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Known for his whimsical gardens and novel interiors, Bill Bensley reigns as one of the world’s most sought-after hotel and resort designers. Think he might run out of new ideas soon? Think again. by william bredesen
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private game reserve in Southeast Asia? When Bill Bensley dreams, he dreams big. The renowned luxury hotel and resort designer has begun working on an ambitious new project in central Cambodia where he said he plans to build an 18-tent luxury campground that’s “completely, 100 percent off the grid.” The 3,500-hectare plot of land, situated between two national parks, is home to wild bear, elephants, gaur (a species of wild cattle), hornbills, gibbons, and fishing cats, among other animals. In the middle of this vast remote wilderness, Bensley aspires to create a self-sustaining, highend camping experience like no other. And if history is any guide, he might be onto another winning idea here. His last outing in the luxury camping genre, the Four Seasons Tented Camp Golden Triangle, which opened in 2006, was ranked the No 1 hotel in the world for three straight years by Condé Naste Traveler, despite having no walls, no room service and no airconditioning in the spa. The resort simply created a magical guest experience, defined by elephant excursions deep into the bamboo jungles. “In Cambodia, I want to
take that 10 times, turn up the volume on this doggy,” said Bensley, 54, in his folksy native California drawl. “I want to make it way more of an adventure.” Bensley then squinted his eyes shut, as though deep in concentration, and described how each tent in Cambodia will have its own “super luxurious go-kart” with wheels large enough to traverse the rugged terrain. Guests can spend their days on “safari,” seeking out wildlife, or in the nearby national parks, stopping to enjoy white-tablecloth picnic lunches. “It’s a super-luxury exploration, if you will,” Bensley explained. Shinta Mani Wild, as the property will be known, is scheduled to open next fall.
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To stock its kitchens – the resort plans to generate its own food and electricity – it will turn to a recently opened agricultural school in Siem Reap, where students sponsored by the Shinta Mani Foundation, which Bensley supports, recently began training to become organic farmers. Bensley has spent a great deal of time recently in Cambodia, working not only on the Shinta Mani Wild project and agricultural school, but also on the Shinta Mani Club and Shinta Mani Resort, as well as on rebranding the Hotel de la Paix into the Park Hyatt Siem Reap. “I like to be busy,” he said. On the day of our interview, Bensley said he planned to work on at least 10 different projects, “bouncing all over the place,” from Cambodia to
the Caribbean. His company, Bensley Design Studios, which he founded in 1989, today employs more than 150 designers, artists and architects, spread across offices in Bali and Bangkok. With his four Jack Russell terriers darting around the office, the bells attached to their collars jingling, the easy-going designer was asked about his creative process. “One of the most fun parts about designing
When I’m designing a hotel or resort, I think about it like I’m making a movie. And the most interesting movies, the ones that last the longest, are the ones you can watch and re-watch.
a resort is brainstorming the story you’re going to tell,” he said, reaching for a neatly-rolled scroll paper on the table. As Bensley began to unravel the document, “The History of Phuket as Interpreted by Bill Bensley” scrolled past like a film strip, beginning in 1522 with the arrival of the Portuguese, through the advent of tin mining, onward toward the present day. He had created the document for another resort project, on Koh Ratcha, off the southern tip of Phuket. “When I’m designing a hotel or resort, I think about it like I’m making a movie,” Bensley said. “And the most interesting movies, the ones that last the longest, are the ones you can watch and re-watch. Every time you see it, you notice something different. That’s how I think about doing a resort.” Bensley said he was using the “History of Phuket” scroll to help envision what island life might have been like in 1910, the year in which he is setting the resort. There would need to be a small village, a merchants’ quarters and a doctor’s home. “The more you can tell the story about a resort, the richer it is, and the more people love it,” Bensley said. But surely, when the daydreaming ends, the fun part is over, and the hard stuff inevitably remains, right? “There’s no hard part to my job,” said Bensley, reflexively. “It’s all fun. If it’s not fun, I don’t do it. But yes, it does take a lot of hard work and tenacity to get it done.” Some projects, Bensley said, might require input from dozens of people before they’re finally done. The InterContinental Danang Sun Peninsula Resort, which is still on-going, will have taken 11 or 12 years by the time everything is completed. Bensley said it’s “maybe the best thing
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we’ve ever done.” The accolades for Bensley and his design studio keep piling up. Both Architectural Digest and Time magazine have named him one of the world’s top 100 designers (with the latter also dubbing him “the king of exotic luxury resorts”). In August this year, Dorado Beach, a RitzCarlton Reserve in Puerto Rico whose spa Bensley designed, earned a CNN World Best Design Award. Jason Friedman, the general manager of The Siam, another
recent Bensley creation, has worked with the designer for years, beginning with the Four Seasons Tented Camp Golden Triangle, where Friedman served as GM for five years. “The thing about Bill is that he actually looks at where he’s building the hotel and how it’s going to fit in there,” Friedman said. “He doesn’t say, ‘I’m going to put my big glassand-steel box here, locals be damned.’” “And the guy is a sponge for ideas when he travels,”
Friedman added. “He travels 300 days or more a year, and he’s constantly looking, observing and processing wherever he goes.” On St. Kitts, south of Cuba in the Caribbean, where Bensley is designing Kittitian Hill for the US-based Sedona Resorts, he plans to introduce the world’s first edible golf course. (Yes, you read that correctly.) Bensley, whose career began as a celebrated landscape architect, envisions planting more than 2,000 edible plant species at
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There’s no hard part to my job. It’s all fun. If it’s not fun, I don’t do it. But yes, it does take a lot of hard work and tenacity to get it done.
