Apichatpong Weerasethakul, the Thai artist to conquer Cannes and our imaginations
Thai artist and director Apichatpong Weerasethakul is currently presenting the “Periphery of the Night” retrospective exhibition at the Institut d'Art Contemporain in Villeurbanne and “Memoria” at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival. © Siegfried Forster / RFI
Text by: Siegfried Forster Follow
7 mins
He has the reputation of being the magician of the soul and the invisible in the world of cinema.
After a Palme d'Or in 2010, the Thai artist and director Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 50, is from July 6 again in competition at the Cannes Film Festival with
Memoria
.
On the occasion of the great monograph
Periphery of the Night
which has just opened its doors at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Villeurbanne, he told us how his ideas are born and his images emerge.
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: To appreciate your creations and your films, is it more important to watch them or to feel them
?
Apichatpong Weerasethakul
:
You can do whatever you want.
The important thing is that: freedom.
Of course, this happens inside the frame of the screen, and inside the frame of your head.
You can sync it or you can just dream of something.
You were born in Thailand where you live and work as an experimental film director. When you speak of "
periphery
", what does that mean
?
It is a border or something in our mind in relation to the existence of the between-two-things or between-two-states: day and night, the conscious and the unconscious, life and the death.
And sometimes there is no border line.
This exhibition is a back and forth in the form of a questioning on this subject.
It concerns our way of living and our awareness of this question that we are all the time confronted with.
There is, for example, this fear of crossing, of crossing things, and the fear of death.
In your work, the night is omnipresent. What is its most important characteristic for you
?
Darkness allows us not to see.
The night allows us to imagine.
It reminds me of when I was younger and I walked around with a flashlight illuminating the ground, the trees… So you see some things and you imagine what is in the dark.
In life, this is often the way to approach things, just using your intuition.
Just let the brain smell for you.
View of the exhibition “Periphery of the Night”, by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, at the Institut d'Art Contemporain in Villeurbanne.
© Siegfried Forster / RFI
The exhibition reviews your works from the last twenty years. In each installation or film, there is something different that attracts us
: an emotion, a color, a flash. What awaits us in your new creation,
Durmiente
, an 11-minute video, with Tilda Swinton, shot in 2021
?
The work speaks to us of the periphery. It shows the simple gesture of lying down and falling asleep. There is an interaction with
async-first light
, a 2017 video, projected as a diptych. The new piece interacts with images and sleeping people in the second screen. In
Durmiente
, a person [Tilda Swinton] very slowly closes her eyes and falls asleep. Like the sun disappearing and the room darkening. She "crosses" the border and lives between the two. This is my idea.
In
Memoria
, the film that you will be presenting in competition at the Cannes Film Festival, Tilda Swinton also plays the main role, alongside Jeanne Balibar, two well-known actresses. Since your Palme d'Or for
Uncle Boonmee, the one who remembers his past lives
in 2010 in
Memoria
, in the running for the Palme d'Or 2021, what has changed in your way of making films
?
I thought a lot of things were going to change, but, in fact, they haven't changed that much.
Even though the new film has a different culture and language, different team members, there is still an unspeakable availability and understanding for the type of cinema we were doing as a team, this time in Colombia.
This was also the case with Tilda and Jeanne.
It's like we're talking at the same pace.
So for me that hasn't changed that much except maybe I have a new kind of love for a bigger universe, with more members.
In the exhibit you will notice that it is in fact a similar mode of expression, but with new members.
What makes you want to make a new film
?
My brain.
His ability to grab things.
Sometimes it is so beautiful.
For example with certain types of dreams or events that occur.
I also always have a small camera with me to capture things.
Those kinds of things led me to make these works that you can see in the exhibition.
Many of them were created that way.
View of the video “Durmiente” (2021) by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, with Tilda Swinton, screened in the exhibition “Periphery of the Night”, at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Villeurbanne.
© Siegfried Forster / RFI
The film industry has changed a lot in recent years, with the global success of platforms like Netflix, Amazon or Disney, but also with social networks like YouTube and Instagram. When you make a movie today, what are you looking for
?
Has the impact and role of the moving image and the role of the viewer changed
?
I do not know.
Saying that sounds a bit contradictory, as a movie is meant to be shared and shown.
But I really did it just to have a personal memory and also to experiment.
As far as the viewer is concerned, I really have no expectations.
This is what it means when I tell you: you come in and you are free.
You can do interpretations or even sleep.
That does not bother me.
►
Periphery of the Night, exhibition by Apichatpong Weerasethakul at the Institut d'Art Contemporain (IAC) in Villeurbanne / Rhône-Alpes
, from July 2 until November 28, 2021.
►
Apichatpong Weerasethakul will present the world premiere of his new film
Memoria
, with Tilda Swinton and Jeanne Balibar, on July 15 in the official competition of the Cannes Film Festival.
The theatrical release in France is scheduled for November 17, 2021.
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