Oracle Film Series: Kappa + Sud Pralad (Tropical Malady)
Overview
Bruce and Norman Yonemoto in collaboration with Mike Kelley, Kappa
Eastern lore gets a camp, Western update in this work of early California video from Bruce and Norman Yonemoto, who cast artist Mike Kelley as the namesake amphibian Japanese trickster to intervene in an Oedipal scene played out by Warhol starlet Mary Woronov and Eddie Ruscha. (Video, 26min., 1986) Courtesy of Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York.
Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Sud Pralad (Tropical Malady)
A heightened fever dream, part contemporary psychodrama, part Thai fable, Tropical Malady begins as an unlikely love story between a soldier and neighboring farmer. When passions escalate, however, the duo transform and embark on a heated quest of longing and survival in a jungle teeming with lustful spirits and wild beasts. (35mm on digital video, 124mins., 2004)
About Oracle Film Series
The film compendium to The Broad’s latest collection installation, Oracle Film Series, considers the individual in systems of global commerce, colonialism and digital networks. What becomes of traditions, religions, our oracles in the hyperreal inertia of our present day? The films assembled here celebrate the tenacity of the body and its ability to locate moments of sublimity in the face of global capitalism. From features shot in France, Japan, Djibouti, Thailand and the US, paired with short artist videos that render their message via lip-sync, video games, camp performance or productivity consultations, Oracle Film Series assembles masterworks in world cinema that shimmer with subversive glory, unleashing the self into jungles of digital or metaphysical design.
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