Features – Page 2

On the trail of S-22

No visitor could possibly leave Phnom Penh without having at least heard about S-21, aka Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, one of the country’s most famous historical landmarks and tourist destinations. S-22, however, is shrouded by a shady history, which continues to conceal it from the collective consciousness.

Everyone knows S-21, or the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, the Khmer Rouge prison and one of the most famous tourist attractions in Cambodia. But not many people have heard of S-22.

Yet, a place with a code name S-22 is included in the list of crime sites in the Khmer Rouge Tribunal’s case 003. Case 003, which is opposed by the Cambodian government, brings charges against a Khmer Rouge navy chief and an air force chief, who is now deceased. According to documents from the tribunal, around 300 prisoners were held at S-22.

“Some prisoners were identified as having committed ‘light offense[s]’ whilst others were implicated as having a connection in the ‘enemy string.’ The prisoners were provided only one meal a day,” the documents state. “Their ankles were shackled and they were made to work digging earth and clearing grass within the compound. They were also made to do work outside the compound, building a dam and dike, along with rice farming.”

The prison was operated by the Division 502 of the Revolutionary Army of Kampuchea, and the people imprisoned inside were also members of Division 502.

But what was the significance of this prison, which seems relatively small compared with Tuol Sleng, where an estimated 17,000 were murdered? And where exactly was S-22 located?

According to Lars Olsen, the spokesman for the Khmer Rouge Tribunal, S-22 is in the Meanchey district of Phnom Penh. However, the prison’s address has not been made public.

It was Robert Petit, the Canadian co-prosecutor who resigned from the tribunal in 2009, who asked for S-22 to be included in the list of crime sites in case 003. But Petit, who is currently employed by Justice Canada, said he is not in a position to answer questions from the media.

Meanwhile, Youk Chhang, the director of the Documentation Centre of Cambodia, a depository currently holding the largest number of documents from the Khmer Rouge era, says that S-22 was the old psychiatric hospital in Ta Khmao, the capital of Kandal Province about 30 minutes outside of Phnom Penh.

During his trial at the tribunal, the former director of the Tuol Sleng Prison, Kaing Guek Eav (better known by his alias “Duch”), also referred to S-22 as a psychiatric hospital in Ta Khmao. When questioned about what happened to the mentally ill patients there during Pol Pot’s time, Duch told the court they were probably killed.

“I am not clear, but I would like to give you my analysis in comparison to those who get leprosy. In Sector 15, those leprosy people were smashed, ordered smashed, and the upper echelon ordered to smash all those who get leprosy,” Duch told the court in April of 2009. “I’m more than 15 percent [sure] that all the patients at the psychiatric hospital were smashed.”

The psychiatric hospital

The psychiatric hospital in Ta Khmao was the only psychiatric hospital that Cambodia ever had. Once known as the Prek Thnaot Psychiatric Hospital and later as the Sok Mam Hospital, it housed mentally ill patients from 1955 until 1975.

There was a ward for patients with tuberculosis and a building for (possibly mentally ill) monks. It was a hospital, but in some ways it was similar to a prison because the patients weren’t allowed to leave. The windows had bars on them and, as one of the local residents remembers, the guards would beat the patients if they tried to escape.

Today, the old psychiatric hospital in Ta Khmao still treats patients, but it’s no longer a psychiatric facility – although there is a day clinic for children and teenagers with mental health problems. The compound is now known as the Chey Chumneas Referral Hospital.

On a Sunday afternoon, it is a peaceful place with rows of coconut trees and children running around on a playground. There is a man-made pond that looks like a swimming pool from a distance. Ducks stroll through the hospital grounds. The walls of the paediatric ward are painted with cheerful images of an ant riding on a motorcycle and a dinosaur saying hello to a rabbit. The busiest ward is the one where women give birth, judging from the pile of shoes near the door.

Yet, look closer and you might notice some remnants of a dark past. The windows of the older buildings have bars on them, starkly resembling those at Tuol Sleng. The hospital rooms are fitted with padlocks, which can be locked from the outside. Indeed, one of the rooms at the end of the paediatric ward is still used as a prison cell. Ill inmates from the Ta Khmao prison stay here, says the prison guard who sleeps in a hammock outside.

According to Pheng Pong-Rasy, who wrote a report about the Khmer Rouge prison at the hospital for the Documentation Centre of Cambodia, five years ago you could still see the shackles in some of the hospital’s offices, and holes in the wall which were used for the prisoners to urinate. The coconut trees – about 130 of them – were planted by the Khmer Rouge on top of mass graves.

“Those coconut trees were not there during Sihanouk and Lon Nol regimes,” Rasy reports, based on interviews with survivors. “The Khmer Rouge would plant coconut trees on the spots where they buried the bodies in the belief that the corpses would become a good fertiliser… Currently, all the coconut trees grow surprisingly well.”

The Khmer Rouge converted the hospital to a prison for air force soldiers who did something wrong, Rasy says. For instance, one man was taken away for having sex with a woman in his unit.

Unlike Tuol Sleng, there are no written records, photographs or confessions at S-22, so the only way to know what happened is to gather the memories of survivors – or perpetrators.

There is also no memorial here and no human skulls on display as there are in S-21. The reason there is no memorial, according to Rasy, is because comparatively few people were executed here: “only hundreds, not thousands.”

The memories

On a recent afternoon, information gathered from interviews with locals in the area pointed to the home of 92-year-old So Rein, whose children sell bread near the hospital.

Rein, who was born and raised in Ta Khmao, says he worked as a night guard at the hospital soon after it reopened in 1979.

“I saw shackles and blood… At night, the smell was bad inside the buildings from the blood of the people, and I couldn’t sleep well because of the smell,” he says. “I felt bad because of the smell of blood, so I’d get up and smoke a cigarette. When the rain came, the smell would get really bad.”

Rein (whose job also included cremating the bodies after patients died in the hospital if their families didn’t claim them) says he heard that the Khmer Rouge took some of the psychiatric hospital’s patients in cars to Pich Nil waterfall on Route 4, where they were executed. Afterwards, the hospital was cleaned and converted to a prison.

Upon being asked whether he witnessed the execution of the patients, Rein says that he only heard about it from his friends.

Rasy heard a different story from Daok Sok-Kai, a former hospital worker who pretended to be mentally ill to survive the ordeal. Some of the psychiatric patients at the hospital were killed because the Khmer Rouge mistook them for Lon Nol soldiers, Sok-Kai told him.

“The Lon Nol soldiers dropped their uniforms [when they realised they lost the war]. The people in the hospital didn’t know [any better], so they put on the clothes,” recounts Rasy. “When the Khmer Rouge saw this, they brought them to be killed [because they mistook them for real soldiers].”

Another longtime hospital employee, Say Penh, who began working at the Chey Chumneas Referral Hospital in 1979, told Rasy that the prison was used to detain handicapped people who used to be high-ranking officers, and that they were forced to dig three wells into which the bodies of Khmer Rouge victims were thrown.

Conflicting information

While the Documentation Centre of Cambodia insists that S-22 is the old psychiatric hospital in Ta Khmao, and Duch said the same during his testimony on April 27, 2009, by June 24 of that year the code numbers in his memory switched places. As a result, at the end of June 2009, he stated that S-22 was a fruit farm “somewhere in Ta Khmao,” while the psychiatric hospital was known as S-23, according to court transcripts. S-24 was the Prey Sar prison, he told the court.

Meanwhile, Cambodia Daily newspaper, in an article dated May 10, 2011, refers to S-22 as “an air force detention centre in Phnom Penh’s Toek La’ak area,” which was under the direction of Khmer Rouge air force commander Sou Met (a suspect in case 003, who has since passed away).

So, was S-22 the old psychiatric hospital, a fruit farm, or an air force detention centre? Was the air force detention centre on the campus of the former psychiatric hospital? Was S-22 in Ta Khmao or in Phnom Penh?

Tribunal spokesman Olsen continues to assert that he doesn’t have the authorisation to clarify the confusion.

But perhaps the answer doesn’t matter. Whether the Khmer Rouge prison at the psychiatric hospital in Ta Khmao carried the code name S-22 or S-23, it doesn’t change what happened there.

Julie Masis organises visits to the Khmer Rouge tribunal. For more information, email her at greenelephant888@nullgmail.com

Rekindling the fire

At first glance, Lomorpich Rithy seems like your average uni kid. Casually dressed, well-spoken and congenial, she eagerly rattles off her latest projects with bubbly enthusiasm. Yet, as she further delves into her vision with a professionalism and poise one would expect of someone twice her age, it becomes clear that Ms. Rithy – who prefers to be called ‘YoKi’ – is not your regular student. Last year, at age 21, she founded Plerng Kob, a group of local university students drawn together by their love of art, and passion to reignite an interest in traditional art forms among younger generations. The major avenue through which they achieve this is the revival of the annual Bonn Phum, an ancient village festival traditionally held prior to Khmer New Year.

With equal parts humility and pride, YoKi explains how the idea for the collective first came about. “Plerng Kob is a group of art lovers: kids in town from different universities who just love art and to watch art performances. One day in August last year, we came together to talk about making a place to see our performances and share our interests with an audience,” she says. “So we are here to preserve art culture, but also take it into the next level. Plerng Kob means ‘campfire.’ It’s important because the original Cambodian light was made with a campfire – every house used one in front of their house. It’s also used for the traditional shadow puppet performance, which is displayed during festivals.”

As a natural progression of this concept, YoKi and the Plerng Kob team realised that one of the most effective ways to present traditional arts and culture was through a festival. Rather than create an entirely unique celebration, the group instead decided to revive what was once one of the most important village festivals in the Kingdom, Bonn Phum, adapting it with subtle additions to appeal to younger audiences in an urban setting.

“We presented our first Bonn Phum last year,” explains YoKi. “The idea came about because I was doing my thesis on documentary films and the shadow performance at the time. I started thinking about celebrating art through the context of the old way of performing. My sister, who is an art student at the Royal University of Fine Arts, said, ‘Let’s make a festival so I can show and sell my art.’ Another member of the group is a fashion student. She said, ‘Well, I want to show my fashion, so why don’t we present a fashion show there, too?’ Then we discovered the history of the village festival, so we took the old programme of the village festival and then added to it to create this new style of celebration.”

While recognising that the addition of a certain amount of modern elements were essential in engaging and inspiring a younger crowd, YoKi emphasises the importance of retaining the authenticity of the ancient festival customs as much as possible.

