Catalogue > At random

"[...] where the colonizer undresses her, the native’s nakedness stares back at him both as the defiled image of his creation and as the indifferent gaze that says, “there was nothing - no secret - to be unveiled underneath my clothes. That secret is your phantasm” (Rey Chow, Writing Diaspora: Tactics of Intervention in Contemporary Cultural Studies, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1993) The touristic voyage gaze does not only create an object but also implies the desires and longings of the subject who stares and grasps. The westerners journey to know about oneself becomes a search for a counter-narrative where the new ‘orient’ is believed to provide the answer to lost origins and a shelter from problems. Many expect non-western persons to be passive and modest, available to offer them care and a sense of belonging. With the neocolonial structures such as global extractivism, backpacking-tourism, international corporates as the background, I aim let this video remind audiences of their possible participations in any of these, and to convey to audiences the uncanniness of these relationships; as if they were orphaned and were to be adopted by the indigenous "mother entities".

Sarnt UTAMACHOTE (1992, Thailand, he/they) is a queer filmmaker and curator. He studied Industrial Design (BA) at Chulalongkorn University, and Cinema Studies (BA) at the Freie Universität of Berlin. He co-founded collective “un.thai.tled” (of Thai-German diasporic critical creatives), through which he curates critical cultural exhibitions such as “Beyond the kitchen: Stories from the Thai Park” (2020) as well as film-screenings “un.thai.tled Film Festival Berlin” (2019-annual). He is part of the selected participants at Young Curators Workshop for 11th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art 2020. His film-related profession (as film producer/director/ editor) furthermore utilizes cinema as a means for social and imaginary engagement beyond social conditional realities. His video installation “I Am Not Your Mother” was commissioned and exhibited at International Rotterdam Film Festival and nominated for “R.D. Pestonji Award” for best short film in Bangkok 2020. He is the 2020 recipient of Queer Short Film Fund, granted by Xposed Queer Film Festival Berlin.