The vernacular sonorities of the memory film in Southeast Asia

Referring to the experience of anamnesis, sound theorists Jean-François Augoyard and Henry Torque claim that through sound’s association with memory and perception, it has the ability to span vastly different scales that are both temporal and spatial. The memory film often uses music and sound to provide a bridge between the present and the past, a technique that has particular resonance in the absence of official archives. Taking sound as its primary focus, this chapter considers the vernacular sonorities of the memory film in Southeast Asia. Bringing into relation Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Mysterious Object at Noon (2000) and Shireen Seno’s Big Boy (2012), the chapter explores how anachronistic layering of different sonic phenomena in Apichatpong’s and Seno’s work foregrounds the interrelatedness of personal and social memory in the parallel political and historical contexts of Thailand and the Philippines.