“The village festival concept has always been one of the original ways of life of the Cambodian people,” she says. “We always celebrated every festival at the pagoda, especially New Year’s Day. We gathered at the pagoda to play traditional games, to celebrate the fruit and vegetables we grew, to pay respect to the monks and to meet the people in town. It disappeared because of what happened following the war. So what we want to do is bring our people back to the old time, to what it looked like and how we celebrated. We have just adapted it to do so in a modern way. So we showcase new art, like fashion drawing and shows, alongside the old. It’s a platform where youth in the city can show their original artwork too.”

With a turnout of around 10,000 people over the three-day event last year, YoKi expects numbers to increase further this April, with a greater focus on attracting international attendees.

“Last year our target was mostly locals, but this year we want to target both local and international people. Our posters are bilingual this year, and we have introduced a tour package for foreigners as well. If you want to spend a day at Bonn Phum you will have a student guide and they will drive you around and explain how to enjoy it at its best. It’s free entry, but if you want to have a guide we will charge for transportation, food from some of the stalls, and the guide. But it’s very cheap – the students are very hard-working!”

With a range of traditional games and performances, a guided tour would seem a favourable option for city-dwellers – both foreigners and locals. Many of the traditional performances and activities will never have been seen before by many local urban youth, after having been forgotten for decades in the aftermath of the Khmer Rouge.

“One of the dances we present is the trod dance, a kind of performance that we normally perform during the Khmer New Year season,” YoKi says. “It’s like the equivalent of the Chinese New Year lion performance. You call them to your house to dance as a sign of good luck and blessing. It’s the identity of Cambodian New Year’s Day. So we want the Cambodian people to become more familiar with the trod dance, because many Cambodians, especially the younger ones, are so much more familiar with the lion dance than they are their own trod dance. Every day at 3pm we will show it so they can see.”

Activities are spread over a schedule which runs through both day and night, with nightly events showcasing the main traditional performances. The first night begins with bassac, a colourful pantomime, which YoKi likens to a hybrid of soap opera and comedy theatre, in which performers dress in very thick make-up representing regular characters such as the monkey or the giant. Traditional yike singing is scheduled for the second night, while the lakhon khol – a masked dance performance – and a shadow performance wrap up the third night.

Although the festival is heavily performance-based, YoKi emphasises the importance of crowd participation at the festival, particularly during daily workshops and traditional games.

“For the daily schedule, we bring different workshops with small performances. We have ayai, which is stand up singing and a little bit of comedy, and also chapey. Then there is the hand drum performance which we all sing and dance to. We also allow a platform to play traditional Cambodian games, which are lead by village people and everyone can join in and play.”

Of course, no cultural celebration would be complete without paying homage to the local cuisine. Vendors from surrounding provinces will travel to the site to sell produce and cook for hungry festival-goers. “We sell food which is all Cambodian,” YoKi says. “Village people sell whatever products they like: food, milk, eggs – anything they want, they can sell there.”

Although Plerng Kob itself remains proudly not for profit, YoKi insists that one of the central aims of Bonn Phum is to ensure all artists and performers are paid for their services during the festival.

“The event is not for profit and the organisers, Plerng Kob, are just volunteers,” YoKi says. “But we collaborate with local sponsors, like the radio station FM 107.5, who help find us sponsors. That means all the artists in the event get paid. That is one of the main purposes of the festival. We want to create a place where the performers and artists can find their market. We don’t want them to perform for free – we pay them through sponsorship. We also do some fundraising before the festival starts, and because of the event we did last year we have more people who know about us and want to support us.”

With each year, YoKi and the Plerng Kob team plan to expand the Bonn Phum village festival, incorporating more performances and activities, and hopefully bringing it to more cities and provinces across the Kingdom.

“In the next few years, we would like to see it happen across the country on the 3rd of April in three places: Phnom Penh, Siem Reap and Sihanoukville. Kampot too – it’s a very artistic province. That’s our future plan,” she says. “In the future, we’d also like to bring Bonn Phum to Cambodians overseas who are far, far away from their country. Cambodian Living Arts has a program called Seasons of Cambodia in New York. So we would like in the next 5-10 years to hopefully work together to bring Bonn Phum and the Cambodian way of life to Cambodians there.”

Comprised of a diversely talented team of young students, Plerng Kob uses the period between organising the annual Bonn Phum festival to continue working on smaller creative endeavours, gathering funding and providing support to young artists who wish to carry out individual projects of their own throughout the year.

“The members in our team have talents from many different fields,” YoKi says. “We have musicians, a painter, a fashion designer, an independent filmmaker, professional photographer, etc. So the idea is to ask [young people], ‘What do you want to do?’ And we will support them. Any young person wanting to showcase their work can ask us and we will help them and support them under the name of Plerng Kob. In November this year, for example, we will run a recycled fashion week, because that was an idea of one of our fashion designer team members. Bonn Phum is simply the first of many things that are to come from Plerng Kob.”

Plerng Kob runs from Fri-Sun April 3-5, from 7am-10pm daily at Prek Thloeng Pagoda. Entry is free.

Drakkar Band: Rockin’ the boat

Named after a Viking dragon ship, Drakkar has well and truly lived up to its namesake. Since its conception in 1967, the band has ridden waves of soaring successes and survived the crushing power of the Khmer Rouge regime. With members now in their 60s and 70s, Drakkar is ready to take their powerful rock on their first US tour.

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Few musicians can lay claim to forming a band that has persisted for almost five decades, creating the country’s highest selling album three times over, surviving the Khmer Rouge period and continuing on to play at sold out shows around the world. Vocalist and guitarist of the legendary Drakkar band, 63-year-old Touch Tana, recalls how it all transpired with sharp wit and humbling candour.

Long hair, loud shirts and a lifelong promise

Despite now being recognised and respected as one of the legendary musicians of the ‘70s, Tana makes no attempt to pretend that the rock star life came naturally to him.

“When I started, I knew only one song. The way I played the guitar was the worst – [lead guitarist/vocalist] Chhatha even said so!” Touch laughs. “I felt ashamed and I said, ‘Maybe I should not be a musician.’ But [bassist and vocalist] Molivan said, ‘No, no stay! You can learn to play the guitar like me.’ He’s the best musician of all Drakkar, too. So that’s how I learned.”

When Drakkar was formed in 1967 with its three other members, Touch Chhatha, Mam Molivan and Tan Phanareth, Tana was the youngest of the four, possessing significantly less experience and confidence than his elder bandmates.

“I felt very shy because I was only 16-years-old. And we were a travesty, you know! We had different clothes and hair. I grew my hair, cut my jeans. I felt funny doing it because I was so shy, and I came from an educated family.”

There was little time for Tana to become accustomed to his new role, however. No sooner had the band formed than they were asked to perform at a large party for the socially elite at the American Embassy. Pushed straight into the deep end, Tana managed to draw upon an inexplicable self-confidence in a moment of fear – a behaviour which not only salvaged the band’s first performance, but was later to save his own life.

“When I was backstage, no one knew who I was because I’d never played with them before. No one shook my hand. Everyone was like, ‘Who is this guy with the band?’” Tana recalls. “We were called onstage and I had to play electric guitar. I’d played acoustic, but I’d never played an electric guitar before that day. And we hadn’t rehearsed. No one even knew what song to start with. No one played anything and we all just stood there. Phanareth lost it – he got a little scared. But as the others became more scared, I became strong. I picked a song and said, ‘Okay, let’s play.’ The crowd was breathless – they just stood there with their mouths open.’”

From that point on, Tana became more serious about his role in the band. But having been raised in an educated, well-respected family, Tana’s ambition to play music professionally were at odds with the future his parents’ had in mind for their son. On the day his parents had promised to buy him a guitar as a result of doing well in an exam, Tana was forced to make a promise of his own that would forever change his life’s trajectory.

“When we went to get the guitar, my mother and father were really upset with me. It ended up being so expensive. My mother didn’t realise how expensive it was when she made the promise. When [the shopkeeper] told her it was 10,000 riels, my mother said to me, ‘No way! Are you stupid? Are you crazy? You want me to spend that amount of money on this?’ I said, ‘Mum, you promised. I need only one. I don’t need a motorcycle, I don’t need anything else.’ Finally, my parents agreed, but only on the condition that I promised never to become a professional musician – I was not allowed to make money from it. I kept my promise. To this day, I do not survive with making music.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQkeBTJFHlc

Going solo

True to his word, Tana continued to perform with the band, but always alongside his own studies and never again with the aspiration to turn it into a career. In 1970, Drakkar split up to pursuit individual careers, some of which were military or governmental roles afforded by the Vietnam War. Tana’s experience and passion for the arts lead him to land a role developing a programme for a government radio station. It was here that Tana inadvertently produced the makings for what were to become the country’s highest-selling albums in 1971.

“I just started to play the first song I wrote, called Why Are You Angry? Then one of the agents started recording, but I didn’t know. I stopped playing, then later I heard him play the song back over and over, and I thought, ‘Who’s playing my song? How could another person have thought of the exact same tune as me?’” Tana lets out a long, wheezing laugh. “When I realised he had recorded me, I was so surprised. The agency asked me to write 20 songs for a cassette to record the next week. I ended up recording two cassettes that year for them.”

Never one to break a promise, Tana refused the offer to continue producing recordings for the company, and made a conscious effort to redistribute any profits earned from his musical successes.

“They wanted me to do many more, but I said no. I had my other work to do. Besides, if I started earning money from recording then it would have been a profession and I’ve promised not to do that. The moment I started earning money from it, I immediately spent it – on other musicians, their drinks, their food. I didn’t save any money from it. I just wanted to test out what I was capable of or not, and now I know I can do it.”

The two cassettes featured 40 songs in total, all of which were originals penned by Tana, but sung by guest musicians including Pen Ron and Mao Sareth. At one point, Tana was given the option of collaborating with the legendary singer Sin Sisamouth on his records. After much deliberation, Tana declined the offer, partly due to financial restrictions, but primarily because it conflicted with a particularly strong principle of his.

“Sin Sisamouth I love and respect so much.” Tana says. “He talked to me so sincerely and nicely even though I was just young and new in music. I wanted him to be in my cassette so much. But something for me to consider was this: why don’t we try other musicians out? Because Cambodians should have many different musicians, not just one. It doesn’t mean I don’t like Sin Sisamouth – he is the best. And that’s largely because he made many originals – he mostly did not copy. That’s why I respect him. And yet, people are always copying him now. Cambodia needs variety.”

A second shot

After finishing his contract with the recording agency, Tana was asked to tour Vietnam, playing music to soldiers in US military camps. The original members of Drakkar were now heavily preoccupied with commitments to work and family, so Tana collaborated with three new musicians for the shows: lead guitarist Som Sareth; drummer Ouk Sam Ath; and bassist Ouer Sam Ol. The tour catalysed the second instantiation of the Drakkar band.

