SOUNDING LABO*R

Pisitakun Kuantalaeng will host a listening session and a live performance. In the listening session he will be sharing his research on protest and revolutionary songs from Thailand since the 1970´s until today. It will be followed by a live performance of his recent album KUANTALENG. His third solo release on Chinabot riffs on the Thai-language translation of his last name [ควรแถลง], which means “should make a statement”. As reflected in the playful tracklisting and album art, he imagines the album as a recreation of his homeland, showing real wistful longing while making a sly dig at the naive vision of Thailand as it’s understood in his new home in Europe. 

This is event is one of the sonic contributions to the SOUNDING LABO*R – part of our current exhibition LABO*R. AN INVITATION TO ACTION… A BASIS FOR HOPE. It is a sculpture, a listening station, a sonic space with filled with sound by Jasmina Al-Qaisi, SAVVY Kwata (Kerala), Emmanuel Tanka Fonta, Pisitakun Kuantalaeng, Manuela Garcia Aldana. Lovingly designed and created by Santiago Doljanin and Ola Zielińska. 

Narrowcasting (meaning live onsite in the SAVVY space) takes place on Fridays from 16:00–18:00 & broadcasting on Sundays at 17:00 on SAVVYZΛΛR, streamed online and on Berlin 88.4 FM & Potsdam 90.7 FM.

PISITAKUN KUANTALAENG graduated with a BFA in Sculpture at the School of Architecture, Art, and Design – King Mongkut’s Institute of Technology Ladkrabang, Bangkok, Thailand. Growing up in Thailand’s art scenes during one of the country’s most politically unstable periods, Pisitakun kicked off his practice as a visual artist, essentially focused on political speculations and frustrations. Thailand’s Red Shirt protests and the government crackdown solidified his approach as a permanent critical thinker and artist.

His work The Unfinished History queries the truth hidden behind political power and conflicted histories by asking who is allowed to write history. Later, Pisitakun’s interest in music started to increase. He began to experiment with how sonic expressions take shape under different media environments. The multimedia work Black Country was born out of forced confrontation in a country where things go beyond rationality.  Pisitakun’s practice represents a decisive break from many of his Thai peers: he questions fundamental and increasingly global values without merely decrying the fact of corruption or offering neat palliatives.