Email Conversation between Rirkrit Tiravanija and Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Facilitated by gridthiya gaweewong

GG : Why both of you interested in working with art and film ?

AW : Filmmaking makes living more exciting. It is like a parallel life that you live along with a current one. But in this film life, you shape it up to reflect the always-present one. The film life has its own stream of time. I regard the films I make as a single unit. It evolves as my experience accumulates.

RT : I think I have always been interested, since I started to be interested in art, with the relations of time. From the very beginning I was very much influenced by the ideas of ‘real time’ or ‘verite’ from cinema. And though many see my work as perfomative, I think the idea of transmission and reception in the work can be more or less framed as a cinematic scenario. I think we can see how cinema, movies, films and videos is very pervasive in peoples live and in that sense in culture, its a medium that most of the population can enter (out of habit, perhaps) into, and the interference into such a stream I think is interesting to me. I think it’s about the audience and the medium, it’s like chrome in the future, its gleaming with possibilities.

GG : What’s the relationship between these two medium meant to you ?

AW : I don’t really think about this issue.

RT : Yes, it’s Chrome!

GG : What the definition of art and film now, and the difference with the 60s, comparing to the Andy Warhol’s time ?

AW : Personally I really appreciate living, the fact that I breathe. I think everything is beautiful, is art. So film medium is part of the art – and it is everywhere, whether it be Hollywood film, music videos, the news, etc. Nowadays, kids can make their own films. This was not the case in the 60s. I think it has become a very easy and democratic medium.

RT : Yes, like Marcel Duchamp would have said, ” I rather breathe than make art…”, there are too many trying to make definitions when there is only life. I think perhaps one could rethink what is main stream and what is experimental, but all that, as Joei says everyone can make their own movie, so in the end perhaps it’s about transmission. It’s all more real but its also not, its all more art but its also not. Perhaps the differences from the 60′s is speed, we have more speed and information is driven by that idea. Its necessary to think and rethink the approach to ones own time and place, and perhaps life.

GG : P’ Rirkrit mentioned about the speed and transmission. Do both of you see the transition between those two in the mainstream media, in comparison to the artistic production e.g. MTV style and its impact to the younger generation artists’ mentality and their approach to their works. But there’s an anti – speed trend among young generation filmmaker. Why did that happen ?

AW : It is a near-instant phenomena. We have more speed as P Rirkrit mentioned. Our perception, analytical logic is trained and moves along with this enhancement of CPUs and circuit boards. Even though physically you see certain contemporary films to be slow, for me this feature always accentuates the opposite. Your mind is actually racing to extract information (or to contemplate) in our contemporary way. In this regard, we watch old films different than the former generation did. Like Ajarn Joe Prapon’s show title – My Time is Not Your Time.

RT : I think the artistic community is generally thinking one step ahead of the situation, or that’s also the reaction against cultural conditioning, artistic production is often made as a critical reflection on society. But also we are all looking backwards into history and forward in to the future at different speed and time. Concerning speed and time it will be very interesting to finally the film on Zinedine Zidane, being edited right now by Philippe Parreno and Douglas Gordon. It a film (portrait) of the soccer player playing on the field for the length of the game, which is nicely relevant to feature length film time of 90 minutes (by chance the game had four minutes over time, so the film is 94 minutes long). The camera is only following Zidane, so even when he is not handling the ball we are just looking at him, its almost in a real time portrait. Time waits for no one.

GG : There are so many artists working with film now, from Paris based artists who associate with Anna Sanders Films, to P’ Rirkrit, Douglas Gordon, Henrik Hakkenson and so on. Is it a new trend in contemporary art world ?

AW : The moving images are always there when we grew up, in the bedroom, the living room. I think we are just used to analyze and reflect the idea, the living, through moving images – like a universal language. When something is projected and moves, it still exudes the magic and wonderment. It’s erotic to the brain.

RT :I think film is the medium which artists are interested to interfere with, its a luanguage which everyone is so familiar with and has taken it for granted, artistists like to “fuck it up” and “fuck things up” and perhaps make new meanings and new readings. It is also, as mentioned earlier, a medium that can reach a wide sphear of audiences, as well the economies of the image is much more aviliable to be used artistically and vice versa.