“The musicans were all extremely talented. We went to Vietnam for six months. Again, not to do it professionally – I just wanted to try and see what it was like. We played Rolling Stones covers and things for both Cambodian and US soldiers and they really liked it. They danced and sang along. We loved the music, each other, and the way we all played together in Vietnam. So, a little while after we returned, we formed the second Drakkar. We were very popular. We were the first Cambodian band to play on TV.”

The restructured Drakkar band enjoyed newfound popularity with its different sound and, between 1972-73, recorded the band’s first album, Drakkar ‘74. Originally intended as a test record, the album suffered initial sales levels so low that Tana eventually dismissed the idea that it would ever become a hit and moved to Pailin to start a new business. In late 1974, Tana received a phone call from his brother announcing that the album had sold all 20,000 copies, making it the highest selling album for Cambodia to this point.

Producing another 20,000 copies, which sold out in a few months, the band intended to make another 20,000 immediately after. However, their creative endeavours, like all others at the time, were suddenly and brutally cut short as the Khmer Rouge regime took hold of the Kingdom.

Surviving on talent

Although he was openly recognised by most soldiers and villagers as a musician, Tana was one of three members of Drakkar who managed to survive the Khmer Rouge period. In fact, it was perhaps his gift for music that afforded him the opportunity to be spared – at least on one occasion.

“I met one group of soldiers and they had one guitar but they didn’t know how to play it. They were like monkeys with it.” Tana recalls quietly. “Then one day they asked me to teach them because they knew I could play. So I tuned it and played a Khmer revolutionary song and they liked it. Then one soldier asked me to play an old song. I said ‘No, it’s prohibited.’ He pleaded with me, ‘I just want to know what it sounded like. I promise no one will hear.’ So I started to play one of the Apsara songs, Annie. They liked it a lot and danced. They asked me to teach them so I did, just a little bit. They gave me boxes of cigarettes, let me eat with them and treated me quite well. But then, maybe two months later, all the soldiers swapped over and went to different sections and I never saw them again.”

With the changeover came an influx of unforgiving soldiers who controlled Tana’s commune with the typical cold-hearted, violent tyranny for which the regime was renowned. Tana was one of their chief targets.

“The new soldiers wanted to kill me. They set up stories to try to kill me all the time. The way they did it was by getting people to judge you and turn against you. I was set up to steal fish. Groups of villagers would take turns to collect fish from the lake. During one of my turns, one of the guys in my group cast the net and when the fish were hauled in he said, ‘Take one fish home for your family. Everyone takes one.’ ‘I said , ‘Aren’t you scared?’ But he assured me that it was okay, and I saw everyone take one. So I did. Then when I went into the room where we prepared to go home, the chief told me to stop on my way out. They checked me and found the fish, but not on the others. I was so shocked. I said, ‘But what happened to your fish?’ and they said, ‘Don’t try to blame us.’ I realised that everybody had released their fish, but they had not told me. They tricked me. I went to put the fish back but they said, ‘No keep it – eat one fish before you die.’”

Tana continues, leaning in with his voice lowered, “I knew they were going to come after me that night, but I didn’t tell my wife. We prepared the fish and ate it. At about 6:30pm, the sun set. I heard many people come and gather outside. The whole commune comes – a thousand people – because they all want to see the killing. The people jeering in the crowd were my friends. In fact, the man who had set me up was my old friend I had gone to school with. Once everyone had sat down for the meeting, they come knock on my hut. The young boy soldiers were singing, ‘Tonight we’re going to kill the man, cut open his belly and stuff it with grass.’ I tied one knife down each leg. I became brave. I don’t know why, but when I get very scared I become brave. Like I did that first time on stage – just like that.”

“I raised my hand and said to the crowd, ‘Do you allow me to say something before you kill me?’ They said ‘yes.’ I said, ‘Do you allow me to talk without interruption until I stop?’ They agreed. I said, ‘Thank you.’ So I talked. I talked non-stop for about two hours. I talked about every one of them. Because I knew that most others had stolen rice. I had checked all their houses before. I went everywhere, I was well prepared.

The crowd was so angry. They wanted to stop me but they could not because they had already promised. In the end, the chief told the villagers to go back home. Eventually, the chief went too, and then it was just me and my wife left. So we went home.”

Of course, not everyone was as fortunate as Tana. By the end of the regime, an estimated 90% of the country’s traditional musicians and the majority of its contemporary musicians were believed to have died at the hands of Pol Pot’s army. With them, most of the country’s music and film recordings, paintings and additional historical records of Cambodian art were lost.

Gone but not forgotten

In early 2015, filmmaker John Pirozzi released the documentary “Don’t Think I’ve Forgotten,” which explores the Cambodian rock ‘n’ roll scene of the ‘60s and ‘70s. The film features archival footage of contemporary performances as well as interviews with musicians who survived the Khmer Rouge period, including Tana and his other surviving bandmates.

This year, Drakkar will be touring America to help promote the US premiere of the film. “I really appreciate what John did,” Tana says with a smile. “He did a very good job. He really revealed the good of Cambodia and the strength of the people he interviewed. And with the film, our music is now being shown in a top place in the world. We’re very excited.”

Drakkar will play their last gig in Cambodia before heading to the US at 8pm, Friday March 27 Sharky Bar, #126 St. 130. Free entry

The Mekong in peril: a view from mid stream

Proposals for mainstream dams on the lower Mekong River threaten the livelihood of more than 60 million people and imperil some of the most biodiverse freshwater life on the planet. Wayne McCallum investigates the Sambor Dam proposal and its potential impact on those who call the river “mother.”

Kratie Province, Sambor District

I have finally found it, that most rare of things: a group of teenagers who do not use Facebook. I am standing on an island in the centre of the Mekong, about an hour’s drive north of Kratie and only 500 metres from the “mainland,” but I could be in another world. There is a special feeling here of the Cambodia I knew 10 or so years ago, before things became so hurried and hectic. The teenagers of the island Koh Rongeav remain unflinchingly optimistic about their future. One, Sean Thirith, hopes to work for an NGO one day, two of his classmates wish to become teachers, another a healthcare worker. The young men are courteous and smile nervously when I ask them questions. When I leave 20 minutes later, I depart in a sea of waves feeling that, if these pupils represent the future, then all bodes well.

Ominously, however, their island and river are standing in the headlights of breakneck development. One proposal, a hydro-scheme at Sambor, would likely flood their school, homes and livelihoods beneath concrete and water. With them could vanish some of the last global populations of Irrawaddy dolphin, candor turtle and giant Mekong catfish. It’s a sobering thought as we gather for a group photo, the teenagers laughing and smiling, seemingly unaware of the forces coalescing around their island, swirling like a dark eddy in the Mekong itself.

•••

At 4,350 kilometres in length, the Mekong (or “Mother of Water”) is the twelfth longest river in the world and the seventh longest in Asia, with a catchment of 795,000 square kilometres. It originates in the glaciers of the Tibetan Plateau, then passes through China, Burma, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam before discharging into the South China Sea. The value of the river, and the life and ecosystems it supports, is immense. Mekong expert Professor Zeb Hogan, from the University of Nevada, describes the waterway as “the most productive river in the world.” In terms of biodiversity, the river is second only to the Amazon in the range of species and habitats that it contains. Some of this life is unique to the Mekong itself, including two species of the probarbus family: the thin-lip and thick-lip bard, large white fish that reach more than a metre in length. Both were categorised only in 1992, and the nature of this recent discovery hints at how little we still know about the Mekong.

More well-known is the king of the river’s fish: the giant Mekong catfish. Reaching up to 3 metres in length and 300 kilograms in weight, the catfish is the world’s largest freshwater fish and a true river behemoth. Sadly, with numbers of this creature declining by 80 percent over the last 15 years, the catfish is now categorised as critically endangered. Other rare species abound on the Mekong, including the Irrawaddy dolphin, the candor turtle and freshwater stingray. The list hints at both the Mekong’s ecological significance and its current plight.

But it is the more common creatures that provide a vital backbone to an estimated 60 million people who rely on the Mekong’s fish and other aquatic resources – including shellfish, snakes and frogs – for food and income. Between them they consume 2.5 million tonnes of wild fish, a sum representing between 47-80 percent of the dietary animal protein for this population. Crucially, the open access nature of the Mekong’s wild fishery means that it is vitally important to the poor, who find themselves increasingly marginalised from the region’s land and forest resources.

The incredible biodiversity and productivity of the Mekong can be attributed to several interrelated factors. These include: the share size of the river and the diversity of its catchment; the opportunities created by the seasonal variations in the river’s flow; and the productivity of its various instream and riparian ecosystems, augmented by massive sediment inputs.

For Simon Mahood, a researcher at the Wildlife Conservation Society, the discharge of water is particularly important. “The flow of the water regulates the annual flooding of the Tonle Sap Lake,” he says. “It supports an incredible diversity and abundance of fish that constitute the primary source of protein for Cambodia’s people, and brings sediment to farmers in the floodplain, sustaining Cambodia’s rice harvest.”

•••

Yet, despite its massive ecological, economic and social importance, Southeast Asia’s “mother” river faces a mounting array of threats. In the Cambodian tributaries of the Sekong, Sesane and Srepok, economic land concessions are causing the wholesale destruction of wetlands and forests, the sponge-like lungs of the Mekong. Chemicals leached from mines have caused fish and livestock deaths, and burns to people who previously called the river friend. In the Mekong’s main stem, pressures from illegal fishing have caused a sharp decline in fish resources, while in the face of intimidation, including fire arms, local villagers have been left defenseless. Now, the specter of hydro-development in the mainstream of the lower Mekong is adding a new concern. Currently, the Laos government is proceeding with a project at Sispondone, the Don Sahong dam, despite international protests, including from the Cambodia government, which has called for a review of the scheme. Joining this protest has been international agencies, World Wide Fund for Nature among others, with calls for a moratorium on all mainstream dams until a full and detailed assessment has been completed.

But now, in the shadows, there are reports that Cambodia is planning its own mainstream project at Sambor, 40 kilometres north of Kratie. Sophoan Phean, project manager at Oxfam, is conscious of the scheme. “For the mainstream Mekong at the moment, one dam that is being discussed in Cambodia is the Sambor dam,” he says. “The information received so far are reports from the community of a Chinese group who came to take samples of water, drilling the river’s banks and beds, and topography studies.”

Hul Soeun, commune chief on Koh Thnot, another mid-stream Mekong island, has heard talk of the project. He recalls a visit by Chinese geologists in 2006 and a more recent visit, late last year, by another Chinese team. Back in town, Em Thirin, Sambor’s deputy governor, talks about a recent visit by consultants who came to gather information about the river’s communities. Despite this activity, none of the officials spoke of contact from the Ministry of Mines and Energy – the agency managing hydro-development in Cambodia – and my own efforts to raise the subject with the Ministry went unanswered.

