D-Project

The D-project is a proposal for investigating Bangkok through a
double-edged approach. Our purpose is to equally document aspects of the urban condition of the city and the subjective identity of its
observers, taking as a starting point our position of travelers enmeshed
with the uncomfortable status of western tourists. D- stands for
documentation, but a documentation of its own kind, a process which aims to document at one and the same time observers, observed and
observation, while interrogating the ambiguities and difficulties that
their relations produce. D- will be based in a defined space in Bangkok
(D-room) where all along the period of our work for the show in October
we will in turn live, work and research.

D-room. It will be a hotel (hostel? friend's house?) room from which we
will plan and deploy all our sorties into the city, accumulate and
process the material collected during our expeditions. Starting cell and
final container of a chain of subsequent, and only partly predictable,
findings, D-room will be a hybrid between an urban laboratory, the MIR
station, a picture agency, and a prison cell.
D- will rather be a structure and a system rather than a defined object:
in fact it will be an open and loose space which might contain different
lines of intervention and multiple proposals.

D-appendixes. We envisage to employ a variety of D-vehicles to carry out
our explorations: D-boat, D-van, D-car, D-tuk-tuk, D-local friends'
cars, D-etc. These vehicles will become an essential component of the
making of our D-room-in-progress, in that a number (if not all) of our
documentation will be generated through their support.

D-work. At the actual stage of work, we imagine two different
interventions, marked as D1 and D2, and proposed by various members of
the D-group.

D-timing. The D-project is splitted in two parts : the first is
connected to the exhibition Cities on the Move, which will be displayed
in Bangkok in September and October. Its center will be the D-room. The
second will be inserted in the architectural seminar "City of water", in
December, and it will require a D-boat.
In the first part "Souvenir Bangkok" will be the core of the work. In
the second part, the work will be "Measuring Bangkok".
D-1. Souvenir Bangkok

Our intervention will focus on the observation of Bangkok as a world
center of urban tourism. We will question what makes the city an
alluring place to visit (and ultimately a gigantic machine geared in the
global pleasure-seeking industry) by considering a range of processes,
sites, and practices which constitute what may be defined the tourist
gaze. In particular, we want to explore ways in which the imagery of the
city is constructed both for the purpose of the tourists' experience and
as a result of it. Within the framework of D-, our operation proposes a
collector's exploration of some of the sites in Bangkok where the
encounter between visiting travelers and locals (architecture, places,
events, people, etc.) significantly occurs.

The basic idea is to employ the structure of D- as a depository of
multiple images and objects that are to be gathered on the spot and
which will be used as raw material for our subsequent elaborations. By
so doing, we intend to exhibit the very process of collecting a range of
relatively disconnected sights, as it prevails in a great deal of
touristic practices. This reflexive act is aimed to investigate the
existence of a malleable city of leisure which is largely manufactured
by the industries of travelling and consumption - fuelled by the lure of
exotic (and erotic) expectations. No claim to reveal authenticity, as
opposed to artificial or simulated experience, is advanced here; but
rather an attempt to observe specific instances of "collage tourism" and
recompose them into a purposely-intensified montage. This could find
expression in varying formats ranging from a one-room installation to
publications in local media.

Among the options scrutinized is the direct involvement of small groups
of tourists in Bangkok, whose perceptions - recorded in various supports
such as snapshots, videotapes, etc. - could become part of the
exhibition virtually at the same moment they are being produced. Through
the assemblage, juxtaposition, and editing of such multifarious
material, a peculiar vision of the contemporary tourist city will take
shape. It will be equally exposed to the views of local citizens and
temporary tourists alike, whose respective cultural identities are
mutually rebounced across the invisible boundaries of the metropolis.

