Solarium

• Technique Double-channel video installation
• Length 19:32 minutes (looped), for the Thailand Biennale, in an old school
  Later adjusted to 15:00 minutes for installation elsewhere
• Materials Two glass panels, holographic film, two video projectors, an audio system
• Year 2023–2024

Apichatpong Weerasethakul recreates a horror film from his childhood about a doctor who kills a man for his eyes. The dead man’s spirit haunts the neighbourhood, searching for the eyes that were stolen from him, until the ghost is finally destroyed by the sun.

In one video, Apichatpong selects only the moments of the ghost’s actions that have stayed in his memory. It is shown against a second video, in the opposite room, of moving lights. The lighting in the two films shifts between visible and invisible.

The ghost, like a filmmaker, is always searching for an apparatus with which to experience light. The title hints at his inability to escape this dreamlike state: forever trapped in a solarium of his own making, yearning for the warmth of the sunrise.

The work also pays homage to experimental artists of the industrial revolution and early cinema, such as Hans Richter, Marcel Duchamp and Fernand Léger, through a study of geometry, light, perception and movement.