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Kittitian Hill, including 30 different types of bananas. Even the lawnmowers will be edible, Bensley said. “Being goats,” he added, with a chuckle. In fact, Bensley’s original training was as a landscape designer (he holds a master’s degree from Harvard), and the early years of his career were defined by his imaginative gardens, lush walkways and lilyfilled ponds and lagoons. He
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made the leap to interiors in 2001, when William Heinecke, the CEO and chairman of the Minor Group, hired him to work on the Anantara Hua Hin. “What he brings is a unique outlook,” Heinecke said of Bensley. “We’ve worked with Bill for over 20 years, and because of him we have a tremendous appreciation for fine gardens and the environment around you. Even in the city hotels,
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that’s what gives you that leisure feeling.” The first Anantara project ended up marking a turning point in Bensley’s career. “After Anantara Hua Hin, he was no longer Bill Bensley, landscape designer, but Bill Bensley, designer,” said Joe Cummings, author of Journeys with Anantara, a new coffee table book. Bensley acknowledges that resort design must continue moving toward greater environmental sensitivity, and he said he’s working on a property in Phuket – “it’s going to be the best 4-star hotel in Phuket,” he predicted – that features guest rooms that only require 25 square metres of air conditioning in the sleeping area, the rest of the room space being cooled by cross-ventilation. Over the years, Bensley has established a number of trends in resort design, including being the first to use fire as a design element. Bensley first used fire 30 years ago in Lombok, near
What he brings is a unique outlook... Because of him we have a tremendous appreciation for fine gardens.
Bali, in a Sheraton. Today, fire is quite common in resorts. “And I think we were the first to do contouring within a pool,” Bensley said. “Now, every pool has seats inside it. But 30 years ago, I did a pool – actually it was for Mick Jagger – and it had a lounge chair where he could lie down and the water would only come up to here. As far as I know, we were the first people to do that.”
themagazine meets China’s most prominent artist, dissident, social critic and commentator Ai Weiwei.
interview by michael brown / photographed by benya hegenbarth
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burly bear of a man, Ai Weiwei resembles a warrior monk from a kung fu movie, his powerful face framed by a goatee beard and his precise, measured movements hinting at hidden reserves of strength. He is a man with an almost messianic mission to right the wrongs of the world and to hold the powerful accountable for their acts by exercising his right to freedom of speech, which is supposedly enshrined in China’s constitution. Once courted by the Chinese government as an innovative, contemporary voice who could help guide the country on its quest for modernity, his championing of social causes and especially his investigation into the devastating Sichuan earthquake in 2008 made him into an official pariah. Banned from the internet, dragged to court on trumped-up tax charges, fined, beaten by police, detained for 81 days without charge and forbidden to leave China, Ai Weiwei has weathered everything the government has thrown at him but he remains unbowed, a powerful symbol of the individual’s struggle for liberty in a totalitarian society. Performance artist, sculptor, architect, filmmaker, photographer and musician, Ai Weiwei’s creative output is sporadic but boundless in its imagination. He was a consultant on the Bird’s Nest stadium design for the Beijing Olympics but later disassociated himself from the project, condemning the event as China’s fake smile to the world. His art cannot be displayed in China but in the international arena he is considered a figure of global artistic significance. At the 2007 dOCUMENTA exhibition in Kassel, Germany he created a conceptual piece called Fairytale for which he built an outdoor
My life is not comparable to that of people who have no self-awareness or cannot speak out or even identify their feelings. So many people are worse off than me.
structure made of 1,001 doors salvaged from Ming and Qing houses that had been destroyed by uncontrolled development in Chinese cities and recruited 1,001 ordinary Chinese citizens to live in Kassel for the duration of the event. In Munich in 2009 in response to the official silence on the children who died in poorly constructed schools during the Sichuan earthquake he exhibited a work called So Sorry made up of 9,000 children’s backpacks arranged to form the characters for the message: “She lived happily on this earth for seven years”, a quotation from a mother of one of the victims. In 2010 he astounded the art world by filling a huge space at the Tate Modern in London with 100 million individually made porcelain sunflower seeds and asked the public to walk on them and crush them underfoot, apparently a reference to the millions of Chinese citizens who are trodden down by an oppressive government. While few Chinese will ever get to experience Ai Weiwei’s performance artworks, he wields enormous social influence inside the country through his prolific use of Twitter (@aiww). He has produced over 100,000 tweets and counts nearly a quarter of a million followers. Ai Weiwei lives in his studio on the outskirts of Beijing in the Caochangdi artist’s village. Behind high walls on a quiet street lined with ginko trees and surveillance cameras, his garden is filled with stray cats he has rescued from the neighborhood. The interview takes place at an outside table adorned with a crystal ashtray of the Bird’s Nest stadium. The whir of cicadas and the whistle of passing trains are the backdrop for the softly spoken but powerful words of this remarkable man.
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was considered anti-revolutionary and would be dangerous and potentially worsen his situation. Your family were exiled to Xinjiang in the far west of China, one of the remotest regions on earth. What are some of your memories of growing up there with your father? The first day we arrived in exile I remember I was sitting on top of a pile of coal in the back of the truck that brought us there. We needed the coal because it was extremely cold and without it we could not survive. I jumped down and went running about with no reason except for the pure joy at being in this vast open field that is the Gobi desert. What I remember of my childhood is that we were in a place that made you feel completely alone. The area was very dry and inhospitable. Life was reduced to the basic necessities of survival; water, food and shelter. Our house for the first five years was just a hole in the ground that we dug out and covered with branches and mud for a roof. Traditional houses in that area were built like that
When you were born in Beijing in 1957, your father, the famous poet and artist Ai Qing, was a favourite of Mao and a leading member of the Communist party intelligentsia. You should have had a golden childhood, but by the time you were five years old your family were struggling to survive in the Gobi desert. How did that happen? At that time it was like today in North Korea. Colleagues, neighbours and strangers would report and denounce you. My father defended a fellow poet who had been denounced and for this he was condemned to exile and nineteen years hard labour cleaning public toilets. The work was so heavy, for the first five years he worked every day with no time off as he was the only person assigned to the job. When I grew up I didn’t see him as a poet, but as a person who didn’t belong to anything. He was a poet by profession but they didn’t allow him to write. The mere act of writing
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as they had the advantage of being a bit cooler in summer and much warmer in winter. My impression of my father was that he was a very honest man. He was also very poetic and passionate but honesty was his essence. He believed that through honesty you can really influence people. He was always precise, always on time. Even when he slept, his shoes would be arranged neatly by the bed. He didn’t have much need for possessions, I always remember him wearing the same few clothes. His mind never stopped working and he was not limited by his physical situation. His thoughts were free and in his mind he was not in exile. I didn’t know what he was thinking about when he sat looking at plants or birds. He would take a piece of wood and cut it and polish it to a perfect shape, do anything to keep his mind focused. I’m not as disciplined as him, but what I did get was the idea of the freedom of one person’s mind and that no one can stop you from thinking. They can imprison your body but never your mind. I think that’s why they tried to exhaust him with work to make it so difficult and tiring that he had no energy and time left to think.