Chinese consultants taking samples and a lack of transparency from the Ministry of Mines and Energy – it all sounds very familiar. The history of recent hydro-development in Cambodia has been underlined by an opaqueness as thick as the concrete that now spans the Kampot, Sesan, Srepok and Stueng Tatai rivers. Together, these suggest a planning environment that instills little faith in the processes of consultation, due diligence and professional levels of impact assessment should a Sambor dam move forward.

A search of the internet is more forthcoming. Online records show the first mention of a dam at Sambor in the ‘50s, with a survey later completed in the early ‘60s. In 1994, the Mekong Secretariat (a forerunner to the Mekong Commission) proposed the concept of a dam that would span the entire Mekong at Sambor and generate 3,300 megawatts of electricity.

Later, in 2006, the China Southern Power Grid Company signed an agreement to carry out a feasibility study for this massive project and a smaller dam that would generate 435 megawatts and block an eastern channel of the river (this timing corresponds to the reports of surveys on the river described to me). The smaller proposal, which is the focus of current interest, would entail the construction of a 2-metre weir to channel water from a reservoir – covering an area of 6 square kilometres – down a 20-kilometre-long and 350-metre-wide canal that would run parallel to the main river. After running through a set of turbines, the water would either discharge back into the Mekong or be diverted for irrigation.

•••

But what would the consequences from the construction of a dam at Sambor be? Officials and members from the local community offered their insights.

Fisheries Administration Cantonment Director Sean Kin is in a good position to comment. He grew up by the river and has spent 26 years promoting the sustainable use of the Mekong’s fishery resources. For Kin, the concerns range from impacts on the Mekong’s currents and the quality of river water to the survival of the river’s deep pools, some up to 30 metres in depth, which are vital to the survival of the remaining populations of giant catfish, freshwater stingrays and Irrawaddy dolphin. Reaching up with a desk ruler, one of Kin’s colleagues points to the place on a map where the proposed Sambor dam would go. In 2005, a survey by the Wildlife Conservation Society identified a major deep pool just below where he is pointing, reputedly the deepest of those on the lower Mekong. The area is a short distance from some of the last remaining Mekong dolphin populations – down to less than 80 individuals – living in the river.

Sam Sovann, executive director of Northeastern Rural Development Organisation, works closely with communities living on the Mekong islands of Sambor. He puts the importance of the Mekong to Cambodia succinctly, “The Mekong is the brain and the Tonle Sap is the heart.” His NGO, working alongside the local community, has helped to publicise concerns about the Sambor Dam and the upstream project at Don Sahong. In 2014, NRD organised for a party of villagers to travel to Kuala Lumpur to petition the Malaysia Human Rights Commission, protesting against the role of the Malay company, Mega-First, in the construction of the Don Sahong dam. Traveling with the deputation was Sem Vorn, a 60-year-old mother of nine, on her first trip outside the Kingdom. Following her travels, Vorn is now known locally as the “Brave Lady,” and one can only imagine what she might do if someone decides to build a dam across her island home.

Back on Koh Rongeav Island, commune chief Chhit Norn is especially worried about the likelihood of population displacement caused by the construction of any dam. “People’s lives here are connected closely to the river,” he says. “I do not know if a new location would be connected to the Mekong and how people live today.”

Across on the adjacent island of Koh Thnot, commune chief Hul Soeun puts its more personally. “We have grown many fruit trees here,” he said. “If we move we will have to buy this fruit and we will lose years of work and care.”

Next to Hul a colleague cuts in, “I am too old to clear and develop land again.”

For him, this is his home and he does not wish to move.

•••

Tellingly, the concerns of those living and working in Sambor are substantiated by national and international experts, for whom a primary fear, given its economic and ecological value, are impacts on fish migration and breeding. Concerns about the Don Sahong dam in southern Laos highlight the dimensions of this issue. When completed, Don Sahong is expected to block the only channel providing assured dry-season passage for fish moving up and down the Sispondone portion of the Mekong. Meanwhile, any fish moving down the river that hit this or any other future dams face being churned to pieces by turbines or diverted down canals and lost to the Mekong system. These impacts could precipitate the extinction of a host of key Mekong species, including the aforementioned thin and thick-lipped bard, which travel extensively up and down the river through their life cycles.

The operating regime of any mainstream dam will also invariably alter the natural flow patterns of the Mekong, disrupting the biological cues that trigger fish spawning and migration. Removed also, trapped behind a dam, will be a portion of the Mekong’s massive sediment flow, which helps to fertilise the rice bowl of the Cambodia plains and the Mekong Delta. These sediments are also crucial in replacing soil lost to the impacts of erosion and sea level rise. Above and below the dam, meanwhile, the future of the Mekong’s important deep pools will be uncertain, as dam-induced hydrological changes will alter the processes that create and maintain these unique environments. Scientists also expect mainstream dams to affect lake levels in Cambodia’s Great Lake, with unknown implications for one of the planet’s most significant inland fisheries.

Oxfam’s Sophoan Phean is working closely with the Sambor community and recognises the impacts on river connectivity as a major concern. “The river plays a very important role in connecting the spawning and growing areas between the Mekong and the Tonle Sap,” he says. “So, regardless of the measures that are taken to facilitate the migration process, the proposed dam will cause disruption and there are going to be certain fish that can no longer go upstream to spawn.”

Tracy Farrell, technical advisor with Conservation International, agrees. “What is sometimes forgotten is that there are both up and downstream fish migrations happening annually,” she says. “We can definitely expect to see declines in fish yields for dependent populations of people, mainly the poorest of the poor, as well as millions of others.”

The ecologically unique flooded forest environments around Sambor will also come under imminent threat from the construction, inundation and flow alterations from any hydro-development undertaken in the area. Each wet monsoon, these forests are inundated by the rise in the Mekong’s water levels, providing a temporary home and food source for a wide variety of fish and other animals, including rare species such as Cambodia’s national bird, the critically endangered Giant Ibis.

A study lead by Alan Ziegler in 2013 documents the likelihood that the development of dams on the Mekong will result in an increase in water and food associated illnesses, including schistosomiasis, dengue and malaria fever, diarrheal complaints, and even cancer (caused by the trematode fluke, Opiethorchis viverrini).

Behind all these changes are the impacts on human communities, ranging from consequences for food security and livelihoods to displacement and damage to homes and workplaces (a 2010 UN report estimated that 19,000 people could be displaced by the development of a dam at Sambor). These impacts are more than just physical, for the river is the spiritual home to the people who live along its banks, including members of the Kuy ethnic minority, who have resided on the Mekong for generations, creating lives that move with the rhythms of the river. This includes people such as Sem Sorn, Sambor’s “Brave Lady,” who each dry season transforms a small portion of a Mekong riverbank into a lush family garden.

•••

Sem, Chhit and Hul are heartland people and those for whom the trickle-down effects of Cambodia’s development are eventually meant to benefit. However, in the race to power Cambodia’s economic growth – and the air conditioners, opulent villas and new malls of Phnom Penh – they and the river’s other inhabitants appear to be footing the bill. Recalling the smiling teenagers of Koh Rongeav School, the injustice is obvious, and yet all the people I spoke to in Sambor were balanced and fair in their approach to hydro-development on the Mekong. Most agreed that if proper and detailed impact studies reveal the impacts to be minimal, then it would be acceptable for a dam to proceed. Tracy Farrell of Conservation International is also conscious of the challenges facing power generation in the Kingdom and would like to see alternative options considered.

“There is no question that energy provision is a key development needed for the Lower Mekong,” he said .”What we would like to see is greater emphasis on where [dams] are located, how they are operated, and greater consideration of other alternative energy options, such as solar, wind and biogas.”

•••

From March 13 to 15, the first Mekong River Festival celebrating Cambodia’s “mother” river will be held in Kratie, just a few kilometres south of Sambor. Yet if the Don Sahong and Sambor dams – and up to nine others proposed for the lower Mekong – are completed, one has to wonder if there will be anything to celebrate in the future.

Whatever happens, you feel that the people of Sambor will not allow bulldozers to roll over their homes, history and livelihoods without a fight.

After a long day on the Mekong, with the sun now sinking below the sugar palms, I ask Sem Vorn what she loves most about living on the river.

Her crinkled face lights up with a warm smile. “The fresh air,” she says. “And the soil along the riverbank is fertile and you do not have to use chemicals. It is better.”

She pauses, then looks out across the Mekong, a steely expression of resolve crossing her face.

“It is my home,” she says. “I will die here.”

Fire proof

We returned to Phnom Penh and our next interview took place at the house of Seim Chantha, 47, in Kandal province. The house was a work in progress, with tools, lumber, and all manner of rusty debris littering the downstairs living area.

It was our ninth interview in four weeks, as we traveled across Cambodia looking for sorcerers, spirit mediums, fortunetellers, and other mystics to add to our forthcoming book. I assembled a team to document the lives of these spiritual professionals, not to debunk the notion of spirit possession or any of that nonsense, but to show the world these rituals and traditions, and, maybe, help preserve them. Every interview revealed something new, and Seim Chantha was no exception.

The upstairs was mostly vacant, save for a room dedicated to an elaborate altar and a front porch covered with plastic mats and, as we’d find out later, some sticky, staining petroleum-based wood treatment meant to repel termites. An elaborate spirit house hung from the roof to guarantee the local entities lived in style: designed with an eye toward modern architecture, it came complete with an SUV and a helicopter. It was a window, perhaps, into Chantha’s own aspirations and a testament to his showmanship, which he was eager to demonstrate.

Chantha’s magical practices were derived from a complex cosmology that came not only from the spirits that possessed him but also his unique past lives as well: among others, he claimed to be the reincarnation of Jayavarman VII, the greatest king of the Angkor era Khmer Empire. But he didn’t always know that.

“My parents were farmers. Neither has experience with spirits,” he said. “I spent most of my life in the countryside as a farmer, and I didn’t know much about what went on in the outside world.”

He spent some of his younger years in the army, and protective tattoos on his hands and chest were evidence of that, but otherwise, his worldly experiences were of the more mundane sort: working, marriage, and supporting his family.

“When I was in my early ‘30s, I encountered spirits, and they said, ‘Go and take care of other people. They need help,’” he said. “The spirits first came to me in a dream. I dreamt that a god gave me a chakram from his palm and said that this was the power god gave me to help humans who are in need of help.”

Seim-Chantha-in-front-of-his-altar — Seim Chantha

Chantha disregarded these messages, preferring instead a life of fishing, but disbelief carried a heavy price: five years of sickness that he couldn’t seem to shake.

