Ontological Performativity of an Animistic World: Reflecting on Animistic Apparatus in Udon Thani

From 23–26 April 2019, I joined in on a field trip to Udon Thani, a north-eastern province of Thailand. We were a full busload of 40 artists and curators travelling as part of the research project Animistic Apparatus, led by May Adadol Ingawanij, Julian Ross and Mary Pansanga. The project was inspired by the Thai tradition of itinerant outdoor film projection that emerged during the Cold War, which has evolved into a local industry of outdoor projection, including as spiritual offerings. The project and its technical operations have been recounted in detail, along with descriptions of projected imagery, audio interventions and experimental gestures.¹ It aimed to explore how these cinematic interventions open up spaces for improvised collaboration that engage with questions "of human/non-human entanglement", and its impact in relation to ideas of rituals and audiences.

This account is focused, however, on several incidents that occurred alongside the planned itinerary, including a visit to an archive of cinematic equipment, a disused cinema and the archaeological museum in Ban Chiang, one of the most important prehistoric settlements in Southeast Asia. This retelling emerges from my participation as an observer of the artists at work and viewing and listening to presentations. Being present and in relation to the artists, I inevitably became involved, for example, by lending equipment, and also participating in other side conversations that extended the scope of this capacious project. These incidents and the retelling of them as stories persist beyond the iteration of the project in situ. It suggests that the configuring of Animistic Apparatus along with (and as) its operations generate strands of narrativizing that interrelate environment, events, natural phenomena, mythology and multiple subjective interpretations during and beyond the project. The speculative recollections between the participants then, and then two years later with artist Zai Tang and filmmaker Daniel Hui, continue to raise questions as to what extent, or under what conditions, might one claim that the ontological is performative, and here, I suggest "ontological performativity" could be helpful in expressing this complex interplay.

I reference the term "ontological" as having been defined broadly and deployed in many instances. Plato's Timaeus speculates on the relationship between the eternal abstract world and the making of the entire physical world and human beings.² His discussion of ontology is outlined in relation to politics and government, cosmology, the human body and everything that exists in the world. Numerous critical theorists have since in fields of literature, art and architecture grappled with re-readings of Timaeus, including Jacques Derrida's discussion of the operations of making and un-making, construction and deconstruction.³ In addition to this, I find generative Jane Bennett's discussion of "vibrant matter" that reconfigures an awareness of the "vitality of matter and the lively powers of material formations" that have the capacity "not only to impede or block the will and designs of humans but also to act as quasi agents or forces with trajectories, propensities, or tendencies of their own".⁴ Bennett's reframing of materiality also draws on Derrida, where "he points to the intimacy between being and following: to be (anything, anyone) is always to be following (something, someone), always to be in response to call from something, however nonhuman it may be."⁵ This reading is echoed by Levi R. Bryan's observation of such a possibility in Karen Barad's relational conception of ontological performance as "beings acting upon one another and modifying each other", and where "phenomena are a product of intra-actions".⁶

Matter is produced and productive, generated and generative. Matter is agentive, not a fixed essence or property of things.⁷

This conception of an agentive ontological performativity maps coherently with the project's cosmological framing of "animistic", where it might be possible to perceive everything around us as an agent in relation with our subjective experiences, in enacting an expanded account of the artistic aims of a project. While this iteration of the Animistic Apparatus project engages with the specific context of northern Thailand, its participants from Southeast, East Asia and beyond, bring together variegated cultural and theoretical perspectives on animism and spirituality.

Incident One: Where A Local Shrine and Its Legends Manifest Unusual Behaviour

We visited an old shrine that commandeered the territory of a local 'paternal spirit' Jao Pu Nong Jok. Upon arrival, we were informed by group leader Mary Pansanga that we were free to take as many photographs as we would like. The temple provided visual curiosities with its crowded displays of animal figurines, along with candles, joss sticks and other ritualistic paraphernalia that were clustered around the temple and its surroundings. I noticed my fellow participants first taking photographs, then setting up tripods to film. I took photos with my phone too. We were then called to gather around an elderly shaman, also known as the jaam. He spoke at length in Thai, not particularly persuasively, since at least half of us did not understand him and could only access the story via Ingawanij's translated summary.

