Free Parking - press release

[varsha]

Free Parking

Within dense urban grids universally, parking spaces are much sought
after and generally taken for granted. Car parks are transitory spaces
where you park or un-park your car and at the same time, stare at a few
blank walls as you go. Designed as multi-storey or underground, they seem
to be tagged on like afterthoughts, as though they are invisible appendages
to large shopping malls or office blocks. Generally characterless, most
people think of them as dark, smelly places - necessary to our existence
in a city but at the same time, spaces that can be easily dismissed to
the realm of being ‘non-places’ in our minds.

As the current debate heats up about whether the Bangkok city authorities
will build us a museum with a car park or, a car park with a museum, I
collaborate with architect Savinee Buranasilapin and turn this exhibition
space into a parking area. The existing space remains unchanged - it is
merely inhabited differently. In turn, it is also entirely possible to
enter car park spaces to create new and different situations without changing
the original function of the place. It’s a question of how to engage people
through the experience of art within the integral experience of the city.

Varsha Nair.
Bangkok, June 2002
Free Parking
Site-specific installation 2002

Varsha Nair in collaboration with Savinee Buranasilapin
At:
Art Gallery
Centre of Acadamic Resources,
Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok
From: August 14 - 31, 2002