Memory as a Motor of Images: The Essayistic Mode In Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Variations of Uncle Boonmee

Abstract

Filmmaker-artist of Thai origin Apichatpong Weerasethakul is known for crossing the boundaries between cinema and installation art, documentary film and fiction, and the work of memory, myth and fantasy. Weerasethakul’s variations on the character ‘Boonmee’, including a documentary essay, a series of objects and video installations as well as a feature film, are hybrid and reflective aesthetic works that together form a larger imaginary space based on the interplay of image and word. From this space, as Christa Blümlinger argues, a theatre of memory evolves that originates from one singular historical motif but is developed in various ways through different formal and aesthetic means. The three works are linked together by a central motif, namely that of recurrence. Heterogeneous temporalities, however, challenge and disrupt the configuration of a more continuous cultural and political memory, as well as the viewer’s individual perception.