Weekend Report: Something Else

Since my publique demands for a weekend report every Monday, I could not help but post about it. You know me naman, very customer-oriented, di ba?

So here it goes.

Friday evening I went with Maggie Cheung and Bubbles to the Bangkok Arts and Culture Centre (BACC) to check the preview of Thailand's entry to the 53rd International Art Exhibition for the La Biennale di Venezia.

The installation of Thailand is called Gondola al Paradiso (website here), which examines how the country represents and packages its culture and landscape for tourism purposes. The installation is akin to a travel agency and I see it as a critique of the commodification of culture to lure in more visitors bringing much-needed money.

We also happened to catch Hypnosis, a graduate exhibition of the Textile and Fashion Department of the Faculty of Fine and Applied Arts, Thammasat University.

The students' creations mainly feature reconstruction of fabrics and other materals. Placed in a frame, they are veritable artworks.

The top floor of the BACC holds Campaign for Art. The BACC is a result of a ten-year campaign by a network of artists, including protests, marches, and other gatherings.

To commemorate that successful campaign called "We Choose an Art Centre, Not a Shopping Centre", some two thousand pieces of artwork on cloth that were produced during the campaign are now laid down on the cavernous halls of the art center.

The pieces capture the spirit and passion of the artists, along with students, passers-by, and other members of the community, who fought for the establishment of the BACC. It's a very inspiring exhibit that showcases the citizens' strong preference for a temple for art and culture over a temple for consumerism.

Last night, together with Shanghai Tang and a couple of his French friends, I also caught an "experimental performance" that mixes movement, live video, installation art, and theatrical play of B-Floor Theatre, one of Bangkok's most provocative and unconventional theater companies.

The performance is called Something Else, and freewheels into the complexity of human relationships. Five dancers-cum-actors demonstrate how fragile our connections are with people and the dissonance between our self-perception and how others perceive us.

The fusion of different artistic media keeps the performance engaging. However, eighty percent of the lines were in Thai, sans subtitles. Of course I did not understand any of the dialogue so I had to cling on the acting mainly. Fortunately the performers were very, very effective in evoking the message of the material.

So there, that's my weekend.

I also did a bit of drinking last Friday and Saturday with Bubbles, Maggie Cheung, and Neomie Lenoir.

And had my ears checked coz until now I have yet to fully recover from a little ear damage during our diving trip. I discovered that I have allergic rhinitis, which prevented me from properly decompressing. So for now I'm taking medicines to clear my nasal passages.

And oh, a couple of things to look forward to this week:

One, my sister and her Davao friends are dropping by Bangkok. I cannot be more excited to see my sister for the first time since I left Las Islas Filipinas.

Two, I'm flying to Phuket for a few days for something I'm too embarrassed to talk about here. I'd try to win Best in National Costume, ok? I'd show you my crown when I come back. Wink, wink.