Research insights

Ingawanij’s output challenges the theory and underlying exhibitionary apparatus of slow cinema, and develops a de-westernising curatorial method and concepts for thinking about the radical implication of Diaz’s oeuvre, the expressive and temporal forms of his films, and the historical contexts and legacies shaping his mode of artistic practice. Taken together, the exhibition and the articles demonstrate the necessity of engaging with Diaz’s work from a starting point different from western modernist art cinema’s historically ingrained apparatus of valuing and exhibiting them.

Instead of starting the research process by reproducing the epistemic underpinning of slow cinema, Ingawanij’s curation and textual publications highlight the productiveness of situating Diaz’s oeuvre in relation to contexts and genealogies of socially engaged artistic and performative practices in the Philippines and Southeast Asia. Importantly, her output analyses the relationship between Diaz’s long films and mode of artistic practice, and the legacy of anti-colonial vanguardist artistic and cultural praxis within which the artist is entangled. In particular, the article ‘Long walk to life’ displaces the existing terms of analysis of Diaz’s oeuvre by showing how his long films return to the previous century’s vanguardist conception of the cultural work of Filipino anti-colonial nationalism and third-world liberation movements, while simultaneously projecting the continuity of the time before colonisation, particularly through the figuring of the animist, the spectre and the matriarch.

In international contexts of exhibiting Diaz’s long films, Lav Diaz: Journeys proposes a curatorial method that itself rethinks the exhibition history of the artist’s works. The exhibition does so through calibrating pre-existing conventions and models for presenting his films and demonstrating the potential of designing their exhibition mode in ways attentive to regional and national genealogies of projecting and circulating moving images. As the article ‘Exhibiting Lav Diaz’s long films’ discusses, rather than assuming that the correct way to exhibit the artist’s films would be one that would somehow mandate spectatorial endurance and invite a so-called contemplative mode of spectatorship, Ingawanij’s curation thinks through how Diaz’s long films create multiple frictions with existing westernised conventions and sites of art film and artists’ moving image exhibition and spectatorship, and how they imply potentiality associated with other performative genealogies and possibilities of cultural-political values.

Ingawanij’s output thus proposes the following ideas for grasping the values and potentiality of Diaz’s very long films. They are: ambiguities of anti-colonial nationalist legacies in contemporary artistic and cultural praxis in the Philippines and comparable global south contexts; the sociality of durational forms and spectatorial labour routed through specific regional and/or national genealogies; the porosity of film curation and participatory spectatorship; and the implication of Diaz’s oeuvre for de-westernising modes of film programming and curation. These ideas replace slowness, contemplation and cinephiliac endurance as terms with which to describe the value and the political implication of the expenditure of time and effort in studying, curating and experiencing the artist’s long films.

Further indications of the research contributions of Ingawanij’s work on Diaz include: the international symposium organised as part of the exhibition highlighted new and under-explored approaches for analysing Diaz’s films, including film ecocriticism, and art historical readings of the relationship between the iconographic aspects of Diaz’s films and modern and contemporary Philippine art history. Ingawanij’s ‘Long walk to life’ article was requested for re-publication in a forthcoming book on the artist, edited by Parichay Patra and Michael Kho Lim (Intellect Books). Ingawanij’s publication and curatorial work comprising this output also led to two invitations to contribute article-length studies of the artist’s work, published beyond this REF period. New Left Review journal will publish Ingawanij’s analysis of Diaz’s films made in response to the disastrous nationalist turn in the Philippines under the presidency of Rodrigo Duterte. The forthcoming bilingual book (French-English), Lav Diaz: faire face/Lav Diaz: To Face Up, edited by Oliver Zuchat, Corinne Maury, Marcos Uzal (Editions Macula), features Ingawanij’s study of the temporally recursive, historiographic and animistic characteristics of Diaz’s A Lullaby to the Sorrowful Mystery and From What Is Before. Ingawanij has also been invited to deliver multiple keynotes and lectures on Diaz’s works.

