Montika Kham-on is a video artist and filmmaker based in Berlin and Bangkok whose practice explores collective fear, speculative futures, and embodied resistance through moving image and performance. Her recent work, Afterlives (2025), imagines a post-tropical future and was commissioned by GHOST:2568. Beyond her video practice, she founded Phimailongweek, a site-specific art festival supporting emerging artists through experimental, context-responsive practices. Montika is currently pursuing an MA at the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK) with support from the DAAD scholarship.

Can you tell us about your background and how you started your artistic journey?

I grew up in a small housing development inside an industrial area. It was a gated community, and as kids, we were never allowed to go beyond the gate because right across from us was a food processing factory. For me, this housing development always felt strange, unlike any other place. It was designed almost like a Russian doll:, one gate inside another, layer after layer, until you reached the innermost part. Sometimes I felt trapped from the inside.

But of course, that never stopped a child from playing. I remember there were so many tropical trees and plants around that it almost felt like living in a resort, which was very different from what you saw once you stepped outside.

I believe the way we play as children shapes who we become. As a kid, I loved imagining stories from my surroundings, creating creatures and places that didn’t exist. For example, I used to tell stories about red flowers that would turn into octopuses when they fell from the tree, floating up into the sky to find their freedom. One day, my father gave me his digital camera, and I made my first stop-motion film. That was how it all began.

At first, I never thought about becoming a video artist or director. My dream was to work as a production designer for film, to build the worlds that others imagined. But my film school trained us to become directors, so I had to find my own way to understand light, colour, and the thresholds between inside and outside, the space between reality and imagination. I realised that a film didn’t have to be realistic; it could be emotionally true. For me, when you move beyond realism, into abstraction, emotion, and feelings that are hard to explain, that’s where you can feel most free.

My final year in film school in Bangkok was hard. It was 2020, the year of COVID. Learning filmmaking through a computer screen was never easy. At the same time, Thailand was seeing one of its biggest youth protests, with young people standing up against the military government and asking for justice and fair elections. It was a radical and beautiful moment for the art scene, because art was one of the few spaces the government couldn’t fully control. Many of my friends skipped the class to record what was happening outside. I also skipped study, but I wasn’t very good at making documentaries. Instead, I began exploring experimental film and contemporary art to express my emotions and experiences during that time. Through experimental film and video, I could imagine other realities, worlds I wanted to live in. That was when I showed my first installation in a group exhibition in Bangkok.

What are the main themes or concepts you explore in your work?

My work centers on the intersection of myth generational trauma and future imagination. We are all inhabitants of a dominant mythos and the essential question is who created it. I believe the only way to genuinely overcome the myth that controls our lives is to tell the story that authentically belongs to us. My understanding of myth is deeply informed by the Southeast Asian context which teaches a non-linear way of seeing the world and perceiving time. These narratives rarely follow the typical hero’s journey instead they often culminate in tragedy suggesting that sorrow itself is a vital lesson. This tradition guides the very way I approach telling a story.

As an artist I possess the tools to articulate my experience and the story I couldn’t deny telling is about my own family’s intergenerational trauma. This legacy became tangible when I read my grandfather’s notebook detailing his childhood struggles, his moments of hope gained and lost. I was led to wonder if his unfulfilled dreams and the dreams of those before him now live within my own body. I recognize the profound sacrifice they made to ensure a better future for their descendants, understanding that my path too demands significant sacrifice. What I must do is keep their story alive effectively keeping their ghost alive through my art.

This clear connection to the past directly fuels my exploration of future imagination. Because I see history so clearly I can project the picture forward. We are living amidst ideas of destruction and apocalypse yet my generation still holds out hope for a better future. The medium of the moving image is key to this; it literally projects light and plays a crucial role in shaping our collective imagination. I’m fascinated by the idea that when humans contemplate the past and the future they engage the same parts of the brain suggesting that the images we conjure for the future are fundamentally sourced from our own memory. This insight led me to the concept of Nimitr, a Sanskrit term signifying vision, dream or divine imagination. Nimitr represents that fluid space between consciousness and belief where images appear before they are materialized. It touches upon images you consciously create as well as those you simply do not control. The tension and potential of this uncontrollable image are central to my current interest connecting this way of thinking to how we can genuinely imagine our future.

