Signed and numbered edition
30+ minute DVD Video in custom packaging designed by the artist. © B-181-06
Concept: Identity and Memory in the Chinese population of Phuket Thailand
As globalization encroaches into each culture, the opportunity for the disappearance of ancient traditions rises with each day. Within the structure of the new world, old traditions must take their place with the new. And in the Chinese community in the south of Thailand, the importance of ancient traditions runs hand in hand with importance of integration into a world of technology and modern thought.
Artist Sandrine Bouiniere Skellie gives us a world of ritual, though ancient, still capable of bringing its participants to levels of ecstasy measured in terms of the spiritual, not the physical. Although the participants belong to the modern, technical world, their adherence to these rituals not only connects them to the past, but may guide them through the future. |
Dim lights |
In Kin Pak, the idyllic experience of personal faith is seen without the influence of the broader arbiters of the larger society. In a world where boardrooms seem to be the new governments, we see a world where individual emotion and action can, at least for that moment, define the individual.
In finding strength through faith, the participants in the various ceremonies transcend momentary pain. In doing so, they transcend the broadest community to which they belong. In doing so, they cleave to the most basic understanding of community that is in danger of being swallowed by an ever encroaching world.
By holding to the rituals of old, participants can, for an idyllic moment, latch on to a memory of distant identity.