CreatorsIngawanij, M.A.
Description

Lav Diaz: Journeys (2017) deploys the university arts spaces (London Gallery West, Regent Street Cinema), as differentiated from film festival or highly commercial film venues, to adapt the migratory model of exhibiting radical films and artists’ moving image. Ingawanij and collaborators created a hybrid space, a pop-up cinema and Southeast Asian curatorial space, to present Diaz’s works, accompanied by public programmes and an archival theatrical presentation. Underpinning the curatorial method is an understanding of histories and practices of artistic and participatory agency in contexts of fragile and at-risk arts infrastructure, and attentiveness to the legacy of artistic and cultural vanguardism in the Philippines. Ingawanij’s curation also draws inspiration from Southeast Asian genealogies of performative practices, informality as curatorial praxis, and spectatorial participation and experience. Her first article explores the aesthetic and political forms of Diaz’s long films. The second analyses the vexed exhibition history of Diaz’s long films, critically highlighting the tensions shaped by the persistence of the western modernist paradigm of art film spectatorship in advocating the value of global contemporary art or radical films, especially through the idea of “slow cinema”. The project generated multiple insights into the values and potentiality of Diaz’s films: ambiguities of anticolonial nationalist legacies in contemporary artistic praxis; sociality of durational forms and spectatorial labour routed through specific regional and/or national genealogies; porosity of film curation and participatory spectatorship.

Portfolio itemsLav Diaz: Journeys
Exhibiting Lav Diaz's Long Films: Currencies of Circulation and Dialectics of Spectatorship
Long Walk to Life: the Films of Lav Diaz
Year2017
PublisherUniversity of Westminster
Web address (URL)https://www.westminster.ac.uk/news-and-events/events/lav-diaz-journeys
KeywordsLav Diaz, curation, spectatorship, world cinema
CREAM Portfolio
FunderStrategic Research Fund, University of Westminster
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)https://doi.org/10.34737/qvw88

Portfolio items

Lav Diaz: Journeys
Ingawanij, M.A. 2017. Lav Diaz: Journeys .

Exhibiting Lav Diaz's Long Films: Currencies of Circulation and Dialectics of Spectatorship
Ingawanij, M.A. 2017. Exhibiting Lav Diaz's Long Films: Currencies of Circulation and Dialectics of Spectatorship. Aniki: Portuguese Journal of the Moving Image . 4 (2), pp. 411-433. https://doi.org/10.14591/aniki.v4n2.327

Long Walk to Life: the Films of Lav Diaz
Ingawanij, M.A. 2015. Long Walk to Life: the Films of Lav Diaz . Afterall . 40.

Related outputs

Flaherty Film Seminar 2024: To Commune
Ingawanij, M.A. 2024. Flaherty Film Seminar 2024: To Commune. 2024

To Live With: A Conversation Between May Adadol Ingawanij, Sorawit Songsataya, and Riar Rizaldi
Ingawanij, M.A. 2023. To Live With: A Conversation Between May Adadol Ingawanij, Sorawit Songsataya, and Riar Rizaldi. Hocken Collections, University of Otago.

Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook’s Relational Tableaux
Ingawanij, M.A. 2023. Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook’s Relational Tableaux. MoMA Post - Notes on Art in a Global Context.

Legacies
Ingawanij, M.A. 2022. Legacies . Artspace Aotearoa 02 Sep - 22 Oct 2022

Animistic Apparatus screening programme at Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Visions
Ingawanij, M.A. 2022. Animistic Apparatus screening programme at Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Visions. Berwick Film and Media Arts Festival 19 - 22 Sep 2019

Animistic Apparatus: A Gathering
Ingawanij, M.A. and Ross, J. 2022. Animistic Apparatus: A Gathering . World Records. 7.

Vivre après la catastrophe
Ingawanij, M.A. 2022. Vivre après la catastrophe . in: Maury, Corinne and Zuchuat, Olivier (ed.) Lav Diaz: Faire Face post-éditions. pp. 149-173

Art and Communication: A Regional Genealogy
Ingawanij, M.A. 2022. Art and Communication: A Regional Genealogy. in: Ute Meta Bauer (ed.) Climates. Habitats. Environments. MIT Press.

