The Bamboo Stupa of Wat Pa'O Ram Yen: An Experiment in Local Agency

Abstract

After the traumatic experience of the 1997 financial crash, an imposing 'soul searching' happened in Thailand to assess where the country had failed. This assessment gave rise to some elements of the current discourse on localism, where globalisation is pinned against rural life, which became a source of traditional values. Yet the discourse was rooted in an idealised vision of rural life, crystallised in an undetermined traditional past. The discourse failed to present the rural community as a source of transformation, change, and agency, which ultimately led to a distrust of the local as a source of contemporary relevance. This article explores a small rural temple as a community art project, where the entire village came together, under the supervision of contemporary ceramicist Somluk Pantiboon, to construct their chedi, or stupa. Similar to community and relational art, the stupa serves as a source of communal relation. The chedi is an anomaly in comparison to other Thai stupas, as it was created using criss-crossed strips of bamboo on a metal frame. This unusual choice of medium is at the centre of Somluk's concept behind the temple, which was created to bring the community together and create their own identity, as a rural community, by participating in the construction of the temple. Contrary to stereotypical constructs of the rural community in the current discourse on localism, the chedi at Pa'O Ram Yen becomes a positive symbol of the community, while the process leading to it being there helped forge the community in the 'local', yet focused on the future, rather than an idealised past.