“I was young and didn’t believe in such things. But the god visited me a few more times, and the god took my spirit to visit different places, like heaven, the mountains, and even where the dragon lives under the water. So I started believing. And the god told me that when I stopped being a fisherman my life would get better.”

This supreme being’s name was Krorpom Jakrova, protector of three realms (heaven, the Earth, and the underworld). When he came to Chantha, he brought company.

“Seven spirits come to me: 1) Krorpom Jakrova; 2) Ey Sey Akinet; 3) Lok Ta Mae Toib; 4) Lok Ta Kom Haeng; 5) Lok Ta Krong Nokor; 6) Lok Ta Meun Ek; 7) Vihear Sour. The other six are the associates of the first one. Bodyguards, each with powers,” he said. “They come when the people need them. When they come, they smoke three cigarettes.”

While the supreme being is very gentle and understanding, the other six, being bodyguards, are more strict and have specialised roles. When these spirits came upon him, they told Chantha about his past lives and what he needed to do in this life to preserve his legacy.

“My karma decided what I am now. In my first life, I was a forest saint near Veing Mountain. In my second life, I was Jayavarman VII. In this life, I am destined to help people. People are suffering, and my karma decided that I need to be a medium and help people.”

He’s not the only family member with a strong past – his eldest son is the reincarnation of a mountain saint.

“He has cheated death. Once, his boat sank in the river. Normal people would have died, but my son survived,” Chantha said. “Because he was born powerful.”

Chantha’s grand visitation prompted skepticism in his village.

“At first, the villagers thought I was insane,” he said. But the spirits’ power proved them wrong, as people came to him to have their problems solved. “Now, the whole neighborhood believes in me, and people often have me bless ceremonies as I channel the spirit of the protector of the land.”

Using charms, ointments, relics, and more, the spirits that Chantha hosts provide guidance, cures, and protection to those who seek him out, and the appreciation of his clients has his family slowly climbing out from under the mountain of debt that his wife assumed when he first fell ill.

“Before the spirit came to me, my life was a struggle: I barely had enough to feed my wife and my family. But now I am much better. I help people, and people help me back with offerings depending on how much they appreciate my help and how effective it is. With these offerings, my life has improved,” he said. “I’m happy and content with my life because I believe that this is what I’m destined to do from my past lives – to help people. When people are happy, I’m happy.”

What doesn’t make him happy are fortunetellers who exploit those in need (“That’s not how spirits work. Spirits help people.”) and black magicians who attack him out of professional jealousy.

“There are other people who practice magic who call themselves spirit mediums who get jealous and use dark magic to make my family suffer,” he said. “Once, my wife was targeted by black magic, and she would wake up in the night crying and screaming. But I channeled my spirit and blessed her, and it all went away.”

Like our other subjects, Chantha couldn’t conceive of a situation in which his neighbours would blame him for problems in the area or commit violence against him, as mobs had done several times in the preceding months. But he admitted that black magic is still a problem – and he was the solution.

“I was not aware of those killings, but there are people like that, and that is the reason why there are people like me. There are people prone to doing bad things. That’s why the spirit came [to me]: to help people escape black magic,” he said. “[The killings don’t] concern me because people in the village know that I don’t know black magic. What I do every day is not my doing! It’s the spirits’ doing. So I don’t concern myself about people accusing me of performing black magic.”

While he sees a growing sense of disbelief among Cambodia’s younger generations, Chantha believes that they’ll eventually come around.

“Teenagers today do not fully understand how magic works. Whether they believe or not, it’s a way of helping people. Sometimes when science fails, they look for magic to help. A teenager who suffers from a broken heart can go insane, and a doctor cannot cure that, but the spirits can.”

We then prepared an offering that would summon the spirits into Chantha’s body, and he told us to expect the unexpected.

“You can ask the spirit to perform a miracle for the camera,” he said. “It can eat fire.”

Chantha donned a yellow sash and red headband and turned on some traditional music. Several minutes later, the spirit was inside Chantha, scribbling on pieces of paper, which it distributed.

“This is a language known only to me. No human can read it. It’s the language I use to bless people and heal people,” it said. “The Buddha and the dharma help the people in all realms.”

The spirit Chantha referred to as Krorpom Jakrova calls itself Hun Bak, and it says that it’s 2,337 years old (“Since the beginning of Buddhism”).

“Destiny decided for me to choose this host. My destiny is to help people,” Hun Bak said. “I’m very pleased with this body. I tortured this body for more than five years because it didn’t believe in me.”

Hun Bak chain-smoked three cigarettes at a time; each representing one of the “three jewels of Buddhism.”

“The three cigarettes represent the Buddha, the dharma, and the sangha [clergy],” it said. “It’s either cigarettes or betel nut, and you didn’t bring us any betel nut.”

While its father is Yum Reach, the lord of the underworld, and it claims dominion over all the dark spirits of the underworld, Hun Bak said that its intentions are friendly.

“My favorite thing to do is to help people, especially people who are suffering from disease, whether it’s a disease they are born with or a black magic curse. I also help couples who are breaking apart. The more people I help, the sooner I can fulfill my destiny and go back to where I came from,” it said. “I often have to fight evil spirits, and my greatest enemy is an eight-headed ghost. I don’t use relics or charms [to fight them], just my power.”

Hun Bak said that it originally came from Cambodia’s Dangrek Mountains on the Thai border, though there’s a shrine to it in Kompong Chhnang province and here in Chantha’s house.

“I am Khmer, and I have always been here,” it said. “I’ve never been anywhere else.”

When we asked about a miracle, Hun Bak was ready.

“Fire-eating is very powerful,” it said. “When humans are possessed by bad spirits, I eat fire to burn the bad spirits from their bodies.”

Hun Bak lit a handful of yellow candles and shoved them into its mouth. After doing that several times, Hun Bak held up the melted candles and opened wide to display an unburnt mouth (as far as I could tell). It wrote down more blessings for us in the language of the underworld and said goodbye. Chantha came back.

“It’s all okay. I don’t feel a thing. But I’m very tired after the spirit leaves my body and my spirit comes back,” he said.

“My spirit stays in the room, watching us, and there are spirits guarding me to make sure I don’t go too far from my body. My spirit cannot wander around because there are bad entities that would prevent my spirit from going back to my body.”

Chantha said that while he’s aware of everything the spirit says and does during a possession, he cannot perform any magic or miracles himself, and he is unable to discuss anything said between the spirit and the client.

He relishes this post-miracle state, spitting out bits of yellow wax. Taking into account the testimony of the monks we’d met, I asked him what he thought about Sameoun saying that rituals like this are not truly Buddhist.

“A monk just studies the light part of Buddhism. Even Buddha needed help from gods to reach enlightenment. The monks don’t understand that because they don’t understand the dark way of Buddhism.”

Vanishing Act: A Glimpse into Cambodia’s World of Magic contains 11 of these interviews, dozens of photos, and nearly an hour of video, and it’s available from the iTunes Store for iPads and Macs running iBooks. A Kindle edition (without video) is also available from Amazon.com. More information and additional formats can be found at www.neaktaa.com. Meta House will host an exhibition of Valenzuela’s photos from Vanishing Act in July 2015.

(Translation by Sun Heng)

Changing Exchange

After a long scarcity of cultural exchange between Bangkok and Phnom Penh, it seems like the two cities have found a common currency. Rates of Exchange, Un-Compared is a six-month collaborative project hosted by Sa Sa Bassac gallery in which six Thai and three Cambodian artists were invited to partake in discussions, symposiums and residencies. As well as creating the resulting exhibition, the project aimed to create a dialogue between artists from the two capital cities.

The exhibition curators, Roger Nelson and Brian Curtin, discouraged comparative frameworks – instead, the artists also examine the ways in which we talk about nationality, history and geography.

“It seemed as though most artists were so used to curators presenting them with a ‘theme’ to ‘respond to,’” Nelson says. “I think that can often be quite a problematic idea, so it confirmed for me that this project was a worthwhile experiment. We were lucky to work with people who are bursting with exciting ideas, and who thrive on the chance to share those ideas, and learn from the different thinking and practices of others.”

For this show, the process was just as valuable as the result. “The artists, curators, researchers and spaces involved in the project made the connections happen, and it was really nice to watch that unfold,” Nelson continues. “The conversations really varied from artist to artist. Some artists were interested in talking about the similarities and differences in Thailand and Cambodia, both past and present – in a sense, comparing the two cities and nations. Other artists were more interested in talking about the abstract idea of thinking about comparison as a mode of analysis.”

Instead of working around a theme, the show largely defines itself in its own terms with a mishmash of multi-textured playfulness.

Delicate processes, violent histories

Recurring ideas create internal echoes within the gallery. On one wall, Orawan Arunrak has hung a jacket belonging to her late godfather, a soldier deployed to protect Cambodian refugees after the Khmer Rouge regime collapsed. The artist has lovingly stitched the camouflage outlines with gold thread – an act of deification, symbolic of family and national ties.

On the other side of the gallery, Tada Hengsapkul’s video installation mirrors Arunrak’s piece: it shows a close-up of the soft folds of an American soldier’s jacket from the ‘60s. American military presence during that era is still officially denied by Thailand – despite the eyewitness memories of local people, and physical evidence of jackets such as these.

Hengsapkul’s installation shows the image of the jacket woozily dissolving into yellow and purple streaks as it is chemically cleansed from the screen – just as it has been cleansed from Thailand’s historical records. As with Arunrak, the slow, delicate process he has employed is at odds with the artefact itself, which is evidence of the two countries’ traumatic history of war.

“Local history is interesting and seems even more important than national history, which was written and rewritten by governments, and which shows the government controls people with its power,” Hengsapkul says. “I think most artists don’t see its significance, lost in the repeated words created by the government. If no one talks about it, everything will slowly and gradually disappear, and nobody’s going to even notice it. Moreover, we can learn from mistakes in many dimensions of social structure through history.”

Unexpected mediums

The politicised symbol of the jacket is repeated again by Thai artist Jakkai Siributr, but this time in the context of the monolithic garment industry. Siributr’s installation Fast Fashion consists of a set of H&M jackets embroidered with slogans and scenes from Cambodian garment protests. The painstaking detail and care given to each garment is in itself a protest against cheap, throwaway fashion.

It’s hard not to read his piece as a twist on the trend of “reclaimed fashion” – his work is not only recycling clothes, but literally reclaiming them as Cambodian products, with their palimpsests of traditional Yantra texts and scenes of recent political strife. In a further sense, they function as portraits of the unseen artists of the pieces: the factory workers who made them.

Indeed, the exhibition explores unexpected mediums with a beguiling lightness of touch. Even the most apparently conventional pieces, such as the two dark canvases by Imhathai Suwatthanasilp are marked with delicate, contoured patterns, which on closer inspection reveal themselves to be made with human hair.