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His job was to clean and maintain the public latrines in the village and my works in the West then my situation would be almost exactly like I would sometimes help him. It was a long open trench with a small that of my father’s.The lessons I learned from him were not about art screen separating the men and women. The woman’s side was more and literature because those things were forbidden but about taking joy difficult to clean as there was much more liquid and I remember it in and being sensitive to simple things and a basic sense of right and being multi-coloured. It was really dirty; there was no toilet paper; wrong. Above all his commitment to honesty and personal integrity has helped me in ways that I could not even imagine. people would use leaves, grass or sand to clean themselves. My father always made sure that the toilets were perfectly maintained. When he was finished it was like a model for how it should be. Of Coming from an artistic family, did you make a conscious decision course the next day it was all messed up again and he would have to to become an artist? It came naturally to me. Painting and drawing were things I just did, redo the whole thing but I think it gave him some joy to do this work perfectly. Can you imagine how that was for a man such as my father not because I loved doing them. It’s like a shoemaker’s child will make who studied art in Paris and who loved the Impressionists and Rodin? shoes, it’s just part of their life. Today I see my young son who is four years After a day of hard labour, my father would have to get dressed old start to write poetry. I was shocked by the beauty of his poems but then up and be humiliated, beaten and insulted in front of hundreds of I realised that we are all artists and poets when we are born but teaching people. It was all for no reason as they had no idea why he was being and education makes us forget this and follow more practical professions. My father and all our family never had any practical skills, we were punished. They called him a novelist but he had never written a novel, just wandering artists. I never felt that it took only poetry. When he came home, sprayed a special kind of effort or skill to be an artist with black ink and dirt I would be shocked by even though we still need a lot of daily practice his appearance. This was not unique; at the and struggle to do it well. No one can avoid time this type of treatment was very common that. That’s why I can involve myself in social and happening all over China. It was justified and political arguments, because it is just like as being part of the so-called class struggle. my art in that it springs from my sensitivities But if I think about him I remember him This is the first time and recognition of the world since I was born. as someone who was always happy, always that an individual It’s like the political situation; people say passionate to have a conversation about can freely inform and “that’s dangerous, don’t touch it.” But I believe something he loved but shut off completely express themselves if you don’t act, the danger becomes stronger. I when he had no interest. My mother was a without reference enjoy confronting it to see what happens. This much simpler person, but she always made sure to their social or attitude has put me into very extreme situations the house and me and my brothers and sisters economic class on like the time I was physically beaten so badly by were very clean. any matter at all. a policeman that it almost cost me my life, or the official fines, imprisonment, banning and Did you get strength from your father’s false accusations I have been subjected to. But example during your own struggles with with all these frustrations I am still alive and I authority? can still talk with you, make music and art and I don’t think about it that often but the day even just enjoy the weather and the trees in my I was arrested I was very relaxed and I told the garden. I still have plenty of space for my own police that it reminded me of fifty some years ago when my father was arrested for the same reason – subversion of private joy that belongs only to me. These are the facts of my life but I don’t have much to complain state power. But they just laughed at me and said “this time it’s different.” My father used to speak to us about his life and when he studied in about. My life is not comparable to that of people who have no selfParis. As soon as he returned to China he was jailed for six years by awareness or cannot speak out or even identify their feelings. So many the nationalist Kuomintang government as a leftist. That’s where he people are worse off than me. started to write poetry. That was possible then. Nowadays you are not Why did you choose to go to New York when you first left China? allowed to write anything in prison or even ask for paper or a pen. My father loved Paris but for me New York was more contemporary. During my detention I could just sit here like this with two soldiers right in front of me or I could walk up and down in the cell. Even Actually I knew very little about the United States but I had read a lot the soldiers would be searched when they left my room. In my father’s of American classic literature like Walt Whitman and Mark Twain. The time he was able to send his poems outside and they were published idea I got from them was that America was a very beautiful place, which in newspapers and magazines. By the time he came out of detention it is in some ways, but of course it was nothing like those books. I had never read modern writers like Allen Ginsberg or listened to he had become a famous poet. Under the Nationalists there was more freedom of speech. Today my name cannot even be tapped into Bob Dylan before I went there. I just wanted to go to this new land, Chinese social media or if someone puts up a photo of me it will be with its equal opportunity and personal freedom. I suppose the reason why I really wanted to go there was because America was the country deleted. You can see how in fact the world has changed for the worse. My situation today is similar to his. At least they still allow me to China hated the most politically. I wanted to go to the most extreme, create art even though I can’t exhibit it in China. If I couldn’t show furthest place from my own country.
