Symposium: Ghosts and Spectres – Shadows of History Session II: Ghosts and SpectresPresentation: “The Spectre of Photography in the works of Apichatpong Weerasethakul” by Dr Clare Veal, art historian, Lecturer, MA Asian Art Histories, LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore

The Single Screen, Block 43 Malan Road

The histories of photography and film in Thailand intersect in multiple ways. Yet the revelatory, iconic nature of photography in this context has meant that it has often been considered separate from filmic practice in which the "real" lacks weight. The trans-disciplinary nature of Apichatpong Weerasethakul's practice, described by Dr May Adadol Ingawanij and Dr David Teh as "permeable," complicates these distinctions. Despite Apichatpong's preference for cinema and video, the photographic is implied through the slow, rhythmic pace of his time-based works, as well as their reconstituion as stills. By aligning these references with the implications of different media forms in the Thai context, this presentation considers the role of the photographic and the filmic to reveal and conceal, and how medium specificity is implicated in the visualisation of traumatic pasts that resist representation.