What does a legacy taste, smell, sound, feel, or look like?
CIRCUIT is proud to present Legacies, our 2022 programme of artist cinema commissions, featuring five short films for cinema by Edith Amituanai, Martin Sagadin, Ukrit Sa-nguanhai, Pati Solomona-Tyrell, Sriwhana Spong.
Curated by CIRCUIT curator-at-large Dr May Adadol Ingawanij (Thai/UK) the project began in late 2021 when Ingawanij sent the artists a series of propositions about the potential of the term ‘legacies’;
"Legacies are that which we carry, sometimes with pride and sometimes with shame, as the basis of social bonding, whether as things a people embodies with pride or as an enduring pain, a burden, some kind of ghost.
Legacies as: the pre-modern artistic, cultural, linguistic and religious heritages of the place and land that you were born into and raised in; the legacies of colonisation, and the spectres of nations and nationalisms, during and after colonialism, and their continuing shaping force; the legacies of the modern art/film histories, narratives, and ways of knowing that shaped you, and that bring an ambivalence and a desire to undo."
– May Adadol Ingawanij
Each artist was invited by Ingwanij to make a short film which attempted to articulate the artist's own personal response to the term:
Edith Amituanai, Epifania (2022)
A portrait of an inspiring young Pasifika matriarch raising her family; Epifania, the rose that grew from concrete.
Martin Sagadin, Garden of Clay (2022)
An artist sculpts clay in their studio while telling stories about their predecessors. The work affirms the artistic process as a circular gesture, one that starts with gifting the earth.
Sriwhana Spong, And the creeper keeps on reaching for the flame tree (2022)
This film animates the insects found in the last painting by the artist’s grandfather, the Balinese painter I Gusti Made Rundu. The swarm imagines ancestry not as linear succession but as an accumulation of energy "charged with potentiality."
Ukrit Sa-nguanhai, Trip After (2022)
A travel vlog mapping mobile cinema screenings in Northeast Thailand during the 1960s. The films were presented by the United States Information Service as a form of propaganda.
Pati Tyrell, Tulouna le Lagi (2022)
A visual interpretation of alagaupu (proverbs) used within Samoan funeral chants and speeches, utilising imagery from the artist’s personal photographic archive.
May Adadol Ingawanij is a Thai/UK curator and film scholar based at the University of Westminster in London. May's research explores histories and genealogies outside the dominant histories of cinematic arts; particularly avant-garde practice in Southeast Asia. She is one of CIRCUIT’s 2022 Curators-at-large.
Legacies is CIRCUIT's seventh annual programme of Artist Cinema Commissions.
Legacies is accompanied by the Legacies reader, a new publication edited by Thomasin Sleigh, which features contributions from the artists, plus fiction and essays from Huni Mancini, Tina Makereti and more.
