Ghosts of Dansai
"Something is Hauntological when it references the dreams of the past, a nostalgia for a future that never came to be." - Mark Fisher
In Thailand's northeast Isaan region, people’s lives are deeply entwined with the spectral world.
In Dansai, Loei, villagers create masks made of sticky-rice baskets and coconut palm husks to honour the ghosts of the land. They believe doing so will help bring them abundant rice harvests with the monsoon.
Spiritual rituals, culminating in the Phi Ta Khon festival, and traditional wisdom offer a way for this community to understand the natural world around them. Water carries special symbolic significance; many rituals are led by the town’s spirit mediums along the Mun River.
Yet Isaan is now at the forefront of Thailand’s climate crisis. Shifting monsoon patterns, drought, flooding, and soil degradation are disrupting traditional practices.
This ongoing project, shot on analogue film, explores the idea that the present is haunted by a future that can no longer materialise as imagined. In this context, ghosts are not just apparitions, honoured through Dansai’s traditional mask making, but fading beliefs and ways of life.
Supported, in part, by the IMF’s “Visions of Thailand” grant and the Tourism Authority of Thailand.
