TELEPATHY IN THE AGE OF MASS REPRODUCTION

There are two interesting videos shown in the exhibition A LEG UP PROJECT at 100 Tonson Gallery. You can read about the exhibition here:
http://www.100tonsongallery.com/exhibitionsAndActivitiesDetail.asp?exhibitionID=48

Merveillesxx shows some photos from this exhibition here:
http://www.bloggang.com/viewdiary.php?id=merveillesxx&month=10-2008&date=12&group=9&gblog=135

Unfortunately, the videos and the brochure of this exhibition don’t tell us exactly who are the directors of these videos. So I guess the video A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE SWAMP (A) may be directed by Shane Bunnag, and the video TELEPATHY IN THE AGE OF MASS REPRODUCTION (A) may be directed by Mei-ling Hom. Please tell me if I guess wrongly.


A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE SWAMP is like a companion piece to MANUS CHANYONG’S ONE NIGHT AT TALAENGGAENG ROAD (2008, Paisit Panpruegsachart, A+) and LOCOMOTION IN WATER (2005, Hanna Shell, A), because these three films show us images from the present time, but tell us the stories about the past. A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE SWAMP shows us images of Bangkok in the present time, but the voiceover talks about something I don’t quite understand, and there are some texts appearing on the screen, including:

1837 TOPOGRAPHY OF BANGKOK
1862 ANNA AND THE KING OF SIAM
1867 A WEEK IN SIAM: MARQUIS OF BEAUVOIR
http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/2950525?lookfor=&offset=&max=23
1888 JOSEPH CONRAD
1894 DIRECTORY OF BANGKOK AND SIAM
1896 CONSUL IN PARADISE: W.A.R. WOOD
http://www.chiangmaitouristguide.com/08-2005/feature1.html
1898 EMILE JOTTRAND
http://forums.thaieurope.net/index.php?action=printpage;topic=313.0
1904 A. CECIL CARTER
http://haab.catholic.or.th/2directory/x_english.html
1922 GUIDE TO BANGKOK AND SIAM



TELEPATHY IN THE AGE OF MASS REPRODUCTION shows us the images of people in the present time communicating via mobile phones. One of them is Ing K, the director of CITIZEN JULING. But the voiceover in this video recite some poems. I’m not sure which poems are recited in this video, but I think they include:


1.TIGER – William Blake

“TIGER, tiger, burning bright

In the forests of the night,

What immortal hand or eye

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?



In what distant deeps or skies

Burnt the fire of thine eyes?

On what wings dare he aspire?

What the hand dare seize the fire?



And what shoulder and what art

Could twist the sinews of thy heart?

And when thy heart began to beat,

What dread hand and what dread feet?



What the hammer? what the chain?

In what furnace was thy brain?

What the anvil? What dread grasp

Dare its deadly terrors clasp?



When the stars threw down their spears,

And water'd heaven with their tears,

Did He smile His work to see?

Did He who made the lamb make thee?



Tiger, tiger, burning bright

In the forests of the night,

What immortal hand or eye

Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?”



2.KUBLA KHAN – Samuel Taylor Coleridge


“A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight 'twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise."



3.EAST COKER – T.S. Eliot

““In my beginning is my end. In succession
Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended,
Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place
Is an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass.
Old stone to new building, old timber to new fires,
Old fires to ashes, and ashes to the earth
Which is already flesh, fur and faeces,
Bone of man and beast, cornstalk and leaf.
Houses live and die: there is a time for building
And a time for living and for generation
And a time for the wind to break the loosened pane
And to shake the wainscot where the field-mouse trots
And to shake the tattered arras woven with a silent motto.


In my beginning is my end. Now the light falls
Across the open field,, leaving the deep lane
Shuttered with branches, dark in the afternoon,
Where you lean against a bank while a van passes,
And the deep lane insists on the direction
Into the village, in the elctric heat
Hypnotised. In a warm haze the sultry light
Is absorbed, not refracted, by grey stone.
The dahlias sleep in the empty silence.
Wait for the early owl."



4.THE ILIAD – Homer
This is the part in which Ing K appears.

“Rage — Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus’ son Achilles,
murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses,
hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls,
great fighters’ souls, but made their bodies carrion,
feasts for the dogs and birds,
and the will of Zeus was moving toward its end.
Begin, Muse, when the two first broke and clashed,
Agamemnon lord of men and brilliant Achilles. . . .”



5.RUBAIYAT – Omar Khayyam

“Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night
Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight;
And lo! the Hunter of the East has caught
The Sultan's Turret in a Noose of Light.”



6.DECEPTIONS – Philip Larkin

“Even so distant, I can taste the grief,
Bitter and sharp with stalks, he made you gulp.
The sun's occasional print, the brisk brief
Worry of wheels along the street outside
Where bridal London bows the other way,
And light, unanswerable and tall and wide,
Forbids the scar to heal, and drives
Shame out of hiding. All the unhurried day,
Your mind lay open like a drawer of knives. "



7.PSALM 55


“My heart is in anguish within me;
the terrors of death assail me.

Fear and trembling have beset me;
horror has overwhelmed me.

I said, "Oh, that I had the wings of a dove!
I would fly away and be at rest-

I would flee far away
and stay in the desert;
Selah

I would hurry to my place of shelter,
far from the tempest and storm."

Confuse the wicked, O Lord, confound their speech,
for I see violence and strife in the city.

Day and night they prowl about on its walls;
malice and abuse are within it.

Destructive forces are at work in the city;
threats and lies never leave its streets. ”



8.IN THE OLD AGE BLACK WAS NOT COUNTED FAIR – Shakespeare

“In the old age black was not counted fair,
Or if it were, it bore not beauty's name;
But now is black beauty's successive heir,
And beauty slandered with a bastard shame:
For since each hand hath put on Nature's power,
Fairing the foul with Art's false borrowed face,
Sweet beauty hath no name, no holy bower,
But is profaned, if not lives in disgrace.
Therefore my mistress' eyes are raven black,
Her eyes so suited, and they mourners seem
At such who, not born fair, no beauty lack,
Sland'ring creation with a false esteem:
Yet so they mourn becoming of their woe,
That every tongue says beauty should look so. ”



9.SONG OF SOLOMON

“I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys.
As the lily among thorns, so is my love among the daughters.
As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons. I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste.
He brought me to the banqueting house, and his banner over me was love.
Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples: for I am sick of love.
His left hand is under my head, and his right hand doth embrace me. ”


10.SEPTEMBER 1913 – William Butler Yeats


“What need you, being come to sense,
But fumble in a greasy till
And add the halfpence to the pence
And prayer to shivering prayer, until
You have dried the marrow from the bone?
For men were born to pray and save:
Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
It's with O'Leary in the grave."