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What were some of your experiences in America? When I first arrived in Philadelphia I was on a student visa but I had no money on which to live and I spoke no English. I went around knocking on doors asking if I could do housecleaning or gardening. People were surprised to see an Asian when they first opened the door, but when I showed them my piece of paper explaining I was looking for odd jobs they were very friendly and helpful. I still remember the most difficult thing for me was to identify all the cleaning products they used. There were different ones for the piano, the furniture, the toilet, the floor and the kitchen but in China we just used one kind of soap that was good for everything. I got paid the minimum wage then: $3 an hour. I was a good cleaner and worked like a model Communist worker, always very fast and efficient. Even though people told me I should work slower and make more money, I just couldn’t do it. At first I was a student at various universities, but with no money to register for courses I dropped out and became an illegal alien. I was inspired by an article I read by the painter Jasper Johns
I once joined a group who took a sightseeing trip to the casinos in Atlantic City. In the beginning I wasn’t interested at all but after I read a book about Blackjack I tried to play a little bit. My record was pretty good and it brought me a small amount of cash that helped me survive. The most important lesson I learned from playing Blackjack was discipline. It’s a really tough job to be a gambler and you have to really concentrate hard and observe well to succeed at it.
who said that when he dropped out of art school he just told everyone he was an artist. I decided to do the same. The surrealist Marcel Duchamp helped me realise that being an artist was an attitude or a lifestyle and that gave me the excuse to stop studying and do what I wanted. At that time no one was interested in my art. Every time I moved apartment I had to throw away all my work because it would occupy half of the room and it made no sense to keep it. I think all these difficult experiences were important. Tragedy and misfortune give you the most important lessons in life if you can still continue working in your direction.
What was it like to return to China in 1993? When I was in New York I had no intention of ever going back to China. But when I came to see my father before he died I ended up staying on. After twelve years in America I had very little to show for it. I didn’t have an American passport. I didn’t even get a degree, when for people of my generation just getting into university was a great honour for the family. I never married; I had no fixed job and didn’t even drive a car. When I came back I realised that my mother was embarrassed to introduce me around as I had done nothing she could be proud of. A friend even asked me,“Did you really spend 12 years in America?” At first I lived with my mother and published a few underground art magazines to help local artists understand that even without galleries and exhibitions it was possible to get exposure and share ideas. I helped put together a few exhibits but I never thought that I would do art again. I started to collect antiques and old Chinese artifacts. For me it was a way to learn about the part of Chinese culture that I had
You are remembered in some circles in America not as an artist but as a professional gambler. How did that happen? Two to three years before I came back to China I was already waking up in the morning with no idea what to do with my time. I had no work to go to, I was tired of the museums and galleries and I didn’t have many friends to visit as they were all busy making a living.
If you had stayed in New York and didn’t come back to take care of your father what would you be doing? Most likely, I would still be living in Lower East Side where there are lots of people like me who are artists, writers, musicians and actors. None of them have formal jobs but they have a strong interest in what they are doing. We would go to poetry readings, performances and exchange ideas, it’s like you are in the centre of a stage with all these things happening around you and even if you do nothing you can feel like you have a full life. I was always a typical observer rather than a participant.
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missed out on and I became something of an expert on antique ceramics, fabrics and furniture. After six years I got bored with it and decided to open a studio and become an artist again. At that time in the 1990’s China was looking for new ideas in design but very few people had any international experience of contemporary art. I started to write in fashion and design magazines about aesthetic values and similar topics. By 2005, I had developed quite a reputation in design and architecture and I was approached by the government to share my ideas about design and art through a blog. They actually showed me how to use it because at that time I had no idea how these things worked. I was soon fascinated to use this media that could directly reach a mass audience. After about a year I felt really comfortable using it. Architecture and design always came naturally to me and I began to get deeply involved in city planning and urban architecture including the Bird’s Nest stadium for the Beijing Olympics. As a Blackjack player I was trained to be very observant and
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This is the first time that an individual can freely inform and express themselves without reference to their social or economic class on any matter at all. This is a clear and dramatic reshuffling of the cards of existence. The exchange of information has become so much faster and this has put real power in the hands of the people. The pace of change in society has become much quicker as a result. I think we are in need of this exchange of information if we are to progress in a good way. Look at what happened with the revelations about surveillance made by Edward Snowden. His case is not really about espionage, it’s about one individual who made a personal decision that had very farreaching consequences in an extremely short space of time. When you see how governments reacted to this, they just made themselves look ridiculous. They didn’t know how to handle it when their entire structures were shown to be based on wrong values that can collapse in seconds. The struggle now comes down to the established power structures and the individual. All governments whether in China or the United States want to
to discover what was the real deal in any business, especially when dealing with the government and officialdom. I spoke about these on my blog and it became one of the most active in China. In 2009, the government finally shut it down when they perceived the danger to themselves of letting me continue. The internet and social media have changed the way we communicate and have touched every aspect of our lives. How do you perceive the impact of this phenomenon? I feel this has changed humanity more dramatically than anything in history. The industrial revolution led to deep changes in society but nothing has liberated the individual like this has.
The booming art market is really just about decorative art, which is fake art, in my opinion.
maintain power whereas all individuals have a desire to be free. That is one of our basic characteristics as individuals. When I was put under surveillance I put up my own cameras inside my house and broadcast them live on the internet. After a few days I had a few million followers and the police came and asked me to take them down. I told them, “this is what you want, what’s the problem?” What do you think about the current state of Chinese contemporary art? There are several issues. The Communists have completely destroyed the products of Chinese culture and traditions several times over. This land has been dug up many times in an attempt to not allow anything different to grow on it. But of
photograph : Šcorbis / profile
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course land is land and when there is sun and water different things will grow naturally. Today Chinese art is still mostly directed at the foreign market. The current boom in Chinese art is really a result of Western interest as there are almost no Chinese collectors. Chinese artists have very little individual freedom. Discussion or criticism of moral or philosophical subjects is not encouraged, so how can they make relevant art in this environment? The booming art market is really just about decorative art, which is fake art, in my opinion. The art they produce is not really involved with what’s happening in China today as the artists are not active in the culture under the current circumstances. Even when they meet me they turn their faces away; they just don’t want to talk about these issues. Is art your life, or is your life an artwork? I think I live my life in a way that can be called art. Maybe because the government has struggled with me they have created a kind of myth that people think I must have some kind of special power to survive. But I think I can survive because I put my faith in very ordinary values like honesty. I don’t see myself as someone special but I try to live my life as an ordinary person like my neighbour or the person sitting next to me on the bus. That’s why I like children so much, because they remind us to be honest. I’m sorry to say it but for me politicians are perhaps the least honest people, not only in China but everywhere it seems.
