Centralizing Decentralized Art in Thailand*

 

Thanes Wongyannava

 

           While polis as the birthplace of democracy was an ancient Greek invention, democracy has now become a glocalized phenomenon. One of the characteristics of globalization, democratization, or the intensification of the consciousness of democracy as a way of life, is now conceived as being inevitable. With the spread of globalization the sense of place is diminishing, whereas the sense of the space of globalism has been empowered.[1] Democracy, then, indicates the desire of the local rather than its actuality, which has yet to arrive.

The space of democracy has expanded as if democracyπs roots in urbanity have disappeared without a trace. Democracy is bringing about an end to the division of rural and urban space. Liberal democracy is based on freedom, while the city itself is being moved by the dynamic of the incorporation of the center and the periphery. The city involves various forms of participation, involvement and exploitation, and so living in the city requires people to depend upon others much more than they realize. The city is then not so much a space of freedom, but one of interdependence. Democracy, which originates from the ancient city, is thus related not so much to freedom, but rather its opposite, which is why the espousal of freedom is so often heard there. Within the boundaries of the city freedom is simply the space of a desire that has never been fulfilled.

As democracy expands, the city augments itself beyond its territory by turning itself into nation-state, but without being homogenized as a coherent unit as anticipated in the notion of the nation. Nevertheless, while the capital city displays varieties and differences, by virtue of its status as part of the nation-state the city also portrays homogeneity. The desire of the nation-state has thus become the penultimate form of the ≥universe≤ rather than a ≥pluriverse≤, though its actualization can only take place in the future.

The conjuncture of the city and democracy has been the locus of space and philosophy since the ancient Greek. This, however, does not necessarily imply a relationship between rationality and spatial relations; on the contrary, the city is a space of creativity where choice is a constituent of modern life. Although choice is one of the key components of consumer society, creating choice is also an essential part of liberal democracy, especially during political elections. However, creation needs to choose as much as to judge.[2] In this way democracy and the city are related to aesthetics, probably much more so than to the rigidity of rationality.

One has no need to refer to architecture to see that the locus of democracy in the city is beautifully constructed, as long as one considers the beauty of democracy as a proportional form of power manifesting itself in a constitution. Such aesthetics, however, is not based on the harmonious beauty of nature. The relation between the reality of nature and its representation is not congruent; the gap itself is the basis of aesthetics. To understand the aesthetics of the city life one does not need a technocratic theory of urbanity, geography or sociology. In other words, truth and the hidden meaning of artifacts are unnecessary; all that is needed is the power to construct an aesthetic sensibility in accordance with oneπs identity and taste, particularly among the masses. To appreciate the aesthetics of urban life, therefore, one learns to create sensibility as well as imagination. But such a form of learning using the faculty of judgment does not necessarily lead us to a utopian state of beauty as it is described in the works of the eighteenth century German philosophers, i.e., Immanuel Kant.

 

Art and the Process of the Incorporation of the Nation-State

 

The space of the city never portrays unity and coherence. In fact, the non-existence of homogenous space determines the sphere of aesthetic experience. The space of the city without any unity and coherence paves the way for aesthetics. Aesthetic experience emerges from the paradoxical space of unity and multiplicity, universal and contingency.[3] Universality and unity, as forms of desire, will be fulfilled in a future that has yet to come; but the yet-to-come seems to last forever.

Once the interplay between unity and multiplicity dissolves into either the former or the latter, the aesthetic experience vanishes. The space of aesthetics needs opposition without the Hegelian dialectic. The unresolved contradiction between unity and multiplicity shows the stage of confusion, chaos, and suffering, while at the same time the desire for unity prevails. However, life without suffering is unable to enlighten anyone. The aesthetics of existence requires suffering.

Within the boundaries of a nation-state whose members always desire to live happy lives, as asserted by Aristotleπs eudaimonia, politics is, therefore, not the path to aesthetics since the space of politics aims to alleviate suffering. However, modern politics, which is based upon the notion of a contract, is informed by the idea of happiness-to-come. Politics, particularly within the structure of the nation-state that demands homogeneity and integration, is thus necessarily opposed to aesthetics. Politics is the search for identity, not difference.

The more that technocratic society encroaches, the more the aesthetic sensibility is transformed mechanically. Aesthetics eventually evaporates into thin air. The idea of a utopian state of beauty has vanished. Following the failure of this utopia art as social practice has become fashionable due to economic and social factors, particularly in its role in organizing social order and as social therapy. Art as a form of social engineering is thus most appropriate to the requirements of urban life.

