Archipelago Cinema, an auditorium raft designed to float on the sea, premiered at the inaugural edition of the Film on the Rocks Yao Noi Festival, curated by Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Tilda Swinton.
Archipelago Cinema is a collaboration between Studio Ole Scheeren and the Film on the Rocks Yao Noi Foundation, founded by Nat Sarasas, Chomwan Weeraworawit and Apichatpong Weerasethakul. It is the first project of Studio Ole Scheeren since he established his architecture practice, Buro Ole Scheeren, in Beijing and Hong Kong in 2010. With Archipelago Cinema, Ole Scheeren further explores his continued interest in non-architectural projects and interventions, and in creating alternative scenarios and realities by combining an ability to comprehend diverse yet specific contexts with the power of imagination and fantasy.
Beijing-based Scheeren fashioned his design after local fishermens' lobster rafts. The wooden frames were tied up by rubber straps to foam blocks and floated in the lagoon "almost like driftwood." He wanted to create "a sense of temporality, of randomness" where the pieces playfully joined together. The modular rafts, loosely assembled, were meant to replicate a floating archipelago of islands within the lagoon. Alas, upon the festival's conclusion, the rafts were disassembled, reconfigured, and reused by the local fishermen.
