Artist
Korakrit Arunanondchai
Title
With history in a room filled with people with funny names 4
Date
2017
Medium
HD video, programming, blown red glass,
LED lights, objects collected during the production of the video, old Hello magazines, slippers, wooden toys, 23’31’’
Credit line
Stage, programmable lights, blown glass, objects:
Tiryavarna Nitibhon
Cinematography:
Alex Gvojic, Rory Mulhere, Korakrit Arunanondchai, Janechai Montrelerdrasme, Op Sudasna, Thappawut Parinyawat, Abhichon Rattanabhayon
Audio Composer:
Aaron David Ross
Audio Mixing:
Michael Beharie
Voice of Chandri:
Chutatip Arunanondchai
Special Thanks to boychild
Work commissioned by curator Nadja Argyropoulou for Polyeco Contemporary Art Initiative (PCAI), Greece
Object label
Arunanondchai uses a combination of installation and video,
of analog and digital means, of conventional and spiritual
materials, to examine the unexpected ecologies created by
our encounter with the emerging, unknown, new world. The
different perception of nature and its enjoyment; the new
animist philosophies; the behaviors associated with the mass
migration of people, data and materials; the painful losses
on a political, cultural and personal level; the experiences of
de-materialization, surveillance and control – all constitute
a critical mass with unexpected, ambiguous, toxic attributes:
its action can be debilitating and destructive or beneficial,
therapeutic.
His new work features many of the elements of his artistic
universe, such as: the oversized rat that has survived the
Apocalypse; the serpent-spirit Naga, symbolizing the spirit
that does not surrender to the power of authority; and the
drone-spirit Chantri, which speaks in the voice of the artist’s
mother (a linguist) and enables a hypnotic dialogue about
the possibility of rebirth, of reconnection with our lost self.
The video opens with a close-up shot of the hands of the
artist’s grandmother, who is slipping into dementia. It follows
her in the rearrangement of objects that her memory has
rejected as indicators of a specific life, turning them into
unfamiliar, meaningless objects.
“The present has ceased to apply to me,” is the phrase that
describes her amnesic mind, while Arunanondchai unfolds
around her the achronicities that throw our world into a
vertiginous state. Aiming to draft a new deal with ancient
Mnemosyne and understand the ‘extreme present’ we
often experience, he focuses on specific incidents, such
as the recent demonstrations in America, a safari in South
Africa, the death of the king of Thailand, and a visit to the
controversial Buddhist temple Wat Phra Dhammakaya, whose
leader is believed to shelter anti-regime elements and has
been accused of embezzlement while proclaiming his faith
in wealth and reincarnation.
The overall installation in the exhibition, formed using
personal objects, family heirlooms and interiorly lit
blown-glass pods, is attuned to the sound of a breathing
whose nature is uncertain: does it suggest a state of panic or
meditation?
How do the technologies we have developed manage and
distil (expel and preserve) our fragile memories and fickle
experiences? What processes of lamentation are necessary
for us to connect with the spirits of the world?
Nadja Argyropoulou, March 2017
