Namkheun Collective
Co-founder and artistic director
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.
- 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’
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.
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.
I suppose it is frost screen, 2021
still image on digital screen, 16:9
The Exhibition wall text
English / Spanish / Korean
2023
Published by ourwork.is (Hong Kong)
Printed by Repro.nl
Utrecht, Natherlands
29.7 x 42 cm, 24 pages, offset printing, folded out, color,
An edition of 288 on 55 grams newsprint
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 and the third issue, brought together in Bangkok by textual collective NAMKHEUN in collaboration with Hong Kong-based Display Distribute. This fourth edition has been instigated as ultra-circulatory study material for the Ultradependent Public School, an initiative of basis voor actuele kunst (BAK) in Utrecht, Netherlands. The allotted budget has been utilised in its entirety for printing.
Twitter: @namkheun
Instagram: @namkheun
Website: namkheun.com
