This document discusses the city innovation of public arts in Bangkok, Thailand. It highlights how concepts of temporality, transience, and fun have been innovatively employed in contemporary public art interventions. New forms of participative art and community art have emerged, related to urban policies of inner city regeneration and community revitalization. Public and private sectors have increasingly partnered to support public arts. Two types of spaces have been targeted - contemporary public spaces like malls and transit areas, and local communities/neighborhoods. Shopping malls and transport hubs in Bangkok's central business district have attracted the most participative art exhibitions and events outdoors from 2006-2010.

1. City, Innovation, and Arts:
The Case of Bangkok
Dr. Pun-Arj Chairatana
Dr. Apiwat Ratanawaraha
CISASIA Project
www.cisasia.net

2. Converging City, Foresight, and
Innovation: Thailand Experience
2006: Coining City Foresight 2009: Developing City 2010: Merging City Foresight
framework Innovation Concept and City to City Innovation
Innovation System:
•Location: The 1400 Years old town: •Scenario building: Six Mega cities in
Two municipalities along River Ping. •Locations: Six Mega cities in SE SE including , Bangkok,, Singapore,
Lampoon., Northern Thailand including , Bangkok,, Singapore, Ho Ho Chi Minh City, Kuala Lumpur,
Chi Minh City, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, Jakarta, and Manila. (Project
and Manila. (Project supported by supported by IDRC)
IDRC)

3. 2006 * Lampoon City Foresight
The First City Foresight in Thailand
Scenario 1: A Bitter
Prosperity
Scenario 2: Global
Village Lampoon
Scenario 3:
International
Lampoon
Scenario 4:
Lampoon Green
Knowledge Town

4. 2009 Defining City Innovation
and Systems
Figure 2: City Innovation and City Innovation Systems (CISs) A new or
improved
Conventional Alternative solution
innovation systems City innovation innovation systems that
(Institutions) (Spaces)
contributes
Research and Product innovation
Technology
Organization (RTOs)
Physical space towards
Process innovation
enhanced
Position innovation
Private firms
Paradigm innovation
Information space liveability,
Institutional innovation
prosperity,
Government
Service innovation
Cognitive space and equity
of the city.”

5. 2010 Bangkok City Innovation System Foresight
Towards Liveable, Prosperity, and Equity 2030
Product
Services Process
City
innovation
Institution Position City
innovator
Paradigm

6. Bangkok and City Innovation
Bangkok City
Macro Innovation
System
Meso Aesthetic
innovation
Creative
Economy
Art led Creative
Micro Temporal
Intervention
Community
Revitalization
industry
mapping

7. Rirkrit Triravanich’s Padthai, 2004 Spider Shack, 2008
Case 1: Temporal Intervention,
The City Innovation for Public Arts in Bangkok
Led by Dr. Khaisri Paksukcharern
Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand

8. Introduction
Based on a research paper on
The city innovation of public arts in Bangkok.
Main Findings:
- ‘Temporality’, ‘Transience’, ‘Fun’
are the innovative concepts recently employed in the
contemporary public art intervention in the city.
- New forms of ‘Participative Art’ and ‘Community Art’
- In relation to the latest urban policies of ‘inner city regeneration
especially at the scale of ‘community revitalization’.
- An increasing support of public and private sector in partnership.
- The city innovation for public arts in Bangkok is evidenced
in two types of inner urban areas;
* contemporary public spaces in the city
such as shopping malls and transit spaces
* local community and neighborhoods

9. PUBLIC ART:
varied and ambiguous definitions
- public art is the art outside conventional art spaces such as
museums or galleries.
‘site-specific’, an art created and installed in a given site
or the design of a site as an art itself
‘site-general’, an already created art object is chosen
to be placed in a site.
- the concept of ‘public’ can be difficult and makes the status
of public art become more ambiguous in the case that the
definition of public is not necessarily bounded by space.
- ‘Art in public sites’ brings about encounters and coexistence
of people and subsequently leads to urban livability.
- In this research, as art in public spaces has had a long history
from being in art institutions in relation to public open spaces of
the city, it will trace public art related to both inside and outside
conventional art spaces.

10. PUBLIC ART AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT:
the concept of ‘livable city’ and ‘urban aesthetics’
- 1980s: The concept of ‘livable city’ in relation to ‘urban aesthetic’
especially through pedestrian points of view
- 1990s: Discussions on public art and its supporting role to reclaim
the ‘public-ness’ of open spaces in cities
- In the context of urban decay, public art played a significant role to
entail a re-visioning of public spaces and how they should be used
- and by whom.
- There has been a continuous and interrelated development between
public arts and urban spaces: the solutions of how both could adapt
and make use of each other in order to sustain the right balance
of intervention.
TALA Exhibition: Central World Plaza, 2009

