Today we’d like to introduce you to Saun Santipreecha.
Hi Saun, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
My life in the arts began simultaneously in visual arts, dance and music. I’d begun drawing very early, like many, and was also in ballet when I was six, specifically in ‘The Nutcracker’ where I played the dual role of the child who breaks the nutcracker at the beginning and subsequently the Prince in the ensuing sequences, and I first heard and was struck by my first opera, Mozart’s ‘The Magic Flute’, when I was in kindergarten. So for me, the visual, aural, and the body’s implications in movement have been and are inextricably linked. Later on, I studied piano and performed as a concert pianist for a while before joining the opera choir of the Bangkok Opera. All along I’ve had a love for film which makes sense in hindsight as it’s a medium which brings both the visual and the aural together, of course predominantly within narrative but not necessarily so. Film is ultimately what led me here to LA where I pursued composition for film for many years. Contributing in this manner in the myth-making within contemporary media ultimately led me to question those myths beginning about seven years ago when I began the next important phase in my life with the attempt at a novel, ‘Dandelye’. While the novel, which after over twenty drafts turned into a book of poetry using ancient Thai poetic forms transposed for use in English, remains unfinished, the project found its completion in both an album, ‘Dandelye’ last year, and my debut solo exhibition as a multidisciplinary artist this past July, ‘Dandelye—or, Beneath this River’s Tempo’d Time We Walk’.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
I wouldn’t necessarily say the road has been unsmooth. Rather, I would describe the road itself as circular but never returning to the same starting point, remaining ever in motion, pushed forward and outward by my various interests and inquiries, intersecting at times with old terrain from much earlier work, periods or mediums, but always with newer tools through which to excavate the subject in a more thoughtful manner; knowing better, as a friend recently put it, how to ask the questions. The struggle has always been, even when I hadn’t arrived at a precise and clear way with which to phrase it, to pursue the ever-moving horizon of clarity and lucidity, in thought and practice. In a way, that is my green light across the harbor though unlike the unreachable dream of the light, there has certainly been a sense of milestones at times which is the most exhilarating feeling.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I’m a multidisciplinary artist. My work primarily lives in interstices and intersections, of the visual and aural, of the tangible and intangible, of image, language, and sound, always ever-moving, ever in flux, grounded in the position of questioning, or rather the questioning of position, realizing that even as I ask myself a question say of where I am, who I am, I have already moved in relation to myself in order to view myself from a different position and so can never catch the ‘me’ I am questioning. But nonetheless, the impossible chase goes on. I’m most proud of the collective works in my solo exhibition, which is one of the milestones I mentioned and has opened me to further explorations and inquiries, particularly in the exploration of my copper/sound sculptures where I’ve attached exciters to copper sculptures I’ve created (all from a single piece of copper hand bent and hammered) which vibrate the sculptures into speakers and through which I feed a sound or musical composition I have created for each sculpture. Like all of us, each sculpture, each body is unique and thus has its own unique resonances. In continuing this exploration, I’m working not only on creating sound, musical, and language works specifically for each sculpture but also exploring the relationship of one to another, of bodies and systems, continuing the exploration of modularity, which began with my first copper/sound sculpture in the exhibition, ‘Let the Wind Speak…’
Are there any books, apps, podcasts or blogs that help you do your best?
Literature, poetry, and language in general have always been very close to my heart and is often at the basis of my work and inquiries, whether it be a poem or novel or, more frequently lately, a triangulation of poems, novels as well as philosophical, sociological and critical theory texts. Most of my process in whatever medium/s I end up in for that work consists of me weaving webs of ideas and concepts which inevitably, after some time, begin to find their own gravitational pull, their own vortex which naturally builds and connects. Lately for instance, I’ve returned to the works of someone whose works have been incredibly foundational and formative to my maturation, Samuel Beckett. Diving back into his work has been so important to this next phase of exploration and experimentation and over the past months it’s been incredible to see how it has become a kind of new center of gravity for my current and ongoing projects. So book-wise, Beckett is up there. As is Virginia Woolf (‘Orlando’ remains a favorite), Kafka, Camus, the poetry of Edith Sitwell, Rimbaud (I seem to keep returning to him frequently), Alejandra Pizarnik. Podcast-wise, I absolutely love David Guignion’s ‘Theory and Philosophy’. It’s been an invaluable part of my continuing pursuit of clarity and lucidity in thought and practice.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.santipreecha.com
- Instagram: santipreechasaun
Image Credits
All photos except for ‘Untitled’ and ‘Framing Devices’ courtesy of Reisig and Taylor Contemporary. The remaining two (‘Untitled’ and ‘Framing Devices’) photos by Saun Santipreecha. Framing Devices Installation view at Reisig and Taylor Contemporary, Let the Wind Speak… (in front of Excavation (or The Vagaries of the Exposed)) Installation view at Reisig and Taylor Contemporary, Three Elegies (Triptych) Installation view at Reisig and Taylor Contemporary, Façades Installation view at Reisig and Taylor Contemporary, Excavation (or The Vagaries of the Exposed) Installation view at Reisig and Taylor Contemporary Ghosts of ’76 Installation view at Reisig and Taylor Contemporary
