Why am I working in Northeast Thailand?
Why The Discovery Tool and Our Voice Framework? Why this synergistic storytelling combination of citizen science, objects, and maps? I tore a few pages out of my field journal to explain.
My Journey in Sketchnotes
My experiences in public health storytelling, use of the Discovery Tool in New Orleans, and basic understanding of the political ecology of Isaan made me uniquely positioned to gather and share these stories.
The Rasi Salai community is keen on elevating the profile of their movement concerning the environment, culture, nature, and livelihood. Human rights defenders here have been the target of judicial harassment due to their outspoken roles in the defense of land rights and environmental justice. My academic position allowed a certain degree of independence to share stories with deep socio-political themes.
A range of creative works have inspired my work in place-based storytelling, including Glenna Gordon’s photography work on the power of objects to tell stories; Museum of Broken Relationships’ collection of extra[ordinary] mementos; Rebecca Solnit and Rebecca Snedeker’s Unfathomable City; and CityLab’s Maps of Life Under Lockdown.
Since studying abroad in Thailand in 2017, I stayed connected to public health and land rights issues in Isaan through Radical Grandma Collective, Isaan Record, and ENGAGE. In 2019, community leaders in Rasi Salai and faculty at Ubon Ratchathani University and Khon Kaen University expressed interest in hosting me as a researcher.
I began to understand each step in this project as different platforms for storytelling that built off each other. My team and I focused on how space and place can impact power dynamics, trust, and agency.
The survey is the least intimate and most basic form of information sharing because it collects quantitative responses. However, it primed citizen scientists to expand on the survey’s topics more autonomously during the walk; citizen scientists lead the route and decide what they want to share via photos and audio narratives. We then offered the option to partake in our object-based storytelling prompt. This was the most intimate version of storytelling, as participants often invited my translator and I to their kitchen table for a free-flowing interview.
Why the title, Visible Ghosts?
Voices from the Margins
In December 2019, I attended Isaan Human Rights Festival at Ubon Rathcathani University. The annual event gathers communities from across the northeast region, including activists, scholars, students, and foreign diplomats. I heard directly from local land rights defenders affected by development projects and government policy, many of whom discussed feeling like “invisible citizens.”
Sompong Viengchan, a long-time activist opposing the Pak Mun Dam, discussed the need to collectively push for social change and elevate local voices. “We have to make a stand, make a fuss, and make some noise.”
Photo Credit: Adithep Chanthep/The Isaan Record
Ghosts As Protectors of Land and Livelihoods
Hundreds of spirits live in the Dong Phu Din forest in Rasi Salai, known as “the capital city of spirits.” Villagers’ faith in these ghosts and their relationship to the land are deeply intertwined, and rooted in over three centuries of tradition. Every April and October, villagers ask the avatars to bless their farmland for good harvests and growing seasons during "buang suang chao pho dong pho din” ceremonies. Many villagers in Rasi Salai use such nature festivals, ghost stories, and folklore as a creative protest tool to catalogue the ways the dam has irreparably altered the river and damaged their way of life.
Crest of the Mun River
The Mun River flows through five provinces of Thailand. Our logo uses five circles based on the tributary’s bend at the Rasi Salai dam site. The ghost-like shape represents villager’s connection to the river basin.
Why Citizen Science?
Citizen science, an approach originally utilized by the disciplines of ecology and environmental science, involves members of the public collaborating with researchers to lead research projects. Extractive projects combined with villagers’ deep-rooted culture of belongingness have left them understandably distrustful of outsiders. Starting in 2001, Rasi Salai villagers welcomed “Thai Baan” research when local fishermen served as citizen scientists to collect data on changes to the river. Building on this introduction to citizen science, I used the Discovery Tool, an app–based environment assessment tool that provides contextual data about walking routes and environmental features. T
he tool has been adopted seamlessly in diverse communities across 20+ countries and proven powerful in building trust between researchers and citizen scientists.
Why the Neutral Background?
“Isaan activism is far more complex than the troped image of a rice paddy. Please see these people, see these objects. Let the object transcend your functional assumptions about them. Allow yourself to feel the personal significance of these objects through this decontextualized lens.”
— Camilla Fuller, Curatorial Intern
“This grey background frees the viewer from preconceptions they might have about villagers, and gives space to imagine them in new ways. We have seen a lot of images of rural people farming, fishing, and weaving; we form a schema for viewing them a certain way. It becomes prepackaged. By extracting them from that, it encourages viewers to engage with the image with empathy rather than sympathy.”
— Brandon Block, Art Critic and Journalist
Peruse our gallery of objects and portraits here.
Why Maps?
Reimagining the Exhibition During COVID-19
As the COVID-19 pandemic evolved, we postponed Visible Ghosts’ public exhibitions in the US and Thailand until further notice. I believe this show’s purpose will be even more relevant in the wake of our current call to global consciousness- a call that is conjuring conversations around climate change, human rights, and political powers.
Curating From My Childhood Bedroom
In April 2020, the show ended up online and I ended up back in my parents’ Bay Area home. While informally explaining my field experience, I asked friends the same questions I prompted citizen scientists with in Rasi Salai:
How is your health and happiness connected to your normal walking route, place of comfort, built environment, or home?
What are positive, negative, or complicated features of your neighborhood?
How has your relationship with your neighborhood changed over time?
I was struck by the diverse, map-like descriptions I got in response, and put out a call for submissions. These response pieces tie my research’s mapped walks + place-based storytelling project together.