WHO WISHES TO REPRESENT AN ANGEL, MAKES A BEAST (A+)

These are the photos I took by my mobile phone in the exhibition WHO WISHES TO REPRESENT AN ANGEL, MAKES A BEAST (2007. Christine Laquet, A+) at the Bangkok University Gallery.

These photos can be viewed easily from this link in the Bioscope webboard.

I don’t know what this exhibition means. As for me, this exhibition makes me think about life living in some unpleasant or ugly environment. One has to adapt oneself all the time or be patient in order to survive and may be able to catch a brief glimpse of beauty in life from time to time.

There is a TV showing a short film about a crab moving around on a sand beach. The TV is situated near a bunch of plastic bags containing water. The weight of all this water bags equals the weight of Christine Laquet. I don’t know what it means, but it is very intriguing. The water inside the bag keeps on evaporating during the exhibition. Maybe it signifies the transience of life.
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This is a photo of the crab in Laquet’s film. What I like the most in this film is that I misunderstood for a while that the crab in the film was robotic. I don’t know if Laquet intends it or not. I had had to watch this film for a few minutes before I could be sure that the crab was real, not robotic. I’m not sure what this film means. But watching a crab living its daily life is not boring at all in this film. However, to say that the daily life of a crab is represented in this film might be wrong, because the film shows obviously that the filmmaker intervened in the crab’s life and provoked the crab to move around.

I think this Laquet’s film can be shown together with a short animation film called THE CRAB REVOLUTION (2004, Arthur de Pins, A+/A). Coincidentally, I just saw THE LAST MIMZY (2007, Robert Shaye, B+/B) yesterday and found that there is a scene involving crabs, too. The painting exhibition HUA HIN 2007 at Jamjuree Art Gallery also has some paintings of crabs on Hua Hin beach. It seems as if crabs are invading Bangkok right now.
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What I like the most in this exhibition is those robotic animals hiding in plastic bags and moving around in front of the TV. I think this is the most outstanding thing in this video installation. Whoever wants to watch the video has to avoid all these robots at the same time. I had to observe the movement of all these robots for a while to calculate which spot was safe from these robots. When I figured out that spot, I moved into that spot and could watch the video safely. I have never found this kind of thing in other video installations I had seen in Bangkok. However, in the Fourth Bangkok Experimental Film Festival held in the Lumpini Park in December 2005, I had to find a “safe” spot to watch the films, too. But in that case, I didn’t have to avoid robotic animals. I just had to avoid some unpleasant people looking for sex in the Lumpini park.

I think that Christine Laquet said in the Bangkok Post newspaper that she put these robotic animals in the plastic bags, because there are so many plastic bags on the streets of Bangkok, so if some marine animals want to move to Bangkok, they might hide in the plastic bags.
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There are some model temples situated in inappropriate surroundings. At the background of or under these model temples are big photos showing the ugliness of Bangkok. This installation art reminds me of Wat Pathum Wanaram, a famous temple situated among big department stores.
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This is the photo of the real Wat Pathum Wanaram.
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There are many dolls in a state of falling in the exhibition. They are called fallen angels, or something like that. These dolls seem like some angels falling onto the earth. There are several dolls in this group lying on the floor, with some robotic animals moving near them.
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There is a huge painting by Christine Laquet shown in exhibition. In this painting, Laquet is doing something on the beach, maybe finding some crabs.