Two years after local and international artists helped bring “street art” from peripheral sois to the mainstream, organizers of 2013’s Bukruk Street Art Festival said today they’re getting ready to do it again.
Nico Dali, one of the project’s leads, said although they were keen to repeat the popular project which ran for a month two years ago, they needed to take a break and bring it back at a time which made sense instead of just repeating the same formula.
“For the next one, actually so far we’re going to do something really different in curation,” Dali said. “Different from what you can see today, when we have so many street art festivals”
Pivoting away from the ubiquity of “street art,” which two years on has become embraced by mainstream consumer culture, Bukruk 2 will rebrand itself more along the lines of graphics and muralism with an emphasis on the bizarre and original.
“There’s no point to doing the same thing,” Dali said. “Our aim is to do something different, something new, something kick-ass for sure.”
Dutch artist Daan Botlek poses before his mural in Siam Square.
A Bukruk mural by Thai artist Alex Face
The first Bukruk festival happened amid a wave of innovative expression from music to performance and visual arts that was underway in the capital. Twenty-five local and international artists collaborated on 25 murals created in spaces like Siam Square, along the Saen Saeb canal and in disadvantaged communities, where they were warmly received.
For 2015, Dali said the focus on Chinatown as a both neglected treasure and threatened community made it the right place to host the festival’s exhibitions and murals.
“That’s the place that deserves to be recognized,” he said. “Nice places to discover and some amazing buildings, many about to be destroyed.”
Another goal will be improving the interaction between visiting and local artists by selecting spaces that put them into more contact, as well as hosting community and school workshops for visiting artists to interact directly with locals.
Bukruk 2 is planned for mid-December, although its organizers are still in the planning stages and trying to line up a mix of public and private funding and sponsorships.
Photos: Bukruk Festival
Bukruk promo video from 2013
Correction: An earlier version of this article misidentified the creator of a mural. It was painted by Alex Face, not the late Mamafaka.
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