Ghost Projects by Niwat Manatpiyalert is one of the selected projects presented in the 25th Silpa Bhirasri’s Creativity Grants Exhibition, which showcases creative projects supported by the grant. Each project was selected by a distinguished panel of judges, reflecting a diverse range of approaches and practices within contemporary art.
(_) ลวง Ghost Projects
Ghost Projects is an exploration of semi-public spaces scattered throughout the country. These spaces appear so often in daily life that they become familiar images. Closer examination reveals them to be full of unresolved questions about status, use, and meaning. Such spaces exist in a state of ambiguity: caught between being public spaces meant to respond to people’s needs, and being spaces whose meaning is instead defined by state mechanisms or certain structures of power.
This project therefore seeks to raise questions about the conflict between the top-down process of defining a space’s meaning and the actual needs and lived experience of the public. It does so by viewing these spaces as a Space of Crisis, a liminal condition suspended between presence and neglect, between use and uselessness, between the space already defined and the space still open to interpretation. Under these conditions, such spaces might be seen as a “Third Space,” one born of the collision and negotiation between needs, memories, power and multiple layers of meaning. This third space has no fixed form or boundary; rather, it emerges through the relationships between people, place, time, history, community, and the various activities that unfold within it.
(Text from Silpabhirasri Creativity Grants 25 catalogue)