Chulayarnnon Siriphol employs moving images and his body as his main medium. His works are wide and varied in genre, ranging from short films, experimental films, and documentaries to performance videos and video installations. From adaptations of local mythology and science fiction to the transformation of analog body to digital spirituality, he questions contemporary issues and political ideology through his own sense of sarcasm.
Topics of discussion include decolonizing process and the aesthetics of the global south, self-performance on and off-screen, adaptation/appropriation as a method, Japan & Thailand relations & the incorporation of melodramatic novels in the director’s work, geopolitics, and film reception.
In his recent film ANG48, the director explores Thailand-Japan colonial relations drawing on the popular Thai novel Khu Kam with the protagonist named Angsumalin or ANG for short. The film locates Inter-Asia relationships drawing references to various novels and films from Taiwan, Thailand, and the Philippines featuring Japanese soldiers and local women. Chulayarnnon plays the female lead role of Angsumalin himself while also mixing the universe of the director’s own research and intertextual references including the Japanese girl group franchise AKB48.
Birth of Golden Snail /2019 / 16 mm. film and color painted on film /silent / black&white / 20 min
Birth of Golden Snail is a short film based on the history of Khao Kha Nab Nam, Krabi, Thailand during pre-historic and WWII. It navigates the boundaries between fiction and folktale, which are filled with fantasy, and historical facts. It also plays with the physicality of the natural cave being transformed into a screening space and the internal spaces within the film. Similar to early cinema, using black and white film and a film projector conveys a metaphor about the origin of early films and the origin of human beings; starting from the dark cave of motherhood into the illumination of the outer world.
This film is produced on a 16 mm. film, with the Khao Kha Nab Nam cave in Krabi as a backdrop. The film used to be a part of Thailand Biennale Krabi 2018 but it was censored and banned because the content was deemed against the peace, morality, national security, and dignity of Thailand according to the Thai film and video act 2008, article 29.
Golden Spiral / 2018 / video installation / video projection / HD /sound / color / 18 min snail shells with golden spray in display window
Golden Spiral creates a narrative from spiral motifs, from the era of dinosaurs, and folktales, to sci-fi anime. The unassociated evidence is connected through the video work that creates the transmigration of stories through time. And the time is altered by a network of random stories. This video installation is a part of Ghost:2561.
The Internationale / 2018 / Music Video / sound / color / 6 min
"The Internationale" ("French: L'Internationale") is a left-wing anthem. It has been a standard of the socialist movement since the late nineteenth century when the Second International adopted it as its official anthem. The title arises from the "First International", an alliance of workers which held a congress in 1864. The author of the anthem's lyrics, anarchist Eugène Pottier, attended this congress. This anthem has been celebrated by communists, socialists, anarchists, democratic socialists, and social democrats and has been translated into many languages. "The Internationale" was adapted to rock music by the Chinese band, Tang Dynasty, in 1992. Chulayarnnon Siriphol created this music video when he was an artist in residence at Organhaus Art Space, Chongqing, China in July 2018.
ANG48 / 2022 / Two-channel HD video installation synchronized on loops / sound / color / 25 min / Collection of the Artist and Bangkok CityCity Gallery
ANGSUMALIN 48 is the full name of ANG48 which stands for a fictional organization ‘Alliance of Nippon Girls 48’. The film is a synthesis of archival materials of Asian film history from different countries. The result is an intelligent operating system of 48 digits which was born into a half-human half-golden-snail figure. ANGSUMALIN 48 can dissolve and become invisible to human eyes in order to penetrate through the air as a secret cultural agent. The ANGSUMALIN 48 women have the role of building connections, spreading good relations, and providing support for the alliance of Asian women in different countries to rise up and release their past pain since WWII, and the Cold War until today. The name of this operating system is chosen to commemorate and give honor to ANGSUMALIN, a Thai fictional character in Khu Kam, a novel by Thommayanti, who is an emblem of honesty, loyalty, and love for the homeland.
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