Hey everyone. I hope you are doing well. The weather has changed slightly here in Zhuahi…it feels like LA at the moment, although not a dry. I’ve been recently falling in love with the tropical breeze here. I am still coming to terms with living in a tropical place as opposed to visiting it temporarily. The past weekend I traveled to Xi’an and learned a great deal of Chinese history given the city’s long geographic and historic importance. The silk road starts there and many of China’s leader came from or went through Xi’an in their beginnings. I got to see the Terracotta Army, which is an 8,000 life-sized army recreated to guard the Qin Dynasty’s first Emperor in the afterlife. It was massive and it temporarily made me rethink my own art.
Anyway. Today, I am speaking with Sarnt Utamachote. Born in Thailand, Sarnt moved to Berlin in 2014 where he has been rediscovered himself and his ‘essence’ of Asianness within a European culture ever since. He describes himself as a filmmaker-photographer-artist-poet-writer-clubkid-culture enthusiast. Sarnt also organizes Thai film festivals around Berlin and our circles overlapped during my time there. I got to catch Sarnt before I left for China and we talked about navigating cities, k-pop, white queer German filmmakers, and Asian masculinities. I hope you enjoy this.