Korakrit Arunanondchai: Songs for dying (2021), video still. HD film, 30'. Co-commissioned by the 13th Gwangju Biennale, Han Nefkens Foundation and Kunsthall Trondheim. Courtesy Korakrit Arunanondchai, Bangkok CityCity Gallery, Bangkok, Carlos/Ishikawa, London, C L E A R I N G New York / Brussels
The event Ghost Stories – Voices of trauma, resistance and care in Southeast Asia will take place 1pm–2pm (CET) online. The event is free of charge but requires advance booking.
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Participants:
Cosmin Costinas
May Adadol Ingawanij
Seong-nae Kim
Moderators:
Katrine Elise Pedersen, Carl Martin Faurby
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Through the lens of Korakrit Aruranondchai’s newly produced film Songs for dying (2021), which has its world premiere in his exhibition at Kunsthall Trondheim, we will follow the voices of shamanistic and spiritual practices and voices of contemporary student demonstrations for social justice in Southeast Asia through the artist’s exploration on spirit mediums – keepers of the threshold between the sacred and profane.
In Songs for dying, the artist explores the idea of spirit mediums through the voices of the female shamans of Jeju Island and through the student protesters’ use of pop cultural references in the ongoing demonstrations in Thailand.
During the event, we will be joined by Seong-nae Kim, who has researched how shamanistic practices offer healing and reconciliation after trauma and violence, especially in relation to the Jeju Massacre in 1948, and by Cosmin Costinas, who has curated a large number of research-based exhibitions that connect contemporary social dynamics to the historical fabric of the region of Southeast Asia.
Spirit mediums have concerned the artist over several years in his artistic practice. In this regard, we will also learn about May Adadol Ingawanij’s research into ritualistic film practices in North-East Thailand that used film equipment, which was leftovers from the Vietnam War, for outdoor film screenings for ghosts.
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Bios:
May Adadol Ingawanij is a writer, curator and teacher, and Professor of Cinematic Arts at the University of Westminster where she co-directs the Centre for Research and Education in Arts and Media. She works on decentred histories and genealogies of cinematic arts; avant-garde legacies in Southeast Asia; forms of potentiality in contemporary artistic and curatorial practices; aesthetics and circulation of artists’ moving image, art, and independent films in, around, and beyond Southeast Asia. Recent publications include articles on Korakrit Arunanondchai, Karrabing Film Collective, Nguyen Trinh Thi, and Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook. Curatorial projects include Animistic Apparatus, and Lav Diaz: Journeys. May is writing a book titled ”Animistic Medium: Contemporary Southeast Asian Artists Moving Image”.
Cosmin Costinas (b. 1982, Romania) is the Executive Director/Curator of Para Site, Hong Kong since 2011. He was Guest Curator at the Dakar Biennale (2018), Curator at Dhaka Art Summit (2018), Co-curator of the 10th Shanghai Biennale (2014), Curator of BAK, Utrecht (2008-2011), Co-curator of the 1st Ural Industrial Biennial, Ekaterinburg (2010), and Editor of documenta 12 Magazines, Kassel (2005–2007). At Para Site, Costinas oversaw the institution’s major expansion and relocation to a new home in 2015, and curated or co-curated exhibitions including: An Opera for Animals (2019); A beast, a god, and a line (toured at Dhaka Art Summit ‘18, TS1/The Secretariat, Yangon, and Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, 2018 and Kunsthall Trondheim in 2019); Soil and Stones, Souls and Songs (toured at MCAD, Manila and Jim Thompson Art Center, Bangkok, 2016-2017); Afterwork (toured at ILHAM, Kuala Lumpur, 2016-2017); and A Journal of the Plague Year (toured at The Cube, Taipei, Arko Art Center, Seoul, and Kadist Art Foundation and The Lab, San Francisco, 2013-2015) in recent years, a.o. He co-authored the novel Philip (2007) and has edited and contributed his writing to numerous books, magazines, and exhibition catalogs and has taught and lectured at different universities and institutions around the world.
Seong-nae Kim is currently Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies at Sogang University. She is a founding editor-in-chief of the Journal of Korean Religions (JKR), the only English-language academic journal dedicated to the study of Korean religions, which was launched in the autumn of 2010 by the Institute for the Study of Religion at Sogang University. During her stay (2015-2016) at the Harvard-Yenching Institute, she will undertake research and writing for her book manuscript, tentatively entitled ”Violence and Cultural Memory in Korea”. By drawing on contemporary issues of violence and memory in Asia, her research explores the way in which the legacies of the Cheju massacre, known as Cheju April Third Incident on Cheju Island, and the Korean War are intergenerationally transmitted and reenacted in practices of post-memory concerning commemoration and kinship. Her first book in Korean language, Han’guk Mugyo ui Munhwa Inryuhak [Cultural Anthropology of Korean Shamanism] (2018, Sonamu Pub.) was awarded the 2020 Yim Sok-jae Prize for academic achievement in anthropological field. Her recent publications include “Placing the Dead in the Postmemory of the Cheju Massacre in Korea,”Journal of Religion (University of Chicago Press, Vol.99, No.1, Jan 2019) and a chapter “Memory Politics and a Women’s Sphere in Korea” in the edited volume Gender, Transitional Justice and Memorial Arts: global perspectives on commemoration and mobilization, edited by Jelke Boesten and Helen Scanlon (Routledge, 2021).