According to the jaam, the spirit of the shrine had been a soldier from Laos who travelled across the border to Udon Thani to learn magic. What followed was a recounting of the popularity and efficacy of the shrine, where many wish bearers would come and make offerings to present their plea. In addition, there were tales of warning of occasions where Jao Pu seemed somewhat severe with his caretakers and supplicants, causing death, bankruptcy and illness to those who disobeyed his preferences. One story particularly piqued the group's interest. While Jao Pu was fond of offerings that included a popular local musical form called morlam, he objected to the fictional genre of movies as dishonest fabrication. One unlucky wish bearer who sought a lottery win, had commissioned as offerings three movie projections at the shrine, only to have the screen go up in flames before the end of the first reel of film.

When we gathered ourselves to depart, I observed filmmaker Daniel Hui, making an offering of lighted joss sticks at the shrine. I thought perhaps he was making a plea on behalf of our group. As the group made their way up the air-conditioned relief of the bus, artist Zai Tang and I found ourselves rooted just outside its sliding doors, somehow unable to enter. We stared at each other for a moment before we bolted back to the side of the temple with the shrine, where plumes of smoke were emanating from the burning incense. We took turns making our salutations then rejoined the group.

Later I asked Tang, what kept you behind? Why did you go back to the shrine?⁸ Tang replied that he was concerned that we might have caused offence (since we had all barged into the temple, and photographed and videoed the site without reserve). I felt the same way. Even though after the jaam told that tale, our fellow participants, the film critic and author Wiwat Lertwiwatwongsa and the moving image artist Nguyễn Trinh Thi, had chimed in to ask if this disfavour also applied to documentary filmmaking (inferring that documentary was truth-telling as opposed to the fictional world of movies), I did not feel assured. After all, we were told we could take photographs, but did that extend to making videos? Was it disingenuous of us to have assumed it meant the same thing? Perhaps Jao Pu was not a fan of moving images, as he perceived them as shadows of 'real life'—for in this spirit-filled world, if all that is intangible is somehow real and material, then shadows on the screen would purport the same despite the decontextualisation of the images and sounds from their origin of recording.

Despite this post hoc rationalism, I remained somewhat unsure as to my own motivations. I recall when we were back on the bus, I had asked Zai, are you religious? No, he replied, he is an atheist. And yet he apologised. I am agnostic, but I offered a word of thanks. Was this willingness to enter a different matrix of reality due to sleep deprivation? (After a full day of travelling the day before, due to being locked out of my hotel room the night before by my roommate, I had minimal sleep before our breakfast call.) Perhaps exhaustion helped open up my mind to accept this dream-like world where a local shrine, its colour figurines and legends configure a different topology of reality where Jao Pu, a figure mandated by military force, had assumed the role of spiritual governance. This did not seem impossible since it references older configurations of power in Southeast Asia that defy our understanding of modern national borders, but nevertheless have material impact in the region by consolidating an inflow of wealth and obeisance.

Incident Two: Where Crematorial Context, Materiality and Music Might Conjure an Olfactory Experience

We spent the next evening at the local Buddhist temple Wat Baan Nong Na Kham, which often hosts movie projections for its neighbourhood audience. Upon arrival, I explored the compound and noticed the row of memorial stones around its periphery. The film projection team set up two large screens, with a parked truck carrying the video projectors. The audience was composed of people from the neighbourhood, along with a few vendors with their food carts. In the open hall, the projectionist team demonstrated various old film projectors, while the artists experimented with their materials to various degrees of success. Some strips of film even caught fire, which made for interesting images projected on the screen.

