Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Born in Bangkok, Thailand in 1970. He is currently based in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Apichatpong began making films and video shorts in 1994 and completed his first feature in 2000. Apichatpong is recognized as a major international filmmaker and visual artist. His works are characterized by their use of non-linear storytelling, often dealing with themes of memory, identity, desire, and history. His works have won him widespread international recognition and awards, including the Cannes Jury Prize in 2021 for “Memoria”, his first film shot outside of Thailand. He also won the Cannes Palme d’Or in 2010 with “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives”. His “Tropical Malady” won the Cannes Jury Prize in 2004 and Blissfully Yours won the Cannes Un Certain Regard Award in 2002. His large-scale video installation “Primitive” (2009) is a multidisciplinary creation that has toured many museums, including the Haus der Kunst in Munich. He participated in documenta thirteen (2012) and won the Gold Prize at the 11th Sharjah Biennial (2013) for his collaboration with Chai Siris. In the same year, he was awarded the Fukuoka Asian Culture Prize. In 2016, he held his first large-scale solo exhibition in Thailand at the MAIIAM Contemporary Art Museum in Chiang Mai. His recent installations include “Constellations” (2018), “Fiction” (2018), “SleepCinemaHotel” (2018), “A Minor History” (2021, 2022), and “Solarium” (2023).

Naotaka Fujii
Naotaka Fujii is a medical doctor, brain scientist, and CTO of Hacosco Inc. He is also the Representative Director of the XR Consortium and Brain Tech Consortium. He is a specially-appointed professor at Tohoku University. After graduating from Tohoku University School of Medicine, Fujii received his PhD from the same university. He has been a researcher at the McGovern Institute, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) since 1998. Deputy Team Leader at RIKEN Brain Science Institute since 2004, Team Leader since 2008; started Hacosco Inc. in 2014; Professor at Digital Hollywood University Graduate School since 2018. His research theme is “Reality Science”. His major publications include “The Connected Brain” (winner of the Mainichi Publication Culture Award), “Introduction to Social Brains”, “The Expanding Brain”, and “Living with the Brain”.