The creation of objects of art through human activity, known as public participation, is a form of artistic engineering whose purpose is to exalt the understanding of art by the masses. Educating the masses is an essential function of the nation-state, where the subject of the state is considered a human resource. As an increase in the understanding of art by the masses is accomplished, the purpose of art becomes a part of national development. Utilizing art as a force for national development has transforms art into the art of politics. Art, therefore, becomes politicized.

Since possessing a center is imperative to politics, an idea that is reflected in the existence of the idea of a capital city, politicized art also contributes greatly to the centralization of politics, which seeks to incorporate everything into the space of politics. Art also becomes subject to politics. Politics has thus transformed art into a means. The ideal of art as an end in itself has lost its allure in modernity. While it is not hard to accept the argument that art is not autonomous, blurring the dividing line leads to the disappearance of the space for art itself. The desire for freedom in art, like anything else, is only what one strives for, endlessly.

In modernity, the attempt to incorporate everything into the center has been exacerbated by the idea of participation, whether in politics or in art. In art, incorporating the viewer as part of the painting is an idea that has existed in theories of art for many centuries, both in Northern or Southern European painting. The analysis of Diego Velazquezπs Las Meninas by the French philosopher Michel Foucault in The Order of Things simply reiterates an old idea in art history.[4] Incorporating the viewers into the frame also coincides with the idea of the modern state, where everyone is required to become a member of the state, particularly within the space of the nation-state. Everyone is required to be a citizen of the nation-state; the apparatus of the nation-state regularly demonstrates that one cannot live without it. The existence of man, therefore, depends solely upon the life of the state. The well known poem, Siam Manusati, is a case in point:

 

While Siam still lives, we also can live.

If Siam is destroyed, can we Thais survive?

 

 

Whereas the vanishing point in painting is the locus of the inclusion of sight and light, the nation-state, to which one is required to sacrifice oneself, posits the state as the center of life. Death therefore represents the purest form of political participation, whereby one dedicates oneself to the state. Death becomes the ultimate demand by the nation-state of its members; to die for the state brings glory to the subject. The last two verses of the Thai national anthem illustrate this glorious desire for death:

 

Sacrifice every drop of blood for the nation

Celebrate the Thai nation in its triumph, bravo

 

The light of the victorious nation is thereby turned into the darkness of human beings. However, the gift of death delivered for and by the state is a space of exception rather than of everyday life. The members of the state have a duty to participate politically, at least as required by the 1997 Constitution of Thailand. Nevertheless, the ultimate demand has not necessarily written in the constitution, the demand of death.

To show its complete control of state sovereignty following the eventual abolition the extraterritorial powers of the Western states in the kingdom, Siam changed its name to Thailand, the land of the free. Since this time every Thai has been living by default within the space of the nation-state, the condition whereof one cannot choose. In modernity, no one can escape from this political space, which Aristotle called the space of the åpolitical animalπ. In the same way there has been an attempt to create a realm in which no one is free from art. No one can exist in isolation; everyone participates in order to attain the common good-eudaimonia.

 

Politicized Art and Participation

Once the nation-state began to emerge the notion of the art of government as the tactful management of the human beings organized by the state seems to have faded away. As democracy developed within the space of the nation-state where the people exercise supreme power known as åsovereigntyπ, the power of the people could not be exercised in accordance with this ideal. In fact, the power of politics, as everyone surely knows, does not belong to the people. The people do not have the opportunity to present their definite voice and take an active role in politics. åParticipationπ has become the catchword as the solution to this problem of the powerlessness of the people.

However bringing the masses into politics by means of participation, demonstration, and conflict, also requires political institutions and organizations in order that the political demands of the people can be implemented. The idea of participation in politics ignores the fact that politics requires institutions, since without institutions participation is too metaphysical. However, such a complex political scenario is too complicated for the layman to comprehend. In fact, no one would be able to grasp the total reality. Participation as a process of empowering the people has decreased and alienated ordinary people more than one realizes.

As the space of politics becomes more and more democratized, art, too, has become more democratized and has abandoned the exclusiveness of class distinction, the space of the museum and the art gallery. The belief that democracy is to be achieved through participation has also paved the way for the democratization of art by means of participation. Art is thus no longer a function of the leisure and the sublime aspirations of the elite. As democratization has become the central idea of modern life, art has been unable to sustain its sense of class distinction. Art can no longer preserve its own space for itself. Like the space of modernity itself, art has to be expansive. The conjunction of art and democracy is thought to provide a space for the active citizen.

