Films of Prapat Jiwarangsan: Borders of Porosity

Across national boundaries, institutions and archival images, borders appear to be impenetrable, yet are always permeable. This programme of works by Prapat Jiwarangsan examines the fragile membranes between nations, bodies and archives. From migrant labour moving through Singapore’s polished urban facade, to exiled voices across Myanmar’s contested spaces, to images that mutate under digital manipulation and fade into spectral residue, these films reveal how authority attempts to stabilise, even as it threatens to dissolve identity and history. Through keen observation and experimental reworking of images, the films trace the unstable flows that unsettle these borders. Ploy (พลอย, 2020, Prapat Jiwarangsan) Ploy is a Thai migrant who works in one of Singapore’s elusive “jungle brothels” — makeshift brothels in secluded forested areas where covert sex work takes place. Inspired by diary entries discovered during Prapat Jiwaragsan’s research work with migrant workers in Singapore, the film meanders through the city’s manicured public parks and curated urban spaces, collaging visuals of orderly nature with the idyllic rural landscapes of Ploy’s home country and photographs of migrant bodies at rest. Speaking from the margins, the film reveals the hidden economies of labour and migration that underpin the nation’s polished facade. Parasite Family (2016, Prapat Jiwarangsan) Constructed from film negatives salvaged from a defunct film lab, Parasite Family combines analogue processes with digital manipulation to reanimate these forgotten images. Through analogue collage, AI-generated visuals, and even NFT artworks, familiar faces mutate into grotesque hybrids. They emerge as a new species of monsters, mirroring the powerful families who feed parasitically on Thai society, amassing wealth and influence until power itself distorts them beyond recognition. The Slides of Prof. Somkiat Tang-Namo (2016, Prapat Jiwarangsan) The founder of the first Thai virtual university for free public education, the late Professor Somkiat Tang-Namo, is a pioneer of art aesthetics in Thailand. Composed from educational slides from his collection, the film presents them as blurred, out-of-focus images. These slides, once tools of instruction, have become spectral objects, artefacts suspended between knowledge and disappearance. Myanmar Anatomy (2023, Prapat Jiwarangsan) Uncovering Myanmar’s turbulent history through three sites — the Yangon Zoological Gardens, the Yangon Circle Railway, and the Drug Elimination Museum — Myanmar Anatomy places these locations in dialogue with the recorded voices of exiled Myanmar activists. This layered collage of voices and spaces is interwoven with moving images of animals roaming the city of Yangon, creating an uneasy overlap between captivity and political constraint.