FAQ: Questions in words. Answers in images.

We often joke that FAQ stands for Frequently Arc Questions. It's not wrong. Arc Press has always been more interested in asking than answering questions. But FAQ is also, of course, Frequently Asked Questions. The internet's most utilitarian format. A list of problems and their solutions. You come with a question, you leave with an answer.

FAQ Vol.1 does none of that.

The book started as a social media experiment. Arc Press sent a set of open-ended prompts to ten artists, nine from Thailand, one from Japan, and gave them one instruction: Respond only with an image. What came back was a collection of photographs that don't behave like answers. Some feel like interpretations. Some feel like translations. A few feel like deliberate refusals.

The ten artists — Akkara Naktamna, Kamonlak Sukchai, Ar Lhao, Krerkburin Kerngburi, Sakurako Nagaiwa, Kanrapee Chokpaiboon, Pariwat Anantachina, Tawanwad Wanavit, Benjarat Aiemrat, and Sarut Thawonrunta — share a single container but speak in completely different registers. Some images are intimate. Some are structural, almost diagrammatic. The sequencing doesn't try to smooth these shifts. It lets the conversation stay strange.

That's the thing about a book that refuses to explain itself: you have to do the work. The only text you'll find is the questions themselves. You're left with the image and the gap in between, which is where the most interesting part of the project lives. That gap is different for every reader. It will be different for you the second time you pick the book up.

© Krerkburin Kerngburi

© Pariwat Anantachina

© Tawanwad Wanavit

© Sakurako Nagiwa

© Kanrapee Chokpaiboon

© Akkara Naktamna

© Ar Lhao

© Kamonlak Sukchai

© Benjarat Aiemrat