Leaving the classroom and moving into the field, how do we direct our attention when there is so much to encounter? How close, or how far, do we position ourselves in relation to what we observe? At what scale do we choose to look, and what becomes visible or remains overlooked through that choice?

Set in Chiang Khong along the Thai bank of the Mekong River, facing Laos across a shared cross-border landscape, ‘Monsoon School #2: Field as Method’ is a program that approaches the field not as a bounded site to be documented, but as a dynamic constellation of ecological, political, social, and more-than-human relations that continually exceeds the boundaries of any single place. Moving through this field continually repositions the practitioner, requiring constant negotiation of distance, scale, and positionality.

Before leaving for Chiang Khong, participants begin by examining their own standpoints through a session facilitated by Book Re:public. By placing personal histories alongside broader socio-political histories, the session reveals how each participant’s lived trajectory shapes what they notice and how they interpret it. Before entering the new field, participants are invited to reflect on the perspectives, expectations, assumptions, and possible blind spots they bring with them and to make these part of the inquiry itself.

Once settled in Chiang Khong, participants are guided by Wo-Men Work and their “transcalar” framework—which draws on the shifting perspectives of cinematic framing, from wide shot to medium shot to close-up—participants will move between the intimate, the territorial, and the planetary. Transcalar thinking is not a matter of zooming in and out, but of moving across different frames of reference, across interconnected scales, from the micro (soil, water, insects textures, sound) to the territorial (villages, river systems, infrastructures, borders) to the planetary (monsoon cycles, climate systems, hydropolitics). Participants begin from a specific-scale reference, then translate it into a site-specific observation protocol to produce three fragments across various scales. These are developed through different media and later assembled collectively using principles of sequencing and montage.

These different scales are explored through two complementary approaches anchored in Chiang Khong: Chiang Khong Conservation Group’s engagement with the Mekong River Basin as a socio-ecological and political territory; and Warong Wonglangka’s attention to the intimate spatial worlds inhabited by other species in the nearby Ban Muang Chum Community Forest, guided by Uncle Muang Srisom, the forest guardian.

The Chiang Khong Conservation Group will introduce participants to the Thai Baan research methodology, their long-standing commitment to the Mekong River basin. Working at the scale of the watershed, participants examine how local communities become active producers of knowledge rather than objects of study, and how community-generated knowledge becomes a political instrument through advocacy, campaigning, and collective action in response to ongoing ecological transformations and political challenges across the Mekong region.

Participants then shift their attention to Warong Wonglangka's course ‘Landscape for Wildlife Habitat’, engaging the intimate ecologies of the Chiang Khong riverside. Through observations of different species conducted across different times of day, participants will examine how changing light, humidity, seasonal water flows, and river conditions reorganise animal presence across riverbanks, canopy layers, and wetland edges, revealing landscape through the lived spatial worlds of other species rather than solely through human perception.

Through this movement across distance, scale, and position, ‘Monsoon School #2: Field as Method’ asks how a site informs what we see, how the field asks from where we see. The programme ultimately considers how a place comes into being as knowledge—from where, at what scale, through whose position, and with what responsibilities is it encountered, interpreted, and acted upon. Rather than attempting to capture the field in its entirety, participants are invited to attend to its limits: what remains unseen, unheard, or resistant to capture? Who or what exceeds the frame, and how might we respond without claiming to fully know?

A Khmu folktale told in Chiang Khong, titled ‘Barking Deer and the Owl’, informs ‘Monsoon School #2: Field as Method’.

The story begins on a summer morning, when an Owl invites a Barking Deer to fish with him. They turn the outing into a competition and choose separate places along the river. The Deer settles on a wide sandy bank and soon gathers a large catch of fish, prawns, and other aquatic animals. Further upstream, the Owl catches nothing. Hungry and envious, he tells the Deer that another part of the river is overflowing with fish. The Deer hurries there, leaving his catch behind. When he discovers that the Owl has deceived him, he returns to find that nearly everything has disappeared.

