\n<\/p>\n
A<\/span>s a child, while other kids were playing with toys, Apichatpong Weerasethakul was content with a flashlight. \u201cThat was enough: the shadows on the wall or the blanket,\u201d he says. \u201cI chose to work in cinema because of that feeling of taking me back to childhood, that freedom and curiosity.\u201d<\/p>\n This primal fascination with light and shadow has fuelled a career spanning three decades, across experimental features and video works, feted by the likes of the Cannes film festival and London\u2019s Tate Modern. It\u2019s also produced some of contemporary cinema\u2019s most captivating and puzzling imagery \u2013 from the talking animals of his 2004 psychological drama Tropical Malady to the ghosts and human-catfish sex in his hallucinatory 2010 Palme d\u2019Or winner Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives. His most recent film, 2021\u2019s Memoria, starring Tilda Swinton as a woman haunted by a rumbling boom only she can hear, features a startling image of an alien spacecraft rising out of the Colombian jungle.<\/p>\n The most remarkable thing about these images is their matter-of-fact presentation. Weerasethakul depicts the fantastical in the same realist style he observes everyday life, and his characters react to strangeness with zen acceptance. As with the logic of dreams, incomprehensible scenes make perfect emotional sense.<\/p>\n This dream-like sensuality is strongly felt in his new work: A Conversation with the Sun (Afterimage), a monumental video installation at Sydney\u2019s Museum of Contemporary Art. In the vast darkness of the museum\u2019s Macgregor gallery, a random assortment of clips featuring quotidian imagery \u2013 palm fronds against the sky, a harbourside at night, Weerasethakul\u2019s friends, including Swinton \u2013 play across a large screen while a curtain of floating white fabric moves slowly up and down in front of it. The cumulative effect of these image shards, layered and dissociated from narrative context, is the sensation of swimming through a sea of jumbled memories or dreams.<\/p>\n <\/span>\u2018[My work] plays with the audience\u2019s awareness of illusion, of the material, of the space\u2019: Apichatpong Weerasethakul.<\/span> Photograph: Chayaporn Maneesutham<\/p>\n As with all his work, Weerasethakul is reluctant to affix meaning \u2013 not only for viewers, but also himself. \u201cOver the years, I\u2019m unconsciously drawn to certain objects or circular motifs, like sleep and dream. I wasn\u2019t really conscious about this until scholars and critics wrote about it. I was like, \u2018Oh, am I like that?\u2019\u201d he says. \u201cI intentionally try not to analyse or think about the work because I prefer something very spontaneous and organic.\u201d<\/p>\n A Conversation with the Sun (Afterimage), conceived with longtime collaborators Rueangrith Suntisuk and Pornpan Arayaveerasid, draws primarily on Weerasethakul\u2019s 10-year-deep trove of video diaries, shot on a lo-res pocket camera that Weerasethakul calls his \u201cparticular eyes\u201d. The camera\u2019s sensitivity to light transformed what he saw; scenes of a wagging dog or a long walk through a garden often become overexposed or disintegrate into grainy irresolution. Intercut with Weerasethakul\u2019s personal archive is Suntisuk and Arayaveerasid\u2019s footage of Indonesian caves \u2013 a potent symbol: the site of humans\u2019 first storytelling endeavours, in wall paintings and tales told around the flickering flames of communal fires.<\/p>\n The movement of the curtain within the installation draws viewers\u2019 attention to the delicacy of the images; it also calls attention to the projector beams, bringing us into keener awareness that light is a vessel for memory and illusion, and also an impermanent and changeable force.<\/p>\n \u201cHis work gets us close to appreciating the things that as humans we do respond to \u2013 basic things like light, nature \u2013 in a way that you almost lose awareness that you\u2019re actually viewing art,\u201d says curator Jane Devery. \u201cIt gets very close to the experience of being in front of something overwhelming and sublime in nature. I think that\u2019s what people respond to, and I certainly do.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>\u2018The sensation of swimming through a sea of jumbled memories or dreams\u2019 \u2026 A Conversation with the Sun (Afterimage) was commissioned by the Museum of Contemporary Art.