HOW TO UNLEARN HISTORY
A Thai artist at the international art event documenta 14 offers a powerful, chilling narrative about democracy, history and why a Thai man was one of Hitler’s last visitors
When artistic director Adam Szymczyk proposed that audiences should go through a process of “unlearning to learn” to experience documenta 14 to its fullest potential, he really meant it.
Last Saturday, the highly anticipated quintennial international art exhibition opened in Kassel, Germany, after a special run in Athens, Greece. Opening its doors to the public, one of the world’s most important art events welcomes visitors to confront art that isn’t just for art’s sake, but highly political and thought-provoking art revolving around government, refugees, democracy, the economy, the financial crisis, globalisation, the nation state and other heavy-hitting issues. The curated and commissioned artworks which span over 30 venues across the city range from inspiring and powerful to outright confusing — but in the end never really stray from the core concepts.
A sole Thai artist at documenta 14 is on hand to offer his observations on some of those themes. As international critics begin picking the highlights of the vast exhibition (the Bangkok Post will do so next week), the name Arin Rungjang from Thailand has emerged as one on the must-see list.
His work can be found in one of the new focal points of the event — the Neue Hauptpost (confusedly renamed to the Neue Neue Galerie). A 10-minute walk from city centre, the venue was Kassel’s main post office and mail distribution centre, and has been strategically chosen as an art space to bring about metaphorical concepts of departures, arrivals and distribution — the latter very loosely relating to Arin’s show entitled “246247596248914102516 … And Then There Were None”.
As an artist whose work is known to trigger discourse on the history of international relations and transmigration of ideologies, Arin’s multilayered work, comprised of many pieces, tackles big subjects and raises multitudes of questions about how historical information is distributed, and how power rests in the hands of those who write history, as well as Thai history and the afterlife of fascism. Most of all, he observes where oral history, personal experience, and collective history overlap and diverge.
Turning into the corner where his work stands, the first thing audiences are drawn to is the golden 2.4x7m brass relief of soldiers going into battle. Thais would find the work familiar — as they should, because the relief is the exact replica (3D-scanned and all) of one of the sculptures below the base of the Democracy Monument, called Soldiers Fighting For Democracy, depicting stern-faced military men marching to war.
It’s a strange feeling seeing the sculpture so up-close, since we usually see it in glimpses from afar, and it reminds us in the least subtle way of Thailand’s current political situation: how soldiers occupy the base of our monument of democracy.
To the right of the relief, two portraits hang on either side of a glass box holding a replicated memoir belonging to a Thai man named Prasat Chutin, and the last page of Hitler’s guest book found in his bunker after the war. The last signature on the paper, dated April 20, 1945, was signed by none other than Prasat Chutin himself. Many questions of course arise: Why was a Thai man the last person to visit Hitler? Who is he? What was he doing in Germany? Is this even real?
Yes. It is really documented by history.
“I watched a documentary about Hitler, probably on the History Channel,” explained Arin. “In one episode, they opened up Hitler’s guest book, and the last person who visited Hitler in his bunker before the fall of Berlin was signed ‘Prasat Chutin’ — a Thai man. [The project] started from that documentary and that name.”
After avid research, Arin found that Prasat Chutin was actually Phra Prasart Phitthayayut — one of the leaders of the 1932 Siamese Revolution. He studied in Germany and came back to Thailand with progressive ideologies. After Khana Rassadorn transformed Siam from absolute to constitutional monarchy, Prasat was sent to be the ambassador for Thailand in Berlin, where he would later become a prisoner of war in Moscow after Germany’s defeat. Returning to Thailand after being released, he wrote a memoir, 225 Days In Rus
sian Prison, for his wife’s funeral, the contents of which have been made into a 30-minute video by Arin and situated in another room, constantly packed with people.
The single-channel video is heart-wrenching. Two sets of visuals and narratives are combined into one: On the visual side, the gruelling and warlike process of creating his brasswork Soldiers Fighting For
Democracy is intercut with two dancers moving slowly and organically through a hotel and car park that sits atop Hitler’s bunker. In the background, Arin starts the narration of his own life story, intercut with that of Prasat from the memoir, and ending with Arin’s memories again. He mixes his small narrative in with the larger, historical narrative, revealing the lesser-known facts about Thai-German relations during that era and within history in general. Prasat at one point even spoke of how Hitler was a gentleman, and the complete opposite of what the rest of Europe made him out to be.
It seems to require a lot of “unlearning”, especially for Thais and Germans, to take in all of the at times shocking and confusingly sad information.
Arin said he’s laying the information he found out on the table for audiences to draw their own critical conclusions. The power of the piece is accentuated by being shown in Germany, where the memories of atrocity have never really gone away. Many viewers responded to the emotional impact of Arin’s works and life story. Arin’s father was attacked by neo-Nazis in Hamburg and died in Thailand as a result of the injuries, and the artist’s great-grandfather, who rebelled against the 1932 Revolution, was arrested and sent to jail.
However, for any Thai who was forced to study primary school history, the whole video and replicas may cause them to reflect, deconstruct and begin the process of “unlearning” everything they thought they knew.
“What’s interesting about it is it’s a visual element that makes viewers think about the history that has [actually] happened,” said Arin. “But from what I said, in my work, I’m not trying to create evidence in history to contrast with actual history itself. I’m not creating a new history. It’s just putting information on the table and creating a comparison image. I was born and grew up with a certain knowledge of what the revolution was like. At the same time, when more information came in to diffuse [that knowledge], it made me start to understand that there was a bigger picture. It went beyond just simply wanting to change from an absolute monarchy to a democracy or that we just wanted to copy the West.”
Arin’s interest in transnational influences and how history is shaped is evident from his body of work. Four years ago, his Golden Tear
drops — a shining, suspended sculpture made of hundreds of small, golden, tear-shaped orbs — was inspired by the Thai sweet thong yod, which was said to be introduced to Siam by the Portuguese in the 16th century. Two years ago, his work Mongkut features a replica of the royal crown presented by King Mongkut to Emperor Napoleon III in 1861.
“So, history that’s been developed by a certain group of people — they compose history in the same way [as art]. But it’s building a composition in order to promote a narrative they want. In my work, it’s looking back, and placing the composition of the history [in a new way] — in a way that might be different from what was drawn or written up like what we’ve learned so far.”
Arin Rungjang’s “246247596248914102516 … And Then There Were None” will be on show in Bangkok later this year. Documenta 14 takes place in Athens until July 16 and at Kassel, Germany, until Sept 17.
I was born and grew up with a certain knowledge of what the revolution was like. At the same time, when more information came in to diffuse that knowledge, it made me start to understand that there was a bigger picture