Wit Pimkanchanapong
Honey: a study of my father
honey in 2012 tubes, video installation, 34 min
at Tokyo Wonder Site, Hongo from September 21, 2012 to November 25, 2012
After visiting the Fukushima and Tohoku area in summer 2011. and facing the big flood of Thailand by myself late summer the same year, I saturated to seriously think about my relationship to this world. I don't know what will happen next, but keep living as usual, pretend like nothing had happened is not considered a good living creature. My reaction was to stop and to question.
I have a feeling that modern world living life style obscured me from something. Lucky enough, in Thailand, the pre-modern living life style still remain. It's even more lucky that my father is the one that still practicing it.
I was going to my father's second home, deep in the Jungle of Kanchanaburi, where he used to work with a mountain tribal as a representative from government Human development Bureau. After his retirement, the tribal offer him a small piece of land to stay with them as an honor guest, almost like a village "Sebseu". At the age of 72, he spends 2 weeks living in the village and 2 weeks in Bangkok's nothern suburb, my mom's house.
I went to visit my father's 2nd home as a researcher, researching pre-modern way of living, as well as my own father, a previous generation of human being and Thai citizen who can survive and be totally happy without internet, electricity and clean pipe water.
My research period was around the end of March - early April, a special period for every northern
hemisphere living organism, a glory spring time. However, for Thailand, situated quite close to equator line, it's a dry and over heat season. It is an appropriate time for honey hunting, the 5th (Thai) month, the best honey time.
Honey from the village and my father are the things that link me with this distance rural place. I taste their honey 2nd things after my mom breast milk. It's a substance that circulates inside my body without awareness. This was the first time in my life that I participated in their honey hunting activity and actually the first time to visit the village willingly.
What I present in this work is in video format. It is a research process of honey hunting as well as a research of my own father in Thailand. In addition I want to challenge a very unique feature of the video medium, particularly digital video nowadays, which is, in fact, that it can play or reproduce itself endlessly. (Among art organiser / curator working with digital video medium is the most convenient way to handle, cheap to transport and easy to install).
Together with the global cinema and internet culture, digital video seems to be an immortal medium. In contrary with digital video medium on Youtube, which it gains more power and the more audience to see it. What if it ends? What if it gradually disappears the more it has been exposed to audience.
What will we react when the endless reproduction power have a potential to end somehow?
TO achieve a s self destruct possibility of the video medium. I connect it with a natural and seasonal substance, in this case "honey". I offer every audience a glass tube of honey that I and the tribal hunting for this 2012 harvesting period. It is 2,012 tubes total in this exhibition. Every tube that been taken will effect to the next presentation of the video, by erasing [12] random frames out of the presentation and replace it with black frame. This means the [34] minutes video will be completely disappear after the last honey tube been taken by the audience. And the video will no longer be an immortal medium anymore, it will be a seasonal substance as same as honey, banana and apple.
Even the video presentation is all in black frame, it represents the real process of honey hunting. We need to be in totally dark in order to get the gem out of mother forest, a reflection glimpse of the moon light will cause us a fatal death from army of bees.