Animistic Apparatus: Screening

This event presents a selection of recent works of artists’ moving image that dwell on the co-existence between human and nonhumans. The works see the beyond human as also entities that embody history, speculate futures, and tell their own stories. Together they question the assumption that humans are the only audience of events - including the screening of films. Presenting films from and/or shot in France, Japan, Argentina, Colombia, Canada, Trinidad and Tobago, Hong Kong and the Amazon, the screenings will be accompanied by discussions and artist talks by Rei Hayama (Japan) and Zai Tang (Singapore).

Alliance Francaise Bangkok

This screening is supported by Alliance française de Bangkok, The British Academy, The Japan Foundation, Bangkok and Purin Pictures.

Co-presented by CREAM, Centre for Research and Education in Arts and Media, University of Westminster, Cloud and NOIR ROW ART SPACE.

Programme 1

Recording of a Screening for a Spirit (Chao Phor Mor Din Daeng), Tanatchai Bandasak, Thailand, 2015, 3 min


In April 2015 Tanatchai Bandasak travelled to Khon Kaen with media ethnographer Richard MacDonald to research the practice of mobile film projection as offerings to the spirits in and around the northeastern city. This is his recording of a projection performance to the spirit residing on the ground of Khon Kaen University colloquially known as Chao Phor Mor Din Daeng.






not even nothing can be free of ghosts

Rainer Kohlberger, Austria/Germany, 2016, 11 min

Courtesy of the artist and sixpack films


“Rainer Kohlberger’s abstract film was created entirely without a camera. Through digital algorithms, he precisely arranged a rhythm of light and shadow that pulsates off the screen into our physical space with blinding intensity. The presence of light is almost felt as we are sucked into the image to become its ghostly accomplice. As we leave the theatre, the optical vibrations continue to haunt us.” IFFR
http://kohlberger.net/work/not-even-nothing-can-be-free-of-ghosts


Field Notes

Vashti Harrison, USA, 2014, 18 min

Courtesy of the artist


Field Notes is an experimental portrait of the ghosts embedded in the culture of the island nation of Trinidad and Tobago. The film is structured as a visual and aural field guide to the ghosts spirits and jumbies througout the island: from personal tales about shapeshifters and bloodsuckers, to the ghosts of Trinidads past. The film focuses on the places where the natural and supernatural collide.
https://www.vashtiharrison.com/field-notes-





brouillard – passage #14

Alexandre Larose, Canada, 2014, 10 min

Courtesy of Light Cone


“A path that extends from my family's backyard into Lac-Saint-Charles (Québec City), condensed in multiple layers.” Alexandre Larose



Mud Man (film version)

Chikako Yamashiro, Japan, 2017, 26 min

Courtesy of Yumiko Chiba Associates


“Her latest film, Mud Man […] was filmed in South Korea’s Jeju and in Okinawa, with Japanese and Korean languages mixed, and the landscape of the two islands juxtaposed. The work continues Yamashiro’s interest in employing flesh and the earth as metaphors for the political body of Okinawa.” White Rainbow.



Programme 2

Rei Hayama – Artist Talk


Rei Hayama works mainly with moving image, and is one of the founding members of the Tokyo film collective, “[+]”. She studied at the Department of Moving Images and Performing Arts, Tama Art University, and has been making films since 2008. Hayama’s films revolve around nature and all other living things that have been lost or neglected from an anthropocentric point of view. Her works have exhibited and screened internationally at Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, New York’s Museum of the Moving Image, Bergen Kunsthall, Tromsø International Film Festival, and Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival, amongst others.
She lives and works in Tokyo, Japan.



Programme 3

Post-Military Cinema

Bea Santiago Muñoz, Puerto Rico, 2014, 11 min

“Post-Military Cinema was shot in Ceiba, Puerto Rico in a cinema that was once part of the now decomissioned Roosevelt Roads US Naval Base. The entire mechanism (light, audience, projected image, sound) and the idea of cinema are a frame through which to make visible the new event now taking place. A beekeeper manages the bees that are part of the soundtrack. The afternoon light streams into the theater for 45 minutes to an hour everyday and projects images of the forest that has grown in the 10 years since the closing of the base.”

http://www.fabricainutil.com/index.php/project/post-military-cinema/



Curupira, creature of the woods

Felix Blume, France/Mexico/Brazil, 2018, 35 min


“Deep in the heart of the Amazon, Tauary inhabitants invite us to listen to the sounds of the jungle, the birds, and animals. However, some weird sounds appear: a creature prowling around the trees. Some of them have heard her, very few have ever seen her, and those who did find her never came back. She charms, she enchants — she leads people to get lost: each of one of them tells a story in their own way and tries to decipher her sounds. Curupira, creature of the woods… takes us in search of this being: a reflection about myths and their place in the contemporary world. It’s a sound thriller in the midst of the jungle.”

http://www.felixblume.com/curupira/





The Jungle Knows You Better Than You Do

Juanita Onzaga, Belgium/Colombia, 2016, 20 min


“Colombia is a land of ghosts. Two siblings roam these mystical landscapes in search of their dead father's spirit. Their journey takes them from Bogota to the Colombian jungle, through realms of thought and deep into their haunted dreams. Here they will find some answers and attract unexpected company.”
https://cargocollective.com/juanitaonzaga/THE-JUNGLE-KNOWS-YOU-BETTE...


Could See a Puma

Eduardo Williams, Argentina, 2011, 18 min


“A rooftop accident sends a group of friends wandering across desolate landscapes until they plunge into the earth's depths” Film Society of Lincoln Center



Programme 4



Railtrack Songmaps by The Migrant Ecologies Project (ongoing)

Lucy Davis, Zai Tang, Kee Ya Ting, Zachary Chan, Singapore, 2009- ongoing, 14 min 
Introduction by sound artist Zai Tang


“The Migrant Ecologies Project embraces concerned explorers, curious collectors, daughters of woodcutters, miners of memories and art by nature. The project evolves through and around past and present movements and migrations of naturecultures in art and life in Southeast Asia. Railtrack Songmaps is an interactive media, sound and visual experience evolving from interdisciplinary explorations of relations between people and birds, nature and culture in a quarter of Singapore facing social and environmental change.”

http://www.migrantecologies.org/