Cinematic Animism and Contemporary Southeast Asian Artists’ Moving Image Practices
Ingawanij, M.A. 2021. Cinematic Animism and Contemporary Southeast Asian Artists’ Moving Image Practices. Screen. 62 (4), pp. 549-558. https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/hjab056

Philippine Noir: The Cinema of Lav Diaz
Ingawanij, M.A. 2021. Philippine Noir: The Cinema of Lav Diaz . New Left Review. 130.

Stories of Animistic Cinema
Ingawanij, M.A. 2021. Stories of Animistic Cinema . Antennae: The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture. 54 (Summer 1), pp. 84-103.

Ghost Cinema for a Damaged World
Ingawanij, M.A. 2020. Ghost Cinema for a Damaged World. in: Burmester, M. (ed.) Korakrit Arunanondchai & Alex Gvojic: No History in a Room Filled with People with Funny Names 5 Serralves Foundation-Museum of Contemporary Art Fundaçâo de Serralves. pp. 49-57

Animistic Apparatus screening programme: Landscape of Spirits
Ingawanij, M.A. 2019. Animistic Apparatus screening programme: Landscape of Spirits . Berwick Film and Media Arts Festival 19 - 22 Sep 2019

Animistic Apparatus @ Berwick Film and Media Arts Festival
Ingawanij, M.A. 2019. Animistic Apparatus @ Berwick Film and Media Arts Festival . Berwick Film and Media Arts Festival 19 - 22 Sep 2019

Animistic Apparatus screening programmes: Mud, Drones and Spirits; Between the Living and the Dead
Ingawanij, M.A. 2019. Animistic Apparatus screening programmes: Mud, Drones and Spirits; Between the Living and the Dead. Berwick Film and Media Arts Festival 19 - 22 Sep 2019

Animistic Apparatus: Screening
Ingawanij, M.A. 2019. Animistic Apparatus: Screening . Berwick Film and Media Arts Festival 19 - 22 Sep 2019

Animistic Apparatus
Ingawanij, M.A. 2019. Animistic Apparatus. University of Westminster. https://doi.org/10.34737/qy152

Comedy of Entanglement: The Karrabing Film Collective
Ingawanij, M.A. 2019. Comedy of Entanglement: The Karrabing Film Collective . Afterall . 48, pp. 26-37. https://doi.org/10.1086/706125

Making Line and Medium
Ingawanij, M.A. 2019. Making Line and Medium . Southeast of Now: Directions in Contemporary and Modern Art in Asia. 3 (1). https://doi.org/10.1353/sen.2019.0001

Aesthetics of Potentiality: Nguyen Trinh Thi's Essay Films
Ingawanij, M.A. 2019. Aesthetics of Potentiality: Nguyen Trinh Thi's Essay Films . in: Reynolds, L. (ed.) Women Artists, Feminism and the Moving Image Bloomsbury Academic. pp. 151-164

Art's Potentiality Revisited: Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook's Late Style and Chiang Mai Social Installation
Ingawanij, M.A. 2018. Art's Potentiality Revisited: Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook's Late Style and Chiang Mai Social Installation. in: Teh, David and Morris, David (ed.) Artist-to-Artist: Independent Art Festivals in Chiang Mai 1992-98 London Afterall Books in association with Asia Art Archive and the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College. pp. 252-263

Itinerant Cinematic Practices In and Around Thailand During the Cold War
Ingawanij, M.A. 2018. Itinerant Cinematic Practices In and Around Thailand During the Cold War. Southeast of Now: Directions in Contemporary and Modern Art in Asia. 2 (1), pp. 9-41. https://doi.org/10.1353/sen.2018.0001

Forces and Volumes
Ingawanij, M.A. 2017. Forces and Volumes .

Fields: On Attachments and Unknowns
Ingawanij, M.A. and Erin Gleeson 2017. Fields: On Attachments and Unknowns.

Lav Diaz: Journeys
Ingawanij, M.A. 2017. Lav Diaz: Journeys .