GG : Is it true that, film is the only thing we can do now, in the art world ?

AW : No, I think art is indefinite.

RT : No, we can also do nothing… well we do breathe…

GG : What’s interest you most when you working with art & film ?

AW : How I can integrate my feelings, my experience into the film. It’s like a diary, a non-fiction sense. But the process of shaping up the film is so full of fictional elements – from art direction, costume, the acting, and so on. So there is this conflict that is very appealing to me to venture on, to experiment.

RT :The process, I don’t like to shoot a lot of footage and like to be rather precise about the use of image, and in that the process of arriving to the moment which an image is made is rather interesting to me. I also like the collaborative aspect of that process.

GG : Why both of you like to work and collaborate with other people ? E.G. P’ Rirkrit with other artists / audience, and Joei with non-actors / actresses, when you start to work as a filmmaker in Mysterious object at Noon, and as an artist, you collaborate with Christelle ?

AW : I view the process of filmmaking as part of the whole thing. Sometimes I have the idea that making film is just an excuse to be able to “do” stuff like traveling around for locations, seeing different kind of costumes, meeting artists. Lately it’s actually more important than the finished film – which is simply a documentation of this whole performance.

RT : Well, I just answered this last question with my previous answer, it a process of what I do that I like to work collaboratively. I think with the generation of artists I know many of us share our ideas and thoughts and often a work is arrived from this sense of community.

GG : Joei, pls. talk about your project with Christelle in Ghost of Asia, 2005 and Secret Love Affair, (2002 ) ? By the way, P’ Rirkrit, Secret Love Affair is a title of Joei’s work, not his personal life ?

AW : For Ghost of Asia, we imagined a ghost who still lived and wandered around the seashores. We invited kids to be the directors to direct this ghost, which was played by my actor from another film. It’s like a game of simulated life. I just treasured the time I work at the island more than the final film. Again, the film is just a documentation. I had the idea a long time ago about reconstructing a film strictly according to certain events that happen in real life – like a good conversation with a friend, a trip to Kanchanaburi, a good dinner, etc. To do a 100%, meticulous script from life and restage. But I heard that P Rirkrit had done it! So I think that this pleasure of filmmaking and its process is so universal.

GG : For P’ Rirkrit, in your recent collaboration with Philippe Perrano at Lyon Biennale, 2005, we really like the way you consider all component in film culture, as a single piece. The way you construct the theatre, floor installation and screening session, plus the film itself is so complete. pls. talk about the level of collaboration and the process of your film installation. Thank you ka.

RT : Wow, Philippe and I just stumbled our way through this film, I think we had the idea of taking a trip and making the trip into a film, of course we had ghosts in out head, but it was also about not knowing where we were going and to make that into an image. It was really a process where one builds up to the other and the next. So, we are very pleased that many people felt strongly what we wanted to project in space, time, sound and image. Okay, hope this gets us to another idea! I like the way the dialogue is set up, it a nice balance of shades and shadows. Thanks, let me know what is next! Pee rirkrit

GG : It’s interesting to see both of you draw the sense of community to filmmaking process. When you work with artists/ filmmakers friends to collaborate with each other, and in the meantime, you extend the ‘invitation of collaboration’ to other artists, ordinary people (as actors in Joei’s films), and as narrators in P’ Rirkrit latest Retrospective in Paris. It’s such a gift that both of you have in terms of integrating a sense of community and generosity to the artistic production, which used to be individualistic and/ or director – centric process.

AW : I’m curious to see the Utopia program at this BEFF where you invited people to make films. Each Tambon should have their own media station to produce programs – like an OTOP. Remember we talked about Village TV?

RT: That would be interesting a community village TV, a friend in Scotland once had the idea of making a mobile TV cooking show where I would travel to different village and cook a meal for the village and in turn they teach me a local dishes. It would be interesting to have such a vibration of representation, imagine what people in the South would do? And imagine what the CEO of UBC, would do? One village one TV station!

Thanks very much to both of you,
Jeab
bangkok, December 7th, 2005