3. Meet Kawita Vatanajyankur, the Thai artist pushing boundaries in art, tech and AI
If you’re familiar with Bangkok’s art scene, you’re no stranger to Kawita Vatanajyankur. The Thai-born and based performance artist is known for her bold and striking conceptual work that delves into topics like female labour, oppression, hyperconsumerism and, most recently, AI.
Her work is as much physical as it is symbolic. In Mental Machine, she painstakingly enfolds her entire body with a roll of red yarn like a spool; in Voice of the Oppressed, Kawita teeters on a cannon within a glass box, objectified as a gunpowder machine. Across her performances, the audience watches intently as she puts herself through gruelling, repetitive tasks, often pushing her bodily limits as she subjects herself to industrial tools or personifies everyday domestic objects.
Her latest work, however, sees her pushing creative boundaries at the intersection of art, tech and AI, as she explores the impact of machines and technology on human capital. Following a recent trip to Bangkok (where I caught her live performance, Voice of the Oppressed, at the Bangkok Art and Cultural Center), I caught up with Kawita for a Q&A.
In the conversation, we discuss
Her thoughts on AI and its impact on human labour
Performance art as a medium for change
The biggest artistic influence on her work
1. Your recent work, Voice of the Oppressed, which features cybernetic, AI versions of yourself feels very topical, in a time of GPT-3. How did the idea or concept come about?
My partner on the project Pat and I were talking about the rapid change of technologies like GPT-3, which was once only known by scientists but is now accessible to everyone. Pat’s a researcher, but also a PhD candidate at MIT Media Lab. We discussed how machines have rapidly become human-like; while humans are still dehumanized. You can see this in the corruption, oppression, exploitation, and the labourers protesting for living wages in Thailand.
Referencing the Pedagogy of the Oppressed as the basis of the project, Pat then created two artificial intelligence (AI) in my likeness. They have opposite mindsets: Kawitash1 (left) believes in oppression and Kawitash2 (right), believes in freedom. In the live performance of Voice of the Oppressed, I’m controlled by both AIs. In one, I’m objectified as a gunpowder machine and, in parallel, a water cannon that attempts to clean the dirt. However, every four minutes the black returns and the water cannon is deployed again in an ongoing battle. As human beings, we are stuck in this glass cave, struggling to find the meaning of freedom and still shrouded in a cloud of uncertainty.
2. In your mind, what is the most central message or theme in your work?
I grew up in a family that was heavily involved in law and justice. We lived in a compound together - all 50 of us. My grandpa was the president of the Supreme Court, my aunt was an attorney, and my grandma was a senator. My grandmother was heavily involved in justice work for sex workers, which had a big influence on me. I'm also especially close to my aunt, who works in labour exploitation, human trafficking, and domestic violence.
Every night during dinner, we would have conversations about these topics. It became my life. I was inspired by our discussions and was curious about their cases each day. It made me believe in justice and human rights; if the law changed, society could change. But if people are not aware of the law or the prevailing injustices, then the law won't be able to change. It's also important for them to understand how it feels to be objectified and dehumanized, and I wanted to explain this visually.
My work, whether that’s Voice of the Oppressed and Mental Machine, is not black-and-white; rather, I’m interested in exploring the grey areas.
3. What is your mental headspace like during these physical performances?
Time was like a meditative state for me during these performances. In Voice of the Oppressed, my team and I knew that I should not do it for more than 30 minutes, otherwise I could die in that room. Although I’d only planned to do it for a half hour, I ended up spending more time. A lot of the time was spent trying to understand how I felt at that moment and if I could find an answer during the performance.
“My work, whether that’s Voice of the Oppressed and Mental Machine, is not black-and-white; rather, I’m interested in exploring the grey areas.”
4. Do you hope to come out of one of your performances with an insight? Or are you open to whatever experience comes out of it?
