Bodies of Force (2025–2026) by Wantanee Siripattananuntakul

Movement unfolds beyond human intention. Rather than treating action as something controlled by a subject, the work attends to the conditions that shape it: gravity, terrain, atmosphere, and the relations between bodies. Movement does not belong to any single agent.

Bodies of Force is a three-channel video installation filmed at Mount Merapi, Goa Cemara, and the Cemeti Institute for Art and Society in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. The work begins with the release of a coin from an elevated position. From that moment onward, gravity, wind, surface texture, and surrounding conditions shape its movement. What unfolds is not directed or corrected, but allowed to proceed according to the conditions of each site.

The coin carries a parrot on one side and an eagle, the emblem of the Indonesian state, on the other. As it spins and slows, these images turn with the metal surface that holds them, appearing and disappearing through motion rather than remaining fixed.

Each channel consists of a single continuous on-site take. Duration is established at the point of capture rather than through post-production. Movement unfolds within the limits of terrain and atmosphere. The camera does not intervene, and no attempt is made to stabilise or repeat the event.

Removed from economic circulation, the coin no longer operates as a unit of exchange, but as a material body among other bodies. Human action initiates the event, but does not retain authority over it. Spin, deviation, and friction arise through contact with volcanic terrain, coastal wind, and institutional ground.

The work does not isolate a single cause or agent. Movement unfolds within a field of interacting forces, where control is not held but distributed. What appears as an action is not governed by intention; it is shaped by conditions that precede and exceed it.

Motion does not fully settle into rest.