Darunee Terdtoontaveedej

Hey Darunee! You work as a curator and researcher. What are your earliest memories of being interested in collecting things and forming collections?
Darunee: I think it started with my obsession with collecting food packaging from supermarkets as a child. Supermarkets fascinate me, and I would always make sure to visit any supermarket when travelling. I think they reflect our current culture and patterns of consumption.
Later on, when I moved to Western Australia at the age of 14, I became more interested in “ethnic” supermarkets; places where diasporic communities gather and find commodities from “home.” I find this interesting because back then, imported products were scarce and people had to compromise, improvise, and use creativity to emulate the flavours from their memories of home. The availability of products would also reflect the demographics of the area. For example, in some areas, you might find more Chinese products, whereas in others, you might find more Greek products.

You are also trained as an architect and are interested in the interplay between home, the self, and belonging. For members of diaspora communities it could be argued that physical spaces and possessions take on a very different meaning in terms of re-affirming identity and creating safe(r) spaces. What does the home and the positions inside the home mean for you as a member of the Asian diasporic community?
Darunee: For me, the idea of a “home” doesn’t really exist concretely. I find myself going through different phases of longings and homesickness, and this “homesickness” shifts from time to time. There are moments where I identify more with certain spaces, and there are moments I reject them completely. I think it may have to do with both the fact that I spent much of my formative upbringing in different environments and being of mixed heritage. In some cases, I may find sentimental objects comforting, but essentially, home for me, is a state of mind — the feeling of security.

How can we explore alternative histories through physical possessions and physical homes?
Darunee: Supermarkets. If we look around ourselves, we find traces of “other” cultures. For example, in Rotterdam where 49% of its population are not Dutch, it is a very diverse city, full of people from everywhere. Even though much of the city was destroyed during World War II and architecturally, everything is new, we see businesses, supermarkets, and religious spaces that are evidence of the “other” inhabitants. How did they end up here? And what brought them here?

From there we can start tracing the history of the city as a port or a city in desperate need of cheap labour to rebuild after the war, and the country as a colonial empire, where many of its ex-subjects emigrated after independence, often settling in the port city. At the same time, we also see newer restaurants and products available in the supermarkets, catering to a newer generation of migrants, with different needs and purposes.

Since 2019, you have been the LGBTQ+ programme curator at CinemaAsia Film Festival and in 2020, you were selected as the Young Curator of the 49th edition of International Film Festival in Rotterdam (IFFR). What has it been like working in an industry predominantly run by cishet white men and why is it so important that we have members from marginalised communities with intersecting identities in curatorial and leadership positions?
Darunee: Both festivals are very different, in terms of scale, objectives, and leadership. IFFR was indeed run by white cishet men who see themselves as experts in films that are made in different parts of the world, and therefore, their visions seemed superficial and without deeper understanding of the context in which the films may have been made. I find that very colonialist, but hopefully that is changing with the new leadership.

On the other hand, CinemAsia was a festival built by the drive to create a better representation of Asia and Asian people in The Netherlands. The festival was built by and for the Asian community, as well as to provide safer spaces for LGBTQ+ people. I think the objectives of the festival already says a lot about the need to build something for and by the specific communities to find each other. Although, I acknowledge that it’s not perfect and still lacks artistic vision, it’s striving to be what many other film festivals are lacking.

The irony is that in the times of the pandemic, where Asian people are being explicitly antagonised and the need for speaking up and for better representation is evermore urgent, CinemAsia has lost its structural funding to continue operation, and is now resorting to crowdfunding to start again. I think that’s a real pity, but it also makes me feel the urgency to disseminate our vision of empowerment with the Non Native Native Fair.

You and Belle Phromchanya recently created Non Native Native Fair, an experimental hybrid event that brings creative cultural practitioners together to present and sell their work, products, and labour in an online trade fair environment. How did it come about and what was this experience like for you?
Darunee: The idea of building a fair came about from a conversation I had with Belle Phromchanya. Both of us co-founded Non Native Native — a platform observing the creative industry in The Netherlands as outsiders. We are particularly interested in people like ourselves – creative practitioners from elsewhere that somehow ended up in this country – and the process of navigating and negotiating our ways in the industry. We founded the platform together in late 2018, and had since organised smaller scale events in collaboration with other existing institutions, for example, a round table discussion at the International Convention of Asia Scholars, a symposium at Leiden University College, The Hague, and at Verhalenhuis Belvédère, an audio-visual experiment with The Asian Union Gerrit Rietveld Academie and Sandberg Instituut, and so on.

