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M+, Hong Kong, © Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook
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Mediatheque
Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook 阿拉亞．拉斯德乍爾姆倫索
Conversations I 對話I
2005
Conversations I (2005) is an early video work by Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook, and one of her best known. In this five-channel video, the first from her Conversations series, the artist sits with her back to the camera between a pair of corpses, which lie on gurneys veiled in white sheets. Acting as both observer and participant, the viewer joins in meditative, silent moments that are interspersed with short interludes of Rasdjarmrearnsook humming and chanting. Informed by the Theravada Buddhist tradition of sitting and chanting with the deceased over several days to guide them to the next realm, the artist performs her own private communion and takes on the responsibility of ushering them into the next life.
Rasdjarmrearnsook collaborated with a hospital in Chiang Mai, Thailand, and requested to work with the deceased, who had no family to attend to them. By standing in for relatives or friends, she confronts the notion of death as taboo and challenges traditional cultural attitudes. Rather than considering the corpses as removed and soon to be forgotten, the artist communicates with them and seeks to give them voices, connecting the realms of the living and the dead.
Rasdjarmrearnsook collaborated with a hospital in Chiang Mai, Thailand, and requested to work with the deceased, who had no family to attend to them. By standing in for relatives or friends, she confronts the notion of death as taboo and challenges traditional cultural attitudes. Rather than considering the corpses as removed and soon to be forgotten, the artist communicates with them and seeks to give them voices, connecting the realms of the living and the dead.
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