A sheet of newspaper lies on the floor, as if it blew there accidentally. This, too, reveals an uncanny surprise as it twitches and moves mechanically. The artist, Makha Sanewong Na Ayuthaya, is known for his un-still lives, animating everyday objects, such as paint buckets, toothpaste tubes and bottle caps. Aside from producing the visceral discomfort that comes from seeing an ordinarily still object animated, the artist aims to jolt us from our blindness to functional objects by making them into kinetic sculptures.

Ayuthaya’s piece in Sa Sa Bassac, simply titled Newspaper, isn’t just questioning the hierarchy of function over form. On the front page of the newspaper is a story on the country’s most recent coup – the 19th in Thailand’s recent history – while the back page holds an ad for a SIM card and a promotion for watching free movies. The Thai media distracts people from the precarious reality of their political situation; Newspaper scuttles discarded, cockroach-like on the ground.

Exploration, conversation

Phnom Penh’s geography is thoroughly travelled. Cambodian artist Khvay Samnang examines the cities socio-political issues, with a photo series of traditional fighters posing in front of Phnom Penh’s violently changing skylines. Kanitha Tith, an artist who has so far focused on performance art, shows video work for the first time. Exploring the concepts of time and familiarity, the video is a fragmented tour of Phnom Penh’s White Building, which dissolves from the everyday to inky ambiguity as night falls in its long corridors. Pen Sereypagna’s maps of Phnom Penh hang on the wall and across the floor. People have filled in places and things that they would like to see in the city. Unsurprisingly, their map looks very different from the spate of satellite cities and high rises that is on the official city plan.

Aside from the artworks, what else did the project create? “[The] whole process really made me realise that conversations are the most valuable part of any creative exchange,” Nelson says. “Artists getting to know each other, talking to each other about their work, their cities, their lives and everything else. The nature of these kinds of dialogues is unpredictable and the results can be very exciting in terms of creative practice.”

Phnom Penh and Bangkok may remain un-compared, but the project has certainly created exciting collaborations and artworks, as well as inviting much-needed new curatorial concepts into Phnom Penh’s galleries.

Rates of Exchange, Un-compared runs until Sunday March 8 at Sa Sa Bassac gallery, #18E2 Sothearos Blvd.

Cyber-coins and cryptocurrencies

Remember when the internet was first introduced? Speculation was about on par with excitement: in one corner were the skeptics, widely dismissing it as an impractical fad, in the other were the enthusiasts, championing the idea of an unregulated information-sharing network. Fast forward 50 years to an uncannily analogous scenario, the scary-shiny new technology in question being cryptocurrency. There are now several hundred of these conceptual currencies circulating the globe, two of which are flitting between smartphones and computers as we speak: bitcoin, and its lesser known relative, BlackCoin.

Cryptocurrency is (in very basic terms) an internet-based digital tender – a medium of exchange that is decentralised and theoretically anonymous due to encrypted transactions. The currencies can be exchanged for regular money, though their dollar value can fluctuate significantly [sometimes by several hundred dollars overnight]. The most popular of these currencies is bitcoin, which works using a “proof of work” system (aka “mining”), whereby computer processing is used to solve equations and earn bitcoin as a result.

Entrepreneur Ki Chong Tran incited a wave of media attention in March 2014 when he submitted a proposal to the Bitcoin Foundation requesting a grant to allow the implementation of a steady market in Phnom Penh, including two bitcoin ATMs. The proposal was turned down, Tran believes, because “It was a very unique proposal and no one’s ever done something like that before.” At the time, the proposal sparked a comment from the National Bank of Cambodia which stated that it would not consider bitcoin as legal tender within the country.

At about the same time, a more dramatic blow to the bitcoin revolution came in the form of the evaporation of Japanese bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox, following a large-scale hacking incident, which resulted in the loss of over $460 million. Unsurprisingly, the event incited a worldwide ripple of fear over the security and regulation of bitcoin technologies.

None of this was enough to discourage local Steve Merger, however, who last December opened Coin Café, Phnom Penh’s first food and beverage venue to utilise payment via bitcoin. With his business on a steady increase (now hosting regular enthusiast meet-ups), as well as a newly formed website exporting local goods in exchange for bitcoin, Merger attests that the security of the currency is not the problem, rather, the use of a third party that deals with the currency.

“Bitcoin itself cannot be hacked,” Merger insists. “The companies who deal in bitcoin can be though, and that’s why if you use someone like Mt. Gox you’re introducing the third party risk that bitcoin was created to circumvent. Nobody even knows –the [Mt. Gox CEO] could have stolen these bitcoins, or he could have been hacked. Mt. Gox had a history of just being totally inept. I don’t know how they survived at all. Their service was garbage and their reputation was really bad.”

The more immediate issue we really need to be considering, Merger believes, is how the risks and benefits involved with using bitcoin can be weighed against those posed by existing financial institutions.

“Look at HSBC, Goldman Sachs and Bear Stearns – all these companies are regulated, and yet all failed and lots of people lost lots of money. And those were high-end investors – very sophisticated people. Everyone is screaming for regulation with bitcoin, but what difference does it make?” Merger remarks. “Now there’s something called fractional recession banking. It’s totally illegal and you would never think this kind of thing would be allowed to happen. But the banking system is so corrupt right now and nobody cares, because the system is insured by the government – if you lose your deposits, the government will just print more money to bail out the banks. This can’t happen with bitcoin because there’s only a limited amount that will ever be produced.”

Having said that, Merger agrees with the NBC’s decision to refuse recognition of bitcoin as legal tender within Cambodia – at least, for now. “In Cambodia, bitcoin is such a niche. This is the least of their concerns because there’s no market for it yet. So they’re right to ignore it for the moment.” Merger believes, however, that once bitcoin takes off, the NBC will likely revoke their decision. “Once they see its usefulness and the applicability of it to Cambodia then I think they’ll embrace it.”

According to Merger, Cambodia is, in fact, an ideal setting for the implementation of bitcoin. “There are a lot of uses for bitcoin here,” Merger says. “Probably the number one is remittances – people who live in foreign countries who send money back home – because there are no transaction fees with bitcoin. The biggest use for bitcoin in the world now is for donations and charity. You can pay someone 50 cents for free, which you can’t really do with other payment methods. I’d really like to see that take off in Cambodia, because there are so many charities here. The problem is that it’s just not user friendly yet. But it’s growing, the industry is young. Once the government learns more about it and it evolves a bit more, I truly believe that Cambodia is going to be really excited about it. It’s the decentralised peer-to-peer revolution.”

Josh Bouw, International Director of BlackCoin, Cambodia’s only other widely circulating cryptocurrency, maintains a similar outlook, considering bitcoin’s additional utilisation at a personal level.

“Many of us have to travel a lot with work. When I go to conferences overseas, I never bring local currency into another country,” Bouw says. “I take my riel and USD, I buy bitcoin, then I go the foreign country and exchange it for the local currency. Because otherwise I am paying something ridiculous, like 12%, just to change my money.”

For Bouw, however, BlackCoin is the cryptocurrency of choice. Since its conception almost one year ago, Josh has represented and traded with BlackCoin as his preferred alternative tender due to the qualities it possesses, which bitcoin lacks.

“I didn’t think bitcoin would last because of how the technology was set up – the economics just didn’t make sense.” Josh explains. “The method that bitcoin uses is “proof of work,” or mining, which earns bitcoin. It fluctuates dramatically because of this. It’s also grown to the point where people have learned how to exploit mining– there are computers that have been created specifically to mine bitcoin at a more efficient level. BlackCoin doesn’t have these problems because it doesn’t use mining, but ‘proof of stake’. Therefore, it’s been pretty stable since it began almost a year ago. We also hope to implement compound interest with BlackCoin, so the longer you have your coins open on the network, the more value you’ll get back.”

Early last year, BlackCoin announced that they had secured ATM terminals which would dispense and exchange cryptocurrencies within Phnom Penh, provisionally located at Central Market and Tuol Tompuong. The plan has since been deferred until demand is high enough to warrant costs involved.

“Those were supposed to come, but when we looked into it, the rental costs were quite high and the user base would have had to have been much higher to validate their use. It would be awesome to have the ATMs here, but right now it’s better to do it person-to-person until the user base builds up. Right now, people can call me and I’ll meet with them to trade, but when it gets to the point where that becomes too much, having an automated system would be a Godsend.”

The cryptocurrency conversation, it seems, is rooted in speculation and framed within the future tense. Both Merger and Bouw agree that, while it is impossible to say exactly how much sway cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and BlackCoin will have over the Cambodian market, they will inevitably exist, though in what capacity is yet to be revealed.

“There’s a bit of a lull now, but the longterm trend is positive,” Merger states. “It’s a revolutionary technology. It’s now just a matter of how we’re going to utilise that technology. We’re just sort of waiting out to see what happens next. The potential for bitcoin is there and I think there’s a lot more bitcoin user activity in this country than I even realise.”

Bouw agrees, “Cryptocurrency is the future of the economy. It might not be bitcoin, but it will be something similar to it – a currency system that will be improved and regulated. There are a lot of ways it could go, but either way I think cryptocurrency will always be here.”

Smiling, Bouw adds, “I know people have made quite a bit of money off the work we’re doing. I’ve been sent about $15,000 out of the blue and thought, ‘What the hell is this?’ ‘Who did this and why?’ There was just nothing said about it. I’m still wondering who did it, but I’m pretty sure it was someone who was pretty grateful for what they got through buying and selling with BlackCoin.”

Stirring the melting ‘Pot

“Sleepy.” “Laid-back.” “An escape from the big city buzz.” Pick up any guidebook and that’s about the limit to which Kampot will be depicted. It’s not untrue of the town: the communal sigh of relief among passengers as the bus rolls in over the tranquil river is often audible. These observations. however, hardly reflect the deeper, richer qualities of the town and its people. Spend a little time here, listen carefully, and soon you will hear and feel a buzz of an altogether unique kind. This is the collective energy of Kampot’s new wave of artists – illustrators, writers, musicians and curators – who, in the past few years, have steadily begun to redefine the town as an all-inclusive, unrestrained, creative mecca.

Having moved to Cambodia in 2013, Kampot-based illustrator and tattoo artist Natalie Phillips has watched as the city has prospered in population and, subsequently, creativity.

“A lot of people are investing in Kampot right now and the art scene seems to be growing along with the town. In the last six months we’ve gotten an art venue (Lightbox gallery), two tattoo shops and a screen-printing studio. Around town in bars and cafes, I’ve definitely met a lot more artists that have recently moved here.”

