Catalogue > At random

The film evolves from more than 7,000 educational slides left in the cabinet of Somkiat Tangnamo, a Professor of Aesthetics and a founder of Thailand`s `virtual university`, who passed away several years ago. These slides weren`t in use anymore in today`s art education. Thus, it represents the mode of teaching in the past. Watching and piecing these slides together is a journey to an art education in Thailand. After I stay with these slides for months, I set a goal to create a workpiece from Somkiat`s slide archive. Getting started, I examined these slides one by one. They were categorized and put separately in boxes with a criterion unknown to us. I also correlated these slides with the hundreds of articles that this professor had translated into Thai for teaching`s sake. In search of stories in this archive, I tried putting these photos together to create a new meaning out of them.

Prapat Jiwarangsan (b.1979, Bangkok) is a multidisciplinary artist and filmmaker who received his M.A. in Fine Arts from London’s Royal College of Art in 2011. In a unique, interdisciplinary practice, he usually returns to themes such as memory, political history, and nationalism, especially in Thai society. His installations have appeared in Bangkok, London, and Hong Kong, while his videos have screened at international film events such as International Film Festival Rotterdam, Experimenta India, and Canada’s Images Festival.