A 19th-century clock, a gift from King Rama V, the Thai king of the era, is one of many pieces of art and history that have turned buildings and temples into public art spaces for the fourth Bangkok Art Biennale, scheduled from Thursday through Feb. 25.
The clock is to be displayed in the sprawling Siwamokkhaphiman Hall, part of the Grand Palace complex. And time also was a theme very much on the minds of the two Thai artists who created a video installation, to be shown in the hall, about Rama V’s visit to Europe in 1897.
“In Buddhism we believe that time is not linear, but that it’s a circle,” Nakrob Moonmanas, one of the artists, said. “We believe that we exist and then we live again. Everything is a circle.”
It is a central idea in “Our Place in Their World,” the video that Mr. Moonmanas created last year with Chitti Kasemkitvatana. The four-minute piece is a mix of imagery, including vintage photos of temples, palaces and the clock tower, constructed in 1857, that still stands at the Grand Palace.
“When Westerners came, Thailand created a different concept of time, one of progress and productivity,” Mr. Moonmanas said. “The clock tower is an example of how we adapted to the West. When the watch and clock came to Thailand, we adjusted.”
For Apinan Poshyananda, the biennale’s artistic director, the 19th-century clock became a vital part of this year’s biennale when it was taken from storage belonging to the National Museums of Thailand. Rama V, also known as King Chulalongkorn, ordered it and several other French-made clocks for Buddhist monks in his country in 1873. Nine are believed to still be in temples around Thailand.
Almost 25 years later, the king traveled to Europe on a diplomatic trip, inspired by the beautiful clocks he had given away. “He was trying to make Siam a place that was modern, and he needed to make friends, so he went to Europe and he and his entourage dressed in top hats and jackets and the media projected him as a civilized monarch,” Mr. Poshyananda said, using the country’s name until 1939. “He shopped a lot and bought many paintings and souvenirs to decorate his palace.”
Rama V was 15 years old when his father, Rama IV (the monarch portrayed in “The King and I”), died of malaria after a trip to the Malay Peninsula to view an eclipse in 1868.
The new king served as a monk, a royal tradition, for 14 days in 1873, and the clocks he gave his fellow monks came to represent, for many, his commitment to bringing Siam into the world.
“As a present to the monks, he gave the gift of time,” Mr. Poshyananda said. “But I also think this had many messages to the Thai people. It was time to be modern. It was time to catch up.”
The clock in the biennale display, which no longer runs, has Thai inscriptions on its back that identify the year in which Rama V served as a monk and describe his service. The museum does not know the name of the clockmaker, and no one can make it out on the timepiece.
The case was made of polished black slate in the French Victorian style, decorated with a series of faded flourishes that have yellow-orange accents. Its mechanism, according to state archive records, was created by the French clockmaker and mathematician Louis Achille Brocot and required winding every eight hours.
“When you enter the artists’ video installation, they talk about the time of Rama V going to Europe and you see glimpses of his travels in the video and many prints and images of his visit,” Mr. Poshyananda said. “We placed the clock nearby to link it all together. Time really does seem to stand still.”
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