I didn't practice for [Mental Machine] beforehand because I wanted to experience it without any preconceived notions. If I had practised, I would have created a plan of what I could do and it would have distracted me from really feeling and experiencing it for the first time. It was more of a self-experiment to see what came up for me emotionally while performing.
5. The way I see it, each one of your works builds upon the other thematically. As a performance artist, does the engagement with the subject matter ends for you once the performance is over or is it an ongoing piece?
I think it's ongoing. For example, Cyber Labor, my series of live performances and AI installations, has a long way to go.
6. You’ve said before that art is a form of soft power, and that as a performance artist, you're a medium that represents the voices of people. Who do you feel that you're speaking for, or speaking to?
It depends on the topic, but (I speak) for everyone and to everyone. I want to be a messenger for the people oppressed by the system. I remember going to India for Field Work and speaking to farmers working in the fields, asking questions and brainstorming with them about the message they wanted to convey. I wanted to gather as many interviews as possible for this series to ensure a representation of that message.
With Performing Textiles, I went to the factories to interview and speak to the garment workers behind the scenes. Every time I do a series of work, I would do a documentary of the interviews as well. This way I could establish that this is their message, and this is me as a medium.
6. Does the cultural or geographical setting influence the way you speak about specific subject matters?
Yes, definitely. For instance, I’ve shown Performing Textiles in so many cities and I think it takes on a different meaning and context in every city I show in. I had a show at the Jim Thompson House Museum in Bangkok. As the former home of Jim Thomson (who was often credited for revitalising the dying Thai silk industry), it’s essentially a historical place for Thailand’s textile industry. In one of the rooms, I presented Spinning Wheels at a table that once belonged to King Rama V of Thailand. I contrasted that with an image of a female labourer cleaning the dishes in the sink. So yes, I think the site gives meaning to the work, and amplifies the message. This works both ways.
Exhibiting this in New Zealand for the first time was a completely different experience. The series began there, while I was travelling looking for research in wool production. I started my journey by talking to farmers and wool exporters in New Zealand, and then returned to Thailand where I visited farms and factories to see how different it is. What I found was that culturally, farmers in New Zealand are highly valued, whereas farmers in Thailand or India are suffering. In Japan, I remember the response that stood out was they felt like they were machines because their standards of work were very high and they were expected to produce output fast.
It was this contrast that inspired me to create Performing Textiles in the first place. Viewers in New Zealand would interpret the work differently because exploitation in the textile industry isn’t a pressing issue there the way it is in Thailand.
7. Is there another surprising creative influence on your work?
My dad was a creative producer and he organized Bangkok’s first film festival, which was very inspiring for me. It was through conversations with him that I learned about character development, action and reaction in films, and the symbolism within them.
Apart from my parents, Marina Abramović was a huge influence on me as a university student. I was amazed by her work and wondered how she could tolerate (all her performances). Her work, One Minute Silence, was a major source of inspiration for me and I think you can see that in a lot of my work.
8. Is there a theme or a subject that you're keen to explore further down the line?
I'm considering a few things. As I’ve explored ‘machinised’ humans and humanised machines in my earlier work, I’m thinking of working more on the latter. My recent work, Voting Theatre, was something I felt like I had to do. It’s a live interactive installation at the Bangkok Art and Cultural Center (BACC), that features an ongoing conversation between my two AI alter egos. It’s formatted like a game show where the audience gets a chance to dictate certain outcomes. I’ve never created art in this medium before - part gameshow, part performance - and this is something I would like to dig into further with Cyber Labour. I'm very interested in mediums like virtual reality too.
9. Is there any upcoming projects or work that you can tease or already share?
I'm doing new work for Field Work, which I recently showcased at a solo booth at the 2023 Hong Kong Art Basel. I completed the series in 2020, but I never got a chance to display this series anywhere.
Visit Kawita’s website to learn more about her portfolio of work and upcoming exhibits.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity. Subscribe to Hatched in Asia to stay up to date with must-know women founders, creators and creatives in Asia.