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In some parts of the world, writing about art is a risky business. Like in Thailand and Burma, where critics must reckson with the rules of the censor. Following the coup d’etat of 2006, a ‘democratic’ election was finally held in December 2007. The result is that the clone of the putsch-toppled former PM Thaksin Shinawatra’s party, PPP, won near-majority seats, sacked all the small parties in the Parliament and placed the military-recommended Democrat party in sole opposition. They chose the leader of PPP, Samak Sundaravej who is said to have fomented the right wing mob massacre of student activists in 1976, as the country’s 25th Prime Minister. At the first Parliament session, an unexpected problem occurred. The session was broadcast live on television with sign-language translation for the deaf. With agreement of National Association of the Deaf in Thailand (NADT), the sign for Mr. Sundaravej has been set as cupping the nose with open fingers, referring to the PM’s big, rose apple-shaped nose. Watching the broadcast, executives of PPP are said to have complained about the interpretation. In Thailand, when a new sign language for a person’s name is created they often use the unique physical feature of a person in combination with a sign for the first letter of the name (according to NADT, no mockery of the new PM or anybody is intended). For example, the sign for the leader of the Democrat party is to move palms around the face and raise a thumb. This gesture stands for his good looks, as this is what the opposition leader is known for, and the raised thumb refers to the first letter of his name. When sign-language interpreters refer to another politician who is short in height, they put their hands at shoulder level. Last year there was a big controversy among professionals in the field of culture here, when the censorship board demanded film director Apichatpong Weerasethakul to cut 3 scenes from his latest film Syndromes and a Century (2006), that are ‘not appropriate for public viewing’, before it can be allowed for theater release. The story of the film by this director, who creates possibly the most artistic movies in Thailand of all time and has won numerous awards for his earlier films at international festivals, revolves around the memories of a doctor in rural Northeast. The 3 scenes to be cut are: monks playing guitars, doctors chatting over whisky at a hospital, and a doctor kissing his girlfriend, also at a hospital. Both the Doctors Council and censor board claim that these scenes “tarnish the image of doctors and monks’. Weerasethakul refused to cut the scenes with the following statement: ‘I treat my works as my own sons or daughters. If these offspring of mine cannot live in their own country for whatever reasons, let them be free. There is no reason to mutilate them from the fear of the system. Otherwise there is no reason for one to continue making art.’ The film has been shown only out of the country since then, including at the Venice Film Festival, while other Thai movies that have far more violent and controversial scenes have been widely shown, a film of a head being blown off, or a film degrading hill tribes and people with darker skin, these films have been discussed neither by the censors nor by the public. These two separate episodes, in my view, are intricately connected. First of all they are both about ‘image’. In a country where any argument is not based on logo-centric dialectic, ‘image’ tends to dominate the ground for reasoning. The ‘image’ is, in this Thai context, a corporeal instance of the observed and a mental picture of the observed in the observer’s mind with certain moral criteria. And the base of this is what is vaguely defined as ‘Thai-ness’, a collective image of a community that was constructed during the modernization process of the nation. Since then this notion has been used by the traditional ruling class, especially the monarchy, army and Buddhist institutions, to cement their ruling legitimacy. In this condition, Western discourse of art, and, naturally, art that is inherently born out of discourse of past, present and future has little place to settle in, for the Thai-ness part greatly restricts the appreciation of imagination that can only be content if it has access to infinite possibilities. This Thai-ness locking-in the freedom of imagination has cost numerous talents in the past. Last year another young artist had to give in to pressure from Buddhist groups to take down his painting depicting greedy monks shaped like birds, because it ‘damages the image of monks’. All these disputes touch little on the quality of the artwork itself. Let me compare this to neighbouring Burma. Burmese art criticism has long been suffering since good writers, the intellectual community, and lively art scene, all have disappeared either into a prison cell or refugee camp. The most respected personality of theory in art, 78 year old Win Tin, happens to also be the longest serving political prisoner in Burma, paying a price for being the real ideological advisor to Aung San Suu Kyi and her opposition party, NLD. Until now, no art criticism has matched his celebrated book A Quest for Beauty, in its passion and understanding on art, particularly Burmese art. As the political opposition movement has severely suffered as the result of missing the most brilliant ideologue that they had, art criticism in Burma too has not recovered from the loss of its mentor. This combines with the fact of life vis-à-vis publication in Burma, where all texts must go through a vigorous screening procedure before being published. A classic example of authority locking in the freedom of expression, and the consequent suffering of the intellectual community, which we have also witnessed in the former Soviet Union, China, Iran and elsewhere. ‘What is undesirable for censor is the desire of the desiring subject: the desire of the subject is undesired’, writes J.M. Coetzee.[1] In this sense, the power of the authority respects the power of imagination, and out of the respect it limits the imagination to be expressed freely. Yet, in the case of Thailand, whoever the physical authority may be, the abstract ‘Thai-ness’ has already taken over peoples’ mind, dictated it, and self-celebrated it to the point where there is no turning back. For example, in the courts of law concerning lèse-majesté cases – which dominates all censorship cases in Thailand where it is prohibited to speak negatively about the monarchy – there is no case in which anyone has confessed to having intentionally committed lese-majeste, no one has ever talked about abolishing the monarchy, that means, no Thai desires the undesirable for the monarchy, as the monarchy becomes the ultimate in terms of defining Thai-ness. This is a powerful mechanism to rule – letting people be content and not raise questions about ‘freedom’ in its individual form. Modernization of this least colonized country in Asia thus has not produced an avant-garde, no condition for art, besides the dictatorial ‘image’, which has grown in peoples’ minds to become too powerful for art to counteract.A sign language speaker, a metaphor to this subject on its own, does the job of creating ‘image’ in its most basic sense, yet in the most honest manner. Hence, it is also symbolic that a sign language interpreter had to translate the deeply fragile Parliament session, and was scolded for what she only reflected on – the profound root of the problem. Keiko Sei[1] J.M. Coetzee, Giving Offense. Essays on Censorship, University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1996.