Art Sonje Center will be held the colloquium which will present Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s cinema in relation to Asian modernization, in particular, the meaning of his cinema in modern Asia.
Apichatpong’s cinema is well known as the representation of the marginalized world, which seems excluded from the modernization. The
participants in the colloquium will discuss the meaning of his cinema in modern Asia and the tension between modernity and his imagination.

About the artist
Apichatpong grew up in Khon Kaen, the north-eastern region Thailand, where he studied Architecture, and later specialized in film making at the School of Art Institute of Chicago.
He began making film and video shorts in 1993, and completed his first feature in 2000. He has also mounted exhibitions and installations in many countries since 1998. Lyrical and often mysterious, his works are non-linear, dealing with memory and in subtle ways invoking personal politics and social issues. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives has won a Palme d’Or prize at the 63rd Cannes Film Festival in 2010. His 2009 large-scale video installation, Primitive, was exhibited at many museums including Haus der Kunst, Munich and at the New Museum, New York.
In 2012, he was invited to participate in Documenta (13), one of the most well-known art exhibitions in Kassel, Germany. Apichatpong received the Sharjah Biennial Prize at the 2013 Sharjah Biennial 11, UAE in collaboration with Chai Siris. He’s also a recipient of the Fukuoka Prize, Japan, 2013. In 2015, his first performance piece, Fever Room, was premiered at Asian Art Theater in Gwangju, Korea. In 2016, his solo show inaugurated the MAIIAM Contemporary Art Museum in Chiang Mai. He is a recipient of the 2016 Principal Prince Claus Award, the Netherlands.
Apichatpong currently works and lives in Chiang Mai, Thailand.

Program Schedule

Part I (15:00 – 17:00)
Apichapong’s Special Lecture: Life and Cinema
Q & A

Part II (17:00 – 18:00)
Colloquium: Modernity and Cinema
Youngjeen Choe (Moderator)
Woosung Kang: Tropical Unconscious
Alex Taek-Gwang Lee: Dream and
Cinema-Reading Kant through Apichatpong

colloquium 

Youngjeen Choe (Moderator)

Youngjeen Choe is Professor of English at Chung-Ang University. He teaches Cultural Studies and Film Theory and Criticism. He has published on American fiction films and documentaries, American blues music, Gilles Deleuze’s film theory, and many others. He is currently working on the auteuristic reception of the New American Cinema in the Korean Cinema of the 1970s.

Woosung Kang
Woosung Kang is Professor of English, Chair of Comparative Literature Program, and Director of American Studies Institute at Seoul National University. He is the author of Emerson and the Writing of the Moment in the American Renaissance, A History of American Literature, Painting as the Gaze of Philosophy, and he has published many articles on American writers, Japanese films, Jacques Derrida, and other contemporary theorists, including Korean translations of Derrida’s major works and Avital Ronell’s Stupidity. He is now working on two books, Freud the Humanist and Literary Derrida.

Alex Taek-Gwang Lee
Dr. Alex Taek-Gwang Lee is a cultural critic and professor in Kyung Hee University, Republic of Korea. He obtained MA in philosophy from University of Warwick and PhD in Cultural Theory from The University of Sheffield. His publications include The Idea of Communism 3 with Slavoj Zizek, Theory After Althusserianism, Futurism, The Obscene Fantasy of Korean Culture, Nationalism as a Sublime Object, Deleuze as a Theatre of Philosophy, This Is What Is Called Cultural Criticism, The Impressionists, and Framing a Witch.