When Tanat Teeradakorn was at school in Thailand, he had little awareness of how tightly the state controlled the country’s historical narratives. ‘I had no idea how completely one-sided it was,’ he recalls. As the Bangkok-born artist grew older, however, he turned to alternative news platforms, uncovering stories excluded from his education. ‘There was so much censorship. Even the details of the October 6, 1976, massacre were kept from us.’ This event, in which Thai police brutally suppressed and killed leftist protesters at Bangkok’s Thammasat University, profoundly impacted Thai society, yet remains underrepresented in official history.

This drive to uncover hidden facts and meanings continues to define Teeradakorn’s work, which spans sound, installation, performance, video, and textiles. Often drawing from historical data and pop-cultural influences, he examines how stories and identities are constructed and recontextualized across societal and new-media landscapes. He is best known for his multimedia sound installations – he has performed twice at Berlin’s legendary nightclub Berghain as part of the CTM festival – where he creates intricate audio collages blending a broad range of aural samples and synthesizers. ‘I’m interested in how sound affects the body and emotions, and how media manipulates what we feel and believe,’ he explains.

In his upcoming multimedia installation, The Rise and Decline of an Absolutism (2024) – set to debut in January at Gasworks, London, before traveling to Art Basel Hong Kong in March – Teeradakorn explores the political dimensions of state media and its role in shaping socio-political structures and cultural norms. The performance film delves into Thailand’s postwar history, focusing on how traditional art forms like ramvong, a Thai dance-drama, were censored following the 1947 military coup. ‘My intention is to create a form of entertainment as a way of assessing how news media functions in society. I want to explore how we feel when we perform these gestures, how we feel when sound and body collide.’

Teeradakorn’s reinterpretation takes the form of instructional videos, with performers teaching traditional dances set to revolutionary songs, including the socialist May Day Anthem (1903). The work remixes protest music with classical gestures, transforming dance into an act of resistance. ‘By combining these dances with revolutionary songs, you create a contradiction: the feeling of resisting power while simultaneously surrendering to it. I’m fascinated by how to create those complex impacts on the body and human emotion.’