Akeroyd Collection

Works

Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Sakda (Rosseau), 2012

In Sakda (Rosseau), the artist recites a short text into a microphone, in what appears to be a venue for live music. Under the lo-fi disco lights, swirling around the room, two acoustic guitars, in duet, play a melancholic melody. It is delicate like a lullaby, intricate in its composition, and filled with lament and pathos. The artist appears to be a 21st Century reincarnation of the eponymous philosopher speaking out to the world from a bar in Thailand. He talks of his body belonging to no one, not even himself. He seems to be questioning his existence physically and in an existential way. Periodically, the video cuts to a scene of a table on a veranda along the Mekong River at dusk. On the table, a radio transmitter emits the sounds being made in the bar. This ghostly, barely present, disembodied voice is quiet – the only sound on a still night. Its distorted, distant echo is a reminder that this work was created to mark the three-hundredth anniversary of the birth of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

MediumHD film, colour, sound
Duration5 minutes 16 seconds
Editionof 3 + 2 APs