Ephemeral Cinema, 2004
Electric car modified to include a video projection system
Screening in public space,‘Here and Now’, Bangkok, 2004
Ephemeral Cinema is a perfomative project which used the form of an electric car conceived in 2004 for the exhibition 'Here & Now' in Bangkok, which asks the function of the art world against the real world. The car remains inside the exhibition space, plugged during the day to recharge his batteries, taken the energy of the art place and then expending his freedom is used as a mobile cinema at night, projecting films free of charge in the streets of the city and finding another audience in public space.
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Exhibition view ‘Cinematic Panorama’, gb agency, Paris, 2008
Screening in public space, rue Louise Weiss ‘Cinematic Panorama’, gb agency, Paris, 2008
Exhibition views ‘Do you Believe in Reality’, Taipei Biennial, Fine Arts Museum, Taiwan, 2004
Untitled, Screenings in Taipei, 23 October to 23 January, 2005
Painting on paper
This painting on paper is the memory of series of screenings held at night in Taipei realized with Pratchaya Phinthong’s work titled ‘Ephemeral Cinema’, a perfomative project which used the form of an electric car conceived in 2004. ‘Ephemeral Cinema’ asks the function of the art world against the real world. The tiny car remains inside the exhibition space, plugged during the day to recharge his batteries, taken the energy of the art place and then expending his freedom is used as a mobile cinema at night, projecting free of charge films in the streets of city and finding another audience in public space.
During the day, a poster hangs in the exhibition space, announcing Pratchaya Phinthong’s Ephemeral Cinema (2004). Below the poster is en electric plug, whose cable snakes out of the gallery and into the street. It is charging the battery of an electric car, and when night falls, the car travels to temporary locations where it becomes a vehicle for a temporary, mobile cinema. Almost clandestinely, it projects films chosen by Phinthong onto barren walls, buildings, or other architectural elements, until its power runs out, when it moves back to the gallery to be recharged again the following day.
Like several other projects by this young Thai artist, including his recent project In someone else’s body, there is a place for your mind to go (2004), which took him by foot, car, train and boat to 56 cities from Frankfurt to Bangkok, the social spect of the Ephemeral Cinema’s simple gesture lies in the act of turning random public spaces into sites of hospitality and community. Projecting films to strangers in places where art would not otherwise reach, Phinthong’s car uses electricity of art institutions to bring flickering cinematic images to the street. The rigid confines of the exhibition space are thus transformed into improvised outddor spaces, and the deliberatedecision taken by the art-going public to visit an exhibition gives way to accidental encounters with a transient cinema, made for and by a wide range of citizens.
Barbara Vanderlinden
Screening in moats Louvre, out door project for Fiac, gb agency, Paris, 2007
Exhibited
2008 'Cinematic Panorama', gb agency, Paris
2007 Fiac, Paris
2004 Taipei Biennial, Fine Arts Museum, Taiwan
2004 'Here and Now', Bangkok