Through two separate open calls in June and August respectively, Monsoon School invites applications by practitioners (including but not limited to artists, curators, architects and cultural workers) whose work engages spatial methodologies, in relation to specific sites from across Thailand and Southeast Asia. Each gathering commits to a unique 10-day module, firstly in August in Chiang Mai and secondly in October in Chiang Rai.

Monsoonal regions across South and Southeast Asia are shaped by mountainous terrains, river systems, forests, and agricultural landscapes organized around seasonal rain cycles that structure time, labour, mobility, rest, and everyday life. In recent decades, however, monsoonal patterns have intensified under the pressure of climate instability, deforestation, monoculture agriculture, hydropower development, tourism-driven urbanization, and recurring seasonal haze. Monsoon School approaches the monsoon not simply as a climatic condition, but as a methodological metaphor and lived framework through which ecological, historical, and social relations are continuously negotiated.

Monsoon School is facilitated by expertise grounded in long-term, field-informed practices from diverse backgrounds and methodologies, asking not only how a site can be engaged, but how it can generate its own modes of address. It departs from the logic of site as event—where place is staged, activated, and consumed—and instead asks how one might work with site as method. Site is approached not as a stable ground to be interpreted or controlled, but as an ongoing process formed through the interaction between human and more-than-human forces across multiple and often conflicting scales.

In this formulation, the conditions of a place do not simply contextualize practice; they actively shape one’s practice embedded in it. Practice, in turn, reshapes how a site is understood, negotiated, and inhabited.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Monsoon School, conceived and led by Van Do, forms part of Practice Respond Support, an engagement program by deCentral.

Special thanks to Sam Shiyi Qian, Phiraya Ardwichai (Get), and Anantaya Chanlertpaisal (Ice) for their contributions and support.

Credits for the photo carousel: Sinxay Heritage House, Midfield Art Space, Alien Art Space, Womenifesto, Mekong School, Pattani Art Space, Sridonchai Village, and Songkhla Old Town. With thanks to the encounters, conversations, and visits made far afield that have shaped the thinking behind this program.