In anger, the Deer stamps his hoof and accidentally breaks the vine of a pumpkin plant. A pumpkin rolls into a cooking pot; a frightened bird overturns a plough; a snake disturbs the homes of ants and termites; a wild pig startles a bat; an elephant strikes a tree; and a falling branch injures a young Naga in the river.

The mother Naga emerges from the river to find out who is responsible. Beginning with the fallen branch, she retraces the event through the landscape. The branch points to the Elephant; the Elephant to the Bat; the Bat to the Banana Tree; the tree to the Wild Pig; the Pig to the ants and termites; and they, in turn, to the Snake. The chain continues through the plough, the Junglefowl, the old woman, the pot, the pumpkin, and the Barking Deer. Eventually, it leads back to the Owl. While every other being can explain how it became entangled in the unfolding disturbance, the Owl cannot deny that his original act of deception set it in motion. The Naga takes his eyes in reparation for the harm caused to her child. The Owl replaces them with seeds, and from then on can see only in darkness. That’s why owls see at night.

The story is adapted from ‘The Barking Deer and the Owl on Khmu Knowledge’, collected and translated into English in 2016 by Lara Kingston and Chak Kineesee, a bird researcher at Mekong School, with reference to Bampen Chaiyarak, Environmental Education Handbook: Nature Stories [คู่มือสิ่งแวดล้อมศึกษา: นิทานธรรมชาติ]. It acts as a point of departure reflecting on ecological interdependence, beginning with the question of what remains outside our field of vision.

• ‘Monsoon School #2: Field as Method’ will accept 10 applications from practitioners — including, but not limited to, artists, curators, architects, designers, researchers, and cultural workers — whose practices engage with sites, landscapes, communities, and spatial methodologies across Thailand and Southeast Asia.
• The programme begins with an introductory day at Monsoon School at deCentral Chiang Mai, before travelling to Chiang Khong. Participants will then spend time based in Chiang Khong, before returning to Chiang Mai for a day of reflection.
• Return transportation between Chiang Mai and Chiang Khong is provided. Accommodation and per diem in Chiang Mai and Chiang Khong are covered by the programme. Participants are responsible only for arranging their own travel, arriving in Chiang Mai on 9 October 2026 and their departure from Chiang Mai on 18 October 2026.

Participants will be selected based on the following criteria:

• Relevance of their practice or research to the themes and methodologies of Monsoon School.
• A clear motivation for participating in the programme, and an openness to developing one's practice through collective learning, field-based inquiry, and critical reflection.
• Commitment to self-directed and collaborative learning, including active participation in workshops, discussions, and field activities.
• Flexibility, adaptability, and a willingness to work in changing field conditions and collaborative environments.
• Availability to participate fully in the programme from 10–17 October 2026.
• Be willing to take part in workshops, discussions and field activities.
• Possess sufficient English proficiency to participate in group discussions and programme activities. Interpretation may be provided for selected sessions.

Deadline: 10 September 2026

Please fill out the registration form: Monsoon School #2 Application Form

Applicants are asked to apply, answering the following questions:

• Letter of interest: Why would you like to participate in ‘Monsoon School #2: Field as Method’ at this moment in your practice? What would you hope to question, develop, or learn through the programme? (max 300 words)
• Fieldwork has a long and contested history across anthropology and other social sciences and has increasingly been adopted within artistic and cultural practice in Thailand and beyond. Describe an artist, practitioner, collective, or project that uses a field-based approach that makes you rethink what it means to conduct fieldwork. What do you find valuable about their method, and what limitations, tensions, or ethical, methodological concerns does it raise? (max 500 words)
• What is your relationship with not knowing? Describe a moment in your practice when uncertainty, unfamiliar knowledge, or an encounter with something you could not fully understand changed how you observed, worked, or acted. (max 300 words)
• CV
• Portfolio or selected work samples

*Each written response should be no longer than 500 words and submitted in English. If you prefer to respond to Questions 2 or 3 in another format—such as images, audio, video, or mixed media—please include an accessible link to your file.