BANGKOK CITYCITY GALLERY is pleased to announce its upcoming project, second hand dialogue by Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit by acclaimed film director and screenwriter. After the exhibition and performance of screenwriting process in i write you a lot . in 2016, Thamrongrattanarit returns to the gallery with his experiment of collecting human interactions through dialogues. At the main gallery, second hand dialogue is operated by two main compartments: recording room and visitor room.

Either one overhears or listens to surrounding dialogues, one casually receives a message in the air while a speaker may not be aware of how fleeting words diffuse. By this reason, Thamrongrattanarit perceives a movie-making process as a construction of experiences for voyeurs and eavesdroppers, namely, ‘audiences.’ Commonly in movies, the audiences are deemed to be invisible to performing characters who converse as if nobody’s watching. Ascribed to this psychological condition, Thamrongrattanarit finds it crucial to build up a storage of dialogues for they can be re-enacted—not necessarily in the same situation—and made alive in a screenplay.

At the recording room, Thamrongrattanarit will explore how casual and swift dialogues operate. Visitors are welcome to contribute an up-to-3-minute phone conversation. In this compartment, dialogues will be recorded, archived and possibly broadcasted. Serving as a laboratory, this compartment helps magnify voluntary dialogues by looking at colloquies compounded with words, tones, speeds, rhythms. It will also enlarge constituents of verbal interaction in which humans simultaneously convey attitudes, worldviews, beliefs, and psychological states. Beyond its initial purpose, a banal conversation may slip into other domains or even into other mediums unrelated to its original form. second hand dialogue is thus a reused utterance, a passed-over thought, and a re-invented glimpse.

In parallel to the recording room, the visitor room is set up as a public observatory where visitors are free to linger and observe the ongoing process. In this transient state—while ‘audiences’ receive random conversations from the outdoor space, the surrounding area of the gallery—words fleet across ears, their meanings are reoriented in order to correspond with new receivers. It is an open domain where personal interactions become public re-inventions. From bit to bit, human encounters create a complex web of incomplete stories for those who pass between floating words.

Moments of conversation in second hand dialogue will be compiled and published, then delivered back to all participants as a token for their contribution. Like free-floating locutions, the compilation of second-hand dialogue is wishfully to inspire the crowdsourcing and appropriation among participants who may give these anonymous utterances a second chance by transforming them into other mediums.

For the logistical purposes, www.secondhanddialogue.com serves as an online registration for appointments, visitors who want to contribute dialogues are highly recommended to make an appointment in advance. Visitors are welcome to see the process and walk around visitor center during opening hours.