![\"Apichatpong](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/c266d96baba9c0d695cf00dcd06aee8d3877cf19.jpeg\")
<\/p>\nWhen he won the Palme d\u2019Or with Uncle Boonmee in 2010, he was approached to make independent American films \u2013 but preferred writing his own and working with his trusted producers. So, was he never offered a Hollywood superhero movie?<\/p>\n
\u201cI wish,\u201d Weerasethakul says. \u201cThat would make my day.\u201d<\/p>\n
But he quickly plays down his interest.<\/p>\n
\u201cI really like special effects so if I do it, it will be to learn that.\u201d<\/p>\n
For the new installation, Weerasethakul wanted to create \u201csomething about movement, about components of cinema, about activating space that is not normally there\u201d.<\/p>\n
It continues one of the masters of slow cinema\u2019s fascination with dreams, nature, time, ghosts and memory.<\/p>\n
After earlier versions were exhibited in Bangkok and Japan, Weerasethakul recruited two artists from Bangkok experimental studio DuckUnit, Rueangrith Suntisuk and Pornpan Arayaveerasid, to create a new version with him for the MCA.<\/p>\n
He says installations allow him to create a different relationship between the viewer and the image than he can with a film.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn cinemas, you just become zombies,\u201d he says. \u201cJust hypnotised.\u201d<\/p>\n
While he tries to break that down by making audiences more aware of time than in a conventional film \u2013 using such techniques as a long static takes, a meditative pace, elliptical stories, unusual sounds and unexpected framing \u2013 an installation lets the viewer create their own experience.<\/p>\n
MCA senior curator Jane Devery says Weerasethakul is rare among artists for having equal status in film and visual arts.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Apichatpong Weerasethakul (centre) with collaborators Pornpan Arayaveerasid (left) and Rueangrith Suntisuk with a Tilda Swinton image from the new installation. Credit: Edwina Pickles<\/p>\n
\u201cWith film, it\u2019s generally 90 minutes long, you sit in a theatre and you\u2019re kind of directed how to behave and how to experience the work, whereas with installation the viewer has greater agency,\u201d she says. \u201cYou can choose what to look at, how much time you spend here, how you move around the work. So it\u2019s a very different experience.\u201d<\/p>\n
When he last visited for the opening of an installation at the Sydney Biennale in 2016, Weerasethakul was planning to make his first film outside Thailand because of concerns about censorship at a politically volatile time.<\/p>\n
That became Memoria, which had Swinton as a Scottish expat in Colombia searching for the source of a strange booming sound that only she could hear.<\/p>\n
Weerasethakul is no longer worried about Thai authorities blocking artistic expression.<\/p>\n
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\u201cQuestions [about] authority, the monarchy and all these taboos shifted really quickly and there are more younger people allowed to lead,\u201d he says. \u201cAs an older generation, I used to lose hope in living there and so-called freedom. Now it\u2019s much more open.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite that change, Weerasethakul is still planning to shoot his next film outside Thailand.<\/p>\n
He will shoot what\u2019s reportedly called The Fountains of Paradise, inspired by writer Arthur C. Clarke\u2019s life, in Sri Lanka, with Swinton starring again.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s going to be focused on Sigiriya, this mountain rock,\u201d Weerasethakul says. \u201cThat\u2019s a big fascination for me.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Richard Dreyfuss was really attracted to this mountain. It\u2019s the same for me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Swinton has become such a muse that she also features in a new installation opening in Amsterdam next month.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause of her playfulness, it\u2019s almost like she\u2019s water or something I can sculpt and play together,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n