Sitting on the floor, our attention divided between three screens, we began to shift into a shadowy, dreamlike universe, penetrated by percussive sounds and guitar music.
"Metaphors, An Evening Of Sound And Moving Image With Kick The Machine", was one of this season's most highly-anticipated art events. The two-nights-only screenings of filmmaker and artist Apichatpong Weerasethakul and his collaborators' works at CityCity Gallery brought in an enthusiastic crowd for a hypnotising, truly moving experience.
The darkened room, multiple focal points and our seating position led us to believe we were not in the heart of Bangkok during these three hours, nor in an art gallery.
The surroundings seemed familiar and unreal at the same time, a black, cubic box filled with images. Was it magic? Was it a cave?
'Metaphors'. Waiting You Curator Lab
Whether the screening event was an incursion into Apichatpong's mind or a tour of our collective consciousness is up for debate. But if the room is a grotto, then the images on the walls must have been akin to mural paintings, telling us the same stories of men, women, country and culture.
Short films and videos by Apichatpong as well the works of other artists and filmmakers part of Kick The Machine, the independent production company Apichatpong co-founded in 1999, were shown together for the first time.
"Apichatpong's shorts, his installations and performances have been exhibited overseas many times, but this event was the first of its kind," said Chai Siris, whose 500,000 Years 15-minute film haunted the room.
"Each director has his or her own sensitivity of course, but the works as an ensemble were curated to be in line with Apichatpong's videos," he adds.
A recurring question came to mind while watching these works in succession. What is staged and what is simply captured? Reality and imagination, fiction and nonfiction are blended in such way that, even as the evening unfolds, the audience is none the wiser.
Apichatpong himself toyed with this idea of direction, or lack thereof, in his Ghost Of Asia short, a 2005 collaboration with Christelle Lheureux.
The filmmakers gave away control of their 8-minute film to children, who cry out senseless orders to a wandering ghost (Sakda Kaewbuadee) -- "Draw a house! Climb a tree! Throw away trash! Pick up the trash! Now eat the trash!" -- thus determining the on-screen actions and structure of the film.
Other works, such as Krissakorn Thinthupthai's Kasob, are delightfully candid. The segment, a single take showing small children playing with a punching ball -- a rice bag tied to their basement's ceiling -- is life captured, filled with ingenious charm and chaos that could never be re-created or re-enacted.
But for the most part, the artists explored that thin space within the line separating reality from fiction. Portraying a film within a film, and for the audience present at the gallery, a projection within a projection, Chai Siris' 500,000 Years plunged us in surreal territory through the mere depiction of villagers screening a movie as an offering to a divinity.
Through subtle political allusions, the works gave us a sense of time and location, whether it be Bangkok residents standing still as the national anthem is played in different areas of the city in Sompot Chidgasornpongse's opening work, or the shadowy locals in Mae Ram grappling with land management issues in Apichatpong's Vapour (2015). Their silhouettes, shot through a thick veil of fog, are ghost-like, almost forgotten by the majority of us -- the smoke acting as a partition, a metaphor for their concealed woes.
During the span of an evening, the gallery space became transformed into a memory box -- Apichatpong's own, his visual and sound memories, as well as those of his frequent collaborators. Actors Sakda Kaewbuadee and Jenjira Pongpas reminisced on their life experiences, musing about faded dreams and unbroken promises.
These live performances, intimate, with little artifice and minimal setting -- a childhood photograph for Sakda and a tube-like light that changes colours, the same one as used in Cemetery Of Splendour, for Jenjira -- relied solely on the actors' calm but astounding presence.
By going back to the world's oldest form of storytelling, they acted on our desire to return to our origins, a simple, unembellished truth.
Our senses and awareness heightened by three hours of shared experiences, our bodies twitching, necks turned at unnatural angles to catch sight of the three screens surrounding us, the audience set in for a final journey.
A single ray of light pierced through the multiple screens of fog and illusions, blinding as it hit us. With hypnotic, enthralling sounds, the 20-minute excerpt of Apichatpong's Fever Room performance brought us closer to this truth -- or closer to total collapse.