<\/span> Photograph: Zan Wimberley\/Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Rueangrith Suntisuk, Pornpan Arayaveerasid<\/p>\n Weerasethakul, sometimes referred to as a proponent of slow cinema, is known for his glacial pacing and wide, static frames. The elongated sense of time and lush compositions force the viewer to pay close attention to details we typically overlook \u2013 and, in the process, discover surprising marvels. A shift in the quality of light reveals the arrival of the ghost, or a complete transformation of identity. You may become entranced by the meditative thud of rainfall and a slow trek through an ancient cemetery, or you may fidget, waiting for answers to emerge, aware that you\u2019re a restless body experiencing a complex illusion created by an artist.<\/p>\n This kind of mindful, active watching is Weerasethakul\u2019s goal: \u201c[My work] plays with the audience\u2019s awareness of illusion, of the material, of the space, too,\u201d he says. \u201cEven in my feature films, there are many moments where I like the audience to be aware that you are sitting with other people in the cave \u2013 a modern cave! It\u2019s not like classic cinema where you lose yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Sign up to Saved for Later<\/span><\/p>\n Catch up on the fun stuff with Guardian Australia’s culture and lifestyle rundown of pop culture, trends and tips<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n <\/span>Tilda Swinton in Weerasethakul\u2019s enigmatic 2021 film Memoria.<\/span> Photograph: Kick the Machine Films, Burning, Anna Sanders Films, Match Factory Productions, ZDF-Arte and Piano<\/p>\n In Afterimage, this sense of agency is heightened: there is freedom to move around the dance of the drape, to chase a compelling spectre before it vanishes. The randomised images act as a Rorschach test of sorts, tapping into the profound mystery of our memories. Why does a particular shade of green remind us of childhood, or a hike we took one spring? Or why do I find the image of circular scribblings on notepaper, imposed over a slowly encroaching flame, profoundly unsettling? Each person, with their own unique wells of memory, will have a different experience in this collective space; Weerasethakul invites us to craft our own personal poetry.<\/p>\n This sense of freedom is crucial to Weerasethakul, whose film career has been dogged by Thailand\u2019s censorship board from the get-go, with his 2002 romance Blissfully Yours edited to remove graphic sex scenes. His visual arts practice has given him a way to work more freely. \u201cIt\u2019s getting harder and harder to make personal cinema. And when you are uncompromising, you have to wait years and years for funding,\u201d he says. \u201cIn between that time, this kind of practice has become very natural, like breathing.\u201d<\/p>\n Afterimage, the first installation Weerasethakul has created specifically for Australian audiences, offers an opportunity to experience one of the most distinctive imaginations in cinema.<\/p>\n \u201cI would just encourage people to see it for a long time,\u201d Weerasethakul says. \u201cSit on the floor, walk around. Because the work will not be the same.\u201d<\/p>\n A Conversation with the Sun (Afterimage): Apichatpong Weerasethakul in collaboration with Rueangrith Suntisuk and Pornpan Arayaveerasid is showing at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney, until 15 February 2026<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As a child, while other kids were playing with toys, Apichatpong Weerasethakul was content with a flashlight. \u201cThat was enough: the shadows on the wall or the blanket,\u201d he says. \u201cI chose to work in cinema because of that feeling of taking me back to childhood, that freedom and curiosity.\u201d This primal fascination with light<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17718,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[10732,3153,8440,6107,1664,10731,10730,10734,10733],"class_list":{"0":"post-17717","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-apichatpong","9":"tag-art","10":"tag-cinematic","11":"tag-overwhelming","12":"tag-power","13":"tag-primal","14":"tag-sublime","15":"tag-weerasethakul","16":"tag-weerasethakuls"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17717"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17717\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/17718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}