Graphy Animation Review

PUBLISHED: 22 MAY 2024
WRITER: THANUT RUJITANONT

‘KHON-temporary’ (2022)
by Methas Chantawongs

‘Khon-temporary’ by Mathas Chantawongs, a Thai audio-visual practitioner, is roughly 4-minute animation reinterpreting the story of the Ramakien, ‘รามเกียรติ์’ in Thai, one of Thailand’s Indian-influenced national epics. The animation’s title is a multiple pun on ‘Con’, which means ‘together’ in the Latin prefix, with ‘Khon’, ‘โขน’, which means a dance drama genre from Thailand, and ‘Khon’, ‘คน’, which means ‘human’ in Thai. This pun does not only link to the story of ‘Nontok’, a slave giant expelled from a god’s realm Chantawongs handpicks from the original epic, but also reflects the work itself as ‘Contemporary art’.

Being born is a gift or a punishment from the god? ‘Khon-temporary’ (the Human Temporary) engenders a temporal existence of a new-born human who embarks on its life journey since the moment it is in its mother’s womb, in other word, floating from under water in an underground sewerage in this story.

A human version of Nontok is walking around aimlessly under the lights of the city, parts of his body, its head, legs and hands are dissected, and they create distinct and peculiar movements. The body’s gestures and postures perform and find their own paths to live, as a reinterpreted version of ‘Khon-temporary’ (the Thai dance drama genre), a challenging adaptation process in the present time. The animation ends by simultaneously manifesting on-going complicated, hectic, ‘Contemporary’ lives, yet giving a hope of togetherness.

This work stands firmly on the resilient re-use of existing stories from traditional art that expands the interpretability of cultural authority and becomes a contemporary voice. This animation was funded by the Office of Contemporary Art and Culture of Thailand and had been in international festivals, including the ‘SOLIDARITY’ screening programme at Kino Club Helsinki in Finland, where I was fortunate to watch this animation which was rare to find from Thai animation directors, and at the time when Russia had just invaded Ukraine in 2022 and solidarity was needed.