We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Saun Santipreecha a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Saun thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?

I think the concept of ‘learning the craft’ needs to encompass more than what is often thought of today. In any artform, the ‘craft’ should at least be equally that of the conceptual as much as the physicality of the medium itself—the thoughts, what lies beneath the surface appeal of a work, what drives the mechanisms that eventually manifest in what we see or hear in the art object, whether it be visual or aural. This requires a lot of reading and research which is one of the biggest joys for me and is what grounds me through the various mediums and interdisciplinary practices I engage in. I always come back to language, to literature, to reading and to the hinge between the aural and the visual, embodied perhaps most fundamentally in language itself. I grew up, like many trained in classical music, being instructed in the ‘craft’ and technique of the instrument, of Western classical theory etc. but what I always missed and was searching for was the ‘why’. The why, as it turns out, comes from these deeper mechanisms that now conceptually drive my work. For instance, from a musical standpoint, it took decades to realize the ‘function’ of tonality, and the inherent worldview bias it brings: that of a unified (tonal) oneness. I had always been drawn to the so-called strangeness of atonality (and beyond) but apart from my own emotional impressions of it and the cultural biases used in various media that associates these modes with psychological instability, horror and so on, I hadn’t found, until more recently, the ‘reasoning’ for it and how it aligned with much of my own thinking and worldview. Exploring voraciously various kinds of artforms from multiple mediums and eras is incredibly helpful as well as a part of learning the craft, not just of the medium (or mediums) one works in, but also the craft of thinking and viewing beyond the surface aesthetic to the deeper in/visible architectures that govern us and the systems we are entwined in.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My work—and I think this applies to many others as well—is always fundamentally about asking questions. Art for me isn’t necessarily about giving answers but opening up or pivoting one’s way of seeing and experiencing—and asking—the world. Any answer becomes a fixing, a narrowing of complexity into a single legibility which, though is inevitable and necessary, must always remain constantly challenged and challenging.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

Here I would go back to the example I gave of tonality in music, and by extension the harmonic progressions (and rules) one learns in Western music which ultimately mirrors that of eschatological thinking. What one is never taught (or shown) is why these things are the way they are. What belief systems and positions are standing there, silent, mute but exerting control, behind the veils of the systems and the aesthetics we inhabit and inter/act in. This, as an example, was one of the big lessons to unlearn, or more accurately, to unravel. Once unraveled, one is more free (with one’s reading and research at hand) to attempt one’s own raveling of such threads, which is inevitable. One gets tangled up again, and the unraveling must begin again. This is the perpetual action that anchors art for me: a perpetual raveling and unraveling, simultaneous construction and destruction.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

Goal or mission implies there is a destination to be reached whereas the act of questioning is a perpetual state of flux. And like Vladimir and Estragon, we are all, and will always be, waiting for Godot.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.santipreecha.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/santipreechasaun/

Image Credits
First profile image (SSP by objetA.D): Saun Santipreecha outside his current installation [0-I-RI-R] at the Wende Museum, Culver City (Photo courtesy of Reisig and Taylor Contemporary) (ssp_Per-formative Cities_Rome): Per/formative Cities, A Nest of Triptychal Performances, Rome (Photo by Luc Trahand) (ssp_[0-I-RI-R]_ScoreA): [0-I-RI-R] View of Score A of the Installation (Photo by artist) (ssp_[0-I-RI-R]_CopperInsideDetail): [0-I-RI-R] Copper Sculptural Element, Inside Detail (Photo by artist) (ssp_[0-I-RI-R]_CopperOutsideDetail): [0-I-RI-R] Copper Sculptural Element, Outside Detail (Photo by artist)