How dancer Pichet Klunchun became one of Thailand’s most powerful social critics.
by nicholas grossman photographer: chinji kano
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rojected on to the side of a white wall outside the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre, is a video of prepubescent girls gyrating their hips as the Songkran festival unfolds around them. Pichet Klunchun, in a simple black T-shirt and sweatpants, races over to the crowd of onlookers and mimics the motion: “Do you know what this means? Do you know the meaning of this movement?” It doesn’t take a trained dancer like Pichet to explain it. The answer is as basic as the motion: “This means sex. This is an invitation to sex,” he says. The provocative video projection was part of Pichet’s recent show, Unwrapping Culture, which debuted at 100 Tonson Gallery, before being performed to a public audience outside the BACC on a humid Friday evening in September. Scattered on the pavement around Pichet was a collection of bric-a-brac and toys, including several windup dinosaurs, a toddler’s pink bicycle, and a Hello Kitty stuffed animal. Moments earlier, Pichet had embraced the doll in a khon-inspired waltz around the sidewalk. Then he donned
a curly blond afro wig and assumed the posture and voice of a tout, imploring the audience to buy whatever he was selling – Buddhist amulets and other talismans. Then, furtively pointing to pictures taped inside an atlas of Thailand, he asked, “Girls, boys, whatever you want, what do you want? What do you want? What do you want? Whatever you want, I can sell – even my country!” The show competed with traffic less than 20 metres away. Buses hurtled by, taxis and motorcycles released their rush-hour cacophony. Some in the audience of hundreds, which included tuk-tuk drivers, passersby and children entranced by the toys, were likely unsure whether this was a performance or the mentally unstable rant of a soapbox rabble-rouser. But this was no lunatic – though Thailand may make him crazy at times – this was Pichet Klunchun, one of the country’s foremost social critics. The man riding a children’s bicycle in circles was a trained master of khon dance – that most traditional
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cultural heritage of the Chakri dynasty – whose rise from outside the arts establishment had uniquely informed his social observations and whose withering critiques of society are communicated almost entirely through body language. “In this country people are in denial,” he tells me. “They lie to themselves that they live in this beautiful perfect culture. They create a frame for themselves that this culture is a perfect culture and they want to maintain that.” Pichet’s frame is his body and it too had to be perfected. Trained from the age of 16 in the formal postures and movements of khon by the famous master Chaiyot Khummanee, Pichet, now in his 40s, has come to feel imprisoned by the formality of the art form. “I love my tradition very much but at the same time I hate it,” he says. “I want to leave my dance but I cannot. I try to find a way I can stay and also create something new. That’s the point.” This tension is palpable at his performances, which, since the 2006 coup, have become
increasingly preoccupied with social and political issues. On that fateful September night, Pichet was performing at the Siam Society and was shocked by the news – “I couldn’t believe it. I thought, ‘Never again.’” In recent years, his technical mastery, while still plain to see, is undercut with personal expressions, an almost violent passion that bubbles from beneath the formal movements, occasionally breaking out in epileptic fits of fury. The traditional stories and characters from the larger narrative of the Ramakien, which inform khon dancing, are cut up and retold by Pichet, spliced with video, music and his own commentary. The results have been devastatingly effective. At his 2009 solo performance of Ganesh, staged at the height of the “Red and Yellow” conflict, I halfexpected George Orwell’s thought police to come crashing into 100 Tonson Gallery and whisk Pichet away. Without taking sides, Pichet managed to offer an indictment of both. The anti-establishment overtones of his performance, the raw passion and disenchantment with a greed-driven society
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running amok, were incredibly powerful. And yet the show was still strangely beautiful – khon still rested beneath the mess he had layered on top of it. “I have a strong knowledge of khon,” he says, “of the form, the energy that relates to Thai painting and architecture, the Buddhist ideas, and the circle. I now use my knowledge of khon without form. My movement has no form but you can see the energy is moving around, the energy stays in the centre, always with the Buddhist idea.” It may sound intellectual and it is. A year of study in New York in 2001 followed by collaborations with French contemporary dance legend and thinker Jerome Bel, as well as Singaporean art director Ong Keng Sen, changed Pichet’s understanding of what dance could be. Since then, he has consciously attempted to reverse what khon had become – all form but little substance, beautiful to look at but empty of meaning. With his formal training, Pichet is able to preserve khon’s essence while abandoning its form. “I am the first person to take off the mask, to show that I am a human,” he says. “At the College of Dramatic Arts they think when
