Eternal Ghosts views renewable energy infrastructures as sacred interfaces between technology and nature, rather than seeing them exclusively as instruments of energy production. Based on an animistic approach influenced by Thai Buddhist traditions, Eternal Ghosts understands these architectural works as places that harbor more-than-human forces, placing Western notions of resources, extraction, and pragmatism in a new context.
Hydroelectric power plants, photovoltaic systems, wind turbines—they represent places between human technology and natural physical forces. In Eternal Ghosts, these potential forces of nature are understood as spirits. The monumental dimensions of the places they haunt raise the question of whether these structures function as extensions of an extractive dynamic or as domestic sites.
Influenced by Thai Buddhist animism, the project compares renewable energy infrastructures with the understanding of natural forces as spirits that inhabit or even embody land, water, sunlight, and wind. Inspired by spirit houses (ศาลพระภูมิ), miniature palaces where invisible beings are worshipped and appeased, Eternal Ghosts understands power plants not only as technical constructions, but as sacred structures. In doing so, the project examines both spiritual and technological narratives that shape perceptions of landscape and energy. In this way, Western rational ideas about resources, progress, and the domination of nature are questioned.
The confrontation between material infrastructure and its affective level forms the framework in which the following questions are addressed: How are these eternal spirits perceived, and what moves them? How do they experience the places they haunt? How do landscapes change when these immaterial energies are made visible? How are they influenced by technical or non-human systems and practices?
The project builds on an ongoing artistic practice of New Materialism and ties in with a question from an earlier video work: “What would the eternal spirits—the energies—do?” “The spirits would look at the maps with wonder,” is the answer, which refers to how humans divide and constrain natural formations territorially. Eternal Ghosts understands energy as matter, as metaphysical, and as metaphor, thereby shifting the dominance of Western ways of thinking.
Grantee
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Vanessa Bosch |
Project partner / cooperations |
KultX, Baan Noorg, Thapong Srisai
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Dates and places
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January to August 2026 Switzerland/Thailand
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Weblink
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www.vanny.de
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