KORAKRIT ARUNANONDCHAI AND ALEX GVOJIC

— Excerpt from Psychoanalysis of Fire by Gaston Bachelard

BANGKOK CITYCITY GALLERY is pleased to present “PRAY” (Songs for living in a room filled with people with funny names) by Korakrit Arunanondchai & Alex Gvojic. A large-scale installation, totalling 40 minutes duration on an infinite loop, the exhibition will be on view to the public from March 10–April 24, 2022.

“Songs for living’’ provides excerpts from Simone Weil’s Gravity and Grace, Edouard Glissant’s Sun of Consciousness, and On Prayer, a poem by the Polish-American poet, Czesław Miłosz. From separate times and places these writers survived under oppres- sive regimes with the provocation of their art. What they had in common was that they fought for a spiritual clarity amidst the forcefulness of symbolic communions. It is from this space of holding onto the uncertain, which allowed them to refuse. Instead of speaking directly to their rulers, they found ways to make songs, using the discards left over from the struggles of power.

I am not saying we are powerless. I am no longer interested in power. I am asking,who is it that we pray to? Are these prayers meant to unite us with our legitimate rulers or do they only take us somewhere further away?

“and all I know isthat prayer constructs a velvet bridgewalking it we are aloftas on a springboardabove landscapesthe color of ripe goldtransformed by a magic stopping of the sunthat bridge leads to the shore of Reversalwhere everything is just the opposite and the word “is”unveils a meaning we hardly envisionednotice I say “we”ThereEveryoneseparately feels compassion for the others entangled in the flesh and knows that if there is no other shorewe will walk that aerial bridge all the sameall the same”

— On Prayer by Czesław Miłosz