Re/visiting
Revisiting “Collective Walks / Spaces of Contestation; Empowering Platforms, Raising a Non-Army in Thailand
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In the summer of 2023, I received a surprising proposition from TURBA's managing editor, Dena Davida, inviting me to republish the chapter I contributed to the 2019 Curating Live Arts anthology (Davida et al. 2019) and reframe it in the context of the present issue. I accepted with enthusiasm, enticed by the opportunity to revisit an earlier piece of writing and understanding that such a privilege rarely presents itself to writers, let alone to early career writers! But as I gave the proposition more thought, I realized that it fittingly presented itself ten years after the inception of the curatorial project I discussed in my original text, Collective Walks / Spaces of Contestation. The exercise then provides an incentive to critically reflect on what has happened in the last decade, from both personal and socio-political perspectives. And indeed, there is much to take stock of. Re-reading my article, I am struck by the naiveté that transpires through the ideas I devised at the age of twenty- five, when I was taking my first leaps into the world of professional arts curation. Enamored with theory, unencumbered by convention, and moved by boundless energy, my younger self thought of artistic practice as a prism through which aesthetics can effectively mold the social. I wasn't so naïve as to believe that art can change the world, but I was convinced that the radical power of art lay in its capacity to disrupt, if only momentarily, the seemingly natural order of things. I thought of site-specific performance as a means to breach the surface of banal sociability. I conceived of aesthetic interventions into everyday life as tools for the creation of interstitial pockets of possibility.
Contributor Notes
Mariane Bourcheix-Laporte is a visual and media artist, independent curator, author, and independent researcher based in Vancouver. She is currently completing a PhD in Communication at Simon Fraser University, studying the impact of cultural policies on British Columbia's artist-run centers. In recent years, she has worked as lead researcher/consultant on various sectoral research and community consultation projects commissioned by national and provincial arts service organizations. She has exhibited artistic and curatorial projects across Canada, contributed articles to artistic and scholarly publications, and has taught several courses at Simon Fraser University's School for the Contemporary Arts.
Sasapin Siriwanij is an actress, dancer, curator, sometimes stage director, often a manager and producer from Bangkok, Thailand. She began her acting career in 2005, while earning a BA and MA in English Literature at Chulalongkorn University. After joining the B-Floor Theatre company in 2009, she began directorial work in 2013 with solo performances and plays. In 2017, she initiated and still serves as artistic director for the Bangkok International Performing Arts Meeting (BIPAM), a performing arts platform for Southeast Asians which also develops initiatives in support of local young theater artists.