30.09.2009
Musee d'Art moderne de la Ville de Paris
11, avenue du Président Wilson, 75116 Paris, France

1 October 2009-3 January 2010

ARC presents Primitive, a recent work by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, the acclaimed Thai artist and filmmaker. Drawing on sources of inspiration ranging from Buddhism to popular culture, from soap operas to folklore, Apichatpong Weerasethakul's videos focus on individual and collective memory. Endowed with very real artistic and visual qualities, they also explore the present Thai cultural system. The exhibition features eight short works shot in Nabua, a village in north-east Thailand which had been occupied by the Thai army from the 1960’s to the 1980’s to control communist insurgents.

Primitive is inspired by The Man Who Could Recall His Past Lives, a book whose author, a monk, recounts the former lives of a man called Boonmee. Based on the questioning of memory, history and myth, Primitive is a protean project including the installation, two short films, an artist’s book and a forthcoming feature in which Boonmee will appear. In different scenes, we witness the activities of local teenagers: the building of a wooden spaceship, a football match with a burning ball... Apichatpong Weerasethakul paints the portrait of an unchanging youth, the descendants of communist farmers emancipated from their past.

The installation will be exhibited in conjunction with a quartet of photographs made during the artist’s stay in Nabua and the installation version of the short film Phantoms of Nabua.

Films