Ghostly mirage in the desert

 Filmmaker and artist Apichatpong Weerasethakul is falling back on his undergraduate schooling as an architect with his latest project, the open-air Mirage City Cinema for the Sharjah Biennial in the United Arab Emirates.
It’s a collaboration with German architect Ole Scheeren, who created the floating cinema for Apichatpong’s Film on the Rocks Yao Noi festival last year in Phuket. And Apichatpong is curating the programme with help from such folks as actress Tilda Swinton (who also worked on Film on the Rocks), Steve Anker, dean of the School of Film and Video at the California Institute of the Arts, Mehelli Modi, founder of the UK DVD label Second Run, and Filipino filmmaker-poet Khavn De La Cruz.
“Mirage City Cinema reflects the idea of a place where a cinema of illusion arises and flourishes. A place of ghosts. I was interested in the moment when we free our minds and bodies of preconceived ideas, and allow ourselves to be possessed,” Apichatpong says.
Sheeren’s aim was to interweave elements of the Gulf city’s historical fabric to create an “ethereal courtyard cinema experience”.
Floor carpets, which were traditionally used for sleeping and relaxing, are scattered around, drawing upon the common practice of using carpets to sleep on rooftops – a tradition now largely defunct due to the prevalence of air-conditioning units occupying roof space.
Coral, which used to be mixed with mud plaster to build homes but is now forbidden, has been recycled from decaying walls and used for the ground of the cinema space.
“Plaza, courtyard and rooftops all melt into a texture of shared stories of the city and the people who inhabit it,” Sheeren says.
The Sharja Biennial started on March 13 and runs until May 13.