Jonathan Armour LG shares his experiences as a resident artist in Thailand.
My first experience of being an artist in resident (AiR) was from September 2020 until August 2021, when what was planned as a 6 week residency with Praksis in Oslo was commutated by COVID into a year online and a couple of weeks in Oslo. This culminated with an exhibition and panel discussion at the Vigeland Museum. My hindsight analysis of the residency was a mix of frustration at not being able to make much new work with the other artists around the theme of Perfection|Speculation, but replaced by a sense of creative inspiration running through my veins from my new knowledge of transhumanism.
In my semi-regular scan of potential residencies I tend to focus only on those which are about something, a domain to be explored which is closely aligned with my own practice. Thus the Gender Fluid – Evolving Identities residency at Studio 88 in Chiang Mai caught my attention. It ran for 4 weeks in May/June this year.
Studio 88’s director Sasiwimon Wongjarin (Aom), along with her chosen curator Golf (Thanupon Yindee – an experienced choreographer and performer), had prepared a programme of meetings, visits and discussions between the 6 AiRs and those from Chiang Mai who might connect with our thematic interests. This was incredibly informative.
Part of our programme of research curated by Aom and Golf was a meeting with the organising committee of Chiang Mai Pride. In the context of Pride in London which has become such an overwhelming pink-washing love-in by corporates, unions and councils, it was so refreshing to meet a small team driven by a strong sense of activism. We were invited to take part in Pride in Chiang Mai which was fabulous and fun.
Another one of those introductions was to a trans woman performer called Sade Buu Hunt, who had retired from the cabaret clubs in Bangkok and was now teaching traditional Thai Lue dance to people in her rural community near Chiang Mai. I shall return to Sade later.
One of the embryonic ideas I had before going on this residency was to explore, with the performer Golf, a form of rotating/spinning dance, in part inspired by the technique of the whirling dervishes but mostly informed by my background in engineering where machinery transferred motive power from one cog to another through the interlocking of their counter-rotating teeth. In preparation for this I had drafted a pattern for a circle skirt and had two skirts made up by an Afghani tailor on the Old Kent Road. One was in a heavy cotton twill and the other using two test prints on silk of Wendyl, one of my Birth Sleeves.
I was hoping to be able to print more fabrics and have them made into circle skirts in Thailand which has a concentration of the textile industry in the region around Chiang Mai.
Once in Chiang Mai, after much research we found a company, which did hi-resolution digital printing on different fabrics including silks. Arriving at the factory, we discovered that they also did industrial scale silk-screen printing and we were given a tour of the facilities by the manager. This immersion into mechanical industry reawakened the engineer in me. I was fascinated by one of the machines which was extending and rolling the printed fabrics and took a video of it. It became the inspiration for a short performance called Evolving Identities, working with Golf and fellow performer Sunvo, which combined video projection onto the scrolling fabric printed at the factory with 3 different Birth Sleeves. This later laid the groundwork for Incarnation. The fabric scrolling between two people represented the change of identity and passage of time. The wrapping of large swathes of fabric around the stupa in Thai temples is part of their belief that textiles are a tangible representation of the connection between the material world and the spiritual realm.
A month earlier, I had held a “Sleeve Emporium” event at the Sonics Immersive Media Lab at Goldsmiths University. This had involved the audience invoking the AR version of the people whose sleeves were projected onto the video walls by scanning a QR code and witnessing lifesize 3D versions appearing in front of them. My mind had been distilling this ever since and so I started some experimental workshops with Golf, to explore how we as physical humans might engage and interact with digital humans as our existence becomes more hybrid. Each session developed the thinking and how we staged the tech. This led to filming an event called Invocation at Chiang Mai University Arts Centre, which was pivotal.
Invocation had been staged with the help of Chaiwat Lochotinant, who had just finished his Phd at Chiang Mai University. It happens that he was also the artistic director of Base Box Theatre who was running Design Lab: Performing Arts in collaboration with Studio 88 (Aom) in August/ September 2024.
And so the second residency came about – Design Lab: Performing Arts.
Between the two visits to Chiang Mai, I had been developing ideas for a performance in collaboration with Sade, using zoom meetings and WhatsApp video calls. The use of hands to communicate is central to everyday life, but especially in Thai dance and performance. I guess that is true of most countries but perhaps more accentuated in Thailand. Observing that Sade had exceptionally expressive hand movements, I wanted to develop a performance in which she tells her story using her hands. It was to be called Incarnation.
We reconnected in the first week of this second residency, and recorded footage of the different 7 scenes across 3 acts.
Embracing the idea of defamiliarisation (verfremdungseffekt) I crafted the footage into videos which enable us to see anew the beauty of the hand movements. Between each of the acts was a live dream sequence in which Sade’s dream was initially embodied as seagulls, inspired by Jonathan Livingston’s Seagull, performed live by Golf and Sunvo. The third dream sequence brought Sade on-stage resplendent in her Thai Lue costume.
And then I had to contend with the challenges of working in a live theatre for the first time. Slotting our rehearsals between other productions and availability of dancers meant that it wasn’t until 2pm on the opening day, that we were able to bring together the fabric scrollers, two dancers, Sade and final lighting/sound setup. Nevertheless, the doors opened at 5pm, and we started with a bi-lingual double-act between Aom and myself to give a “director’s” introduction to the performance Incarnation.
Over the 3 evenings following Incarnation, another performance called Overlapping was scheduled. Created by Golf, it was previously staged in Bangkok and also in Chiang Mai at a different venue. These versions had incorporated video footage from some of our earlier workshops (Invocation). For this extended version of Overlapping, Golf and Chai wanted to replace the video footage with a live augmented reality set, ie: me going on stage to invoke the life-size AR of Roy and have Sade interact with him. Overcoming my personal demons of being on stage, the main challenge was the tech – AR needs to be able to locate against other visual hooks – such as furniture, floor coverings, wall decoration. In the darkened theatre, with black walls and dark grey floor and with one down-spot, the AR was unpredictable and liable to drift off into the darkness at the edge of the stage. With little time to rehearse and resolve the tech issues, I felt that it wasn’t till the final performance on the Sunday afternoon that I really delivered the performance promised. And then I just wanted to keep going.
And finally, next morning before my flight home, I led a third Re-Invocation workshop for performers to interact with a number of different AR figures, people whom the performers might not otherwise engage with in a real life situation. This particular workshop was for the professor of performing arts, Dr. Wirasant Wirunsakunphiban (Katha) from the local teaching university and some of his students.
During these workshops, the invoking of the AR person connected with the Thai belief that spirits can co-exist with the living. For me this resonated with some of the trans-humanist thinking around our increasingly hybrid existence, real and digital.
Overall lesson learnt?
With the benefit of hindsight, I feel that the first residency laid the ground work for the productions created and performed in the second one. In fact, I would recommend this model to others: go out for an initial residency – perhaps this one can be shorter and then a few weeks/months later go for the main one. You are likely to achieve much more.
Having said that, the richness of engagement in these two residencies was only possible as a result of the openness of the people with whom I was privileged to work. They embraced the crazy ideas and workshopping techniques with enthusiasm, and were very forgiving of my ignorance of rehearsing for theatrical productions. Thank you, Aom, Chai, Golf, Sade, Sunvo, Keng, Fiws, Aod, Time, Trai, Katha, Khao, Anna, Jasmin, Arhit.
I look forward to future collaborations.
Jonathan Armour LG, 2024
Website: The Armour Studio
Instagram: @the.armour.studio