Making Shadows Speak by Wantanee Siripattananuntakul

Making Shadows Speak argues that the afterlives of historical violence, displacement, and geopolitical restructuring cannot be understood through human-centred narratives alone. Filmed at sites shaped by former colonial control, abandoned infrastructure, and shifting borders, the work reveals how political histories continue to register in land, movement, and perception long after they are declared complete.

The video centres on acts of witnessing beyond human authority. A more-than-human presence appears throughout the work—not as a metaphor, but as an autonomous observer whose perceptual field challenges dominant ways of sensing and interpreting history. Attuned to shifts in light, space, pressure, and atmosphere, this parallel mode of attention exposes forms of political memory that remain invisible within official archival systems.

By placing human and more-than-human perception in direct relation, Making Shadows Speak repositions landscape as an active carrier of unresolved historical forces. Rather than treating silence as absence, the work frames it as evidence embedded in environments and living bodies, extending political memory beyond documentation and speech.