How do you stay inspired and motivated to create new work?

Whenever I feel unmotivated or in need of inspiration, I turn to books. Reading, for me, is a process, a journey inward. Sometimes, when feeling lost in life or during the process of making art, reading becomes a kind of affirmation, like having someone to talk to. Over time, I’ve started building my own collection, both fiction and non-fiction, mostly by female and queer writers such as Arundhati Roy and bell hooks. Their words have become my guides.

I’m also very project-oriented. Whenever I start a project, I ask myself whether it’s trying to answer “what” or “how.” Some projects don’t give me a clear “what,” but they teach me the “how.” For example, my collective and I founded Phimailongweek. For me, it wasn’t just about making a festival, it was about learning how to create a supportive ecosystem for emerging artists, where knowledge is shared peer-to-peer, cutting through art-world politics to prove that collaborative learning can work. It was a way of learning by doing, and that process itself became meaningful.

I’ve also realized that I can’t stay motivated alone. Being around like-minded, spirited people keeps the energy alive. While filmmaking or art-making can be done solo, the work that moves me the most always comes from collaboration. When people come together to create something bigger than themselves, whether it’s a festival, a symposium, or a shared vision, that’s when real miracles happen.

Are there any particular mediums you prefer working with? Why?

I have always been completely fascinated by moving images and how much the world fundamentally shifted after this medium was born. Now we are truly creatures of the moving image. We use our own eyes to sense and navigate the world more deeply than ever before. It makes me stop and wonder what was the dream of people before this technology was created.
Whatever that dream was, it is the moving image that is actively shaping our reality right now.

But of course at the same time this medium is a great tool for both manipulating reality and emotion. Everything we see in a moving image whether it is in cinema , on television in advertisements or even scrolling on our phone constantly shapes the way we perceive. This is what led me to become so interested in the mental image of our own ancient imagination. I mean
that imagination is one of the earliest human abilities; it did not arrive recently with language or technology. While language dramatically improved how we think and communicate it’s clear that ‘thinking with imagery’ and even ‘thinking with the body’ were operating hundreds of thousands of years earlier. The profound power of the moving image even at its origin lies in its ability to tap directly into this deep primal skill. It is woven into our deep human history to read, store and retrieve emotionally coded representations of the world, a process driven by conditioned associations not by propositional coding or logic. This explains why the moving image speaks to a fundamental pre-linguistic part of us making it such a potent tool for both shaping and manipulating our reality.

The moving image therefore serves as my primary tool to question the very reality we inhabit. I utilize it to project ideas into the senses offering a way to think beyond the frame itself. The core of my artistic exploration centers on a single question: can we actually find the true agency of the medium, the inherent capacity that allows it to set itself free from external manipulation.

What do you hope people take away from your art when they experience it?

I hope my art can offer a space where people feel connected through shared but private human experiences, a space that allows for reflection, change, and a sense of freedom. I am interested in the possibilities of life, in how we move through pain, desire, and transcendence together.

In Buddhism, especially in the Mahayana tradition, there is an idea of collective awakening, where change does not happen alone, but through shared attention or presence. That is what I hope my work can hold: a kind of group meditation, where people see parts of themselves in others.

My art often comes from my own brokenness and generational trauma, but also from a wish to go beyond destructive cycles, to question what we inherit and how we might live differently. I hope that when people experience my work, they feel the possibility of deep personal change, even in the middle of chaos, a reminder that love, freedom, and renewal are still possible.

What projects are you currently working on, and what can we expect from you in the future?

Right now, my main focus is on a long-term project called Post-Tropical Cinema. It’s something I’ve been developing for quite some time, and it continues to grow with me. At the moment, I’m writing and preparing to translate it into an exhibition that explores what I call post-tropical future aesthetics.

This project looks at how moving images, performance and installation can imagine new realities emerging from tropical contexts, beyond exoticism or colonial fantasy. It’s about rethinking cinema not only as a medium but as a space of ritual, memory, and transformation.

In the future, you can expect to see me continue expanding this framework, collaborating with other artists and researchers across Southeast Asia and Europe, and finding new ways to connect film, contemporary art, and collective imagination.

Text & photo courtesy of Montika Kham-on

Website: https://montikakhamon.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/montikakhamon/