Korakrit Arunanondchai: Exploring a Living Archive Through Film, Painting, and Installation Art

This exhibition by artist and filmmaker Korakrit Arunanondchai focuses on the concept of a 'living archive' through an extensive body of work. It explores enduring relationships, the evolution of history, and the connection between the physical body and abstract concepts.

The exhibition by artist and filmmaker Korakrit Arunanondchai centers on the idea of a 'living archive,' examining relationships that persist and evolve with people and their bodies, drawing parallels to the development of historiography without adhering to its linearity. The central figure in his ongoing video series is a fictional painter who uses denim as a canvas, a material that bridges Western origins, working-class popularity, and global reach, paralleling the significance of the unprimed canvas in Western abstract painting. Denim serves as a literal base for his action and body paintings and as a narrative element in his films, featuring friends, colleagues, and family members, notably his grandparents. Updated biennially, the video series becomes an archive of Arunanondchai's thoughts and feelings, keeping significant events and people alive. The protagonists of 'with history in a room filled with people with funny names' inhabit diverse environments, referencing natural habitats in the Anthropocene and technological advancements, as well as evolving notions of politics, culture, and tradition. This textured approach, combining various emotional states and geographical contexts, is palpable in the videos. Arunanondchai frequently integrates film, performance, painting, and sculptural objects into immersive installations. More recently, he has focused on overlaying structural relationships underlying animistic beliefs with those of global information networks. He posits that animism, the world's oldest belief system, shares similarities with how network technologies transform people into spirits, suggesting that the near future's history becomes a version of a distant, imagined past, blurring the dichotomy between spirituality and technology into a shared present. The Graphic Cabinet is transformed into a black box displaying three video works: '2556' (2013), 'Painting with history in a room filled with people with funny names 3' (2015), and 'with history in a room filled with people with funny names 4' (2017). In homage to the Secession's golden dome, a floral wallpaper made of wild flowers and herbs collected in Vienna is installed in the staircase, serving as a backdrop for new paintings referencing stills from the shown videos.

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