Pratchaya Phinthong: Missing Objects

Pratchaya Phinthong’s Missing Objects is essentially about his solo overland journey back to Bangkok from Germany where he had completed his post graduate studies. It will be difficult to pin down exactly how to interpret such epic experiences through series of hyper alienating environment. This exhibition is not exactly an informative travelogue; it’s not even a coherent report on any particular tale of gallant bravery or exotic absurdities.

This installation of multidisciplinary/multimedia extravaganza is never the less about something that we can all share within our very own vulnerable experiences… How we deal with ourselves when we are left to ourselves. How when we are in completely foreign environment, we identify ourselves with thoughts of our faraway friends, family and loved ones. How in our solo journeys, we balance extreme loneliness, fear and sense of adventure.

After all the title “Missing Objects” is perhaps a metaphor that questions the journey that we all take through life… Our sense of priority and self worth are what defines us. Do certain objects make us feel complete? Do certain people make us feel whole? Perhaps to answer this: we need Pratchaya Phinthong’s art objects to help us feel that we are not missing out on everything.

Prapon Kumjim Head of The Art Center, Chulalongkorn University

Transforming Possibilities, (Reminiscence of a journey.)

Since the traveling has become crucial topic of my interest right after my graduation in Germany, the traveling idea shifts me beyond back and forward, twisted the ways that has brought me here (Germany) and the way that I am going to (Thailand). I am concerning on the notion of "Experience", personality, and culture exchange, and interested in how so-called "Art" could be function as a tool to move or churns/displays many creations and possibility in our contemporary world.

I have come across a border between individual identity and social perception, which lies of our cultural background that we are all part of. I would like to create another form of possibility to transfer my individual perspective to public. Therefore I conceptually realize my ideas through the Journey.

I was raised in a small village in the North East of Thailand, and was influenced /have been fascinating in the idea of Buddhism; there is a ceremony of making such a offer, so- called in Thai "ผ้าป่าสามัคคี" that Monks make a ceremony for common people to give (donate) money in amount of their own wishes to temple for doing such things, for example: to buy some materials to build some more temple's Building, or facilities but the most impressed idea was to send novice to travel to Bangkok for study, to give a possibility for someone to do/learn something, which somehow there is nothing back to people as objects but mind(Merit, Good,) then later one day this novice will return the temple as a monk and transforms knowledge to others.

With this Buddhism influences and European culture that everything has its own Cost. A lot of things worth /evaluate on money and deal .I try to shift the Buddhism thoughts to challenge in capitalism world. How you can pay something, which probably you will not get anything back. How this will be possible to exchange/display the value of thing. How I can travel with somebody’s mind?. And how this trip can be funded by only individual, Then I started to draw my desirable route to wherever I have not been yet in my life toward to the eastern from Germany to Thailand, I have been presenting this Journey to all of my friends who living in Europe to donate/contribute some money for me to begin my trip. There is actually none obviously deal between me and them, there is only trust that I will do travel, create or make something good for societies, or at least to me myself. Therefore I willing to make an exhibition in Thailand as a statement representing what I have been trying to do, to enlarge the personality individual thought to the big public critical scale.

"In someone else body, there is a place for your mind to go" is a sentence that I use for distribute this project, I found that there is strong connection of relationship. *"As when we travel we are stuck, both mentally and physically, between the past and the future. Quite often one seems to find oneself in a moving-laboratory, wanting to tele-transport people from past into the present moment so that they can share one's experiences and fill the void. But simply by thinking of others, one connects distances, shrinks them, allowing one to feel empty-ness and fullness at the same time. This work is based on this fullness, the presence of others in the mind and the creativity that this feeling inspires, to be intertwined with the immediate surroundings and events. So many people remind me of other people who live miles away, their existence mirrored. I would like to capture this conceptually, by bringing them together through my work. I want to explore the world from both the inside and out and allow people to appreciate the parallel universe we are all part of." I hope by doing this will gain a lot of "Experiences" and possibility to transform to others.

The trip will begin in the end of July2004, at first start from Frankfurt to Poland and so on...(view the route and detail on website www.planb.cc) it will probably take 5 months to get Thailand and I will travel alone as Backpacker, with general ground transport, such as, Walk, Bus, Train, Boat, Hitchhiking, all these are concern to the live situations. I will create some ideas and find something and document my trip on several kind of materials: Photos, Writing, Recording, Drawing..etc and they will be sent to Thailand for materials of the exhibition.

Best regards, Pratchaya Phinthong.

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Pratchaya Phinthong: Missing Objects