As in politics, participation in art creates complexity for ordinary people, much more so than the ordinary art displayed in the museum and the gallery. While public participation gives art a certain intensity, it has also created the illusion of the simplicity in art. Participation in art is thus something of a fantasy for the participants, in the same way as it is in politics. In turn, rather than representing the complexity of life, participation has made art banal. In participatory art, everyone is warmly welcomed to participate as well as to create, as if everyone were an artist by oneself, for oneself and of oneself.

In Thailand, once the foundations of democracy were laid by public demonstrations, whether during the October 1973 or May 1992 incidents which represented moments of resistance, protest, and participation, the purpose of art in the service of the people (of course, without knowing the meaning of åthe peopleπ), was restored. After having been suppressed by the military dictatorship for decades the question of åart for the peopleπ had its return. The idea was expressed most famously in the critique by Jit Phumisuk (writing under the penname of Inthrayudhana), the famous Thai intellectual hero of the left and the former member of the Communist Party of Thailand, whose work and heroic-tragic death became widely-known among the educated, even if not among the peasants.

Art was not only a question of composition, beauty, and proportion, but also of social consciousness. The politicized space of art as the realm for actualizing the desire for democracy eradicates the separation between the reality of everyday life and desire. The function of art is an expansion from the space of communication[5] to the sphere of implementation and actualization. Art, therefore, becomes a means of gratifying the masses rather than oneπs own creative achievement. Art should operate in the same way as any other form of instrumental reason, particularly the instrumental politics of the nation-state. The road that has been taken has been to practice art beyond its space. The purpose of art has thereby been transferred from religion to politics, in the setting, of course, of the nation-state.

As nationalized art becomes the ideal there has been a clear turn to the crypto-politicization of art, while the art of government has faded away with the rise of the science of politics. Art is a vehicle not of information nor of sensibility, but of the political manipulation of the nation-state. The gap between representation and reality is longer valid. The space of representation is the reality of political life, particularly through the parliamentary system where the members of parliament are designated as representatives of the multitude. Representation in politics encapsulates the reality of human action that transforms life within nature, but without any åspiritπ as anticipated from the mimesis.[6]

Subject to the politics either of a party or the nation-state, the space of art is no longer a question of the limitation of frame and objecthood.[7] The politicization of art has undergone an åinstrumental turnπ, rather than an aesthetic turn. As the space of art coincides with the space of nation-state, art is as centralizing as the nation-state. In Thailand this will to centralization is strongly emphasized in the Thai national anthem, ≥Thailand is the amalgamation of the flesh and the blood of the Thai race which has made of the people a stateä≤

To achieve the political objectives in art, a social and political consciousness needs to be inculcated. Yet the injection of information and ideas into the social body is not enough; public participation is also imperative, public action is required. Art is more than the signature of an individual artist, since art that is the product of public action embodies the work of the people, the labor of the unknown and the unnamable. Art appears to lose the meaning of the selfhood of the artist as the center - decentered art. Mass participation in art has been working as if the End of the Subject had already arrived before philosophers have had time to declare it.

Mobilizing the masses to participate in art, which at first would appear intended to demonstrate support for decentralization, is in fact directed toward centralization. Once a work of art is collective the signature of a single artist contributes greatly to the exploitation of those who were part of the participatory process. The artifact is still known under the name of the one who produced the idea, not the process. Without the name and the identifiable participants--who is the people, except the name of the artists only, art arises from the space of exploitation and manipulation. The body of the unidentifiable does not count in art, only the idea does. Although participation seems to strongly exert the process of abstraction in art, public participation in art does not lead to the abstraction of the self of the artist. The concrete self and body that contains flesh, blood and desire, are still there. The self-hood of the artist is still at the center of de-centered art.

Given the demands of participation what art needs is numbers of people, the more the better. Like democracy, numbers are the key to victory. Art is therefore democratized by means of numbers, and ultimately by sheer volume. Participation, embodied in the activities of the masses, also needs people to be physically present. The physical presence of the masses occupies not only the position of viewer but also of actor. In other words, incorporating and centralizing the people into the space of art is inevitable due to democratic desire.

Installation art displays its democratic desire. For installation art, the task of moving away from the center, such as the museum and the gallery, was meant to decentralize the power of art institutions,[8] but that has not necessarily led to the abolition of the centralizing process within the space of art. Replacing the space of social institutions and formal educational space with a physical space without definite boundaries is at the same time a form of centralization in art. Art does not resist but rather forces the public to accept the power of art.