We wanted to build a bigger and more multi-layered event which would attract an unexpected audience and diversify our subjects of discussion, as well as to find a way to eventually maintain income for ourselves, as so far, all of our activities are funded by countless funding applications. Therefore, we felt that a “fair” could be an interesting format to play with.

The description of the event states that Non Native Native Fair is about “coming together as a cross between reality and fiction, appreciation and appropriation, labour and play.” Can you explain this further?
Darunee: A “fair” as an event is quite a vague term. At the same time, we felt that it’s the most appropriate way to define the NON NATIVE NATIVE FAIR, as it implies a diverse range of presentations, as well as entertainment, and trade. For our first edition, we decided to experiment and play with the openness of the term. We invited people we admire through personal invitations and launched an open call to invite those we don’t already know. We kept it as open as possible, to allow the freedom for people to interpret what a “fair” meant to them. In the end we had some very playful projects and products that discuss urgent issues – from identities to migrant experiences to lock-down fatigue to politics elsewhere. Some of which are real, physical products, and some are speculative concepts, for example, we had a participant, Jhen Chen who offered to write cooking recipes, if you send her your grocery list as one of her products, alongside her book Amsterdam Lunch: The Instruction of Being the Other, or another duo of participants Jing He and Qiaochu Guo, who presented an alternative Inburgeringsexamen (Dutch integration exam) in a film, which critiques the expectations of the Dutch immigration policy for new migrants to know trivial aspects of the (white) Dutch culture, while completely ignoring the racism many new migrants faced in their daily lives.

For us, the word “fair” also has a double meaning, as it also implies equal treatment for all. The products that were sold at the NNN FAIR were sold directly by the makers on their own terms. We designed a system in which our participants could give their input as to how they would imagine their virtual booth to be at the Fair and supported them with their video and live presentations. As an organiser, we didn’t take any commission from the sales. The makers were fully in control of negotiating with clients. I think this is one of the challenges we gave our participants — to put a monetary value on their labour. This is especially empowering as the creative industry is notorious for exploitation and undervaluing creative labour.

What was it like curating and co-hosting an event that was able to bring together different members of the Asian diasporic community who currently reside in various places in Europe?
Darunee: We’ve always wanted to expand our network outside of The Netherlands, and to get to know other organisations who might be doing something similar to what we’re doing. We decided to reach out to Soy Division and Un.thai.tled in Berlin who we had encountered previously and invited them to co-curate the Berlin Unit programme. Based on that experience, I think we’ve detected some common ground as well as differences in approaches, topics of exploration, and methods of communication. I find it very interesting to observe.

On the other hand, our open call attracted participants from other parts of Europe, too. We had responses from London, other parts of Germany, and even Canada. Apart from first-generation migrants like ourselves, we also found people with very different experiences and narratives to share. For example, we had Asian-Americans based in Europe and Chinese-French based in London who found a space for exploring their own identities within the NNN FAIR. I think it’s great to get to know the wider community and to find kinship and solidarity on a wider scale.

What has digitalising an event that would normally be found in a physical location been like and how has the lack of physical space changed or impacted your personal understanding of the home and possessions?
Darunee: Originally, the NON NATIVE NATIVE FAIR was conceived as a physical event that would take place in Amsterdam in 2020. However, as a consequence of the various lockdowns and restrictions from the pandemic, we decided to move the event into the virtual realm. Initially, I was a little skeptical about it, as I imagined after a year of working from home and attending online events, there might be some aversion towards the idea of an online fair. Moreover, having an online event would mean a limitation in spontaneous encounters.

However, the fact that we were able to do this online, meant we were able to operate internationally, with our collaboration in Berlin as well as with our participants based elsewhere. We were also able to expand our audience to other parts of the world. At the same time, we could also ease the FOMO from our participants and audience as they could watch recordings of all the presentations throughout the duration of the fair online in their own time after the livestreaming was over. So in the end, it was a blessing in disguise.

Based on how the fair went, what can our readers expect from you all in the future?
Darunee: Currently, we are gathering ideas for the next project. It might be a fair, or it might be another experiment. We are still thinking about the format at the moment. I personally hope that we will be able to host a physical event soon.

Lastly, what projects and plans do you have for the rest of 2021?
Darunee: At the moment, I’m taking time to rest and reflect on everything that’s happened in the past few months. I will be working on a very exciting project towards the end of the year, but it’s still too early to announce it right now.
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Images provided by Darunee. To keep up with Darunee on Instagram, click here. For more interviews, click here. For all Non Native Native Fair 2021 articles, click here.