Showing 1 - 10 of 13
A life in art
Life, Pimrapee Thungkasemvathana, Published on 13/05/2015
» Navin Rawanchaikul is his own muse.
Philosophy of design
Life, Pimrapee Thungkasemvathana, Published on 23/03/2015
» English designer, sculptor and architect Thomas Heatherwick established the Heatherwick Studio in 1994. He created the Rolling Bridge at Paddington Basin in London, on his own volition. He reinvented the iconic red London bus, down to the fabric for the seats, treating the interior of the bus like an architectural space. Heatherwick then went on to represent his homeland with the design of the UK Pavilion at the Shanghai Expo in 2010 — the Seed Cathedral, a hairy rectangular structure made with 60,000 identical clear acrylic rods, which created a curvaceous geometric interior space holding 250,000 seed samples. Sunlight travelled through the length of each rod, lighting up the space, and cast different hues throughout the day.
Sculpting Complex, Urban Cityscapes
Life, Pimrapee Thungkasemvathana, Published on 04/03/2015
» Rattana Salee and Therdkiat Wangwatchakul walk the streets of Bangkok, recording what they see with a camera, imprinting images in their minds. Their Bangkok is personal, one that transforms frantically on the surface, and even more tumultuously below. "Representing Localities: Memory And Experience" at Thavibu Gallery presents their lives in the city, where urban development is the setting for sober contemplation.
The leader's true self
Life, Pimrapee Thungkasemvathana, Published on 24/11/2014
» 'A few months ago, the [North Korean] Ministry of Interior issued a statement on TV — 'We will remove your existence from the universe'," says Jang Jin-sung, unfazed, over a decade after he fled North Korea in the middle of the day, across the frozen Yalu River and into China.
Replacing statistics with narratives
Life, Pimrapee Thungkasemvathana, Published on 05/11/2014
» I spent my Halloween weekend shuffling between panels at the Singapore Writers Festival, listening to horror stories. I had been assigned to attend sessions on a variety of discourses, from jazz and poetry to writing about the female body. Instead, I found myself sitting front row at every session featuring Jang Jin-Sung, a North Korean defector, Loung Ung, a survivor of the Pol Pot regime, and Mukesh Kapila, who was the UN commissioner in Sudan as genocide in Darfur broke out.
Role play
Life, Pimrapee Thungkasemvathana, Published on 24/10/2014
» The stories of good girls gone wild mirror one another. Britney Spears. Christina Aguilera. Miley Cyrus. Sara Malakul Lane.
Drawing upon days past
Life, Pimrapee Thungkasemvathana, Published on 22/10/2014
» In her current solo exhibition "Days Of (Endless) Meaninglessness" at 100 Tonson Gallery, Phaptawan Suwannakudt draws on the emotions she experienced during a visit home last December to create five triptychs and a video. She looks at Thailand, her home, with nostalgia as an emigrant and unease as a citizen. Here, she is at once an insider and an outsider.
Taking down The ‘Third World’
Life, Pimrapee Thungkasemvathana, Published on 03/09/2014
» In 1974, Mao Zedong decided China was part of the Third World, not the Second World as categorised by the Communist block. Mao's idea of the Third World deviated from Cold War-era political ideologies and discounted the history of colonialism and imperialism. His "Third World" was a band of non-aligned nations falling behind those which were more rich and powerful — the US and Soviet Union in the First World; Japan, Canada, Australia and the rest of Europe in the Second World.
Planes, trains and tragedies
Life, Pimrapee Thungkasemvathana, Published on 25/07/2014
» For seven years, I flew back and forth between the US and Bangkok twice a year, always with at least a three-hour transit at Tokyo Narita Airport. If I was lucky and sat on the right side of the plane, I got to watch the sun rise above the sea of clouds from the plane window. My skin would always itch from the dry air and my lips would chap. I often found myself sitting next to a Japanese businessman who drank Asahi after Asahi. I once cried so hard watching Up, I had to explain to the concerned passenger next to me that I was OK — I was just watching a very sad cartoon.
Distance learning
Life, Pimrapee Thungkasemvathana, Published on 08/07/2014
» An hour’s drive from Mae Sariang, the paved road gives way to a dirt track. Along the way, landslides have reduced the width of the road by half. At this time of the year, the journey to Pa Daeng Mai from Mae Sariang could take about three hours.