Eighteenth International Conference on the Arts in Society

Abstract

Since the authoritarianism of the military government has been criticized in the multi-media and the public in 2018, the aesthetic of resistance has become textures that stimulate the social body and political consciousness to have a new experience of saying the unsayable in Thai society. This study focuses on how graffiti and street art in Thailand are part of the materiality of protest. Specifically, the role of graphic design font, Prathēt Thūay (ประเทศทวย), that creates the form of dissent for political action. The paper also explores the shift from the artist’s ethnic minority background to those engaged in the new political desire and to the social life of font in the way they look and act politically in public space to identify the self of the protester as anonymous free will. Jacques Rancière mentioned that aesthetics is central to politics and the political system is based on the distribution of the sensible (Rancière 2004), following his idea of finding politics in the play of exchange and displacement between the world of art and the world of non-art (Rancière 2009). I argue that the ephemerality of the graffiti image can be embodied according to the difference in a meaningful order in a political crisis. Its articulated narrative is central to Thai political life today.