Apichatpong Weerasethakul

ULLENS CENTER FOR CONTEMPORARY ART | 尤伦斯当代艺术中心
798 Art Zone, No. 4 Jiuxianqiao Road, Chaoyang Di | 朝阳区酒仙桥路4号798艺术区内
November 26–February 10

Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Power Boy (Evening), 2011, Epson print on paper, 59 x 89 1/2".

British critic Jonathan Romney once wrote in The Independent, “We shouldn’t mistake Apichatpong [Weerasethakul]’s true nature as a hyper-sophisticated modernist with complex, innovative ideas about time and narrative,” but he didn’t elaborate on what this actually means, and he concluded his article by reminding us of the magical and bewitching aspects of the lauded artist’s works. It’s arguable that the enthralling qualities of Weerasethakul’s films and installations have generated enough discourse that the possibilities for description have been exhausted. However, Weerasethakul’s compelling aesthetics can challenge any sustained discussion of the contextual and historical significance of his oeuvre.

For Tomorrow for Tonight (all works 2011) is a largely enigmatic and often humorous take on Weerasethakul’s concerns with superstition and animism in Thailand. Consisting of three video projections, a monitor, and a series of photographs, these beautifully composed works depict a woman (played by Jenjira Pongpas) in a dilapidated interior spooked by otherworldly presences, the same woman in repose, a mud-splattered man, and a guy emanating colored light amid a nighttime landscape. On the small monitor plays the short video Workstation, in which the resigned woman, who also appears to be in pain, is attached to an electronic device and attended to by two men working on a metal apparatus embedded in her leg. Her lips move and she gesticulates but there is no sound. This scenario’s offhand realism oddly breaks the spell that the other works cast, bringing us back to the real world of pain or injury.

The verisimilitude of Workstation contrasts with the supernatural qualities of the other pieces, and viewing these two bodies of work together helps Weerasethakul’s methods and references come to the fore: digital manipulation, the shabbiness of Pongpas’s home, the Caravaggesque lighting of her portraits, and the subdued homoeroticism. Here we might begin to wonder less about the ways we experience Weerasethakul’s works, and more about the decisions he makes as an artist, and the reasons behind those choices.

— Brian Curtin

“Countdown”

CULTURE STATION SEOUL 284 (문화역서울 284)
Seoul-si Jung-gu, Bongnae-dong 2-ga 122
August 11–February 11

Park Chan-Kyong, Manshin, 2011, nine-channel video installation, dimensions variable.

The Seoul Station, a major railway station built in 1925, witnessed the sociopolitical upheaval of modern Korean history until it closed in 2004. Last year it was resurrected as “Culture Station Seoul 284,” named after its historical site number by the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism. The space’s inaugural exhibition showcases thirty-five local artists. Utilizing the building’s architecture as medium to examine changes in culture, the “Countdown” project successfully explores themes of the past, present, and future.

Situated inside the women’s waiting room is Park Chan-Kyong’s Manshin, 2011, a nine-channel video installation that documents a famous female mudang (shaman) performing a ritual. One monitor shows a traditional hat floating over the sky or on the sea, places imbued with magic energy. Another screen shuffles images of folk art and shamanist drawings. Here Park also presents songs of the mudang, which allows the works themselves to have a ritualistic quality; they appears as investigations into the birth and death of the station and evoke the forgotten fantasy of an ideal Korea, a utopia. In the former Executive Room, which was previously reserved for the exclusive use of Korean presidents, U Sunok’s installation Waiting Room, 2011, includes a video of a poem being recited by artist who is seen walking slowly inside the room. The action seems a meditation on the moment of staying and the subsequent moment of leaving, as well as on the illusiveness of memories of a space.

Outside, the old Daewoo building across from the station becomes a canvas for the projection of Kim Sooja’s video Bottari Truk – Migrateurs, 2007. For this work, the artist gathered used clothes and quilts from migrant groups, tying them into bundles and transporting them on trunks. The piece evokes the station’s past life, full of movement and exchange, as well as its recent derelict state and its future as a cultural beacon.

— Yulhee Kim

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer

MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART, SYDNEY
140 George Street, The Rocks
December 16–February 12

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Pulse Index, 2010, digital microscope, pulsimeter, projectors, computers, custom-made hardware, and software, dimensions variable. Installation view, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia.

Visitors are welcomed to Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s exhibition by a conveyor belt with a computerized scanner where they are invited to place all sorts of small objects that they can find in their pockets. Once these pass under the scanner, images of the items are then projected on the conveyor belt alongside objects of other participants. Please Empty Your Pockets, 2010, is one of the thirteen artworks in this first solo exhibition of Lozano-Hemmer in Australia, throughout which the artist uses records and repetition of data such as sound and images captured by means of advanced surveillance or biometric technologies.

Most of the pieces on view generate collective and poetic experiences; for example, Microphones, 2008, is an installation of vintage microphones modified to record the voice of a visitor and immediately play the previous person’s contribution, creating a sense of copresence. Lozano-Hemmer’s deployment of new media in this show creates striking forms of relation between art and audience. Pulse Index, 2010, is a particularly affecting installation that depicts an animated skin landscape of visitors’ fingerprints, which have been captured by a sensor equipped with a digital microscope and camera, then projected as a composite that pulses at the pace of participants’ heartbeats. Visitors become the artwork itself: They act as performers improvising sounds, jumping, or making funny movements with their bodies to activate the pieces. In effect, “Recorders” is a site full of technology that functions as the interface for the encounters of art, self, and the kinetic force of collective memory.

— Claudia Arozqueta