Mediascapes in ‘Cities on the Move in Bangkok’ (1999)

Abstract

The paper focuses on the cultural and social exchange amongst Asian and European architects, artists, filmmakers and designers happening in the multi-media exhibition "Cities on the Move 6 – Bangkok (1999)." The analysis will be processed within the framework of the six editions of the “Cities on the Move” traveling exhibition (1997 – 1999) in Vienna, Bordeaux, New York, Humlebæk, London, and Helsinki. The Bangkok edition is considered to be a city-intervention project. Moreover, it is the only edition that happened all over the city. This paper aims to demonstrate the following aspects of the exhibition. (A) The multitude of ideas and visions on the city that were expressed through the installations and the way each installation is connected to each other. (B) The selected installations will be analyzed and categorized into four processes – Erasure, Origination, Transformation and Migration, the analysis method proposed by Raoul Bunschoten in his ‘Urban Flotsam’ (2001). This schematic analysis will be used as a framing device to filter out emergent phenomena happened in the “Cities on the Move 6 – Bangkok." (C) How were the installations be connected to its neighborhood network? How were the several neighborhood networks linked to the city? What was the role of media at that time? How did the mediascapes function in this case? (D) The relationship between the result of the aim (B) and (C) and the financescapes of the aftershock of the Tom Yum Kung financial crisis in 1997.