Grasping and Clinging

Grasping and Clinging was a site-specific collaboration with Denise Hawrysio at Project 304 Gallery in Bangkok. For this exhibition, I designed ten small interactive audio devices installed throughout the upper and lower galleries. These beige boxes were intended to blend with the gallery’s architecture and fittings; sounds were triggered by movement and ceased only when visitors stood still.

All sounds were alarms designed from scratch using basic waveform synthesis, with one exception: the audio accompanying a projected durational video of Denise’s hand holding a piece of ice. This sound – the pure ringing tone of Buddhist Tingsha cymbals – was digitally stretched to an impossible length. Consistent with the site-specific nature of the work, all objects and materials were sourced or made by the artists in Bangkok.

The title is derived from a text by the venerable Buddhadasa Bhikkhu, a Thai Buddhist monk known for his political engagement and his belief that “the thing called ‘religion’ doesn’t exist after all.” In his Handbook for Mankind, he writes concerning the principles of attachment to certain kinds of attenuated goals and desires. The installation probes the paradoxes of attraction and repulsion. It explores stillness and tension, meditation and obsession, as well as issues of anxiety, alertness, and consciousness.