Beam Wong

Beam chose Lumpini Park for the shoot, not where I expected us to begin. Knowing him through the underground scene, I had imagined somewhere grittier or more dystopian. “This is where I observe the crows,” he told me, and it made more sense. He had always liked city parks and began visiting Lumpini and Benjakitti more regularly after Covid. I knew him mostly through his films and music, and knew much less about his Korean family background, his connection with Japan, or how his practice moves between film, music, performance and installation.

In a quieter part of the park, dozens of crows rested in the trees. As we approached, they clearly disliked my presence. “It takes time to be accepted among them.” Beam knew where they gathered and how close we could get; he had spent weeks observing and filming them. His interest began in 2021, when a crow unexpectedly flew into a film frame. He kept the take and started noticing them more and more.

Beam wanted to show me another spot in Benjakitti, so I suggested the Green Bridge, the elevated walkway connecting the parks, which he didn’t know. Above the traffic and concrete, I made a few portraits. Crows still flew around us, too far away to appear in the pictures. In Benjakitti, he showed me where he had been filming them. We finished among the lilies and went for a beer, where he told me about the footage he was preparing for a residency in Japan. That research developed into 3Ka: The 3rd Leg, connecting the Japanese myth of Yatagarasu, the three-legged crow, with a strange episode from Thai history in 1809. The film was scheduled to screen in Tokyo later that month.

When Beam chose his portraits, he skipped the ones where he looked most polished, gravitating towards stranger, blurrier and darker frames. It felt like a visual echo of his reluctance to define himself too neatly: “For now, rather than trying to understand my own story, it’s more like I’m trying to live life in my own way. Carrying magic kinda things, I guess.”