Soup snakeS

The house I’ve lived in for more than a decade has a long history of people coming and going. Cody became my neighbour sometime during those years. He was quite introverted then, and I mostly ran into him at music or film events. His roommate was the complete opposite, always inviting people over, so the house was constantly full of artists, musicians and people coming back from parties. Plearn was one of the people I started noticing there.

Over time, I got to know Cody better. I invited him to teach colour grading in one of my classes, and later hired him as a colourist on one of my projects. I knew Plearn less well. Gradually, I started seeing more of her, and then Soup snakeS and GIAM TUA appeared.

On 2 March 2024, I went to one of their GIAM TUA na ha nights at Never Normal. I was probably the oldest person in the club. It all felt young, cute and playful. At some point, a รำไทย (ram Thai) group appeared, performing traditional Thai dance and music in the middle of the night. I remember thinking how strange and exciting the combination was.

Soup snakeS started just after Covid, almost by accident. Plearn had been asked to DJ at a friend’s party but didn’t feel comfortable playing alone, so she asked Cody to join her. He spent about a week learning how to DJ from YouTube. They needed a name for the poster and went back to an old playlist they had made when they first started dating. Soup snakeS came from a joke on TV where “soulmates” was misread as “soup snakes”. Neither of them had DJed alone before. They still sometimes talk about Soup snakeS almost as if it were a separate thing, with no real rules about what it has to be.

They told me they’re not particularly organised about any of it. Living together just means they can work on things whenever they have a bit of time. A gecko they kept hearing outside their window ended up in one of their tracks. Plearn works as a stylist, but even the way they dress as Soup snakeS doesn’t follow much of a concept. Sometimes, she told me, they just wear whatever they feel like.

I had wanted to photograph them for a long time when they suggested Punch as one of the locations. Punch was the restaurant owned by Plearn’s mother, and Plearn had spent most of her life growing up above it. It had been closed since Covid and was about to be demolished. Once I knew the building was going to disappear, photographing them there felt obvious.

Plearn’s mother guided us through the building. Walking around Punch changed the shoot for me. Until then, I realised I had mostly understood their story through Cody.

Plearn describes herself with the Thai expression มนุษย์เป็ด (manut pet), literally a “duck human”: someone who can do many different things without any one of them becoming their single expertise. Moving between styling, music and events, it seemed to suit her quite well. I recognised something of myself in it too, as another lifelong jack-of-all-trades.

After Punch, we stopped at their place for a break. Their two black cats were hanging around us. Both had three legs. There was something strangely symmetrical about them, and somehow very Soup snakeS. I’m still annoyed that I never managed to photograph all four of them together.

Then we went to a nearby park. One thing Cody and Plearn share is a fascination with aerobics, so we photographed them beside an evening session. They told me they had talked about hiring an aerobics teacher for one of their events, or maybe even holding a party in the park.

Watching the lycra, the upbeat music and the group choreography, who can resist?