While population growth is indeed necessary for any cultural “scene” to flourish, it seems Kampot has reached that magic balancing point, at which it now has the capacity to support such subcultures, while retaining the peaceful charm that initially attracted the creatively minded.

Katharina Glynne, founder, curator and events manager at Kampot’s Lightbox gallery has been organising and showcasing art exhibitions and workshops since its conception in mid-2014. Last year’s Made In Cambodia event (featuring performances from Tiny Toones, KlapYaHandz and Skateistan) attracted impressive audiences from both Phnom Penh and Siem Reap, significantly accelerating wider recognition of the gallery, as well the artistic potential throughout the town. With infectious passion and enthusiasm, Katharina elaborates on the creative opportunity afforded by Kampot’s current state of developmental equilibrium.

“Kampot has a history of attracting creatives – especially expats – because it’s quiet. It’s been considered for many years as a hideaway for people writing novels or those who prefer spending more time at their canvases than dodging tuk-tuks in Phnom Penh. So I think it’s made a fertile ground for growing an arts scene over the years. But it’s only now that a centralising force is drawing these people together that a community is actually being fostered. What we’re seeing is not just creative individuals working away at their own endeavours, but people collaborating to create and celebrate arts and creativity. What’s really exciting about Kampot is that it’s sort of teetering on the side of development – it’s growing rapidly, but not too much is yet going on. Therein lies the charm of Kampot, but therein lies the opportunity to make something happen.”

And if there’s one name which is synonymous with “making things happen” it’s the multi-tasking, visionary frontman of Cambodian Space Project, Julien Poulson. With his animated imagination on permanent overdrive and several fingers on the pulse, it’s unsurprising that his recent experience in Kampot was enough to spark yet another creative initiative to add to his repertoire.

Julien describes the idea behind his latest baby, Kampot Arts and Music Association, as a platform to “create an umbrella to place many of the arts projects I’m personally involved in. It’s also an opportunity to create a professional association to represent, present and promote local work to the international audience. The idea to set up KAMA in Kampot really leads on from the good experience of working here to create Hanuman Spaceman last year, and I feel the time is right to do this. It will take time to take shape and deliver results, but we’ve got a long-term plan and vision, as well as a great environment to work in.”

Originally planning to workshop, present and premiere the “psychedelic jungle cabaret” Hanuman Spaceman in vocalist Channthy Kak’s remote village in Prey Veng province, Julien said he opted instead for Kampot “because of all the facilities available and our local contacts, including Katharina Glynne, who did a lot of the leg-work ahead of the team arriving. The opportunity to work with Kampot Traditional Music School was also amazing and the results were beyond our initial expectations.”

Julien says it was way back in 2007 when he first noticed the potential in the Kampot arts scene through visiting and learning about the work of Epic Arts, a UK-founded inclusive arts organisation. Having watched the town transform over the years since, Julien remarks, “The place has changed a lot, evolving into a popular backpacker destination with far more hipster types around, Western style cafes and groovy stuff… a great place for a continually developing arts scene, and because of this, attracting all sorts of artists from abroad. Hopefully, this influx will have a positive impact on the local Cambodian artists too, and we’ll see new ideas emerge.”

Indeed, the growth of an arts scene catalysed and maintained by a predominantly Western community raises a number of questions regarding its impact on the local community. Katharina maintains that, so far, her experience of involving and engaging Khmer audiences at music and arts events in Kampot have been nothing but positive.

“One thing that I have noticed with the creative events that Lightbox and others have done, and this whole creative energy that has started to circulate around Kampot, is how well it’s been received. There’s a real energy and excitement towards the cultural happenings that are emerging amongst not just the tourists and the expats, but especially amongst the locals – young, old and everything in between. We’ve had people as young as two years old, all the way through to my neighbour, the grandpa of the neighbourhood who’s hovering somewhere around the late 80s, attend our events with enthusiasm and speak excitedly about the creative energy that seems to be emerging.”

She adds, “What we’ve been especially aware of at Lightbox is that we want to make events accessible, open and approachable, above all, for the Khmer audience, so we’ve always focused on advertising bilingually with images that are clear and appealing, and we’ve found that the flyers are well received.”

Phnom Penh’s well-established French-born street artist Chifumi attests to this observation. Reflecting on his time creating murals in Kampot shortly after painting at the MIC event, he says, “The atmosphere [following MIC] was totally insane, so we absolutely wanted to stay longer in town and paint on the streets. As it is not in Phnom Penh, it was really easy to get permission – dealing with the walls’ owners was no problem. The locals were really friendly and the neighborhood was so nice. All the community and neighbours were pleased to see us there. Local kids were playing around and we quickly became an attraction. As we were painting three days in a row, they started to get to know us and came day by day to check the works’ progress, staying with us for very long periods, just watching.”

By all accounts, Kampot is irrefutably undergoing an artistic revolution of some kind, with positive outcomes for the most part. However, is there a chance that the very draw card of this humble city may eventually lead to its undoing? As Kampot’s laidback, sultry vibe continues to attract more and more creative individuals, this expansion must surely incur some serious long-term implications for the city’s artists, whose income is at least partially dependent on low competition.

Natalie reflects, “The only negative outcome I could see to a larger art scene would be unrealistic expectations – it can be hard to make a living as an artist anywhere in the world. I’m not sure how many creative types the town can support, if that’s your sole source of income.”

Furthermore, as the city’s art scene grows, so too does the population as a whole. Katharina asserts, however, that this is something of which the citizens of Kampot are fully aware and ready to steer in a positive direction, through collaboration rather than competition.

“What myself and quite a few other people in the community recognise is that we have the opportunity for really ethical, positive development in Kampot. We don’t want to turn into the next Sihanoukville – as much as we love Snooky! It’s unlikely though. Kampot is geared towards developing in an artistic and cultural sense. A place where people can come to celebrate alternative events and work together to keep building upon and nourishing the creative community we have created here.”

Digital soothsayers: A new breed of entrepreneur pushes fortune telling into the electronic age

Laptops. Smartphones. A crowded air-conditioned office. Young men gather around to look at a Cambodian game that one of them probably created: cows vs. tigers. Then their interest switches to a 3D image of a witch that pops out of a photograph when they take a picture using a new app. This is the office of the JC IT Company in Phnom Penh, a Japan-Cambodia enterprise that focuses mostly on developing apps for clients in Japan. No one here seems to take fortunetelling seriously.

“No, I don’t believe [in daily horoscopes],” admits web developer Loch Khemarin. “I just believe that every day is a good day.”

But it was here that Cambodian programmers created the Daily Fortune app, which makes predictions about each day of a person’s life based on his or her Chinese year sign. Just two weeks after it was released for iPhone on December 31 2014, the app has been downloaded more than 4,000 times, according to data from the company. More than 2,000 android users also installed Daily Fortune on their phones.

“It’s a hit because it’s growing very fast. Four thousand in two weeks is not normal,” Khemarin says. “Some people believe [in it], or maybe [they want] some encouragement from good fortune [to] feel better, but sometimes they just want to play.”

There are now at least eight Cambodian fortunetelling and horoscope apps in Apple’s store. All the apps are free, and some, such as Khmer Horoscope and Fortune Teller Khmer, appear in the list of the top local apps.

The app that the JC IT Company developed features bright colors, stars and large pictures of animals from the Chinese zodiac. Today, for instance, if you happen to have been born in the year of the rooster, the app advises that you need to work harder and avoid conflicts with others.

Khemarin says that the predictions are authentic because his company purchases them daily from a real fortuneteller. He does not reveal the name of the fortuneteller, however, explaining that only his boss, not currently in the office, knows his name.

Khemarin admits his parents believe in fortunetelling more than he does. For instance, his father has told him about a handwritten book in his village in Kampong Cham Province. He says the magic book, which has been copied from 19th Century manuscripts, can make predictions about a person’s life based on his or her name and date of birth.

If someone could photocopy this book, maybe they could use it to make another fortunetelling app, helping ancient fortunes to skip right over the printing press into the digital age.

In any case, the JC IT company is currently planning to make another fortunetelling game that will include lucky colours, lucky items, love and career advice, and will be available in Japanese and English in addition to Khmer.

The lucky SIM card app

Not all Cambodian fortunetelling apps were created by companies. Sok Ratha, a self-taught 34-year-old programmer, made some on his own.

“In 2012 I saw that there is a market for apps because at that time people started using smartphones, but there were not many apps for Cambodian people,” he says. “Then I started learning [how to make apps] by myself.”

The first app he made is called SIM FengShui. It tells you if a new telephone number will be a lucky number for you. Just plug a potential phone number into the app and read the prediction.

“For businessmen, they believe the number is very important for them,” Ratha says. “In the phone shops, they also have a way to calculate if your number is good or bad, so I turned it into an app.”

As for himself, the developer says he believes in fortunetelling 50/50: “You can’t depend on faith. You have to depend on yourself. Just like if you want something, you cannot just sit at home and wait for it to come to you,” he says. “But sometimes, even if you try, you cannot get that thing. It’s 50/50.”

The Palm Tree Leaves app

Another app Ratha made is based on the custom of Khmer palm leaf reading. The way it works traditionally, he explains, is as follows: when you go to a pagoda, there is a stack of palm leaves with stories from the Buddha’s life and the lives of Khmer kings written on them. You place a stack of palm leaves on your head and put a stick into the middle. Then you read the palm leaf that the stick touched and the monks interpret its meaning for you.

To make this app, Ratha copied the text from the palm leaves at the Banon Pagoda in Battambang province. He didn’t explain to the middle-aged monk, who didn’t even own a smartphone, why he needed the palm leaves.

“I just told him I need it for my own work,” Ratha says.

The ChakKumPy (“Ancient Khmer Palm Leaves Reading”) app works by generating a random number and then the text from a palm leaf that corresponds to it. On a recent test run, for example, the app read, “The ship of Preah Chonok was smashed in the sea and was saved by an angel. Later on, his father gave him the throne. Prediction: This is very good indeed. You will get the support from others if you meet any difficulties.”

More than 150,000 people downloaded the app, according to Ratha’s data. One of these users is 22-year-old Yem Rathana, a university graduate and mother of a nine-month-old baby. Rathana has already heard some memorable predictions from human fortunetellers. When she was getting married, she says, she was told that her marriage would be unlucky unless it took place on a Friday (she followed the advice). And, the fortuneteller warned, either she or her husband would die if her first baby was female (luckily, she had a baby boy).

Unlike a human fortuneteller, however, the app costs nothing and is easy to use. She usually checks it when she wakes up from a dream about a ghost or a car accident, she says.

“I was just looking in the App Store and I found it,” she says. “I don’t use it every day, just when I feel horrible or I feel sad or unhappy, then I go and see. It makes me feel better.”

