HYDROELECTRIC SPECTRE
Bangkok Kunsthalle, Thailand
Sunset to sunrise, 6-7 March, 2026
Sunset to sunrise, 6-7 March, 2026
At the centre of the installation, a raw aluminium bar emits live sound generated directly from Bangkok’s electrical current, while a corresponding bar hums in Singapore. A four-channel sonic composition evokes life on floating rafts in the Vajiralongkorn Dam Reservoir, where displaced Karen communities live above their submerged ancestral forests, rising and falling with the dam’s cyclical water releases. Sine waves tuned to the rooftop's column grid wash through the body as much as the air, forming an invisible field of resonance.
Throughout the night, visitors arrive, settle in, and give the work their time and their bodies, becoming sensing instruments themselves. As the installation unfolds with the rhythms of moon and sun, the rooftop becomes a site of collective attunement—a shared sonic ritual directed toward the distant dam that powers Bangkok, the lives afloat in the reservoir, and the hidden pulse of power generation and transmission.
A corresponding sound bar is presented simultaneously at the Singapore Biennale 2025, marking another node in the circuit. Together, the works trace Southeast Asia’s emerging transnational power grid connecting Laos, Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore.
The installation is developed in connection with an ongoing Water Campaign supporting access to clean drinking water for Karen communities living within the Vajiralongkorn Dam Reservoir.
Water Campaign: Clean drinking water for indigenous children in Thailand’s Vajiralongkorn Dam Reservoir.
Singapore Biennale 2025: Pure Intention. On view till 29 March, 2026.
Essay, ‘Hydroelectric Sensibility’, in 100 Words for Water: A Projective Ecosocial Vocabulary, 2025
Tracing Sand
Curator: Stefano Rabolli Pansera
Production: Gemmica Sinthawalai
Public Programme: Thanchanok Benjajinda
Visual Documentation: Puttisin Choojesroom, Krittawat Atthsis, Chen Zhan
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Sound design in collaboration with Shuoxin Tan
Water Campaign with the Karen community in collaboration with PuPla Trikaewprasert
The Humming of the Power Grid (2025) and Drifting Bodies (2025) on view at the Singapore Biennale till 29 March 2026; How Much Wattage is One Handbreadth of Water commissioned by Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York through the Swamplands open call in partnership with frieze Magazine
Research supported by Harvard GSD’s Wheelwright Prize and the Canadian Centre for Architecture