Sankrit Kulmanochawong (ไทย)

01/06 - 07/06

Sankrit is much inspired by sense of lived realities; looking up close at the everyday. What voices emerge from a body of multiples? The subtle influences and the loud ones. A certain idea and forms associated with it does not sprout out of nothingness, but rather from dense layers of history, chances and connected thoughts. There are many fascinating details, little gems or cultural clashes that often gets left unnoticed in the busyness of it all and I am trying to facilitate them, and sometimes they arrive and takes forms of collected words and inchoate visual sketches.

Maguerite Duras’ India Song was on MUBI Netherlands recently. Its vision of the 1930’s Colonial east is richly elegant visually, pervasive, and distant. I find myself putting the film on repeat, and now questioning my fascination with this picture. The film does not try to force a narrative— its actors do not speak but words are carried through muted second hand chit-chats. The story is multiple and really can be what viewers make of it subjectively. For me there is a Colonial angle that I am fascinated by. There are many exotic names and elements left unexplained and fluid.
For example, a long chant opens up the movie and is not subtitled in its entirety. As a Thai speaker I make some sense of the Laotian song, and what beautiful words they were. Mentions of Calcutta, Savannakhet, Lahore were made with similar coolness. These places are seen through the unapologetically French interiors in which it all take place, like an uncorrupted vision of civilization that struggles to exist in Asia.

ດອກບົວທອງ

Imagined communities, Benedict Anderson

If you don't have a subscription, email / DM Common Time on Instagram for login details