Synopsis

Collapsing Clouds Form Stars blends documentary and experimental methods, commonly involving intensive filming on location. The artist points to the plights written out of mainstream history and weaves together the complexity of peoples, cultures, ethnicities, and beliefs that have shaped modern Thailand. 

It pays tribute to the brave, ordinary, and politically threatened who have led Thai resistance movements throughout history. Visiting the sites where these events took place and shaped the public’s perception of them, the piece creates a time-lapse gallery of still images, drawing connections between the spirit of past rebellion and the current struggle for power. The concept and form of this piece evolved from the idea of ​​constellations and cloud formations, symbolizing the difficulty of uniting to demand the rights of ordinary people, but the fact that clouds will eventually coalesce into stars.

* This film is made from still images.

Commissioned for APT10 by Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art 

“Som Supaparinya has developed a unique form of video-making that blends documentary and experimental methods, commonly involving intensive filming on location. Through her work, she points to the plights written out of mainstream history and weaves together the complexity of peoples, cultures, ethnicities and beliefs that have shaped modern Thailand. In Collapsing Clouds Form Stars, Supaparinya pays homage to the brave, ordinary, and politically threatened people who have led Thai resistance movements throughout recent history.

To create the work, Supaparinya travelled around the country researching and navigating often unassuming sites where historical conflicts and uprisings occurred. Building a repository of time-lapse still images, she has captured these sites in their present form, drawing a connection between the spirit of past rebellion and the power struggles of today. The concept and form of the work was developed around the idea of clusters of stars and the formation of clouds; a metaphor for the gatherings and departures of the people who shape places and histories.”

Nagesh, T., Keehan, R., McDougall, R. (2021). The 10th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art. Brisbane, Australia; Queensland Art Gallery [Download PDF file]

Collapsing Clouds Form Stars is a 24-minute, black and white single channel video comprised of 1000 to 1500 time lapse still images that document a constellation of twenty-four different sites of historical violence and local resistance across Thailand including Narathiwat and Pattani in Southern Thailand, which are the locations of the ongoing insurgency in the South, and Ubon Ratchathani in the Northeast, which saw the Isaan Holy Man Rebellion at the turn of the 20^th century against internal colonisation by the Siamese. Describing the process of travelling to make the work as a “pilgrimage” to these locations, and the work itself as a “homage to the brave, ordinary, and politically threatened people who have led Thai resistance movements,” Som has explained that for her, each of these places resonate with the memory of that collective resistance and “the spirit of the ordinary people who fought for their rights.” She wanted to experience the atmosphere in each of the locations not only to “feel the reaction” from the environment, but for her to be able to sense it looking back at her. “As a woman, standing for about one to two hours” in “unusual locations with a professional camera and tripod” she thought that perhaps she would sense something of the lingering energy in the space. And perhaps someone seeing her there, might also sense something through her presence, about the events that had taken place on the site, erased from history books and now mostly forgotten. Historian Thongchai Winichakul writes that in the shadow of state violence there exists a space of ambivalence and liminality where one can neither remember nor forget. He conceptualises the relationship between national trauma and memory as a silence, an absence of sound that exists alongside passive processes of misremembering, facilitated and encouraged by the state. Tracing what can no longer be seen or spoken of, but might still be felt, through the layering of sound and image, Collapsing Clouds Form Stars becomes an archive of atmospheres as it captures the reverberation of historic violence and refuses to forget. 

Philippa Lovatt, Collapsing Clouds Form Stars, a Mini Retrospective of Work by Som Supaparinya, March 2025, Bangkok, Thailand, Gallery VER

Reviews

• Jasmin Stephens, A Positive Tango: Artists and Institutions in APT10, Art Monthly Australia, Bumper issue 330, Summer 2021-2022. [download PDF file]
• Nagesh, T., Keehan, R., McDougall, R. (2021). The 10th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art. Brisbane, Australia; Queensland Art Gallery [Download PDF file]
• Caitlin, All A Part: APT10 Professional Engagement Forums: Visibility/Invisibility, 2022. [PDF]
• วรพร รุ่งวัฒนโสภณ, นิทรรศการ ‘โลกร้าว’ เรื่องเล่าขนาดย่อมของช่วงเวลาแห่งสงครามเย็น ผ่านสายตาและผลงานศิลปินหลากสัญชาติ, The Momentum, 12 May 2025, Bangkok, Thailand [download PDF file]
• Giovanni Quaglia, Som Supaparinya: A Mini-Retrospective at Gallery VER, A Reflection on Thailand’s Political, Social, and Ecological Imbalances, BKK Art Mag, 31 January 2025 [PDF]
• Alexandre Melo, Reviews Bangkok Som Supaparinya Gallery VER, Art Forum, Summer Issue International 2025, New York, USA. [download PDF file]
• ภานุ บุญพิพัฒนาพงศ์, ฝุ่นถล่มเป็นดาว การสำรวจผลกระทบจากอำนาจรัฐ ที่มีต่อประชาชน, Matichon Weekend มติชน สุดสัปดาห์ คอลัมน์ อะไร(แม่ง)ก็เป็นศิลปะ, 18 February 2025, Bangkok, Thailand [download PDF file]
• Philippa Lovatt, Collapsing Clouds Form Stars, a Mini Retrospective of Work by Som Supaparinya, March 2025, Bangkok, Thailand, Gallery VER