Davide Deriu
Francesca Violi
London, August 1999

D-2. Measuring Bangkok

Space, urban one in particular, is at the same time the site of
political and social conflict, as well as the stage for bodies in
movements, meeting point between abstractions of economy and evidence of
physical perception.
In Asian cities, where the role of public powers, for what concerns the
administration of urban development and common spaces is almost reduced
to zero, space is evidently the first and rarest good to be sold. And
what creates the value, more than the location, as in the structure of
Western cities, is the quantity. The larger, the richer.
The proposal for D- aims then to investigate space in its constitutive
elements, better in the abstraction of the measures of its physical
boundaries which allow the possibility of estimation of its value.
The hypothesis would be that to each given square area and density, are
connected different social and economical aspects of the life of
Bangkok.
The project intends then to document different spaces, climbing bottom
up from the tiny houses in slums and housing areas, through markets and
commercial districts, up to hotels for Western tourists and finishing
with villas and showrooms.
Jumping from scale to scale it might be possible to manifest then the
central role given in Asian cities and in Bangkok as well, to the
dimensions of spaces, therefore to the densities of its use, as one of
the principal instruments of urban and social separation.

Chosen an area of investigation, the river Chao Phraya, the work will be
composed of different contributions, which will be connected to the
other activity of the D-room (it might be possible that same sites and
objects will be observed by different angles from the members of the
D-crew, and to re-use what produced by the previous occupants of the
D-room): pictures, sketches, drawings, small videos, interviews.
At the end of the fieldwork, material will be sorted typologically, in
forms of diagrams and schemes: the "sorting device", assembling the
different spaces and their various representations, would primarily
consider as an operational filter, the density per square meter of each
space.
Let's then imagine the final result: a series of panels, each labeled
with a different density ratio and each containing various material
related to the different social and human landscape coincident with the
various densities.
The work is intended to become one of the multiple fragments of Bangkok
as described by the D-process.

Fabrizio Gallanti
Biarritz, August 1999
Practicalities

Contribution (format). D-room could become itself, or a mock-up
reconstruction of it, the site of a multimedia installation, showing our
diverse recordings (pictures, text, data etc.). At the same time, the
possibility of utilizing local media could trigger out various ways in
which these contributions will be formatted.
D-boat will bring along the river the material produced during the first
part of the work, and it will be a movable exhibition : in occasion of
each stop of the boat this material will be displayed and what produced
from the work of documentation of the second part will be added day by
day.

Location (space). We envisage performing several punctual interventions,
mainly in city spaces and in the media (particularly billboards,
posters, and the press).

Scale (relation). Since we focus on both the observation of specific
urban places and their connection with the broader city context, our
contributions are situated between the local and the metropolitan
scales.

Time (program). Our contribution is essentially a work-in-progress,
whose display as a final object is far less relevant than the very
process whereby it is generated. Therefore, it is important that the
sequence of our successive interventions find appropriate ways to be
viewed "in the making". Also, the timing of D- requires flexibility: for
instance, where media coverage is needed, this could be concentrated on
a short period only (e.g. one week), whereas other parts of the
D-project will be produced through a longer span of time.

Rotation. D-schedule

Theo Michell 24 September - to 3 October
Davide Deriu 2 October -to 11 October
Francesca Violi 9 October- to 18 October

Fabrizio Gallanti 4 December to 18 December
Francesca Violi 4 December to 18 December


Technical requirements

Maximal
· 2 SVHS video recorders
· 2 Color TV sets
· 1 A3 scanner
· 1 Laser Printer format A3
· 1 Tripod for camera
· 3 Automatic slide projectors
· 2 MAC computers equipped with the following software: Microsoft Word;
Adobe Photoshop; Adobe Premiere; Quark Xpress; Netscape Communicator
(each computer should have at least 256 MB of Ram and 10 GB of Rom, a
video entry, modems with Internet connections).

Minimal
· 1 Laser printer
· 1 MAC computer equipped with the following software: Microsoft Word;
Adobe Photoshop; Adobe Premiere; Quark Xpress; Netscape Communicator
(each computer should have at least 256 MB of Ram and 10 GB of Rom, a
video entry, modems with Internet connections).


Davide, Fabrizio, Francesca,
Theo
21.08.1999