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version of this ritual is to pray under a white cloth while lying down in a coffin.” you perform khon you are not Instead, Chaiyot pushed his grades were dismal. human. You learn from the Pichet into the furnace used to Fate intervened when khon beginning that the movement is burn the coffins and closed the master Chaiyot Khummanee not created by the human but by came to his school to teach a door. It was not lit but Pichet was a god.” terrified all the same. folk dance. Pichet played drums The performer, in other The relationship between for the show. Soon after, he words, is a mere vessel, a conduit began visiting Chaiyot’s house father-figure and son, or master for the movements, which and apprentice, would continue to learn khon from the country’s express the higher “Art.” But foremost master. From the age of until Chaiyot’s passing in 2003, Pichet expresses himself in his and even after, says Pichet: 16 to 32, Pichet went regularly, performances, even using his “Every time I had a problem, he including a period of 10 years name in show titles and his would come to me in my dreams. in which he trained intensely. personal history to inform the The last time that happened he The relationship was clearly an performance. “When I use my said goodbye. We met on the extraordinary one. name there is a problem,” he bridge over the river and we said In the first year, Chaiyot says. “People say, ‘Why do you use bent Pichet’s hand backwards goodbye and he jumped into the your name? Who are you? You river, and then I stopped and to increase its flexibility for should not use your name…’” saw him under the water and the khon postures and snapped pulled him up, and I woke up it, breaking his wrist. “The ichet Klunchun was born crying and said, ‘Don’t leave me.’” master was also a shaman who in Chachoensao province Chaiyot had only lived to see performed exorcisms,” says in a fishing village. His father Pichet. “Every week people would Pichet’s first solo performance. was a carpenter and his mother Would Pichet’s recent work come to him.” Pichet himself a fisherman. To this day, his please his mentor? “My master does not believe in the practice, parents have never seen him but in his solo show Ganesh a wild was a traditionalist,” he says. “But perform. In high school in he was also open-minded. This is exorcism is depicted. Bangkok, he became a troubled not normal. I could question him.” “When my master became a teen. “A classic case,” his wife Traditionalists should monk for five or six years,” says and manager Sojirat Singholka love him for giving khon new Pichet, “I went to see him and says. Pichet was a wanderer with ask him about dance and he said relevance, but they don’t, and no purpose. He would loiter Pichet clearly feels marginalised it was a good day because he was around school after it closed, get about to do a ceremony to ward within Thailand. “I think the into fights when provoked, and first issue is that people do not off bad luck. The most extreme
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I love my tradition very much but at the same time I hate it,� he says. “I want to leave my dance but I cannot.
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The tension is palpable at his performances, which since the 2006 coup have become increasingly preoccupied with social and political issues.
started to look at society, how it affects my khon stand, and how it affects my body and feelings,” he explains. Some see Pichet’s contemporary re-interpretations as negative. They don’t like his deconstruction of the dance, and they don’t appreciate that his retellings of traditional stories can suggest that Thailand has not improved much in the hundreds of years since the Ramakien was created. With his independent dance company existing outside of the establishment, Pichet notes, “When people think about a production they think about me first and call me last because
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accept me because I am not one of them,” he says, referring to the masters from the College of Dramatic Arts. Pichet never studied at the school. “The second is my face. My face in this shape is ugly. I wasn’t allowed to play the main character in the Ramakien because the face of the main character is supposed to be ovalshaped, not square. When Thais look at my face they think I am from Isaan.” Such conservatism seems misguided but is also not surprising given the lofty heights khon once occupied. Having evolved from Rama I’s adaptation of Hinduism’s Ramayana epic into the Thai national epic and court drama Ramakien, and being more strictly codified with masks and characters by Rama VI in the 20th century, khon attained prestige in Thai society through its association with the court and monarchy. Indeed, during the time of Rama VI, khon dancers were even given royal titles such
as Chao Phaya (or “Lord”). After Rama VII’s abdication in 1935, however, the nationalist governments of the Pibun Songgram-era sought to coopt many of the symbols of the monarchy, including khon. The court drama was popularised, turned into public entertainment and its dancers were no longer held in esteem. Being a khon dancer was bluecollar work. In the era of Rama IX, khon has been resurrected through the College of Dramatic Arts, but the new incarnation has seen it turned into another saleable cultural relic rather than a living art form. While Japan’s kabuki have sold out the Lincoln Centre in New York, khon performances remain just sideshows at Thai embassy events around the world, and within Thailand, performed at funerals and as a tourist spectacle. Khon has become trapped by its two pasts. Some see it as immutable, a symbol of the
court and a legacy of the Chakri dynasty, while others don’t take it very seriously at all, viewing it as mere entertainment, full of lavish costumes, folklore-style storytelling and simians. Enter Pichet. “The King doesn’t see khon anymore and I haven’t had the chance to perform for the King yet. So as an independent artist the question is how can I survive? That’s why I
when they start to work with my company it is too difficult to work with.” To his critics, he says, “In this country you present everything positive and it is not getting better. I try to do the opposite, to show you the real thing.” Outside the BACC in September, Pichet hoped he could just get the attention of a few people with his Unwrapping
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Culture performance. Meanwhile, across Siam Square on the same night, hundreds of screaming teenagers had gathered at Siam Centre for the arrival of Thai-Japanese pop star Tomo. There, an MC pumped up the crowd. Pichet knew his own performance was not the kind of entertainment most Thais seek out on a Friday night. But he, too, was trying to bring them something new, and he did not doubt that khon could still have a
Traditionalists should love him for giving khon new relevance, but they don’t, and Pichet clearly feels marginalised within Thailand.
meaningful impact. “Art is powerful in terms of politics,” Pichet says. “It can change your feelings and your soul.” From December 5th to 8th, Pichet will perform at Sala Sudasiri Sobha, a beautiful 200-seat theatre attached to the home of Nat Yontararak, a Silpathorn Award winner (2006). Pichet will perform a contemporary dance to Nat’s piano accompaniment.