On the one hand, the interaction between art and the people appears to empower art, rather than the people. Of course, empowered art was one of the original desires for encouraging public participation in art, not to mention the issue of the justification for public funding. On the other hand, the physical presence of both art and people during the production of art has also subjected people to the realm of art. As art expands, participants find themselves encircled by art, and their response is either one of appreciation or apprehension.

In the same way that participation has become the essence of modern democratic politics since World War II, participation in art, such as installation art or participatory art,[9] seems to have given people the opportunity to join in the art process. As it does for political legitimacy, participation provides legitimacy to the existence of art as a public object and activity. Following the feminist idea, once the åpersonal is politicalπ, art is no longer private. Art that is not produced by any particular artist is the objective of participatory art. Since art belongs to the masses or åthe peopleπ it is inextricably bound with the politics of a centralizing nation-state. Once art contains the quality of publicity, the distinctiveness of art also disappears.[10]

Modern public art, for example, the Windmill located in the heart of Bangkok on Silom Road, the central business district of Bangkok, blends in with billboards and advertisements, whose existence illustrates the banality and mundaneness of life. It can no longer be reconciled with its surroundings, except for the pipe-banister along the canal. This specific sculpture is intended to remind the masses of the old windmill from which the name of the street, Silom, derives. This artifact functions as a historical monument rather than an art object. In art, historical consciousness is quite irrelevant. Once art functions as an historical monument it is subjected to the space of history, which is inevitably determined by the sphere of politics.

Although the past is a foreign country, where those who have had a chance to visit hardly ever return, historical consciousness within the space of the nation-state does not necessarily convey absolute foreignness. Art in the form of an historical monument is an attempt to link the unattainable past with the present. The object of art for the general public connects the living with the dead. It becomes a spirit-medium, but without the spirit-cult. Yet this object of art, whose purpose is to function like a reverie, deceiving the masses who engross themselves with a memorably imagined route to the past, fails completely, because the purpose does not intertwine itself with the space of the object of art.

The space of art incorporates the sphere of historical consciousness. As art is amplified, class position does not occupy the space of art as it once did. The identity of public and participatory art derives no longer from any particular class, for example, the bourgeoisie, the blue blooded, etc., but solely from the masses, who do not have any clear identity. As art loses its identity and distinctiveness, which had generally been sustained by protecting it from the space of institutions such as the museum and the gallery, everything that signifies a relationship, rather than the space and boundary of an object, is, therefore, art. Relationship with the masses, here and now, has become the essential aspect of art. The volume and quantity of the masses has become both the milestone and the millstone of art. Like democracy, quantity, which is readily quantifiable, accessible, and accountable, also constitutes the new foundation of art. Art at the lower end of the hierarchy no longer expresses what the elite once considered excellent.

 

The Populism of Art

 

Once art becomes participatory and public it begins to colonize everyday life. The space of art is expanding as ever, like the space of American football whose territory of the players is not fixed, but its aim is meant to expand. But American football is also a prototype of flexible imperialism,[11] moving back and forth without clear boundaries, as in soccer. Art does not exist within the realm of sustainability. Art is not a sustainable space, but an expansive one. Art turns itself into the agent of an internal process colonizing ordinary lives. As art becomes more and more expansive, people are unable to free themselves from art; in fact nothing seems to be free from art. The idea of art as an experience as if everything were art, therefore, demonstrates the expansive power of art. Art functions like a black-hole, sucking everything in.

As a unit of totality that is the locus of the nation-state the people are the center. As the center of politicized art, the people seem to have turned nationalized art upside down, since the latter serves the state, while the former serves the people. However, the notion of åthe peopleπ is itself rather confused because it displays different political meanings. The people are the commoners who are opposed to the elite; within this meaning is embedded a sense of powerless and poverty. The notion of the people as a nation is the foundation of the nation-state. And that leads to the notion of the people as the sovereign. The Thai word, prachachon, which appears to have been adopted from the Western term, åthe peopleπ, has similar connotations. Prachachon also conveys at the same time a sense of collectivity as well as individuality. In other words, prachachon can be both abstract and concrete.

When the people are connected to the notion of sovereignty, it becomes so abstract. In the structure of the nation-state, the state is constituted by the people, and its sovereignty emanates from the people. The power of the state is the power of the people. The circular logic of the state and the people means that whether one serves the state or the people, in the end there is no difference. Love for the people also conveys a love for the state. Art for the people is also art for the state. In Thailand, the process of the statization of art, demonstrated, for example, in the practice of ennobling artists as ånational artistsπ, is a result of politicized art. The artist as national hero is part of a state process that transmogrifies art into a centralizing and incorporating power within the space of the nation-state.

