ROUTES

ROUTES Cinema Screening 

Doc Club & Pub Cinema, Bangkok 

Friday 11 August, 6pm—9.30pm

As part of LEGACIES | ROUTES, FAFSWAG Arts Collective, CIRCUIT Artist Moving Image and Storage Art Space co-present two special screening programmes at Doc Club & Pub Cinema, Bangkok, supported by the New Zealand Embassy in Thailand.

6pm Screening: DIASPORA RENDERED

Today’s Queer Indigenous Moana people experience complex intersecting social and cultural pluralities within their daily life. Forging identities that are grounded in cultural traditions, yet continually impacted by modernity and urbanism. This can be seen in the hybrid identities that have emerged within a digital landscape in the past ten years. Revealing an overwhelming and sometimes bloated social media terrain, where the children of working-class immigrants in Aotearoa New Zealand self-identify with terms like Pacific Diaspora.

Diaspora Rendered is a compilation of short digital works and experimental films created by members of the FAFSWAG Arts Collective. These works explore the experiences of cultural displacement and try to unpack the term ‘Pacific Diaspora’, what it means to live in our current time with bodies and identities that have navigated centuries of displacement both geographically and temporally. These works show artists using digital tools to reclaim narratives, explore uncharted space, contemplate lineage and legacy, and redefine preconceived Ideas of self, family, home and culture.

Curated by FAFSWAG Arts Collective.

Tanu Gago, Apparatus (2018)

A series of moving image portraits seeking to provide a counter narrative to the media portrayal of Indigenous masculinity as fixed, binary and subordinate to dominant western notions of manhood.

FAFSWAG Arts Collective, Diaspora (2021)

An exploration of shared histories among the diverse communities of Aotearoa New Zealand. Inspired by personal testimonies, lived experience and frictional points of view, DIASPORA tells stories through the body and the space between motion and stillness.

Tanu Gago and Hohua Ropate Kurene, Savage in the Garden (2019)

The socially crippling representation of Polynesian men across mainstream image is an example of the continuation of the colonial exercise of power in daily life. SAVAGE IN THE GARDEN counters such dominant images and their subsequent narratives, concerned primarily with trauma, violence and punitive criminality.

Tanu Gago and Coven Aucoin, This is Glamour (2022)

A visual poem that speaks to notions of chosen families, home, and connections that are born from the spirit of our ancestors. Written by Stellar Pritchard and voiced by mother Moe Laga of the House of Coven-Aucoin, this collaboration seeks to place these spirits into the Pacific narrative and the canon of Ballroom Aotearoa.

Pati Tyrell, Tulouna Le Lagi (2022)

A visual interpretation of alagaupu (proverbs) used within Samoan speeches and funeral chants, utilising imagery from the artist’s personal photographic archive. TULOUNA LE LAGI explores oral traditions still practised in contemporary Samoan life, with the sound design reflecting the call and response nature of these rituals. Part of Legacies, CIRCUIT's 2022 Artist Cinema Commissions. 

Pati Tyrell, Fāgogo (2016)

Fāgogo in Sāmoan refers to fables that are told to people in a shared context. The receiver of a fāgogo is vested with an expectation to pass on the story, making it their own and then passing it on. A fāgogo can mirror the real world in ways that transcend contemporary life, through cultural imperatives that pre-date Western beliefs and value systems. Often considered a place where heritage and tradition fall away from colonial distortions, and, in some instances, from linear narrative conventions, a fāgogo can build our perceptions of the world while simultaneously presenting us with perspectives that are ethereal.

8pm Screening: RETURNS 

A collection of recent short films from Aotearoa New Zealand exploring the eternal timelines of people, place and materials. Curated by Mark Williams, Director of CIRCUIT Artist Moving Image.

Leala Faleseuga, Product of New Zealand (2015)

A figure stands against a wall while a series of still images are projected over the top of them, signalling a journey through  life. The images include old photos, documents from school, handwriting on scraps of paper and other ephemera.

Sorawit Songsataya, Mnemosyne (2022)

Mnemosyne utilises photogrammetry techniques to reconstruct and remap 3D spaces from existing locations in Te Wai Pounamu (Aotearoa) and the northern regions of Thailand. These locations are around Ōtepoti Dunedin where the artist currently resides, and Chiang Rai, a home where the artist's mother lives. These places, relevant to the artist and their mother, are rebuilt and merged in a series of 3D environments where memories are abstracted and re-personified.

Phil Dadson, Headstamps 11: Homage to the Silk Route (2011)

One of a series of performance works made by the artist in locations from Chile’s high, dry, Atacama Desert, China’s northern Silk Route, mountainous Yangshuo in South China’s Guangxi province and, more locally, Oruamo, Aotearoa New Zealand.

Jamie Berry, Wai whakaika (2022)

A karakia (prayer) dedicated to the three streams of Kumutoto, Tutaenui, and Waipiro which flow under the CBD of Wellington. In pre-colonial times these streams were considered tapu (sacred), each performing specific functions associated with birth, healing, life-giving essence, wai Māori, food, burial and other matters with the dead.

Christopher Ulutupu, The Pleasures of Unbelonging (2023)

A woman and children walk through a landscape wearing large velvet robes. Birds call, a river runs, and the sound of a bell radiates through deserted streets. The Pleasures of Unbelonging, filmed in Hanmer Spring, a resort town in the Canterbury region of New Zealand’s South Island, unfolds through a series of dreamlike tableaux poised at the fringes of mystery and disquiet. With reference to James Baldwin’s Stranger in a Village, and leaning gently into the heady noir of Vertigo and Twin Peaks, Christopher Ulutupu’s new work stages a drama of encounter with the white gaze.

Keri-Mei Zagrobelna, Te Pito (2023)

In Te Pito the movements of dancer Jahra Wasasala Ragar signal the umbilical cord connecting us to our surroundings and whenua (land). Keri-Mei Zagrobelna  is an artist of Te Āti Awa, Te Whānau-ā-Apanui descent, based in Wellington. The artist hopes Te Pito will act as a guide, facilitator and creative portal for others seeking to reclaim identity and reconnections to whakapapa (heritage and genealogy); to heal past traumas, celebrate who they are and the journeys their ancestors have taken. Known primarily as a jeweller, this is Keri-Mei’s first digital work and was developed with videography by Pikihuia Haenga Shaw.