Dérive in a Controlled Space: Reflections on Wonderfruit Festival
Wonderfruit festival is considered Thailand’s answer to Coachella, a gathering of music and art decked with pomp and circumstance. It is held annually in December on a resort just outside of Pattaya, a touristic city that blends the unapologetic hedonism of Las Vegas with the pastel white condos and tropical beachfronts of Miami. Though not Thailand’s largest festival by attendance, it is undoubtedly its most expensive, with ticket prices comparable to any event held in the U.S. or Europe.
Dérive made its first appearance at Wonderfruit in 2017 and was asked to return for the festival’s 2019 edition. Having just returned from Hong Kong, I decided that it would be a great opportunity to continue experimenting with Terra Form, the public art project that I developed just a few months earlier. To that point, Terra Form had been defined exclusively by its arena—public spaces—and by the spontaneity of participants. I had a hunch of how it would play out in the contained environment of a music festival, yet in recognizing Dérive’s empirical nature I acknowledged that I needed to go through the experience of hosting for the five days first before drawing any conclusions.
Dérive’s booth was set up in the “Wonderness” zone, an area dedicated to health and wellness as well as related vendors. I was provided a 3x3 meter tent as part of a group of four tents in order to install my project. The cluster of tents was located in an open space on the southern field of the festival grounds, relatively close to the zone’s information kiosk and a performance ring vaguely reminiscent of an indigenous tribal circle. The location itself was fairly central, though the zone—and the festival as a whole—sprawled so far as to feel that it was unable to adequately take up the space of the resort grounds that it was located on.
Anyone who has been to a multi-day camping festival is aware of a unique circadian rhythm; barely anything happens until mid-to-late afternoon. Attendees’ partying habits notwithstanding, the December Thai sun is still radiant and forceful enough for you to prioritize shade and shelter until it retreats in the sky. On this particular year, the wide expanse of the festival grounds invited a prevailing gale force wind for much of the morning and early afternoon, forcing vendors to expend almost all their energy on bolting down their products. Clearly, this time and setting was not conducive to Terra Form.
But the daily lag in action can also be felt on a larger time scale; the festival’s busiest days when people are at their most open and adventurous tend to be towards the end. On this case, this was the festival’s third evening, the Saturday night. While participants became more readily open to participate in Dérive, the sheltered nature of the tent lended an air of privacy that attracted people looking for deeper, more lasting connections. And so, more people elected to do Life Compasses rather than Terra Form, something that builds on collective and non-verbal energy. Oddly enough, the only people who appeared to be interested in Terra Form were Cantonese speakers, able to read the etching of the phrase “加墨水” (“gaa mak seoi”) in the corner of the canvas from my recent trip to Hong Kong I displayed on the back wall.
The public space—inclusive and democratic—remains unparalleled as an ideal setting for Terra Form. Wonderfruit’s reputation as an exclusive and expensive festival aside, any space that segments individuals off by some form of discrimination, however small, impinges on Terra Form’s ability to operate at its most effective. Logistically it requires very little, which is sort of the basic point: allowing people to act on their own autonomy, where their willingness to engage and be present remains the top priority. Allowing people of all backgrounds and persuasions to take a moment to step out of their normal mode of exchange and thinking is the heart and soul of this project. It will continue to invite those who expected nothing moments before participation and may carry on when they leave.