Seen Song Ton Studio was founded by Molam Bank (by name of Patiphan Luecha, also known as Patiwat Saraiyam) with his 4 close musician friends, Krittaphop Sommitr (Khaen, Pin), Sarayuth Kotthum (Khaen, Drum), Tongsri Panbubpha (Molam, acting as female), and Veerachai Srisaeng (Molam). This studio is an adapted courtyard in Molam Bank‘s rented row house, and they live-stream the performance on Facebook and YouTube with the name ซิ้น 2 ต่อน(SEEN2TON brand), in every weekend evening.
Seen Song Ton is a dialect in Isan which refers to Soulmate and directly translates as Nueakoo or Doublemeat. Originally, Seen Song Ton was a live-streaming platform for selling and promoting beef jerky, and for presenting molam performances. Unfortunately, the beef jerky business failed due to the pandemic and the political situations in Thailand. However, Molam Bank and his team still attempt to manage the studio for Molam even in the hard times with live streaming twice a month. Although Molam Bank faces many obstacles due to the fight for democracy and freedom of expression by using Molam as a driving force, he will never give up.
Manifesto Agenda Summit Collective (MAS) was established and took the initiative in an artistic activist movement in 2018 within Isan region, the Northeast of Thailand. The group is led by Thanom Chapakdee, an art critique and cultural activist. MAS stands for Manifesto, Agenda, Summit, they believe that everyone can become an artistic-activist without necessarily being an artist. MAS is concentrated on historical, socio-political, cultural, and environmental issues. Their approaches are aligned with the concept of “Plebeian Aesthetic: Critique & Artistic Resistance.” They aimed to create alternative spaces in abandoned buildings, factories, and even desolated brothel in the city of Khonkaen, as they used to organize for Khon Kaen Manifesto (2018, 2020) and Ubon Agenda (2020), and will be continuously held every two years. This year (2022) marks as the time for MAS Collective to organize artistic-activist movements in all areas, the three projects and major cities are Khon Kaen Manifesto in Khon Kaen, Ubon Agenda in Ubon Ratchathani, and Nabua Summit in Nakhon Phanom.
Brilliant Time: Southeast Asia-Themed Bookstore is located near Huashin Street (aka. Myanmar Street) in Nanshijiao, New Taipei City. It‘s a place where it embraces different cultures and diversity, hoping to be a warm and open place for both locals and migrants. Being more than just a bookstore, the bookstore also holds art exhibitions, talks, film showings, language classes within its tiny yet multi-functional space.
The name “Brilliant Time” is inspired by the respectable deceased scholar Lucie Cheng and her biography Linking Our Lives. In her whole life, she had always been an adventurer. What she left us with an important lesson of life is that, “No matter where you are, you can always find your brilliant time by a soul of curiosity and kindness.”
Founded in 1993 in Taipei, Taiwan, Trees Music & Art is an independent music label that specializes in roots and folk music from all over the world, with a particular interest in connecting performing arts to the cultural and societal issues of the day. Trees Music has served as label and production team for highly acclaimed indigenous musicians such as the Betel Nut Brothers and Atayal vocalist Inka Mbing. As one among a number of platforms for the international community to learn about Taiwan's diverse musical cultures, both indigenous and those tied to the Chinese diaspora, Trees Music seeks to uphold a spirit of respect for musical traditions, while at the same time encouraging forward-looking, artistic exploration.
In addition to its many issued recordings, Trees Music is also well-known as the production team behind the Migration Music Festival, a former annual live music festival devoted to folk and contemporary sounds from around the world. Trees has also engaged in many interdisciplinary, cross-genre projects, including Here is Where We Meet, a music and visual art production that focused on issues of migration and diaspora, and the New Narratives Film Festival, which is devoted to Southeast Asian independent film and up-and-coming Taiwanese filmmakers.
Your Bros. Filmmaking Group is formed by three members from Taiwan, namely So Yo Hen, Liao Hsiu Hui, Tien Zong Yuan. They believe that the uniqueness of their films lies in their immature, amateur filmmaking approaches. They focus on various elements emerging in the process of film production, including field research, creative workshops, interspersed unforeseeable incidents, and spontaneous editing of the narrative structure onsite. Utilizing methods of “film production,” they re-interpret and inject aesthetic meanings into reality, transforming it into a medium for thinking.
Ting Tong Chang received his MFA at Goldsmiths, University of London, and has exhibited internationally. He has participated in group shows and commissioned projects in Guangzhou Triennial, Taipei Biennial, Saatchi Gallery, Compton Verney Art Gallery and Wellcome Trust. Chang‘s major awards include the 19th Taishin Arts Award, Taipei Art Award 2020, Art Central Hong Kong RISE Award 2016, VIA Arts Prize 2016 and Royal Society of Sculptors Bursary Award 2015. His works can be found in the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Embassy of Brazil London, Noblesse Collection Seoul, JM SR Collection Mexico and private collections in Europe and Asia.
