Animistic Apparatus @ Amstelpark film programme curated by May Adadol Ingawanij and Julian Ross
Perfect Nature: Amstelpark Test Site exhibition, Amsterdam, Het Glazen Huis, 9 June 2022
Animistic Apparatus is a curatorial project proposing affinities between contemporary artists’ moving image and animistic practices, based on research by May Adadol Ingawanij and co-curator Julian Ross. The project grew from Ingawanij’s experience of researching ritual uses of film projection around Thailand and neighbouring territories since the Cold War period. Animistic Apparatus asks the following questions: What if contemporary film screenings and installations were reimagined as if they were rituals offered and addressed to nonhuman beings? What if artists were precarious makers of offerings, rather than authors of work or producers of self-expression?
Programme
A child dies, a child plays, a woman is born, a woman dies, a bird arrives, a bird flies off
Shireen Seno, 2019, 18 min, color, sound, HD
A single channel edition of Shireen Seno’s project, exploring cinema and migration in many forms and times. Seno says, “Birds, and ducks in particular, are like role models for humans—they find ways to survive by various means across varied terrain. I hope to bring together a mix of local birds and migratory ones, migrating across different generations of moving image media.”
Prelude: Points of Departure
Pam Virada, 2022, 8:10min, color, sound, HD
The coming together of the five Chinese elements (earth, metal, water, wood, fire) signifies balance in Feng Shui through their positioning in cardinal/ordinal directions, relating to the house and its inhabitants. When there is an imbalance, the house malfunctions and decays. Using the elements as a point of departure, Pam Virada’s work navigates each element as coordinates for domestic tales of hauntings bound in space and time, turning the interior space into an infinite expanse.
Kasiterit
Riar Rizaldi, 2019, 18:22, colour, sound, HD
Tin is an essential component of screens and other digital devise. A third of the world’s global supply comes from Banka island in Indonesia. Flying to the island for the first time, Riar Rizaldi noticed it was entirely covered in mining sites. He asked the miners what they mining. “Their answer was tin and I asked “What for?”, to which they pointed at my phone and replied: “Our tin is in that phone” It was eye-opening for me. I started thinking about the material of tin creating technology, and therefore information, and therefore knowledge, and all this entanglement leading back to the island.”
Dormant Soil / Concrete Reflections
Rei Hayama & Zai Tang, 2020, 19 min, colour, sound, HD
A collaboration between film artist Rei Hayama and sound artist Zai Tang, and a response to Kim Hyesoon’s poem Haeundae Texas Queen Kong. Hayama and Tang collected material from their respective surroundings of Yokohama and Singapore, guided by their responses and the resonances from Hyesoon’s poem. Their collaborative process is a navigation towards a third space between poetry, film and sound.