When we finally returned to the bus at the end of the evening, a group sitting at the rear end started a discussion about the smell—whether there was a smell, who smelled it, and where did it come from? Apparently, at some point in the evening, a rather unpleasant stench of decay had wafted into the vicinity. There was speculation that the stink had been triggered by supernatural factors. It was mentioned that the artist Christian Tablazon had applied cremation soot from the concrete pyre onto a found strip of 35 mm film for projection, and that the scent had intensified when another participant projected his recording of the Thai classical music ensemble playing during his grandmother's funeral. I observed that some members were adamant that they had experienced the smell, while others started off hesitant then agreed, and yet others disagreed in silence. I found myself wondering: did I smell anything? It was an aromatically heady evening—the burning of celluloid film, heated and sparking machinery, snacks, sweat, dogs, in combination with the temple site and its crematorium, sonic atmosphere and pyre ashes. If we were in a market square, would we not have just put it down to the different bicycles and trolleys that might have rolled over dog faeces and then rolled away? The uncertainty of recalling a transient sensation amidst a long, hazy night conflated with the persuasive certainty of others. Perhaps there was in this event, and previously at the shrine, a form of ontological performativity at work, where agentive human and non-human actors contributed towards the interrelational weaving of the narratives that encouraged a move away from evidence-based structures of reality towards a co-created narrative of other kinds of unresolved spiritual or mystical possibilities.

Incident Three: A Reverse Raindance and Lost Time

On the last day, a few of us took a break from the group to wander off to a hipster drip-brew cafe with power plugs so we could work on our laptops. Later in the afternoon, the sky turned quite dark, in contrast to the last few days of intense sunshine. We expressed dismay as that night was supposed to be the grand finale of performances on the large piece of land situated next to the picturesque pond and its nearby shops and museum in the Ban Chiang village. The projection truck and two screens had already been set up the night before. We hustled out of the coffee shop to rejoin the group before the rain began. Big drops of rain had begun to fall, dotting the street. I remember thinking this was it. Once an equatorial rain shower hits, there's no holding it back.

When we got to the open space with the projectionist truck, I saw some of the group had gathered round. Hui was again making an offering of joss sticks, which he placed at the foot of a tree. Together with the morlam singer, people began to improvise exuberant singing and dancing—a tropical plea for the reversal of rain. Then the winds came, the dark clouds visibly rolled away, and the air perceptibly dried up. As strange as an exhalation that is suspended, was the rain's absence that brought on instead a group shout of exultation. I still cannot understand what I witnessed. Did we stop the rain? The dry sky allowed the group of artists to proceed with the night's presentations.

Hui and I recalled the event and he recounted a different experience.⁹ He had joined the expedition because he connected strongly with the concept of cinematic performance for the non-human, as he also perceived the cinematic apparatus as a radical other in his own work. He is also familiar with the Chinese culture of returning spirits in the seventh month in Singapore, and would offer prayers before a film shoot in his own projects. He also shared that when he was younger, he was much more sensitive to what he called "energy changes" around him. According to Hui, he had had a period of personal challenges before he joined Animistic Apparatus, hence at Jao Pu, he made an offering for personal cleansing. However, he wondered whether in doing so, something had not latched on to him and would go on to affect him. On the last evening, after he had joined in warding off the rain, in addition to taking part in the activities (he projected his films, one of which referenced the text Aurelia, which was an account of impending madness¹⁰), he had also gone for a stroll in search of faint sounds of music nearby. He thought there might have been a music festival but he could not find it. I do not remember hearing any music. The area by the lake was rather quiet, as all the shops were closed. When he returned from his brief stroll, it seemed as if he had been missing for quite some time, but he had no recollection of how he "lost some time". Although he is aware of his inclination towards superstition, he recounted that when he returned from Thailand, he felt severely depressed for the next six months, as if he had "lost his mind", until a violent attack jolted him out of the condition. As such, he finds himself thinking back to Jao Pu when he made the first offering, and wondering if that somehow was the trigger.

These reflections underscore the ontological performativity of interrelations between organic and human, object and action that shaped the individual experiences. The awareness of this performative interplay was accentuated by the context of the local historical, cultural and spiritual cosmology of northern Thailand, and activated through the interdisciplinary and interpersonal dynamics within the operations of Animistic Apparatus and its participants. However, it raises questions beyond the project for rethinking how we analyse art and research processes that resist the neutered confinement of the 'white cube', the limitations of formalist analysis, and the interesting possibilities that might stem from a more expansive approach to art critical writing.

Lunch on route to Udon Thani

Visit to Ban Chiang Village

Shrine of Jao Pu Nong Jok

Wat Baan Nong Na Kham

Projection site near Ban Chiang village