Korakrit Arunanondchai: No History in a Room Filled with People with Funny Names 5

29 Aug-26 Nov 2023

Overview

The first exhibition in Ireland by Korakrit Arunanondchai, a video and multimedia artist originally from Bangkok who now splits his time between New York and Bangkok.

The first exhibition in Ireland by Korakrit Arunanondchai, a video and multimedia artist originally from Bangkok who now splits his time between New York and Bangkok.

This new exhibition serves as a reconfiguration of Korakrit Arunanondchai’s continuous conversations and collaborations with two artists, Alex Gvojic and Tosh Basco.

Opening with the myth of "Ghost Cinema", a tradition in North East Thailand that grew out of remnants from the occupation of the US military during the Cold War, Korakrit Arunanondchai weaves together a story about possession and the dependency between the caretaker and the care receiver. The filmic installation is charged with the idea of community and questions what holds it together – among humans and non-humans.

The video was mostly shot in Chiang Rai and Udon Thani. In the town of Mae Sai, Chiang Rai, a youth soccer team got trapped in a cave, and their plight became a moment of reframing Thailand and presenting it to the world, as well as back to itself, creating new stories with roles for the helpless, the benevolent, the caregiver and the care-receiver. Spirit mediums, monks, and ghosts of Thailand were there, shoulder-to-shoulder with scientists, the American military, and the international tech-capitalist. In Udon Thani, with the mythical story of the ghosts hiring humans to run an outdoor film screening, the audiences in communion with the ghost, enact a system of rituals through the medium of light projected onto a screen.