Sung Tieu and Ho Rui An
On-Air, Off-Air
The Jim Thompson Art Center, Bangkok

During the American war in Vietnam, the US military employed a slew of underhanded tactics, one of which was Operation Wandering Soul. This lyrically code-named campaign involved broadcasting voice recordings engineered to simulate fallen Việt Cộng soldiers crying out to their living comrades, creating an echo chamber of disembodied shrieks and moans—a ghastly ruse that exploited regional superstitions about spirits of lost or unburied dead, forever doomed to roam the earth.

Such remote methods of combat, intended to unnerve the enemy through an intangible psychological assault on the senses, underpinned Sung Tieu and Ho Rui An’s duo exhibition at the Jim Thompson Art Center in Bangkok. Titled “On-Air, Off-Air” in reference to the transmission of radio or TV programs, the show gathered works across installation, video, and photography to explore how various forms of media can subliminally carry out political stratagems.