Times at Sam Rit

My partner and I were lucky to be at Sam Rit artist residency during the rice harvest. We found piles of rice on the grounds of the local wat, in front of the school, along roadsides…they were all over town. Workers even pitched tents to watch over their rice. It was an interesting phenomenon to observe how the whole community was invested. Each morning, workers came to sift rice in front of the residency.

We noticed that in Sam Rit (and mostly everywhere we traveled in Thailand) life happens in front of the house, at street level. People sit on mats, to relax, to watch TV, to eat, to cook…it all seems to happen outside and right in front. So one afternoon, we decided to situate ourselves right on the street. We watched children walk home from school, families ride by on scooters, rainbow colored rice trucks and local life pass us by. We recorded these sounds and paired them with a time lapse video of the rice harvesters at work.

We enjoyed so many things at Sam Rit. Biking to Phi Mai was especially beautiful. On the way back, we found ourselves a bit lost. Someone soon stopped to give directions, without us even asking. We went though a small village with a very narrow main street and everyone was out on their stoop. It was in these few moments that we saw rural life unfiltered, everything happened in slow motion, peoples faces were illuminated, there was only this moment, this experience.

To wrap up our stay, we exchanged stories over a big family meal at our host’s home. We became a part of Sam Rit’s extended family. We could not have envisioned the profound effect that these experiences had on the way we approach our work and on us personally.

Jaz Graf & Laos Fois, 2014