The luckiest wedding day

One tool that no one in Cambodia has made so far is an app to consult couples on the best day to get married. To find this special date, Cambodians must still seek the advice of a monk.

“I want to make it, but we don’t have the source. I don’t know how they [the monks] learn to calculate it,” Ratha says. “We have to have a reliable source. Otherwise, people will complain that we just make a random prediction. You can’t just cheat people like that. Trust is very important in this kind of business.”

Human fortunetellers vs. free apps

So do human fortunetellers worry about losing their business to the free apps? So far, no.

Chanthou, a fortuneteller on Riverside who charges about $1.50 for her services, says the app can’t be true because it can’t connect with the spirit. On a recent evening, she accurately told a girl that she had had an abortion and advised her to make more offerings to the ancestors if she wanted to keep a happy marriage.

Nearby, a 77-year-old fortuneteller, Sor Phean, also expresses doubts about the apps. He says seeing a person’s face helps him to make accurate predictions. Sor Phean, who has 30 years of experience looking into other people’s futures, says he wants to buy a mobile phone but can’t afford one. So rather than talking about the apps, with which he isn’t familiar, he prefers to tell a journalist about her future.

“You will get married next year,” he says. “If someone asks you to get married after Khmer New Year, you should say yes.”

While most Cambodian fortunetelling apps are only in Khmer, some have been translated to English. Search the Apple App Store for Fortune Teller EN, Chak Kum Py, and Lucky Number to check them out.

Stepping up to a new stage

Cambodian film will celebrate its largest cinematic premiere since the days of Norodom Sihanouk when Cambodian Son debuts Jan 29 with a red-carpet gala affair at Major Cineplex. The film opens citywide Jan 30.

Produced by Anida Yoeu Ali and directed by Japanese filmmaker Masahiro Sugano, Cambodian Son follows Kosal Khiev, a Cambodian-American spoken word artist and ex-convict, on his journey to the United Kingdom to perform in the 2012 Cultural Olympiad, an international poetry event held in parallel to the Olympics.

Cambodian Son is a documentary. But in the hands of Sugano, until now a fiction filmmaker, the movie unravels like a feature film. In Khiev, Sugano finds a compelling, flawed character and unlikely underdog to represent Cambodia in the 2012 event, also known as the Poetry Parnassus.

Cambodian Son represents the latest in a growing body of powerful contemporary cinema that includes Rithy Panh’s The Missing Picture, which was nominated for an Oscar in 2014, Kulikar Sotho’s The Last Reel, Davy Chou’s Golden Slumbers and Kalyanne Mam’s A River Changes Course.

“It just feels like we are back,” said Ali of her country and its once again burgeoning arts and cinema scene. “We almost died. All of this almost got annihilated. Our culture was desecrated to rock bottom. We were left for dead with nobody around and, just like Kosal’s story, we’re all climbing out of it and back to the light, back to life.”

At the time of Khiev’s selection, the Parnassus was the planet’s largest-ever gathering of poets. Each country participating in the 2012 Olympic Games sent a single representative. More than 6,000 were nominated. Only 204 were chosen.

Khiev’s selection to the Parnassus was the event that compelled the trio to start filming. The moment seemed too big to let slip away, even if everyone involved sensed that the road ahead was likely to be rocky. “It just felt like if we didn’t start rolling the camera then we were going to lose it, lose the moment and all the things that come with that,” Ali said. “It was impulsive.”

Sugano, a filmmaker trained in fiction and production, perhaps knew best the dangers of documentary moviemaking. The Osaka native completed his master’s at the University of Illinois in Chicago, the city of Hoop Dreams, an award-winning, $11 million grossing documentary about high-school basketball players. The crew originally estimated three weeks for filming. It ended up taking eight years.

“In a documentary, you keep filming without knowing when it’s going to end,” said Sugano, who is Ali’s husband and co-conspirator in Studio Revolt, the couple’s Phnom Penh media collaborative. “It seems ridiculous to me. You have to be crazy. As a matter of fact, all the documentary filmmakers I have met are crazy. It doesn’t make any economic sense – time, money, nothing.“

Yet, Sugano found it impossible to say no. Khiev was too rare a talent, the injustices done to him were too great, the social problems he personified were too widespread, and his selection to the Parnassus was too significant to leave the story untold.

“Kosal is a poster child for so many social and historical issues,” Sugano said. “He’s a poster child for the conflict in Southeast Asia, issues of immigration, racism in the US, gang problems, the war on drugs, excessive incarceration for children, hate, xenophobia, deportation, all those things I only read about in the newspaper.”

Kosal Khiev was born March 12, 1980, in a refugee camp on the Thai border. He immigrated as an infant to California, in the United States, with his mother and eight older siblings. He never knew his father, a man who, like so many others, disappeared from the camps and was never heard from again.

Khiev struggled to find his place growing up in Santa Ana, CA, a densely populated urban area about 30 kilometres east of Long Beach. He was in trouble early (and often). When he was 13, his mother shipped him to the New Bethany Home for Boys, a Christian school in Arcadia, Louisiana.

New Bethany seemed just as troubled as Khiev, if not more so. The home was often under investigation by police or welfare authorities. Stories of abuse that escaped from its barbed-wire fences included children being beaten with golf clubs and PVC pipe (PVC stood for “pound victims cruelly,” the children joked). Police found one 14-year-old boy “bound, in his underwear, on the floor of a dark and padlocked isolation cell,” according to reports.

After a year at New Bethany, Khiev returned to Santa Ana. At 16, he was convicted of attempted murder and sentenced to 16 years in prison. Because he had never completed a citizenship test, upon his release in 2010, at age 30, he was seized by immigration officials. Khiev spent another year in an immigration detention centre before being deported to Cambodia, a country in which he had never once set foot.

Against nearly impossible odds, Khiev grew up and got his mind right in prison. He took university classes and joined an art program. “You feel worthless when you’re in prison,” Khiev said. “You feel like you hold no valuable space. You’re just here in a cage. So on the inside, you try to create worth, you try to create value.”

Khiev found his greatest salvation in poetry and spoken word, and he planned for a day he could pursue his art on the outside. His dreams were almost prophetic.

“I used to talk to the guys inside, and we’d talk about dreams.

‘So, what do you want to do?’

‘Man, one day, I’ll be in the Olympics. Not participating in the Olympics, I just want to go to the Olympics. That’s just one of those things I want to do.’ Especially after the Beijing games, I was like, ‘Wow, this is spectacular. That’s what humans can actually do when coming together. One day. One day I will be there.’”

Getting selected for the Parnassus put that “one day” on his calendar. “I just couldn’t believe it,” Khiev said. “It’s a dream to even think about it. This is one of the biggest stages I’ll ever be on.”

It was bigger than the Apollo or Def Jam Poetry stages he had fantasised about performing on while honing his craft in solitary confinement. “This was even bigger than that,” Khiev said. “I couldn’t even fathom; wow, is this all really happening?”

But first came the challenge of living it all out in front of Sugano’s camera, an assignment more complex than it first appeared.

“In the beginning it was really rough, because you’re always so conscious of someone there filming your every word, every action,” Khiev said. “I felt really vulnerable and uncomfortable.”

The creative process at times weighed heavily on all of them. Not only were they close friends, they were now work colleagues and three extremely passionate artists, each with strong ideas. Filming tested the strength of their relationships.

“As a media collaborative for us – myself, Masahiro and Kosal – I think it’s really been an incredible journey,” Ali said. ”Would we repeat it? I don’t know.”

The trio started with almost no money, and in the beginning it was financially difficult for everyone. Sugano was demanding, and Khiev, still coming to terms with life on the outside, often seemed unprepared for the rigours of a daily production schedule.

“It was hard,” Khiev said. “Masa is kind of like this totalitarian director. He wants what he sees and he sees what he wants.”

Sugano doesn’t completely disagree. “I’m Japanese, right? So I got my work ethic. It is embedded, beaten in, in Japan,” he said. “I also come from the film industry, which is really regimented, and you can still get cussed at as an intern. So there is that culture of severe commitment that I come from. I expect the same here. My wife always warns me not to bring out my Japanese on the Khmer people in my work expectations, but I can’t help it.”

Still, he realised that not everyone comes from the same privileged background that he did.

“Kosal himself is also not the most stable, boring person,” Sugano said. “He’s got temperament. He’s an artist. He spent time in prison. So he’s not necessarily the most well-adjusted in the ways of fulfilling commitments and what not. So I was always afraid that he might just disappear. That was always a big concern for me. So I didn’t know how much I could push him to find stories. There were moments when I had to take two steps back and give him room. That was the hardest part, actually.”

Slowly the three of them began to find, if not a groove, at least a tenable peace where they could all work and learn. A shared commitment to the bigger picture kept them focused.

“I knew from the get-go that I couldn’t do this for my career,” Sugano said. “I couldn’t do this for Kosal’s career. I had to do it for something bigger. And I actually talked about this with Kosal many times, because he was going to have to reveal a side of himself that he might not want people to see. But the bottom line was that this had nothing to do with me or him. When this story comes out, it will serve a cause much bigger than who we are. And that’s why we are anointed to be part of it. In many ways, we were sacrificed for something bigger. His privacy was sacrificed. My time and sanity were sacrificed.”

That bigger cause holds slightly different contours for each of them. For Sugano, his cause is the fight against the culture of hate and fear spreading across the globe. It’s based on labeling, us and them, and it allows us to castigate others without considering the humanity of our actions.

“We skip out on thinking of people as people,” Sugano said. “We just fall back on the label and get rid of people and that’s exactly how these guys got kicked out. They got labeled as criminal aliens.”

For Ali and Khiev, Cambodian Son takes on far more personal tones. “I think Kosal can really bring a complexity to the intersection of so many of these issues, whether it’s justice or immigration or geo-politics or the past Cambodia-US relations,” Ali said. “I think he can put a human face on it. In the end, he is somebody’s son who just wants to be home and to find where he belongs.”

That sense of belonging, or lack of it, seems pervasive among many Cambodian communities. Khmers who grow up abroad often struggle to find their place in foreign cultures. And in Cambodia, members of the diaspora are often viewed as less than native-born Khmers.

“For a local Khmer to watch this movie and then find a way to relate to this individual that looks nothing like their world, that to me is what it’s about,” Ali said. “That moment of relating to the outsider, to the underdog, that to me is that moment of finally connecting the diaspora with the Khmer who are here, that union of finally making Cambodia and the Khmer identity whole.”

“We need to feel good about who we are, because being who we were, that’s what got us in trouble,” she said. “Being artists, being middle class people, being professionals, that is what they tried to annihilate in that terrible revolution. But they can’t squash the spirit.”

Category: Features