At the same time, creating art through a participatory process, which is a way popularizing art, represents populism in art. In politics, the term åpopulismπ suggests that ordinary people have been mobilized against an establishment, and this political tactic is particularly appealing to the people. Populism always utilizes the language of the people, while simultaneously refraining from revealing divisions along the lines of party, class or ideology. Populism always operates under the name of the people. Justifying politics in the name of the people exists in politics all over the world, from communist regimes to Tony Blairπs New Labor, from the era of the legendary Thai left-wing intellectual, Jit Phumisuk, to Thaksin Shinawatra, Thai Prime Minister.

During the political campaign of Thaksin Shinawatra, Thai Rak Thai Partyπs political motto, ≥the heart of Thai Rak Thai is the people≤, expresses the spirit of the populism. Without divisions of class, ethnicity and gender, the political party has been dissolved and is no longer representative of anything since it has become a neutral government that claims to serve the interests of all.[12] The representative of all is the representative of totalitarian regime. Neither class nor gender is related to the populism of art. Populism in art means that art is for everyone. Then the quality of åeveryonenessπ conveys the centralizing and homogenizing power of art. No one is outside art. As everyone behaves like an insider, everyone is then part of the establishment of art. Nothing is outside art; art is the center.

As with populism in politics, the populism of art does not give way to the abolition of establishments, particularly art as an institution. In addition, the populism of art does not eradicate class distinctions and exclusiveness. Art that intends to give power to the people reflects the ideology of populism. As the people are supreme, the populism of participatory art embedded in the sense of the public has hardly turned art against itself. No one ever criticizes the supreme, the voice of heaven. Nationalized art never criticizes itself. Once the people have generated the fulcrum of art, rather the object of art itself, politics has become the core of art since the space of the people is only possible within the space of the nation-state, the centralized politics of the nation-state. The space of the people which conjures up the homogeneous space of consciousness and memory is expected to be possible within the historical trajectory of nation-state. Hence, the existence of the perfect unity and harmony of nation-state is yet to come; so far it has not yet arrived.

In a nation-state whose regime is liberal democracy, concealing the process of centralization and the homogenization of difference is imperative due to liberal democracyπs assertion of the rights of individuality. The most efficient way to construct the space of memory that can lead to the centralization required by the nation-state is through participation, because it gives members of the state a chance to play and to feel the sense of power of each individual. However, the memory of the nation-state constructed no one has ever shared. Memory emerges from a void. Participation provides the space of belonging and action for the citizen, as well as delivering legitimacy by allowing the interplay between the subjects and the state.

The old notion of the people based on homogeneity possible only within the construction of the nation-state, is therefore evaded or basically even forgotten in todayπs multicultural world. In fact, åthe peopleπ cannot be conceived of within a scheme of diversities since it is incompatible with the idea of indivisible sovereignty required by the scheme of the nation-state. With the help of the state, the notion of the multitude whose characteristic is difference and diversity has been promoted to the space of forgetfulness, and eventually has been transformed into the homogeneous entity, the people.

At the same time those who continue to separate ånationalized artπ and åpoliticized artπ seem to believe that there is a difference between the two categories. In fact, both originate from within the space of the nation-state. The former simply glorifies the state. The latter still gives lip service to the åcritiqueπ whose aim is to improve, so that progress in the politics within the nation-state could be actualized, and the centrality of the nation-state can thereby be sustained in the age of sustainable development.

Critique and education return the function of art to the space of pedagogy, which it once occupied in the religious world of art. Then art could not be detached from morality, to which it was inextricably bounded, and vice versa. Transforming art into morality renders art more public and more expansive. The changing status of art, from a question of sensibility to moral sentiment, eradicates the separation between the different spheres of modernity, the quintessential aspect of liberal democracy. Everything has been transformed into politics as much as art.

As art becomes everything and everything is art, then art is nothing. To be everything and nothing at the same time has expanded the space of art as much as it has shrunk it. Art is no longer a sustainable and independent sphere. It is embodied within a relational aesthetics,[13] where neither separate entities nor exclusiveness are possible. Once the space of art is relational, its boundaries are no longer sustainable in the age of sustainable desire; it expands to encompass everyone and everything.

Once art exists democratically it is possible to turn everything into art and everything is allowed to become art. Everything will lead to art, as if art were at the center of everything. Once art becomes everything, art means nothing. Paradoxically, rather than a desire for a reconciliation towards unity and coherence, an art that arises from nothingness and being sustains the aesthetics of suffering within the metaphysics of binary opposition. However one hardly appreciates suffering, even though in Buddhist ontology suffering is the fundamental state of all the beings.