Pirelli HangarBicocca
Apichatpong Weerasethakul
“Primitive” (2009) by Apichatpong WeerasethakulPirelli HangarBicocca
Primitive
The
Thai artist and filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul presents “Primitive”, a
project he started in 2009 and which is being shown in its entirety in a
display specially designed for the spaces of Pirelli HangarBicocca. In the
almost total darkness of the Shed space, the viewer is plunged into a magical,
mysterious atmosphere conjured up by images that alternate light and dark,
video clips and documentaries, narrative and absolute silence, reality and
fiction, past and future.
The director’s story starts out from Nabua, a village in the north of Thailand which was the target of tragic repression and attacks by the Thai army from the 1960s to the 1980s. Here its history is re-examined and re-imagined, involving the young people of the place – descendants of the erstwhile dissidents – with whom the artist lived and worked for some months in the summer of 2008.
“Primitive” (2009) by Apichatpong WeerasethakulPirelli HangarBicocca
“Primitive” (2009) by Apichatpong WeerasethakulPirelli HangarBicocca
The climax of this shared experience is the creation of a spaceship – a jointly made work of art in which the exuberance of the kids is combined with the artist’s visionary ideas. The term Primitive thus has a twofold meaning: on the one hand the primeval desire of humans to return to their origins and, on the other, with greater political overtones, the primitive state in which peoples are forced to live by governments and the establishment
“Primitive” (2009) by Apichatpong WeerasethakulPirelli HangarBicocca
“Primitive” (2009) by Apichatpong WeerasethakulPirelli HangarBicocca
“Primitive” (2009) by Apichatpong WeerasethakulPirelli HangarBicocca
Apichatpong
Weerasethakul’s works have no linear narrative structure but rather appear as
documentaries that constantly slip into dream-world stories, shifting from
long, detailed shots of a place or character to situations in a world of the
surreal, like the abrupt manifestation of a ghost. These unexpected
interactions partly reflect the lifestyle of rural Thailand, which is still
based on ancient animistic beliefs, legends and superstitions, and on the lack
of any clear-cut demarcation between the real and the spiritual world.
