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Neo Romantic

Neo Romantic, 1998

Installation

About Studio, Bangkok

Curator : Chitti Kasemkitvatana

Back then, I had some choices
It came to my senses that I dig out my ideas

after talking to Earth.
an inter-communication
Orchestrating into story.


It was the moment of need…need
to be with someone all the time yet not

forgetting about oneself.
Some about future, yet not too serious.
Then, we ended up talking about taking

trip to the beach.


NK98

Re-editing from I SHOT MY FRIEND text, 1998

 


 


List of works


Neo Romantic, 70 photographs, size 30.5 x 20.3 cm. and 30.5 x 40.7 cm.
Participants : Mongkol Rattanapakdee, Visa Kongka, Vasit Mukdavijid, Arin Rungjang, Moris, Meng, Meow, Montri,

Jaa Phantachat, Jay Santiphap, Pariya Wongrabieb, Ken, Narumol Thammapruksa, Ian, Earth, Pang, Beae, Golf, Oyi


Song lyric draw on the wall, The 2 of Us / Written by Brett Anderson & Bernard Butler / 5.45 min / Suede / Dog Man Star album / 1994 / Nude Records

 

Wall painting, Acrylic paint on the wall

 

10 incandescent lamp on steel pole

 

4 paragraphs 4 Neo-Romantic                                                                      >>dedicated to S.H.S.J<<                                                                          Chitti Kasemkitvatana 1998


Assemblage
M. decided, after 9 hours at work, to grasp some air one evening. Wondering whether seeing a film or having a drink, he needed a transition. Left the office at 6.30 pm. rode his bike through dense Bangkok traffic, finally he reached About Café. Had a glass of Lynchee Vodka, flipped through About Art Menu, he walk up the stairs. Mellow lighted room whit seventy photographs on loosely pale pink painted wall, “what’re these” he shouted. “Neo-Romantic?”, he doubted. “Off-focus photo, bad photographer”, he concluded. Few seconds past, he decided to give another chance for the show and looked hard into each single picture. After a while, “looking at these pictures is like seeing a film”, he thought. Walking left to right, he stepped back to see the exhibition as the whole. He felt something, “Ah, these pictures reminded me one of Wong Kar-Wai’s.”.At this moment, he started a trip into the work. While doing so, his own story came up, what stood in front of him mixed with images in his long and short term memories. A feeling erupted inside M… “Desire”, he whispered. Like seeing himself in mirror, he gave a little more tenderness to his perception. >>So every time someone says, I desire this or that, that person is in the process of constructing an assemblage, nothing else, desire is nothing else.
<< In the blanket, taken from Gilles Deleuze’s ABC Primer, with Claire Parnet, directed by Piere-Andre’ Boutang, 1996. Overview paper prepared by Charles J. Stivale, Romance Languages and Literatures, Wayne State University. For text in full length, search for http://www.langlab.wayne.edu/romance/FreD_G/ABCI.html.


Darkroom
desire, desires, desiring, desired. 1/ VO or V+to-INF If you desire something, you want it. K. and A. desire for images with sensitive emotional impact, and not for one with highly skilled … K loves taking pictures of his friends and his surroundings because he passionately desires to capture his world and moment in time. *desired ADJ “The assemblage of pictures, text, color, space and lighting did produce the desired effect.” P. Realized while working on his next show. 2/ NC A desire is a wish to do or have something. Thinking about her impossible love, P. shifts her desire into friendship… He has immensely desire for tenderness in life …. His desire for love and friendship. 3/ VO If you desire someone, you want to have sex with them. C. still desired S. 4/ NU or NC Desire for someone is a feeling of wanting to have sex with them. She no longer has any desire for her lover. de-sire. de-/di : -1/PREFIX De- is sometimes added to a verb, changing the meaning of the verb to its opposite. “The next step was to depersonalize yourself from the work.”, a master told his students. 2/ PREFIX De- is sometimes added to a noun, making it a verb and giving it the meaning of removing the thing described by the noun. “Is it necessary to deforested the whole area to build a house?”, M. suggested ironically to some artists whome only wanted to have exhibitions inside the ‘whitecube’. … “You have to deice your glasses.”, J. says metaphorically to his friend while viewing an exhibition. Sire 1/ When a man sire a child, the child is born and the man is its father; an old-fashioned use. K. has sired the first solo show at the age of twenty-three. 2/ NC+POSS An animal’s sire is its father; a technical term. Most people split the established artists from the fertile sires, the young and emerging ones. * Also VO Started a year ago, He’s already sired almost ten exhibitions.
Note : This paragraph is based on the definition of words taken from BBC English Dictionary, HarperCollins, London, 1993


Under neon beam
Where of everything, up to this moment, is in contradiction. Pressure becomes pleasure and vice versa. The flux of influences in global scale measure up the existing ones in local scale. The collective angst and relentless social desire blast enormously, especially among the new generation of young Thais. It is another kind of social drive that causes chaotic change with speed to our social landscape. Is it the age of diverse possibilities or the age of impossibility? By absorbing these, many young emerging artists create realistic illusion of their generation from/for their relative universe. The most influential mode of representation for this specific time and context goes for photography and installation. Both concern space-time phenomena whereas the world is transferred (in photography) and transformed (in installation) into, most likely, the constructed reality. On the edge of tiresome, it is a site where another kind of pleasure arises. Becoming indifference, this social landscape also works as a factory that producing many factors of meaning and putting into play. >>So desire constructed in the collective, the multiple, the pack and one asks what is one’s position in relation to the pack, outside, alongside, inside at the center? All phenomena of desire. << In the blanket, taken from ‘Gilles Deleuze’s ABC Primer, whit Claire Parnet, directed by Piere-Andre’ Boutang, 1996. Overview paper prepared by Charles J. Stivale, Romance Languages and Literatures, Wayne State University. Overview paper prepared by Charles J. Stivale, Romance Languages and Literatures, Wayne State University. For text in full length, search for http://www.langlab.wayne.edu/romance/FreD_G/ABCI.html.


Light a cigarette
>>Like the collector, the photographer is animated by a passion that, even when it appears to be for the present, is linked to a sense of the past. << Quoted from Susan Sontag’s On Photography, Anchor Books Doubleday, New York, 1977, page 77. Looking at photographs of Kornkrit Jianpinidnan’s Neo Romantic is like looking at images through smoky air in a bar or a café or a pub. In fact, some of his photographs were taken there. Anyway, it is neither the question of fact nor fiction. Each image has the same quality as film still photograph. They do not operate as straight political nor social critique artwork. They look like picture taken at some party or, otherwise, of kids having fun. The implications of Neo-Romantic are scattered to many stages and factors of its mode of production and presentation. It is very much stylistic approach to the subject. Its content does not rely on one single image. As seventy prints are arranged into one single line, the content is more spread out. Each image should be viewed as part of the whole. Even through they are put into a single line, there is no the beginning nor the end. The narration of this work is not linear, viewer is welcome to start looking at any part of the line. In addition, a plane/line of images of which artist’s friends and landscape shown notes a line of communication. Constructed. Connected. Cut up. Reconnected. Here. There. Mellow light. Pink backdrop. Love scenes. Done. Blur. Another Cigarette.

 

Neo Romantic
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