roland schär

The Nation, july 4, 2005 :

(...)

By contrast, the displays at Rajata Art House, with works both French and Thai were engrossing and deeply moving.

Noraset Vaisayakul placed a barbed-wire fence in one room and, as you approached, you heard the sound of gunfire. Fascinatingly, spectators were drawn towards the wire again and again, to drunkenly experience a death wish within the safe confines of the artistic experience.

Other rooms of the house contained a set-up reflection on the life of French poet Arthur Rimbaud. Originally put together by 11 artists for the Maison Rimbaud in Charleville-Mézières, France, the festival version successfully imported the poet's anger and grief to Bangkok.

A series of video monitors displayed images to evoke the life and mental state of Rimbaud, and the effects were powerful to an almost unbearable level. One monitor evoked a perpetual-motion walking fever of the poet as he wanders through Europe. Its blurred momentum was startingly hallucinogenic.

Fragments of poetry were shown elesewhere. "Yes, my eyes are closed to your lignt," we read, perhaps then turning to the most shocking image of all in which a dead fish soaked with blue-coloured pigment blends with a man vomiting milk in copious quantities.

(...)

Jonathan Richmond