Drawing A Motion on Death

Abstract

Abstract

“The young, the old, the dumb, the wise, death awaits them.”

Phya Anuman Rajadhon

               This paper is a discussion of the conscious and unconscious creative approaches and processes employed to create the installation animation on the theme of Death for the exhibition, ‘Dialogic’ at the Bangkok Arts and Culture Centre in 2011. The commissioned exhibition was inspired by writings about Thai culture by Phya Anuman Rajadhon. The installation was a creative collaboration with his granddaughter, performance artist Pattarasuda Anuman Rajadhon, Bua.

               The conscious method for the animation construction used narrative theories to help structure and create the four projections for the maze, which the viewers had to walk through to reach Death and /or rebirth. Animation means to breathe life into something so the creation of animation to represent ‘Death’ is perhaps more of an oxymoron. The unconscious process was employed to create animations that are of memories not yet experienced or seen (jamais vu), depicting the cultural theoretical emotive state and experience of Death as explored in 1960’s Thailand by the great grandfather, now passed, of Bua: adding a further dimension of memory and association.

               The key representation of Death in the projections is one of memory and the space between life and death, a continuous and ever present part of life’s cycle

‘This is death and the end of the journey and the beginning’

Pattarasuda Anuman Rajadhon

To conclude the paper will discuss the audience experience of the installation and animation