Influx, 2023
Part of Rapid Eye Movement 's screening programme at Doc Club & Pub, Bangkok, Semtember 3, 2023
Photo Credit: Rapid Eye Movement
“Influx” was initiated by REM’s interest in the creative process of the artist Tanatchai Bandasak, whose practice often undoes the conditions and the limits of the perceptible, be it contexts, materiality, relational entanglements, and slippages of meaning. For this screening, REM has invited Bandasak to present a new work, “Faucet” (2023), and an older work, “di” (2019), in a new context, weaving a new interpretation of the relationships between the works, the act of screening and the space–both inside the cinema itself and the surrounding physical space.
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Faucet (2023) is a video work that shows a mattress leaned vertically against a wall. In this position the mattress is taking a break from its function—a vertical rest from its horizontal use. The mattress becomes a surface, a screen, a sound absorption panel. Tanatchai recorded direct ambient sound as he turned on the faucets that had been at rest for about twenty years. The sound of the faucet creates movement and motion that flow from the state of stillness, filling up the space, connecting everything together.
di (2019) is the outcome of collecting found footage of people filming insects landing on their hands. People uploaded these captured images online and Tanatchai gathered them during his art residency in Singapore. The work shows the tiny contact points on the skin’s surface with minuscule natural entities landing and walking on the skin. While these people are holding their hand in place and filming, the insects may fly or hop off at any moment. This delicate interaction fuses surface, space, direction, tactile points and lives together. The work di presents selected visuals, consisting of just two clips—an image of a spider and a bee on the skin's surface of two individuals—interwoven in an endless loop through a simple editing process, using sound and visual overlays.