Legacies screening and talk at LUX
26 April 2023
What does a legacy taste, smell, sound, feel, or look like?
Legacies is a programme of five new artist cinema commissions from New Zealand and Thailand featuring work by Edith Amituanai, Martin Sagadin, Pati Tyrell, Sriwhana Spong and Ukrit Sa-nguanhai.
Commissioned by CIRCUIT Artist Moving Image and curated by Dr May Adadol Ingawanij the project began in late 2021 when Ingawanij sent the artists a series of propositions about the potential of the term ‘legacies’;
“Legacies are that which we carry, sometimes with pride and sometimes with shame, as the basis of social bonding, whether as things a people embodies with pride or as an enduring pain, a burden, some kind of ghost.
Legacies as: the pre-modern artistic, cultural, linguistic and religious heritages of the place and land that you were born into and raised in; the legacies of colonisation, and the spectres of nations and nationalisms, during and after colonialism, and their continuing shaping force; the legacies of the modern art/film histories, narratives, and ways of knowing that shaped you, and that bring an ambivalence and a desire to undo.” – May Adadol Ingawanij
The resulting collection includes a portrait of a young Pasifika matriarch; a reflection on the cinematic history of Thailand; an artist sculpting clay in their studio; an animation based on a Balinese painting made by the artists grandfather, and a vivid interpretation of Samoan funeral chants and speeches.
The screening will be followed by a conversation between May Ingawanij, Sriwhana Spong and CIRCUIT Director Mark Williams.
CIRCUIT is an arts agency based in Aotearoa New Zealand.
Supported by CREAM (Centre for Research and Education in Arts and Media), University of Westminster.