INFLUX
“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.
Faucet (2023)
variable durations
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)
variable durations
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. This 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.
Tanatchai Bandasak’s works open up our experience to something in a transitional state. He usually makes us aware of the blurred perimeter of the event, the shifting between two things. His exposed interests range from, a series of coincidences in everyday life, ecological matter to the archaic. Bandasak collects what he has encountered as his materials, he then often creates specific methods, structures and narratives, to collide with his collected fragments. This process results in the form of objects, photography, moving image and installation generating another dimension allowing the drifting of the meaning and expanding our perceptions.