Vong Phaophanit is best-known for sculptural works and installations in which he quietly captures the viewer's attention by making ordinary materials strange and then slowly reveals multiple layers of often contradictory meanings. He was born in 1961 in Savannakhet, Laos. In 1971, his family sent him to France to receive a formal Western education. He returned to Laos for summer holidays in 1972 and 1973. He studied art in Aix-en-Provence, France, in the early 1980s and then moved to England in 1984. In 1996, he visited Laos for the first time in twenty-three years. The country that he saw was very different from the one he had left—traditional cultural values had evolved in concert with the social, political, and economic changes the country had experienced since 1975. He traveled again to Laos in 2000, and then he returned in conjunction with The Quiet in the Land in 2005. Phaophanit currently lives in London.
Phaophanit's Lao heritage has remained an important influence on his work. Many of these works embody contradictions that reflect his identity as a Lao person living in England who has faced the challenge of living between cultures. In Neon Rice Field (1993), he arranged seven tons of white rice in neat furrows on the floor of an art gallery, with each furrow marked by a tube of red neon light. The strange aesthetic appeal of this work evoked a sense of respect for the waste of the symbol-laden material from which it was constructed. In the mid-1990s, he created another series of works using neon light tubes. For example, in Azure Neon Body (1994), he fabricated 112 Lao words out of blue neon light tubes and placed them haphazardly into a long, narrow trough on the floor. The mass of tubes evoked a body whose glowing light and sinuous curves possessed a seductive, yet strangely disorienting, visual appeal. The vast majority of viewers who saw this work, which was exhibited in Europe, could not even recognize that the tubes formed words, but they could appreciate the work's beauty. In revealing what language cannot say, Phaophanit gave viewers the opportunity to experience the challenges, as well as the pleasures, attendant to the process of adapting to a culture that is foreign to one's own.
But Phaophanit's works typically place his interest in contemplating the meaning of his Lao heritage in the context of broader aesthetic and philosophical concerns. He is particularly interested in the unnoticed fabric of our everyday environment—the ordinary materials that we look at but never really see. He believes that these materials carry the potential for new meanings, and he has stated that he sees his work as "a process of making these ordinary materials show themselves in new ways." Atopia (1999), which means "without place," is an installation made from thousands of "pigeon sticks" (steel spikes placed on the ledges of buildings in certain U.S. and European cities to keep pigeons away), arranged on layers of light-reflecting plastic sheets. From a distance, the viewer sees a shimmering reflective surface; upon closer inspection the threatening nature of the spikes comes into focus. Thus, the work simultaneously functions as a metaphor for a place of beauty and danger.
THE QUIET IN THE LAND ART AND EDUCATION PROJECT
ARTIST: VONG PHAOPHANIT—APRIL 2005—1ST VISIT
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Vong Phaophanit was born in 1961 in Savannakhet, Laos. In 1970, his family sent him to France to be educated where he studied art in Aix-en-Provence from 1980 to 1985. He became a British citizen in 1993 and now lives in London. He has exhibited internationally and his work is included in major public and private collections. He is currently working on a number of large-scale public commissions and often collaborates with architects, landscape designers, and choreographers.
Although trained as a painter, he now works mostly on large-scale installation/sculpture-based works, which often include materials such as lead, bamboo, rice, neon, rubber, slide projections, and video productions. The use of light is also a vital element in his work.
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
In the context of The Quiet in the Land, Vong Phaophanit is making a video on Luang Prabang today. Trying to avoid clichés, the artist is documenting how the city is changing and how it is being transformed every day by tourism and globalization. He is documenting the life of the city at different moments of the day, of the year, as well as through different ceremonies and rituals. He looks at the invisible city, the intimacy of the people and how the city reveals itself through the rituals of everyday life. He is investigating the memory of the people, their objects, their past, as well as questioning the changes in their life, their work, and their education. Has becoming a World Heritage City changed their city? How do people see their historical houses, the objects of their heritage, the preservation and conservation of this heritage? What changes are taking place in the Buddhist rituals and ceremonies, in the lives of their monks and novices?
There are old objects, new objects of everyday life, cars, buses, computers as well as an increase in population brought in by globalization. Changes are taking place in the markets, in the way people live, eat, and entertain themselves.
The city will reveal itself slowly: the good changes, the problematic ones, the ones that are avoidable, the ones that are not. The city full or the city empty.
METHODOLOGY
The artist is working with three art students, Sone Khounepaseuth, Khamla Punhyasith, and Bangon Heuangnakhone. The first part of the project will take place during the months of July, August, and September 2005 (twelve weeks). The artist's second visit to Luang Prabang will be in October 2005 for Boun Ok Phansa. To do his or her work, each student will borrow a camera and a tape recorder from The Quiet in the Land project. The students will be asked to work three hours a week at $5US per hour for these three months. Each idea will have to be documented with twenty photographs or ten minutes of sound. Each photograph will have to be documented with the time, the place, the names of the people in the photographs and what is taking place.
The second step will consist of filming with the artist in October at various places discovered through the students' photographs. Some of the photographs will be used as part of the film as well, and an exhibition of the material could eventually be organized.
As a first step, the research will consist of collecting visual and audio material on the following twelve ideas:
- EVERYDAY LIFE: the life of families inside their houses and their daily activities, such as cooking, cleaning, the furniture, the objects, the people.
- HISTORICAL MATERIAL OF LUANG PRABANG: old pictures of everyday life, ceremonies, family snapshots, photographs in which we see inside (sitting room, kitchen, verandah, etc.) and outside (streets, monuments, etc.) and elements of decoration.
- SCARY PLACES: a place that you are afraid to visit and why; a place that could be inhabited by spirits or a place where you were told something bad happened, a house, a forest, an empty place, a public building. You have to find the story related to that place and write it.
- ACTIVITIES RELATED TO THE RIVERS: activities of the population that relate to the life of the rivers, the ceremonies that are linked to the rituals of water, such as the boat races, Boun Ok Phansa, etc.
- WALKING MEDITATION CELLS: document the various meditation cells around Luang Prabang, such as at Vat Hatsieo, Vat Long Koun, Vat Kok Phap.
- SOUNDS OF THE CITY AT NIGHT
- NOVICES OR MONKS IN THEIR KOUTIS in their everyday life environment.
- PORTRAITS OF TOURISTS: visiting a tourist site, where tourists live, eat, and shop, as well as entertainment places such as bars, discos.
- MARKETPLACES at different times of the day, with people and without people. (Phosy market, Naviengkham Mai market, Chinese market, Pakham Food Market, Handicraft Night Market, etc.)
- OJBECTS AND PRODUCTS THAT CAN BE FOUND AT THE DIFFERENT MARKETS: natural, manufactured, traditional, modern, big, small, usual, surprising, modest, outstanding, cheap, expensive.
- SOUNDS OF THE MARKETS: loud, delicate, pleasant, unpleasant, natural, mechanical, human, animal, voices, shouting, singing.
- PREPARATION OF A CEREMONY AND RELATED OBJECTS
*THIS IDEA CAN BE DOCUMENTED AT ANY TIME DURING THE THREE MONTHS DEPENDING ON THE SCHEDULE OF THE CEREMONIES OR RITUALS - CAGED BIRDS IN LUANG PRABANG: sound and photographs