Ok, it’s really not that hard to grok.

I’ve been sorting through some of my film from the last year, and figured that I would post these two photos from something that might turn into a project. I usually am juggling a bunch of different ideas all at once, hoping that one will eventually turn into something interesting enough to actually make a project out of.

These two photos were shot outside of Bangkok, where the population is 99% Thai, 99% brown-skinned, and yet the ads use white people to sell their products, services, lifestyles.

2922 is a pick of the week in BKK magazine this week …..

Click the links to download the images in Jpeg format, or here to get it in PDF format.

Click the image to download the high-res version.

Ogilvy and Mather (the advertising firm) invited me to give a talk to their creative dept tomorrow (Wed) about my show and on my thoughts relating to using photography and language as communication tools. I also plan on talking a bit about what art is, what an artist is, etc ….

The poster they put together to advertise the talk is above, a rough translation is as follows:

“A Picture Says Only Some words.
Pictures, Words
Luke Cassidy-Dorion (sic)
A foreigner who speaks Thai will come speak on the subject of words in photographs and photographs that surround words.
The rest just tells the location, time, etc ….”

There is definitely one aspect of the poster that makes me feel like a circus monkey … “yup, time to pull out that white blond guy and make him rattle off some Thai” … that aside, I am looking forward to the talk. It should be interesting to hear what everyone thinks about the work.

Anyway, if you work there, please do come. If you’re interested in something similar at your place of work or university, feel free to contact me.

(click image to view full-size version)

This little tidbit was front-page above-the-fold news in the Bangkok Post on Monday. I’m not sure what stands out more: that these people have zero understanding of the Buddha’s message, or that the post reports gives black magic than weather reports. If they were reporting on the possibility of rain tomorrow, the headline would read something like “80% chance of rain reported”. However in the instance of some villagers cursing some thieves to die (Is a Buddha image worth more than human life? Would the Buddha have really approved of worshiping these statues as idols? Would the Buddha have said guffawed if someone claimed that a statue can have magical powers?), the headline reports on it as if the outcome were guaranteed 100%.

The week before my opening, I did an interview on a Thai TV program called artscenetv.net about my show … here are the youtube clips.

Talk about putting the carriage before the horse … we get a swimming sign at Ram 2 inside a building full of pingpong tables, badminton nets and strange stage props.

“I think art works best in people’s memories. For me, it’s not just the act of going to see it on the wall. I’m not saying it’s bad to do that, although very often it can be disappointing, you know? But in the memory, with all the things you’ve heard about it, all the stories, art becomes this great, rich, flexible, thing.”

- Urs Fischer

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