The Land

On Tuesday 29 July Rashanna, Aoife, Alex, Ohm and myself travel to The Land. Rashanna, Aoife and myself catch the local red taxi. The plot that The Land is on is smaller than I expected. There are 12 structures on the site: 1. 2x toilets, 2. 3 x showers, 3. Phillipe Parreno and Francois Roche: Battery House/electricity maker ( not working) 4. Markus Heinsdorff: A Bamboo viewing tower structure with chickens living below, 5. The communal house with kitchen below and a meeting room/library above, then the Living in/sleeping structures: 6. The Star House (Alex and Ohm settle here), 7. Rirkrit Tiravanija House: A fire below, a platform and a room upstairs, 8. Ajchariyasophon's House, 9. Asian Provision's Structure: which is like a large diving platform, 9. Tobias Rehberger, 10. Kamin's House for Aiwa the caretaker and his wife, 11. Somyot and Thaiwijit's House, light blue stage platform. Two day's later I stumble upon Mit-Jai-In's circle of tree's.


After a look around Aoife and Alex farm some mussels out of the pond. I work in the garden with Aiwa and his wife (I am involved in a community garden project in Dublin). The vegetable garden is looking quite neglected, I pick some runner beans, chillies and basil. We cook dinner then move into The Star House to play cards. I sleep in the house that Rirkrit has built. The side walls on the platform don't exist any more. I am a little nervous going to sleep thinking about snakes and spiders; surely this is a real fear, I grew up in Durban South Africa which has a similar climate. I try to ignore this fear for tonight anyway. I am lulled to sleep by the sound of crickets mixed with Alex and Ohm chatting in The Star House.



Wednesday 30 July
I awake with the sunrise, then walk over to Mit's structure next door and do an hours meditation. While meditating Aiwa crosses The Land over to the buffalo and undoes the blue mosquito net surrounding the enclosure. . He then ties them up outside to feed them. I watch my thoughts, I watch my breathe. When I finish meditating I think about the role of Aiwa in this project ( afterwards because you are not supposed to be thinking thoughts when meditating :-) hhmmm! ). Aiwa is the care taker of The Land he works hard mostly around the Buffalo, every morning he is up with the sun which is 6 am and walks over to where the buffalo are kept to let them out of the enclosure.He has built the structure from wood and placed blue mosquito protection around a framewhere the buffalo are kept. He then feeds the buffalo four times during the day. At one point during the day he has to go and collect grass up river as well as move the buffalo to the pond so that they can take a dip to cool off. Come four o'clock Aiwa lights a fire near each of the buffalo to protect them from mosquito's. Then at around 6pm he moves the 2 buffalo back into the blue enclosure. The buffalo were brought to The Land to give fuel to Super Flex's Bio Gas Unit, which burst a couple of months ago. No one belonging to The Land knows how to fix it so Super Flex will be flying in at the beginning of September with a new orange bio gas unit. There were also plans to use the buffalo to generate electricity for Parreno and Roche's Battery House. This structure has never worked . Parreno made a film of the building here, which I saw recently at The Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin, it was in a show of recent acquisitions by the museum. In the film the building glows in the space of The Land. electricity was brought to The Land in order to make it light up. The Buffalo were meant to pull on and turn a trelly that then stored up energy in a battery so that electricity would be generated but it has never worked.So for the moment the Buffalo have no function except for creating nice images for art magazines and giving Aiwa a lot of work.

I then walk over to the shower: this I feel is one of the most successful structures. It was built by the first set of One Year participants. I climb onto a bicycle and pump water for my shower that is ground water, rain water is also stored in the blue container. I am the only one up, I have some fruit and then walk into the village. People pass me on scooters on their way to work and a few trucks full of farm workers (migrants?) wave at me. People are surprised to see me, I am offered several lifts. There are many rice fields, people living locally do not seem poor, I judge this on the housing I see in the village. I wonder if the people working the fields own the land?


The rest of the day is fairly lazy. I pick up "One Straw Revolution" and begin to read it. It is about a Japanese farmer, Masanobu Fukuoka who after 30 years of developing a method now farms with little effort and close to nature's ways. The book was written in 1975 and covers all the issues on climate change and predicts our current fuel crisis and unsustainable lively hoods. In the afternoon Aoife, Alex and myself go for a swim in the canal to cool off. As we walk back to The Land a silver bus full pulls up full of Swedish and Thai curators. I run up to Rirkrit's house with my wet hair and put my bra's and underwear away ( I suppose I could have left it. . a photo of which might be in the next contemporary art magazine. . a Tracey Emin at The Land.) The group walk around The Land awkwardly. Most of the curators/artists are wearing the classic/typical art world black. I watch a woman try to cross the bamboo bridge to the toilets in her slip on heels. The group don't quite fit in here, they some how look comical. After half an hour of walking around the structures and taking photo's they then leave. I realise our role as participants here is also that of mediator, we are also spectacle part of the art work that is 'The Land' , we leave the art tourists feeling like intruders.
Michael von Hausloff then arrives with his gallery, son and friend, they have come to see and take pictures of The Star house. They lie around and chat with us in the cool shade and drink coconuts. We will see them on Friday evening for talks and presentations at Rirkrit's house in Chaing Mai.