Apichatpong Weerasethakul returns to the Walker for an onstage dialogue with Sky Hopinka (Ho-Chunk Nation/Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians), an artist who has long admired the internationally acclaimed Thai artist and filmmaker. With inspiration drawn from their overlapping interests in place, culture, and ghosts, Hopinka will lead a conversation that delves into a metaphysical cinema.
The program includes a screening of the following short works by Weerasethakul, selected by Hopinka:
The Anthem, 2006, Thailand/UK, DCP, in Thai with English subtitles, 5 min.
Blue, 2018, France, DCP, 12 min.
Cactus River, 2012, Thailand/US, DCP, in Thai with English subtitles, 10 min.; commissioned by the Walker Art Center.
A Letter to Uncle Boonmee, 2009, Thailand/UK/Germany, DCP, in Thai with English subtitles, 18 min.
Accessibility
Assistive-listening devices are available at the box office. Please contact us at least two weeks in advance for ASL interpretation, audio description, and CART captioning to allow time to schedule these services.
For more information or to request additional accommodations, call 612-375-7564 or email access@walkerart.org.
For more information about accessibility at the Walker, visit our Access page.
Bios
Sky Hopinka (Ho-Chunk Nation/Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians) was born and raised in Ferndale, Washington, and spent a number of years in Palm Springs and Riverside, California; Portland, Oregon; and Milwaukee. In Portland, he studied and taught chinuk wawa, a language indigenous to the Lower Columbia River Basin. His video, photo, and text work centers around personal positions of Indigenous homeland and landscape, and designs of language as containers of culture expressed through personal, documentary, and nonfiction forms of media. Hopinka’s work has played at various festivals including Sundance, Toronto International Film Festival, Ann Arbor, Courtisane Festival, Punto de Vista, and the New York Film Festival. His work was a part of the 2017 Whitney Biennial, the 2018 FRONT Triennial, and Prospect.5 in 2021. He was a guest curator at the 2019 Whitney Biennial in New York and participated in Cosmopolis #2 at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. He had a solo exhibition at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, in 2020 and in 2022 at LUMA in Arles, France. Hopinka was a recipient of a 2020 Alpert Award for Film/Video, a 2020 Guggenheim Fellow, and a 2021 Forge Project Fellow. He received the 2022 Infinity Award in Art from the International Center of Photography and is a 2022 MacArthur Fellow.
Apichatpong Weerasethakul (b. Thailand, 1970) has gained worldwide attention for his artistic and groundbreaking experimental films. Before his 2010 feature Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives became the first Thai film to win the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, Weerasethakul was celebrated in 2004 as subject of a Walker Dialogue and Retrospective. This was followed in 2012 with his Walker-commissioned work Cactus River, a short film that debuted on the new online Walker Channel. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives is a part of the Walker’s Ruben/Bentson Moving Image Collection. A maker of films and video shorts since 1994, Weerasethakul completed his first feature in 2000. Now recognized as a major international visual artist, he has also mounted exhibitions and installations in many countries since 1998. Lyrical and often fascinatingly mysterious, Weerasethakul’s film works are nonlinear, dealing with memory and in subtle ways invoking personal politics and social issues. Working independently of the Thai commercial film industry, he devotes himself to promoting experimental and independent filmmaking through his company, Kick the Machine Films, founded in 1999, which also produces all his films. Memoria (2021) screened at the Walker in June 2022.
)
)
)
)
)