four corners of the earth [as] a fairly extensive scheme of resistance and experiment'. In fact, this distinction between Breton's and Apinan's frameworks points to a central problematic of Southeast Asian modern art history: determining the particularities of relationships between exogenous and endogenous artistic discourses and the ideological weight of prioritising one over the other. In this chapter I offer another entry point, one that accounts for the deployment of photographic techniques associated with surrealism in the work of Thai photographers, without deferring to nationalist narratives of cultural exceptionalism or Eurocentric frameworks of belatedness and provincialism. Instead, I am concerned with locating the specific points where Thai Sur and European surrealism intersect and diverge, found here in the resonances between photography and notions of realism. Against the apparent incommensurability between the ease with which Thai artistic institutions accepted Sur and the avant-garde fervour of European surrealism, this approach maintains the relevance of conceptual linkages between the two while also reaffirming their distinctiveness. In doing so, the aim of this enquiry is transformed from an evaluation of how faithfully Sur photographic practices adopted European surrealist techniques and principles, to what the 'sur-real' connoted in a context where the relationship between photography, truth and reality was something quite different. For photography, this is revealed through a discussion of two major functions of Sur. First, as a means to overcome the medium's exclusion from discourses of fine art, and second as a replication of the dharmic vision encountered in photographic icons of highly regarded monks and monarchs.

Citation:
Veal, Clare Elisabeth. "Beyond Reality: Locating the Sur-Real in Thai Photography." Ambitious Alignments: New Histories of Southeast Asian Art, 1945-1990, edited by Stephen H. Whiteman et al., Power Publications & National Gallery Singapore, 2018. 

These entries discuss three recent Thai films centered on the legendary Thai ghost Mae Nak, the spirit of a woman who died in childbirth, but returns to the world of the living to be with her husband. Nang Nak (1999), Nak (2008), and Pee Mak (2013) are each described with reference to their thematic resonances and their importance to Thai film history. Thai Cinema: The Complete Guide is the first English-language book to be devoted solely to the topic of Thai cinema, which has revived and gained new world-wide recognition since the late 1990s.

Citation:
Knee, Adam. Entries on 3 Thai Films. Thai Cinema: The Complete Guide, edited by Mary J. Ainslie and Katarzyna Ancuta, I.B.Tauris, 2018.

This book chapter looks at the cultural history of the Singapore Arts Festival from 1959 to 2017. It studies the role of the arts festival in nation building and the formation of Singapore's cultural identity as a multicultural and multiethnic enterprise. Through a close study of key moments, the chapter establishes the relationship between state enterprise and cultural rootedness, and social access and political agency as key engines of artistic development in postcolonial Singapore.

Citation:
Purushothaman, Venka. "Presenting Culture and Nationhood: The Singapore Arts Festival.” The State and the Arts in Singapore, edited by Terence Chong, World Scientific, 2018, pp. 67-107.

Diverse art practices have, since time immemorial, sought to establish a visceral link with the viewer's insides in order to problematise order and disorder, normativity and aberration, totem and taboo, as even a cursory glance at Ghirlandaio's portraits of decay, Bruegel's depictions of disease, the Viennese Actionists' performances with animal carcasses or Athey's ritualistic work with HIV-positive blood, shows. In all these works, the defilement, the disgust, and the horror are intentional, strategic - even ideological. But what of the unintentional, even decidedly unwanted, yet ceaselessly produced abjection? With its beautiful gardens, highly aesthetised yet functional architecture, and exceptionally rich occupational content, the Bethlem Royal Hospital, London, is the epitome of applied ("ethical") aesthetics. The politics of egalitarianism is here inscribed in all regulations, daily routines, and the individually tailored approaches to psychiatric care. And yet, this (utopian) construct is corroded by the greasy fingerprints on the glass separating the nursing station from the ward; deep cuts in armchairs and sofas; and dents in the woodwork that act as reminders of the more violent attacks, as do, indeed, bruises on patients' faces, necks, and arms. Fusing Nagatomo's notion of the body as an actional-humoural process with Kristeva's abjectness and Rozin's theories of disgust, this essay queries the relation between applied aesthetics, politicised sociality, and (covert) stigmatisation. It argues that stigmatisation occurs behind the scenes, in looped somaesthetic processes, as a byproduct of sensorial, behavioural, and environmental ugliness. In acknowledging this state of affairs, the essay also articulates the relationship between the (vulnerable) somatic body and the vulnerability of the (neoliberal) institutions of care.

Citation:
Lushetich, Natasha. "Stigma Stains: The Somaesthetics of Institutional Abjection." On the Politics of Ugliness, edited by Sara Rodrigues and Ela Przybylo, Palgrave Macmillan, 2018