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. The premiere of Legacies is presented in partnership with Artspace Aotearoa with the support of Creative New Zealand.
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
The result is a programme of five new artist works that proffer a portrait of a young Pasifika matriarch; a reflection on cinema as resistance in cold war Thailand; a painter’s studio and the trans-national practice of the artists themselves who work and live between Aotearoa, Bali, Thailand, UK and the wider South Pacific.
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. It is also the third of CIRCUIT’s artist cinema commissions presented at Artspace Aotearoa. CiRCUIT Director Mark Williams says'
“CIRCUIT is really grateful to once again partner with Artspace Aotearoa to present these terrific new works, and likewise that Artspace Aotearoa has committed to a cinema in their new premises. The very existence of such a space in Tāmaki encourages artists to make work for this format, knowing that there’s a place it can be seen. ”
– Mark Williams
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 others. The Legacies Reader will be launched at Artspace Aotearoa on Wednesday 21 September.
