Floating in the middle of a quiet ocean and watching a movie under the stars seems like the perfect getaway. 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 Apichat-pong Weerasethakul and Tilda Swinton. The Festival, which took place from 9th- 12th March 2012, is set to become an annual meeting place for art and film.

The final night of the first edition of Film on the Rocks Yao Noi took place on Archipelago Cinema, designed by German-born and Beijing-based architect Ole Scheeren. Guests were taken by boat through the darkness of the sea to arrive on a glowing raft in the middle of the quiet waters of Nai Pi Lae lagoon on Kudu Island. Surrounded by a dramatic landscape of towering rocks emerging from the ocean, the audience experienced an atmospheric convergence of nature and cinematic narratives – primordial notions of light, sound and stories suspended in the darkness between sea and sky.

“The thought of watching films here seemed surprising,” said Ole Scheeren. “A screen, nestled somewhere between the rocks. And the audience… floating… hovering above the sea, somewhere in the middle of this incredible space of the lagoon, focused on the moving images across the water: A sense of temporality, randomness, almost like driftwood. Or maybe something more architectural: Modular pieces, loosely assembled, like a group of little islands that congregate to form an auditorium.”

A work with a strong connection to the local community, Archipelago Cinema is based on the techniques used by fishermen to construct floating lobster farms. The raft is built out of recycled materials as a series of individual modules to allow for flexibility for its future use. Subsequent to a journey which will see the raft travel to further places as an auditorium for other film screenings on water, it will eventually return to the island and be donated to its actual builders, the community of Yao Noi, as its own playground and stage in the ocean.

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It’s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day and forget what really matters to you. With help from friends and neighbors, Candy turned the side of an abandoned house in her neighborhood in New Orleans into a giant chalkboard where residents can write on the wall and remember what is important to them. Before I Die is an interactive public art project that invites people to share their hopes and dreams in public space. Painted with chalkboard paint and stenciled with the sentence “Before I die I want to _______”, the wall becomes an enlightening way to get to know your neighbors and discover the hopes and aspirations of the people around you. It creates a public space for contemplation and reminds us why we want to be alive in the world today. It’s a question that changed Candy after she lost someone she loved very much, and she believes the design of our public spaces can better reflect what matters to us as a community and as individuals.