Apichatpong's Morakot at Jim Thompson House

While I've been overwhelmed by the recent news of the censorship of Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Syndromes and a Century, life goes on, and one of the director's newest works, Morakot, is showing as a video installation in the Tomyam Pladib exhibition at the Jim Thompson House in Bangkok.

The show features the works of Thai and Japanese artists, who examine the meanings of contemporary art vs. traditional art.

Apichatpong's short film, Morakot, or Emerald, is an 11:50-minute loop in the derelict old Morakot hotel on Thonglor Road in Bangkok. It was originally made as a video installation for the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, and was featured in a recent exhibition of the director's short films at the Anthology Film Archives in New York.

The Tisch Film Review offered this view of Morakot:

CGI flakes float through a deserted room, seemingly the ashes of the lovers whose voice-overs dominate the space, occasionally popping up in ghostly flashes equally endearing and spooky. We’re deep in a new direction here, where CGI plays a role as prominent — and as texturally rich — as the jungle/urban spaces Joe delineates so richly. Much of the value of these two programs [at the Anthology Film Archives] comes from seeing how Joe’s avant-garde experiments and background has been integrated (arguably barely) into the narrative realm; if he ever figures out how to integrate this into a narrative feature, he’s even more of a marvel than generally thought.

As part of the Jim Thompson House exhibition, Apichatpong will give a talk and a free workshop. "An Artist Talk With Apitchatpong Weerasethakul" will be at 7pm on March 27 at Jim Thompson House. He's to talk primarily about his short films and his work with the Bangkok Experimental Film Festival, which is coming up from March 25 to 30.

The workshop, "*uck the Fame, Hooray for Love", on "how to use association techniques of words and images to create a fabulous story" will be an all-day event from 10am on March 29.

Both the talk and the workshop will be in Thai, with English translation.

For the workshop, participants must register by March 21. And for the talk, I don't know if reservations are possible, but they would probably be a good idea.

The Tomyam Pladib exhibition runs until June 5.

(Via Matthew Hunt, Daily Xpress)