In Mexico early this month, the departed and people’s memories of them will be celebrated in one of the world’s most atmospheric festivals. by michael spencer
“There are cemeteries that are lonely, graves full of bones that do not make a sound, the heart moving through a tunnel, in it darkness, darkness, darkness.” – pablo neruda, ‘nothing but death’
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round this time each year, Mexico comes alive for an extraordinary national festival. In cemeteries throughout the country, revellers dressed as skeletons dance to raucous mariachi bands, the air is thick with clouds of copal incense, fireworks light the night skies and tequila flows in rivers. Mountains of cakes and pastries shaped like skulls and bones are devoured by families using tombstones for tables. Celebrations continue far into the night, with many a drunken participant falling comatose around the tombs, illuminated by thousands of candles and strewn with orange marigold petals. This astonishing, joyous carnival paradoxically celebrates not life, but death; this is El Día de
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los Muertos, the Day of the Dead, Mexican style. The Day of the Dead is actually a full week of celebrations that begins on October 28th and ends with a national holiday on November 2nd. Its ancient origins spring from both Aztec and Spanish traditions but today the festival resonates with Mexicans as a unique expression of their national identity. For many of them, the Day of the Dead is a way of coming to terms with the dark heart of their national psyche, scarred as it is by a violent history where death was a familiar figure strutting the roads of their land. In Mexico it’s a popular belief that during this festival the dead are permitted to briefly return from the netherworld to visit 289
friends and relatives on earth and partake again of the joys of life. To welcome the returning spirits, Mexicans visit the graves of families and friends to adorn them with colourful flowers and offerings of food, in particular sugary breads often shaped as skulls or coffins. It would be easy for an outsider to interpret the dancing skeletons, candy skulls and general drunken revelry as disrespect for the dead and a lack of grief at human loss, but nothing could be further from the truth. For Mexicans, the emphasis is on honouring and remembering the lives of the deceased rather than grieving for their passing. For some it could be a macabre spectacle, but for Mexican families it is a chance to fondly remember their dear departed with an exuberant celebration of life. Coping with mortality is a common human preoccupation, and the Day of the Dead provides a fascinating
insight into the Mexican way of dealing with it. Octavio Paz, the Mexican Nobel prizewinning writer, observed that his compatriots had no qualms about getting up close and personal with the Grim Reaper. In his most highly regarded work The Labyrinth of Solitude, Paz writes, “The Mexican is familiar with death, jokes about it, caresses it, sleeps with it, celebrates it. True, there is as much fear in his attitude as anyone else, but at least death is not hidden away. He looks at it face to face, with impatience, disdain or irony.” Some critics say that the festival has become too commercial and is more about profit than anything to do with honouring the dead. Certainly, in some parts of Mexico City, the holiday has become a fullfledged tourist attraction and entrance fees to cemeteries have become the norm. For other observers the urban spectacle is an interesting phenomenon
It would be easy for an outsider to interpret the dancing skeletons, candy skulls and drunken revelry as disrespect for the dead, but nothing could be further from the truth.
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because it has become an important part of Mexico’s modern identity.
on television and in the media, perhaps desensitising the average Mexican to the proximity of death in their daily lives. In Mexico, death is typically exican academics believe portrayed as a skeletal femme fatale that the violent and who goes by various names. tumultuous nature of the Whether she’s called la Catrina country’s past – the brutality of (fancy lady), la Flaca (skinny), la the Spanish conquest and its Huesuda (bony) or la Pelona (baldy), decimation of the indigenous there’s no doubt she is the star of population, a humiliating the festival. subjugation in the war with the The elegantly dressed, but United States, and the bloodbath of the Mexican revolution – made skeletal, Catrina originated with the artist Jose Guadalupe it impossible for its people to Posada, who is considered to ignore the commonplace reality be the father of Mexican printof unnatural death in Mexico. making. Born in 1852, he was Even today, the dark underbelly of Mexico’s economic apprentice to a local print-maker when he was just 14. Moving to success is the orgy of crime Mexico City in 1888, he worked and violence unleashed by its as the chief artist for a publisher brutal drug cartels that supply of illustrated broadsheets, street the addicts of North America gazettes and other popular forms with cocaine, heroin and marijuana. Since 2006, the start of literature. He became famous for his calaveras – skeleton images of the government’s war on the – which he used as political and cartels, nearly 100,000 people social satire and to poke fun at have been murdered or simply human folly. disappeared. Gruesome images In the popular imagination of murder victims are daily fare
Catrina became not only the poster child for El Día de los Muertos but a symbol of Mexicans’ willingness to laugh at death itself. Posada depicted Catrina as a wealthy woman reminding people of the equalising force of death that strikes both rich and poor without favour. As a political satire, Catrina also represented an obituary for the wealthy elite under the regime of the 19th-century dictator Porfirio Diaz, who was finally toppled in the Mexican revolution of 1910. His work had a profound influence on Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo and other great artists of the Mexican revolutionary generation who frequently depicted death in their works. Rivera himself once said: “If you
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among their gods and rituals; for at least 3,000 years these Mesoamerican civilisations celebrated the lives of their dead estivals for the dead are not ancestors. Mexican culture’s playful unique to Mexico. They familiarity and proximity exist in many cultures, notably Qingming Festival in China and to death is at odds with the European tradition of shying the Bon Festival in Japan, where away from and denying it at all graves are cleaned and offerings costs. Instead, it reflects more are left for ancestors. What the Aztec heritage that saw death makes the Mexican celebration as part of the broader cycle of exceptional is the joyous atmosphere that reigns, making it existence and not as an end in resemble more of a carnival than itself. The Aztecs considered it a blessing to die in childbirth, a period of mourning. battle or as a human sacrifice, The origins of this peculiarly believing the victim would be Mexican take on the Day of rewarded with a more desirable the Dead can be traced back to destination in the afterlife. Skulls the traditions and beliefs of its indigenous peoples, in particular were often kept as trophies and the Aztecs, Mayans and Mexicas. displayed during the festivals Miccailhuitontli, held in Death held a significant place look around my studio, you will see Deaths everywhere, Deaths of every size and colour.”