Exhibiting Lav Diaz's Long Films: Currencies of Circulation and Dialectics of Spectatorship
Ingawanij, M.A. 2017. Exhibiting Lav Diaz's Long Films: Currencies of Circulation and Dialectics of Spectatorship. Aniki: Portuguese Journal of the Moving Image . 4 (2), pp. 411-433. https://doi.org/10.14591/aniki.v4n2.327

Southern Collectives screening programmes and discussion
Ingawanij, M.A. 2016. Southern Collectives screening programmes and discussion . Buenos Aires 29 Oct - 13 Nov 2016

Long Walk to Life: the Films of Lav Diaz
Ingawanij, M.A. 2015. Long Walk to Life: the Films of Lav Diaz . Afterall . 40.

Figures of Plebeian Modernity: Film Projection as Performance in Siam/Thailand
Ingawanij, M.A. 2014. Figures of Plebeian Modernity: Film Projection as Performance in Siam/Thailand. SEAP Bulletin . Fall, pp. 10-16.

Comparing Experimental Cinemas
Ingawanij, M.A. and Shai Heredia 2014. Comparing Experimental Cinemas.

Catalogue of the 6th Bangkok Experimental Film Festival: Raiding the Archives
Ingawanij, M.A., MacDonald, R.L. and Clark, G. Ingawanij, M.A. (ed.) 2013. Catalogue of the 6th Bangkok Experimental Film Festival: Raiding the Archives. Bangkok, Thailand Aan Publishing.

Animism and the performative realist cinema of Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Ingawanij, M.A. 2013. Animism and the performative realist cinema of Apichatpong Weerasethakul. in: Pick, A. and Narraway, G. (ed.) Screening nature: cinema beyond the human Oxford Berghahn Books.

Mother India in six voices: melodrama, voice performance, and Indian films in Siam
Ingawanij, M.A. 2012. Mother India in six voices: melodrama, voice performance, and Indian films in Siam. Bioscope: South Asian Screen Studies. 3 (2), pp. 99-121. https://doi.org/10.1177/097492761200300202

Blissfully whose? Jungle pleasures, ultra-modernist cinema and the cosmopolitan Thai auteur
Ingawanij, M.A. 2010. Blissfully whose? Jungle pleasures, ultra-modernist cinema and the cosmopolitan Thai auteur. in: Harrison, R.V. and Jackson, P.A. (ed.) The ambiguous allure of the West: traces of the colonial in Thailand Hing Kong Hong Kong University Press. pp. 119-134

Nang Nak: Thai bourgeois heritage cinema
Ingawanij, M.A. 2007. Nang Nak: Thai bourgeois heritage cinema. Inter-Asia Cultural Studies. 8 (2), pp. 180-193. https://doi.org/10.1080/14649370701295599

Hyperbolic heritage: bourgeois spectatorship and contemporary Thai cinema
Ingawanij, M.A. 2007. Hyperbolic heritage: bourgeois spectatorship and contemporary Thai cinema. PhD thesis University of London London Consortium

Un-Thai sakon: the scandal of teen cinema
Ingawanij, M.A. 2006. Un-Thai sakon: the scandal of teen cinema. South East Asia Research. 14 (2), pp. 147-177.

Blissfully whose? Jungle pleasures, ultra-modernist cinema and the cosmopolitan Thai auteur
Ingawanij, M.A. and MacDonald, R.L. 2006. Blissfully whose? Jungle pleasures, ultra-modernist cinema and the cosmopolitan Thai auteur. New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film. 4 (1), pp. 37-54. https://doi.org/10.1386/ncin.4.1.37_1

Transistor and temporality: the rural as modern Thai cinema's pastoral
Ingawanij, M.A. 2006. Transistor and temporality: the rural as modern Thai cinema's pastoral. in: Fowler, C. and Helfield, G. (ed.) Representing the rural : space, place, and identity in films about the land Detroit Wayne State University Press. pp. 80-100

The value of an impoverished aesthetic: the iron ladies and its audiences
Ingawanij, M.A. and MacDonald, R.L. 2004. The value of an impoverished aesthetic: the iron ladies and its audiences. Spectator: University of Southern California Journal of Film and Television Criticism. 24 (2), pp. 73-81.

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