Collective work — Lita Ch

Namkheun Collective

Co-founder and artistic director

Translated as ‘Rising Tides’, Namkheun (น้ำขึ้น) is a literary collective based in Bangkok, Thailand. Namkheun is a product of disgruntled text exchanges and over-the-phone gossip sessions between three friends over the years. Together, we raged over the state of the world. Together, we shared memes, unfulfilled dreams, and personal insights. And so in 2020, Namkheun materialised as an extension of such activities, an open chat if you will. Namkheun Collective consists of Kritti Tantasith,
Wirunwan Victoria Pitaktong, and Lita Chala-adisai.

First Project: Namkheun Manifesto

Namkheun Manifesto began with a simple and personal question: ‘Why do I find this manifesto I’m reading so moving?’. Six manifestos were selected, and translated into Thai, based on our own affinity and allegiance to the urgencies raised by each manifesto. Regarding these manifestos as points of departure for further reading of proposed modes of resistance, the project aims to interrogate our own engagement with the texts, and form a conversation with the reader by teasing out resonances among contexts.

6 manifestos include:

The Digital Humanities Manifesto
The Queer Nation Manifesto (1990)
A Killjoy Manifesto (2016)
A Cyberfeminist Manifesto for the 21st Century (1991)
Trans Health Manifesto
Guerilla Open Access Manifesto (2008)

The Queer Nation Manifesto poster, 2021, A1

A Cyberfeminist Manifesto for the 21st Century Manifesto publication, 10.5 x 29.7 cm, b/w and color, offset, staple and loose bound, softcover

Namkheun Notes

Top picks publications at Bookshop Library

Interview with Bookshop Library team ‘Newsletter April 2022’

BLACK BOOK ASSEMBLY:
MORE-THAN-HALF-A-YEAR-REVIEW issue 03

Thai / English / Chinese / Indonesian / Korean

2022
Published by ourwork.is (Hong Kong)
Printed by Metta Printing
Bangkok, Thailand

15 x 20.5 cm, 160 pages, b/w, digital, case bound, hardcover

The Black Book Assembly More-Than-Half-a-Year-in-Review is an irregularly published newsletter initiative of the Black Book Assembly, a loose network of activist writers, artists and publishers from East and Southeast Asia. Each issue is edited from a different locale but treads across geographies to maintain the affinities of common struggle and deepen the toolbox of means and manoeuvres. The first issue began under the pavement of Hong Kong, followed by issue two edited by the Little Black Book Club of Seoul. This third issue, brought together in Bangkok, has been edited by textual collective Namkheun in collaboration with Hong Kong-based Display Distribute. Three years, myriad movements and now amid a pandemic, we ask: When we are no longer able to assemble, what are we doing now?

A Raindrop Caged Awaits a Raging Storm

Derived from Anon Nampa’s powerful utterance, ‘A raindrop caged awaits a raging storm’ (ขังฝนเม็ดเดียว เขาจะเจอกับห่าฝน) is a translation project of words circulated during the detention of political activists from 2020 to 2021. Initiated by
ซอย | soi, a platform for writing, editing, and publishing in the expanded field, in collaboration with Namkheun Collective, we selected, translated, and edited words from political activists delivered during 2020-2021. ‘A raindrop caged awaits a raging storm’ is not a corpus, but moments of utterance to be bound up with others.

Pan-Southeast Asia Triennial Serial Research Exhibition

Project at Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, Guangzhou city, China

BULLET TEXT is a chapter in the exhibition Does It Matter That We’ve Just Met, If Our Hearts Understand: Two Responses to Social Practice as part of the first Trans-Southeast Asia Triennial. The exhibition is held at the Art Museum of Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, from 21 Nov 2021 to 20 March 2022.

One of the five participating collectives from Southeast Asia, Namkheun worked on the publication called I suppose it is frost on the ground.

A part of I suppose it is frost on the ground. publications

I suppose it is frost on the ground is a collection of excerpts and textual products that emerge from the hostile climate of Thai politics. These are texts taken from prison letters and visitation notes. These are texts written as everyday utterances which do not necessarily evoke the rhetoric of democracy. It is from these utterances that we are able to sail across the international waters of sentiments and sensibilities.

In the context of this exhibition, we aim to use these letters not as display objects in themselves, but rather as an entry point into a network of textual references across overlapping temporal, sociocultural,

linguistic, or sensorial regimes. We aim to interrogate our engagement with the letters, either through our translating or possible dialogue with other activists (i.e. Black Window). We expect that this engagement will leave textual traces, and it is these traces that the exhibition will feature.