DuckUnit

DuckUnit is a Thailand collective based in Bangkok, founded in 2005. With a wide range of interests and a penchant for exploring the possibilities within its members’ skills, the group’s design work carries a spirit of experimentation, finding connections among media, humans, and nature—from pixels to light and space. Its main work spans art installation, stage play, and performing arts, developed in collaboration with artists such as Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Korakrit Arunanondchai, and Thanapol Virulhakul. DuckUnit is currently led by Rueangrith Suntisuk and Pornpan Arayaveerasid, who discovered a shared interest in experimenting with mechanical systems and incorporating them into installation artworks—an interest they continue to develop and expand into other fields.

The Embargo of Silence

The Embargo of Silence is conceived and curated by Yuen Chee Wai. A concert built on a silent-disco sound system, it is heard only through headphones, by performers and audience alike. DJ 味王 weiwang, Lai Tsung-Yun (LTY) and Yuen Chee Wai play live, moving between improvised electronic music and DJ sets, while siloed within luminous scaffolds designed by DuckUnit.

It introduces a deliberately introspective mode of listening — one where sound does not announce itself into space but waits to be encountered. Rather than resonating publicly, the music trespasses directly into the listener’s inner terrain, allowing interpretation and response to unfold privately rather than collectively. The work shifts music from something that occupies the room to something that occupies the body. Every listener becomes a singular room. 

The choreography is both possessional and processional. No one can be sure what anyone else is hearing: shared yet unverified, withheld yet unapologetic. This is the secrecy of the medium, the embargo of silence.