11. Location of Art Institutions and Commercial Spaces in Bangkok
with urban attraction places
- 56 private art galleries
- 62 museums
on archeology, anthropology, history,
science, natural sciences and etc
- 2 types of art galleries:
- very few number of visitors.
* 74% has never visited art galleries
- 31% no news 31%
- 13.5% exhibition changing too
quickly
- 41.5% heard the news but
never been interested
- 11% heard the news and interested
but not available
- 3% heard the news and interested
but not confident
- All pure art galleries have less than
10,000 visitors / year
Source: W.Teerachaisuppakit, 2002

12. Le Fete Bangkok at Gaysorn Plaza, 2007
THE FIRST INNOVATION:
the concepts of temporality,
transience and fun
of Participative art
in CBD area
- An innovative attempt to place public arts
with the shopping malls and
transport interchange spaces
such as BTS skywalks in CBD areas
Spider Shack:
Siam Discovery Center
2008
TALA Exhibition: Central World Plaza, 2009
Overhead Nightclub,
Central Shopping, Chang Wattana, 2008 Siam Discovery Center, 2007

13. Frequencies of public art exhibitions / events in Bangkok
categorized by 2 space types (2006-2010)
The record of these contemporary public art event in Bangkok
from 2006-2010 on shows that the CBD areas of Rachaprasong
and Pathumwan, the commercial and mass transit hub of Bangkok;
* attracts most art events in the spaces attached
or en-route to shopping malls and transit stations.
* exhibits art outdoor or outside the conventional art spaces.

14. Distribution of public art exhibitions / events in Bangkok
categorized by 4 art types and 2 space types (2006-2010)
(cont.)
* exhibits art outdoor or outside the conventional art spaces.
* attracts the most participative forms of art ie, installation and performance..

15. In the Nut Shell
- The city innovation of public arts in Bangkok involves
new forms of art, urban spaces and their development strategies.
- A strong potential to reinvigorate Thai traditional artistic-practices
as well as to bring art to the public again.
- Participative Art in the CBD and Community Art in local neighborhood:
the first step to redefine art in Thailand.
- Bringing art out of galleries to streets and disrupted the flow of daily life. - To actually
connect the urban dwellers as well as the local community
to the livable city and urban aesthetic projects
through the exploration of how art can be used as an expression
of identity in everyday life.
- The innovation for public art is to engage with the public not
the didactic presentation.
- The concept of daily life, common routine, temporal but regular
intervention is surely different from the west.
- The real challenge is that how public art could be more than
a one time event, how to make the community react
and the pubic participate and become the norm than the exception.

16. ART-LED COMMUNITY REVITALIZATION:
THE CASE OF KUDEEJEEN NEIGHBORHOOD, BANGKOK
Led by Dr. Niramon Kulsrisombat
Department of Urban and Regional Planning, Chulalongkorn University
CIS-ASIA Project

17. Bangkok, with its long history and diverse
culture
• Old neighborhoods going
through significant
changes
– Changing social structure
– Decay of physical environ
– Lack of investment from
the private and public
sectors
– Though still lively,
compared to most
American cities, they are in
the decline

18. Research Methodology
• The Case Study of Kudeejeen
Neighborhood and
Kudeejeen-Silptamtrok
(KS) Art Festival (27-28
March 2010)
• Action research
• Questionnaire survey
• Interview
• Participatory observation

19. Site Context
• Long history since late 17C
• Cultural diversity from 3
religions and 6 ethnic groups
• Wat-Baan urban structure
• Cultural Heritage Mapping
Project by Association of
Siamese Architects (ASA) since
2008
• Problems:
- Lack of investment from
public and private sectors
- Changing community
structure
- Physical decay
- Limited awareness of
cultural heritage
Cultural map of Kudeejeen neighborhood - Limited participation in
public issues

20. Kudeejeen-Silptamtrok Art Festival map

21. Festival preparation by community members and volunteers

23. Analyzing the systems of city innovations
• KS Festival has been successful as community revitalizing
tool by:
- Increase level community participation through art and cultural
activities
- Increase awareness of community members towards their
cultural heritage
- Increase awareness of potential partners towards the value of
Kudeejeen Neighborhoods
• Key actors:
- ASA (core organization)
- Community leaders (community mobilizer)
- Abbots / Priest / Imam (community mobilizer)
• Interaction among actors:
- Community level and traditional social structure (Wat-Baan)
- Less involvement from city government, local government and
Thonburi District Cultural Council

24. Analyzing the systems of city innovations
• Challenges in the sustainability of the project:
- Lack of effective institution to merge community-based project
into formal planning system
- Strong top-down in cultural policy
- Different notion on “art and culture”
Next step
• Interview with community leaders and other stakeholders
• Questionnaire survey after the 2nd KS art festival in November, 2010

25. What will be the Future?
• More city innovation case studies and
comparative studies
• More understanding on the relationship
and interface between innovation and the
city
• What will be the key characteristics among
different levels of city innovation?
• How city innovator create, develop,
diffuse, and learn in the city?

26. Thank You