When Mr. Y first explained Infinite Thailand to me, 15 years ago, I had no idea what he was talking about. “Infinite Thailand is national performance art piece that will save Thailand.” This was Friday, May 7th, 2007. I know the day because it was the day of Midway Free City, an imaginary “free city” on the Midway Plaisance in Chicago. The locally legendary underground performance artist and musician ‘travis’ took photos: they are on his website, here.
There were a lot of underground characters back then in Hyde Park, so it wasn’t so strange when a Thai man in a rainbow suit walked up to me and said that he had written a performance piece for 90 million people, it was called “Infinite Thailand” and that I was going to direct this performance piece after he died, but “this would be between ten and fifty years in the future. As soon as Thailand legalizes cannabis.” According to Mr. Y, once you would be able to smoke pot legally in Thailand, people’s minds would be free to see his amazing plan,
“Everything starts from the towel. This is why Infinite Art Towels are Strategy 1. Once we see the towel as a site for value vaulting, to make each towel a true work of art, then we can imagine a mimetic cascade outwards from towels outwards to neighborhoods, religions, modernist culture industries, associations, importations, heroes, standards, infrastructures.”
Mr. Y handed me the script to the performance, and told me to study it for nine days, then we would meet to talk about it at Valois on 53rd to talk about it at 9:09 am.
“Why all the nines” I asked
Nine, he said, is lucky in Thailand because it sounds like both progress, and rice. So I studied the script, tried to learn as many performances as I can, and then met him. And kept meeting him. Nine times, of course, in total, over the next eight years: 2007 - 2015, the very last time I was ever in Chicago.
Now Thailand has legalized cannabis, at least for the moment, and we’re ready to start the performance.
Imagine an art that lists the first nine strategies in a National Performance called “Infinite Thailand.” They are: art towels, new new chinatown, new materialism, CAPES, Thaixokos, Berghain Bang Kachao, Apocalypse Now Fitness Cooperative, 420-DOP, and the Tunnelparks.
These towels are the key merchandising item in the Infinite Thailand Strategies Performance Office One, an institutional performance of “Infinite Thailand Strategies” - a consultancy firm dedicated to Infinite Thailand. The goal of the performance is to sell 9000 of these towels for ~20usd each, returning 9x to the initial ~20,000usd investment.
“Why would this work?” I asked Mr. Y at our first meeting at Valois. “It’s simple. Hope. The way Thailand is going now, call it finite thailand, it’s headed towards a sad place. Even if the idea of a national performance seems insane, at least it gives hope. What need is more fundamental! Hope will sell towels, hope will create New Chinatown, hope will import the Berghain and build the tunnelparks. But start with the towels. Always start with the towels.”
b.shepard at
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