A Television
This is a story about a television that is no longer in use.
While walking around the site and waiting for a the restaurant owner to be free to do an interview for us, a particular television caught our eye.
This television appears above the local mart beside the restaurant “Lantern” in the Ban Panthom community. The owner of the local mart told us she was the one that place the television there and people used to gather outside her shop to watch sports matches like soccer and boxing. The placement of the television in a public space allowed the fostering community spirit among the villagers through common shared interests such as soccer matches. The street and the space in front of the local mart thus becomes a communal space. Although this activity allowed social interaction, it also meant that noise would be generated. The television is now an artefact of the vibrant and lively past as the residents complained about the noise generated from the cheering and jeering from the exciting sports matches and the consumption of alcohols.
Such shared activities create shared memories for this particular group of people that gather to drink, eat and watch sports together; and on first thought, one might lament about how it is a pity for such “communal” activities to be gone but could we look at this phenomenon from a different perspective? As outsiders, it is easy for us to pass judgement and say that anything that disrupts such gatherings should be discouraged. However, is the idea of communal living just about the physical proximity between people; i.e. gatherings, living close to one another? Could it also be something that transcends the physical realm; like the sensitivity and understanding of the shop owner towards her neighbors around?
Later on that night, while we were filming inside the restaurant, the lady owner of the local mart started playing her radio loudly. We went over to her store and communicate with her to turn down her radio volume (using our hand gestures as we couldn’t speak Thai). The radio was turned down as we try to explain to her that we were doing some filming. Using google translate, I keyed in the words ‘we are filming something’ and showed it to her on my phone while gesturing an apologetic bow to her as she reads that translated words.
Understanding what we were trying to say, she actually fully turned off the radio. To me, I find that the idea of a community living is really beyond just living close to each other but is also about how individuals understand that they are part of a larger collective and their actions has impact on the people around, and how they are concerned about how their neighbors feel or think.
