Taking centre stage

 “Let’s not forget we are an art and culture centre not just an art centre,” says BACC director Luckana Kunavichayanont, who took over last year from Chatvichai Promadhattavedi after seven years at the helm of the Tadu Art Gallery.

“As a committee, we are very aware that we need to cover all genres but for a number of reasons during the first three years of operation, we were only able to focus on visual arts. 

“The situation changed last year when the BACC Foundation was set up by Bangkok Metropolitan Administration to take over the operation of the BACC. That has made our operations less bureaucratic, smoother and more efficient.”

Luckana says that in the initial plan of the BACC, the fifth-floor auditorium was slated to be performing arts venue, but “in the actual construction and decoration, it became a venue with many restrictions.

“Luckily, we decided to turn the space on the fourth floor, originally designed as preparation space into a more flexible space that would better fit dance and theatre, media arts in addition to more interdisciplinary works. Chatvichai designed the movable audience platforms specifically for this space and they can be arranged in many different configurations. We’ve also added bars for lighting equipment on the ceiling and soundproof curtains on the walls.”

Luckana notes that BACC has hosted dance, theatre and performance art throughput its short history, but “They have never been grouped into a festival.

The festival opened last Friday with the restaging of Khon Na Khao Institute’s “Expression Mime” in the first-floor multi-function room. It’s noteworthy that the institute, led by veteran mime artist Paitoon Lhaisakul, ran a small space on the third floor called People’s Theatre before the changeover last year and that space is now part of commercial space for creative and trendy retail stores called artHUB@BACC.

Luckana says, “Of course, the first-floor multi-function room gives them more space to work with.”

“We built the first festival on the networks of artists we’ve already connected with. The annual performance art festival ‘Asiatopia’ which now in its 14th edition under the theme ‘Reconstruct, Deconstruct’, starts tomorrow and has comfortably settled here for a few years now.

“We’ve also opened for up and coming artists such as Tanatchaporn Kittikong’s ‘Noting the Self Project’. She knew that we’d have a performance festival and approached us with her project. I think it’s an interesting work and quite different from that of Khon Na Khao’s and Asiatopia’s and so it adds more diversity.”

November is the usual time slot for Bangkok Theatre Festival, but the 10th edition last year was moved to this February due to the flood, with the closing event at BACC.

Luckana says, “I’ve been tracking their development and I don’t want it to disappear from the calendar. And so I approached the Bangkok Theatre Network (BTN) with our plan for the Performance Festival. They responded with ‘About Face’ [an adaptation of Nobel laureate Dario Fo’s play of the same name] in which representatives from all BTN’s core members are participating. This is to prove that the BTN is still going strong and active – without the Bangkok Theatre Festival this month. Next year, we hope to host more performances in the theatre festival here, while others will still be at Santi Chaiprakan park. We’re not supporting one individual group, but we’re helping all of them expand the base of audiences for contemporary theatre.”

Another festival that is part of BACC Performance Festival No 1, notwithstanding the fact that it’s also being hosted at other venues in Bangkok and Chiang Mai, is the Friends of the Arts Foundation’s International Dance Festival 2012. That gets underway on November 23.

“Next year, we plan to present more dance and theatre works for a longer period of five months from August to December. Although we’ll use the fourth-floor studio as the main venue for these events, artists can request to use other spaces, like the multi-function room on the first floor as well if that better fits their works.

“We also want to make it clear that BACC is not a venue for rental but, as with the visual arts exhibitions that we’ve been curating, we can also curate performance festivals. One of the important problems for dance and theatre in Thailand is their public exposure. There are many small works year round but they spread out all over the city and I think BACC’s city centre location should be able to help.

“We also want the spectators to crossover and try to experience other forms of arts. When they’re in BACC, enjoying a visual arts exhibitions, or even our Facebook friends see ads for other works, they may give it a try. This is what we’ve been doing with Cinema Diverse, the monthly screening of independent films from around the world, in cooperation with Films Forum. Artists, as well, by having an opportunity to watch works by their peers in different genres, may have ideas for cross-disciplinary collaborations.

“In terms of marketing, by grouping works into a festival like this, potential sponsors may also be more interested.”

 

IT’S SHOW TIME

- The BACC Performance Festival No 1 runs until November 30. For more details, check out the BACC’s Facebook page.