A breath of dream: be(ing) & (be)longing through moving images

Jim Thompson Art Center, Bangkok

3 July 2024

Screening Programme co-curated by Dương Mạnh Hùng and May Adadol Ingawanij as part of the public programme of the exhibition The Disoriented Garden… The Breath Of Dream by Trương Công Tùng. The exhibition is curated by Dương Mạnh Hùng.

Works presented:  

SOME MORE RICE (2005) – Kidlat Tahimik (20’ 00’’)

WHERE IS MY LAND? (2014) – Khvay Samnang (13’ 29’’)

INTO THE VIOLET BELLY (2022) – Thuy-Han Nguyen-Chi (20’ 00’’)

CAMERA TRAP (2019) – Chris Chong (10’ 00’’)

JALAN-JALAN (2019) – Mark Salvatus (10’ 15’’)

Post-screening conversation between Dương Mạnh Hùng, Thuy-Han Nguyen-Chi, and May Adadol Ingawanij

“In his short speech during the opening of The disoriented garden… A breath of dream at the Jim Thompson Art Center, artist Trương Công Tùng said, ‘This moment, here, where we all gather, sharing a breath is very unique to me. I am here thanks to a single breath, of me, of you, of my ancestors, of all beings who exist alongside and within us.’ The Latin root anima, which translates into soul or psyche, initially signifies a breath, the first and last sign of life. Through our individual and collective breathing, we participate in the process of becoming: each breath reminds us of our shared mortality, our metamorphosis, and our desire for a primordial interconnectedness. Drawing from the title of Tùng’s first solo exhibition in Thailand, this screening program attempts to unpack the previously mentioned notions through the ethereal medium of moving image. From the watery breathlessness that besets both a fleeing mother and a struggling dancer, the silent breathing of ghosts and creatures that gestures toward their presence and absence, and a farmer’s dream of rice spirits during his battle against cancer, these filmic works weave a dreamscape that contemplates our current state of being, invokes our longing for unnamable things, and questions our sense of belonging to other humans and nonhumans” (screening programme introduction text).