having-seen-snake | Sriwhana Spong, USA, 14 min, 2016
Sriwhana Spong filmed having-seen-snake in Pittsburgh, using her encounter with a garter snake as a starting point. The physical and linguistic quality of this experience informs the two different styles explored in the film. In the moment of encountering the snake, Spong’s body responded by intuitively entering into a state of stillness and hyper-sensing—as one creature responding to another. The subsequent (late) arrival of language then brought distinctions and separations. In the first part of the film, a more surreal imprint of place and sensory experience is juxtaposed with the interior of the alcohol house at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. This part centres around a new species of snake recently discovered by herpetologist José Pardial in the Amazon. Spong interviews Pardial, who describes the process of designating a name, and reflects on what it means to transfer something from the unspoken into the realm of the spoken. having-seen-snake ends with the song of the Rothschild’s mynah recorded at the National Aviary in Pittsburgh. The bird, endemic to Bali, where the artist’s father is from, is currently on the brink of extinction due to poaching.
Village and Elsewhere Artemisia Gentileschi’s Judith Beheading Holofernes, Jeff Koons’s Untitled and Thai Villagers | Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook, Thailand, 20 min, 2011
Village and Elsewhere: Artemisia Gentileschi’s Judith Beheading Holofernes, Jeff Koons’s Untitled and Thai Villagers is shot inside a prayer hall of a Buddhist temple. In the background of the video’s single tableau shot, we see an enormous gold-framed reproduction of an untitled painting by Jeff Koons that is displayed frontally on the left side of the screen. Beside it, toward the right side of the screen, there is a reproduction of a painting by Artemisia Gentileschi, which is encased in a matching gold frame equal in size to the one framing Koons’s work. In the foreground, there are several rows of lively spectator-figures, children and neatly dressed older women – including Araya herself – all of whom are sitting with their backs to the camera on a fandango pink carpet facing the two reproductions. A figure stands next to the framed reproductions and faces the camera. He is a Buddhist monk who, for the duration of the video, delivers a humorous, didactic sermon on the third Buddhist precept, the prohibition of sexual misconduct, using the images as visual aids. The response of his audience of unruly children and aunties veers between raucous opining and gleefully digressive and associative interpretations of details in the images to chanting enthusiastic replies by rote. Dogs of different sizes wandering off- and on-screen during the unusual sermon, disarraying the loose geometric lines of the tableau. This portrait of improvisatory and participatory spectatorship recalls another genealogy of moving-image exhibition: the live narration of films.
もう一つの教育 伊那小学校春組の記録 (Lessons from a Calf) | Kore-eda Hirokazu, Japan, 47 min, 1991
In 1988, Ina Elementary School adopted a cow named Laura from a ranch as a part of the school’s integrated learning program. The children learn subjects such as math, science, and composition from their group activities: building Laura’s barn, calculating the feed cost, debating in class before making decisions about her care, and experiencing essential existential lessons. Capturing the kids’ lively expressions, the documentary witnesses their growth through caring for Laura. This is Hirokazu Kore-eda’s first film project.