DJ Hatfield is a long-term guest of the ❛Atolan ❛Amis community in what is now known as Taitung County. A sociocultural anthropologist and sound installation artist, he has recently joined the faculty of National Taiwan University's Graduate Institute of Music. His work focuses on sound, Indigenous responses to colonialism, and the ethics of locality. In a life conditioned by wandering, he often asks how we develop enduring connections to places that we might consider home. He poses this question to his interlocutors and the landscapes around him as he works with his materials, which include sound recordings but also a variety of found objects. His concern with habitation might explain the appearance of chairs, black netting, and tent like structures in many of his works. Hatfield‘s current research concerns the influence of far ocean fishing on ❛Amis kinship, houses, and soundscapes. His sound art works have appeared in the in the 2016 Taitung International Austronesian Art Awards, the 2018 Mipaliw Land Art Festival, and the 2020 Taipei Biennial.
Huegu is an artist, a singer/songwriter, and a hunter of Pangcah / ❛Amis descent from Ciwidian, Hualien. He has done multiple jobs, including formworker, carpenter, construction foreman, seaman, taxi driver, gravel truck driver, and musician. Although he has never received a formal music education, he often plays the guitar and sings traditional Pangcah songs in his free time, weaving the landscape of indigenous communities, his laboring life away from home, and the vicissitudes of life into songs in his mother tongue. In addition, Huegu has a pair of dexterous hands and an individualistic talent for aesthetic creations, which he has employed to design and produce highly artistic yet functional installations, instruments, and sheds that are incorporated with traditional Pangcah patterns. In 2020, he participated in artist Ting Tong Chang‘s video installation project, titled Betelnut Tree, Bird's-Nest Fern and African Snails. For the project, he brought the artist into the mountains, where they used locally sourced materials to build a hunting shed, set up traps, and produce equipment for surviving the wilderness. In this exhibition, Huegu brings the Pangcah wisdom of everyday life into MoCA Taipei, and exhibits his works as an artist alongside Ting Tong Chang.
UFA is founded by Cheng Wen and Mic.Usay.Monari. Known for mixing and recombining ethnic, psychedelic soul, and electronic elements into new objects, UFA draws inspiration from the transient and changing scenes in life and infuses ideas of nature and abstraction into their music. UFA‘s Unalloyed Fusion Anamnesis of 2013 was nominated for Best Electronic Album at the 4th Golden Indie Music Awards. In 2018, their work, aynuko (Mixed Blood), was awarded Honorable Mention at the Pulima Performing Arts of New Talents, a collateral open call program of the Pulima Art Award. In 2021, their music album, Lipahak ko ‘orip (Happy Life), was nominated for Best Electronic Album and Best Electronic Single at the 12th Golden Indie Music Awards.
Adisak Phupa (b.1978, Yasothon, Thailand) received his Bachelor's and a Master's degree at Mahasarakham University and Chiang Mai University respectively. He has become interested in installation art through the beliefs of ISAN people, initially towards their traditional Rocket Festival. (Boon Bang Fai) He has participated in group exhibitions including Biennale Jogja XV Equator#5, Spectrosynthesis II–Exposure of Tolerance: #LGBTQ in Southeast Asia Exhibition; “Project-PRY#01” at WTF Gallery & Cafe, Bangkok, Thailand; Gwangju, South Korea Asia Culture Center (ACC). Adisak is also a lecturer at the Faculty of Fine - Applied Art, Mahasarakham University.
Apichatpong Weerasethakul (b.1970) grew up in Khon Kaen, a city in Northeastern Thailand. He studied architecture before earning a degree in film at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In 2005 he was presented with one of Thailand‘s most prestigious awards, Silpatorn, by the Thai Ministry of Culture. In 2008, the French Minister of Culture bestowed on him the medal of Chevalier de l’ordre des arts et des letter (Knight of the Order of Arts and Literature). Feature films include Memoria (2021), Cemetery of Splendor (2015), Syndromes and a Century (2006), Tropical Malady (2004), The Adventures of Iron Pussy (2003), Blissfully Yours (2002), and Mysterious Object at Noon (2000). His film Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives won a Palme d‘Or prize at the 63rd Cannes Film Festival in 2010.
Despite films, he has showed great passion in photography and video production, and has participated in a number of international exhibitions, including dOCUMENTA 13 in Kassel (2012), Sharjah Biennale (2013), Liverpool Biennial (2006), Busan Biennial (2004) and the Istanbul Biennial (2001). His works have been presented in art institutions such as Haus der Kunst, Munich; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Redcat, Los Angeles; New Museum, New York; Musée d‘Art Modern de la Ville de Paris; Hangar Bricocca, Milan; and more.