Technologies of the Hungry Ghosts and Underworld Gods

Abstract

During the seventh lunar month, many Chinese believe that the gates of the underworld open and the spirits return to dwell with the living. During this month, concerts and performances, colloquially known as getai (English: a stage for songs) or kuatai, are staged for both the dead and the living in Singapore and Malaysia. Many Chinese temples and professional videographers in Singapore now provide live streaming of getai performances and spirit possessions during the Hungry Ghost Month. These videos are hosted on Facebook, such as on ‘Singapore Getai’, ‘Singapore Getai Fans Page’, ‘Lixin Fan Page’ and ‘LEX-S Watch Live Channel’. Temples also create Facebook pages where posts of video recordings and live streams of spirit possessions appear. Conventionally, hell and its inhabitants are transported during the seventh month to confined spaces such as private temples, factory sites, ‘void decks’ (a colloquial term for the ground floor of a public housing block), basketball courts or open grass fields where a makeshift stage is erected for the getai performance. Now, with the increasing use of digital technology, deities and spirits perform to the digital camera in ways that extend the performance stage to the digital platform. This suggests that ‘hell’ can shift from a vertical axis (Chinese: 天地人; the realms of heaven, hell and human) to a material stage, where performances of hell percolate as digits on a network that consists of nodes, machines and technologies that mediate the spiritual.