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honour of dead children, and Miccailhuitl, which remembered the adult dead. Presiding over the celebrations was the original Aztec Catrina, the goddess of death, Mictecacihuatl. Before the Spanish conquest, these festivals were held in the ninth month of the Aztec Solar Calendar, which falls in August. When the Spanish conquistadors arrived in Central America in the 15th century they attempted to convert the indigenous peoples to Catholicism. The success of their spiritual conquest in Mexico was in part due to their willingness to incorporate certain pre-Columbian customs into Christian practices. They changed the date of the Aztec festivals for the dead to make them coincide with the Catholic
All Saints’ and All Souls’ days that are held at the beginning of November. While contemporary observance of the Day of the Dead includes masses and prayers to saints and the dead, it is dominated by carnivalesque rituals that mostly reflect Aztec customs. It is still common today, for example, to put a clay dog on the altar – a reference to the pre-conquest tradition of killing a dog and incinerating it with the body of the deceased, to help it on its way to the underworld. The souls of children are believed to return on November 1st, with adult spirits following on November 2nd. Plans for the festival are made throughout the year, and goods gathered that
photographs of the departed, candy skulls inscribed with the name of the deceased, and a selection of his or her favourite foods and beverages. The perfume of burning copal incense and the light of numerous candles are provided to help the departed find their way. It is believed that the spirits of the dead consume the spiritual essence of the food, so although the celebrants later eat it they believe the food has lost its nutritional value. Pillows and blankets are left out so the deceased can rest after his or her long journey home. Meanwhile, at the family burial plot in the local cemetery, relatives spruce up the grave sites. In rural villages this may entail cutting down
weeds that have sprouted up during the rainy season, as well as giving tombs a fresh coat of paint after making any necessary structural repairs. The graves are then decorated according to local custom, which differs from region to region. The tomb may be simply adorned by a cross formed of marigold petals or elaborately embellished with colourful wreaths and fresh or artificial floral arrangements. The graves of dead children, known as los angelitos, or little angels, are festooned with brightly coloured paper streamers, sweets and toys. In many places, people have picnics at the grave site and even hire mariachi bands to lead a heartfelt sing-along. Some people believe that 293
The emphasis is on honouring and remembering the lives of the deceased rather than grieving for their passing.
will be offered to the dead. From mid-October through the first week of November, markets and shops all over Mexico are stocked with special accoutrements for the Day of the Dead, including all manner of skeletons and other macabre toys, such as intricate tissue paper cut-outs called papel picado, elaborate wreaths and crosses decorated with paper or silk flowers, candles and votive lights, and
masses of fresh seasonal flowers, particularly marigolds. Among the edible treats used as offerings for the dead are skulls and coffins made from sugar, chocolate or amaranth seeds and specially baked sweet bread rolls called pan de muerto that come in various sizes, topped with bits of dough that are shaped like bones. The skull is a common theme, with celebrants wearing death’s head masks called calacas. Sugar skulls, inscribed with the names of the deceased on the forehead, are often eaten by a relative or friend. Family members use their purchases to decorate an altar in honour of deceased relatives. In setting up the altar, a designated area of the home is cleared of its normal furnishings. The altar itself is often no more than a table and several overturned wooden crates placed in tiers and covered with clean linens. The offerings are then laid out, decorating the altar with paper cut-outs, candles, flowers,
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possessing Day of the Dead items and symbols can bring good luck. Death-themed tattoos are common as is carrying dolls of the dead. Those with a talent for writing sometimes create short poems, called calaveras, which are lighthearted epitaphs for friends, describing their interesting habits and attitudes, or funny anecdotes about them. Children throughout Mexico have long used the Day of the Dead to ask for sweets or pocket change from adult passersby in the street. In some parts of the country, especially the cities, children in costumes roam the streets, knocking on people’s doors asking for a calaverita, a small gift of candies or money, mimicking Halloween’s trick-or-treating custom. 294 010
In modern Mexico it is usual to see altars in schools, offices and government buildings, as the holiday is now seen as an important part of the national heritage. Day of the Dead rituals are repeated in cities and villages throughout Mexico. exico’s Day of the Dead has has become a tourist phenomenon with guidebooks making special mention of the festival as one of the cultural highlights of a visit to the country. Among the most famous and most accessible festivals are the celebrated all-night candlelight vigils in cemeteries at Mixquic near Mexico City and Janitzio Island in Michoacán state in the southwest of the country.
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Mixquic, once an Aztec farming island, is now a district of Mexico City and has retained something of a rural village ambiance. The area takes on a busy and festive air in the final days of October as merchants set up street stands to hawk their wares. In the cemeteries at Mixquic, all family burial plots are elaborately embellished with an array of earthly delights in the hope of luring back the departed spirits. In the afternoon relatives gather at each tomb to mourn the loss of loved ones with la llorada, or weeping. In the evening, when darkness would normally envelop the graveyard, the glow of thousands of votive candles illuminates the way for the departed. At midnight the return of the dead to the underworld is accompanied by the mournful tolling of bells and recitations of the Catholic rosary prayer. Festivities in villages throughout the state of Michoacan, southwest of Mexico City, have a distinctive flavour that reflects the traditions of the local Purepecha Indians. As in other parts of Mexico, floral tributes, food offerings and candlelight vigils in each local cemetery are integral to the celebrations. Among the Purepechas, however, these activities are performed only by women and children while the male population performs ancient pre-Christian rituals celebrating the fall harvest. Throngs of visitors trek to Janitzio Island in Lake Pátzcuaro every year to witness the spectacular mass graveyard vigil there, but equally colourful celebrations may be observed more serenely in most other Michoacan villages.
The origins of this peculiarly Mexican take on the Day of the Dead can be traced back to the traditions and beliefs of its indigenous peoples, in particular the Aztecs, Mayans and Mexicas.
The Mexican Day of the Dead is not only an occasion to experience a colourful and folkloric festival but a chance to ponder our own notions about, and reaction to the inevitability, of death. Perhaps the Mexican attitude of confronting it with a fun-filled carnival that celebrates the joys of life has something to recommend it after all.