Projecting Films to Spirits: on shrines as conjunctural space and the ritual economy of outdoor cinema in Bangkok

This article is concerned with the ritually embedded character of open-air cinema in Thailand. It draws on ethnographic fieldwork in Isaan and Bangkok and interviews with different actors within the ritual economy of open-air cinema at shrines and temples. Outlining different ritual actions through which cinema is sponsored, it then focuses on a particular practice: pledging film screenings to spirits and deities at shrines. Looking at a specific site, a Daoist shrine in suburban Bangkok, it foregrounds the implications of a disjuncture between the personal nature of the spiritual transaction and the public character of its fulfillment. It considers these implications through an analysis of the spatial conjuncture formed when a projector casts its light in a particular setting, which is then appropriated by those customarily excluded by the institution of cinema in its commodity form.