Local Sensations opens a playful dialogue with Chatri Prakitnonthakan's essay, How to Design a Modern Monument That Won't Become a Shrine. Unraveling the dichotomy of object and subject, the film generates pluralities and gestures toward a kind of topological politics. Though it circles around monumentality and sanctification in Thai society, no literal monuments ever appear. Instead, it drifts through an arborist's walking tour, a glassblowing workshop, a drawing game among architecture students, a multi-instrument improviser, and a recreation center with its non-human inhabitants. ​

Local Sensations combines the material texture of black-and-white 16mm film, architectural thought, and an unconventional analysis of monuments and sanctification in Thai society. Its concern with mourning and commemoration is given form by a passage, cited at the outset, from architectural scholar Chatri Prakitnonthakan’s “How to Design a Modern Monument That Won’t Become a Shrine.” Tulapop Saenjaroen does not simply render the text visually. He generates plurality, dismantles the dichotomy of object and subject, and moves toward a topological politics by exploring actions that might take the place of monuments.
Rather than statues or conventional memorials, the textured black-and-white images observe an arborist’s walking tour, a glassblowing workshop, an improvised musical happening, a game among architecture students, and animals inhabiting a nature center—watching the interactions formed between spaces and beings. From this network of gestures, we are led to reconsider what locality and monumentality might mean.

Local Sensations takes a step “back” to reexamine the making of things, meanings, and their relationships to the world. I’ve been compelled to start from the most immediate and “local” territories—my thoughts, my being, other beings and non-beings, and the environment I inhabit. With the onion-like editing structure of the film, I intend to layer existing elements—both contemporary and historical—with speculative ones. This film is an experiment in thinking: one that gives voice to ineffability, rehabilitates imagination, renders contingency practical, and celebrates pluralities. Amid the return of authoritarian impulses, I hope this mixture may open ways to think about things differently.

• ProducerKardpol NITIPISANON
• Cinematography Parinee BUTHRASRI
• Edit Tulapop SAENJAROEN
• Sound Chalermrat KAWEEWATTANA
• Music Ham TANID
• Cast Ham TANID, Phorntip WONGNAIKOT, Kantida BUSABA

Tulapop SAENJAROEN | tulapop@gmail.com ​