People on Sunday
Tulapop Saenjaroen 19 Dec 2019 - 26 Apr 2020“ People on Sunday ” (2019) is a reinterpretation, a response, and a homage to a pioneered German silent film “ Menschen Am Sonntag ” (1930) or literally translated as “People on Sunday”. Nevertheless, this response is executed from a different context, different era, different country, and different working conditions. The original film was one of the first films that marketed itself as “a film with no actors” as it employed only amateur-actors/non-actors. Its anecdote is that the film was shot only on Sundays in 1929 as these non-professional actors had to work on weekdays. What initiated Tulapop to revisit and reinterpret the film was the setting of the story—simply about their day-off, life in free time. From Tulapop’s point of view, these non-professional actors performed as they were having pleasure leisure for the camera, having free time while they’re actually working. In other words, they worked/acted as not-working/not-acting. This film attempts to provoke the question of representability of free time, of cognitive labour, of contemporary work ethic, and of the paradox between control and freedom via the frame of cinema.
“ People on Sunday ” (2019) is roughly consisted of three parts: the performance at the national park, behind the scene of the performance, and the post-production of the behind the scene video in a rental domestic room. All parts are accompanied with voiceovers: the voice of one of the female performers, the voice of the scopophobic behind-the-scene cameraman, and the voice of the freelancer who works with computer at her home respectively.
The exhibition also features an electronic song remixing the voice recording outtakes of the actress and colouring images customised via an online form and coloured by the performers from the video.
About the artist :
Tulapop Saenjaroen’s (b.1986) interests in artistic practice revolve around cognitive and free labour, production of subjectivity, postcolonial mentality towards advanced technology, the paradoxes intertwining control and freedom, and aesthetics and politics aspects on mental/physical image production. Recent works of his have dealt with the political relation between what is represented in a frame and what is left out—how they associate, create and govern aesthetic or ‘rational’ codes of meaning/feeling, and how they pre-interpret, homogenise, and sanitise our understanding of an image and the subject it represents.
" People on Sunday " by Tulapop Saenjaroen will be on view at 100 Tonson Gallery from 19 December 2019 until 10 March 2020, Thursday - Sunday, 11:00am — 7:00pm.
For more information please contact us via info@100tonsongallery.com or call (+66)2-510-5813
This exhibition is supported by 100 Tonson Foundation
