Violence on the water
It’s 8pm and the buildings along the banks of the Chao Phraya are brightly lit. The engine grumbles, the smell of petrol coats the air and The Ferry Gallery departs from Jam Factory Pier.
A woman is sitting in front of us wearing a white dress. She is holding a large block of ice. She stares into the distance, cradles the block closely against her body and runs her fingers along the edges. As she performs, there are videos playing on opposite screens of the boat.
Launched in 2014, The Ferry Gallery kills two birds with one stone. Based at Tha Tien, it operates as a public ferry and a gallery space, housing video art on the go. Its new show, “The Act Of Violence”, initially curated for the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women last November, presents three diverging visual experiences.
One of the screens shows Tania Smith’s Domestic Gestures. A woman walks up a dirt road in front of a wide green paddock, casually sweeping the dust with a broom. In another sequence, she sits thoughtfully on a hill, looks around quickly — although no one is watching — and throws her arms up, rolling down the slope on her side out of shot.
At the other end of the boat, Adel Abidin’s Ping Pong is playing. Hollow taps echo through a dark concrete room as two men strike a ball. They are oblivious to the woman who is lying naked in the middle of the ping pong table under harsh white light. The woman inhales sharply as the ball slaps her flesh; her body is mottled with red marks.
Behind that screen is a video featuring the same woman holding the ice on the boat — in this video, Heart Melted, we see Alisa Chunchue’s half-turn towards us holding a block of ice in the middle of the ocean. Her live performance, a derivative of her video project, was exclusive to Galleries’ Night last Friday.
The videos play on loop, and water drips down Alisa Chunchue’s knees — the ice is melting onto the deck, becoming slightly translucent.
“I wanted to provide different perspectives to promote the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women,” says Kawita Vatanajyankur, The Ferry Gallery’s director.
“The artists are from different cultures, Tania is from Australia, Adel is from Iraq and Alisa is from Asia.”
Although each piece is different in terms of mood — Smith’s work is colourful and whimsical; Abidin’s piece is jarring and impassive; Alisa Chunchue’s performance and video is almost hypnotic and calming — there is something that unifies them.
“The pieces are about strength and about endurance,” Kawita says. “I want women to understand that they can become stronger and that strength comes from within.”
An installation artist and sculptor, Alisa has been fascinated with capturing the intangibility of water in art.
“I play with water because I feel like it is a part of me. Our bodies are 80% made up of water. Ice feels like part of my body — my organs. I just want to hold [the ice] until it melts, until it disappears,” she says.
Pushing physical and mental limits for an hour during the performance, it seems incomprehensible how she was able to tolerate such raw coldness. For the artist, her concept stemmed from a question she encountered after her grandmother’s passing when she visited the morgue of a hospital.
“When I saw her body, her dead body, everything looked the same, but when I touched her, I was shocked, you cannot imagine how [it felt], like pork — hard. That moment questioned me. I wanted to know what happens in my mind if my body freezes like that. Today I saw nothing, I heard nothing. My mind was separate from my body. It was like meditation.
“I think performing on the ferry was easier than performing in the middle of the sea. [For the video project] when I began, the water was around my legs, and when I finished, it was up to my neck. It made me so nervous!” she says.
When ice reverts into water on the ferry, there is symmetry in the thought of it slipping into the river. It is precisely the context of where the videos and performance coexist that makes the experience intriguing.
“[The ferry] is public transportation so we have a lot of passengers who do not expect to see art,” Kawita says.
“We have monks, we have students, we have market sellers, we have kids who are not going to school. I think it’s meaningful for people in the community to have a space for discussion. You don’t get to go to museums everyday, but this is one way of incorporating art into daily life.”
As we travel down the river, the staccato clacks of the ping pong ball can be heard in the background. An obnoxious karaoke cover of Frank Sinatra’s Sway blasts from the speakers of a passing cruise ship lined with flashing fairy lights.
A breeze can be felt, but the evening is hot and sticky.
Such is the experience of sitting on a boat in motion. The sights, the sounds and the movement of the river invade the insularity of a gallery space as you travel from point A to point B.
Domestic Gestures is on until March at The Ferry Gallery. Ping Pong and Alisa’s work were curated only for the Galleries Night. The Ferry Gallery is boarding at Tha Tien.