Creativity, Coffee and Conflict

The stage is black. A distant tinkling is the only sound, resembling nothing so much as crockery clinking against crockery. The lights go up slowly. Crockery: a heaped morass of over 1,000 coffee cups slithering upstage seemingly with a mind of its own. Then, to the accompaniment of stark chords on an electric guitar, a hooded man emerges from the cup mountain and crawls face down towards the audience. Strange, surreal, sexy – it’s contemporary dance, but not as we know it. This is Kawa (‘coffee’ in Arabic), a performance exploring creative angst and the Arab Spring through the metaphor of everyone’s favourite morning beverage.

“We wanted to transfer the idea of making an espresso to our own situation as artists,” explains Hafiz Dhaou, co-choreographer of Chatha Dance Company by day, dancer crushed beneath coffee cups by night. Both the coffee-making and the creative process, according to Dhaou, involve the compression of a base product, be it coffee grains or personal experience, and the extraction of a palatable product. Performance, art, espresso, “it’s all about some form of pressure.”

Dhaou and his partner (in choreography and in life) Aicha M’Barek know something about the pressures brought to bear on today’s transcultural artists. Since founding Chatha in 2005 they have performed worldwide, taking their challenging interpretation of dance to theatres far-flung from their homes in Lyon and Tunis. In 2011 they choreographed an ensemble piece for the Ballet de Lorraine, France; 12 months later they are bringing Kawa, their one man show, to Phnom Penh. The Tunisian team does not shy away from pressure, apparently.

Kawa explores the effect of this pressure on the artist through its expressionist choreography. The piece “explores the body’s possibilities for generating movement without relying on established forms of dance”, creating an alternative gestural lexicon of movement. Dhaou spends most of the performance spinning skittishly in circles, orbiting the stage with hands clamped over his ears, or standing with his back to the audience. Such dramaturgical techniques smack of Bertolt Brecht’s political theatre, throwing out the traditional semiological system and forcing observers to engage critically in an attempt to understand the strange phenomenon unfolding on stage.

These Brechtian shadows imply a deeper layer of meaning to Kawa. As Dhaou shakes and shrugs between the coffee cups, a recording of Mahmoud Darwich, exiled Palestinian writer and member of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, recites a poetic paean to coffee. As the poem makes way for melancholy electronica the dancer’s movements become spasmodic, as if he were being rent by polar forces; he resembles a man internally at war, although the reasons for this conflict are difficult for the observer’s naked eye to determine. Dhaou arranges the coffee cups strategically around the stage, constricting and demarking the once open space. As he places each cup carefully in position, he locates them as on a map – Beirut, Tripoli, Amman. The contrast between the meticulous placing of the cups and Dhaou’s body in constant flux creates a tension of immiscible forces contained within the same constricted space.

Although Dhaou and M’Barek are reluctant to describe their choreography as “political”, an audience faced with a Tunisian dancer writhing to the rhythm of a Palestinian poem inevitably reaches for wider meaning. At a recent festival in Berlin, Dhaou rejected the role of spokesman for the internecine strife sweeping across the Arab world, steering the conversation towards the question of the artist in society. But it’s hard not to see Kawa as both an expression of internal conflict and current political upheaval: the body as metaphor for nation state, united in form but continually in flux, searching for a way to balance conflicting forces while maintaining its original identity. Kawa is substantially deeper than your average cup of espresso.

WHO: Chatha Dance Company
WHAT: Kawa, solo contemporary dance
WHERE: Chenla Theatre
WHEN: 7pm June 8
WHY: Dancing up a storm in a coffee cup

 

The great vanishing

The first thing one notices about Jeff Perigois’ photographs of Boeung Kak Lake is the sense of absence. His images of the area in northern Phnom Penh—once the location of the city’s biggest body of water and now home to its biggest vacant lot—have an almost post-apocalyptic feel to them. The dramatic, mostly black-and-white photos of the transformed urban landscape, often cowering under roiling clouds, will be on display at his one-man show, Boeung Kak Was a Lake, at Meta House starting June 2.

The controversy surrounding Boeung Kak is well known to many. In 2008, contractors began pumping sand into the lake in preparation for a large-scale development project that will result in the construction of commercial and residential properties where once there was water. But critics from the outset have worried about the environmental and social costs of the project. Many homes and businesses have been displaced and the efforts of some families to resist mandatory relocation have met with official force.  Just last week, 13 women were given jail terms for protesting the demolition of the homes of one-time residents.

“This kind of thing is happening everywhere,” said Perigois, who took his photos at Boeung Kak in April 2011 and then again in April this year. “Things must change, and we need development so that people do not remain poor, but should we really be doing it this way?”

For him, the lake’s filling is another instance of the natural environment being replaced by concrete and he wanted to document how it has affected the people who live there. He didn’t set out to make grand gestures, and the people in his images are engaged in everyday activities—a woman selling coffee, a boy pushing his motorbike. But they are surrounded by a world that has been torn asunder by powerful financial interests over which they have no control.

Still, some of his photos do have something of the grandiose about them. While in this instance the natural world has been uprooted by man, in Perigois’ images, nature still dominates. Even the skyscrapers of Phnom Penh’s quickly changing skyline seem lost in the landscape. “No matter how much we build, we are still small compared to nature,” he said.

Perigois, 42, hails from Brittany in western France. Two decades ago he met an older photographer he wanted to learn from. The man told Perigois to take his camera out to the streets and present the world from his own perspective. He later learned the man had been a student of Robert Doisneau, one of France’s most renowned photographers, and the advice he had been given was golden.

Perigois first started coming to Asia 14 years ago and has made Cambodia his base for the last five. He has always been attracted to the country’s natural landscape and its people, which is why he was drawn to the lake and its residents, and to this dramatic transformation. “I am just a witness to this, what we are doing to the world.”

WHO: Jeff Perigois
WHAT: Boeung Kak Was a Lake, photography exhibition
WHERE: Meta House, #37 Sothearos Blvd
WHEN: June 2
WHY: See what happens when a lake disappears

 

Stories to tell

A book could never hold all the images that John Vink amassed during 12 years of photographing evictions in Cambodia. Nor could a lorry contain the outrage.

Suspicious fires gutted some communities. At others, there was little left for guesswork – police came with torches and set the places alight. In a single week in November 2001, two large Phnom Penh neighbourhoods went up in smoke, displacing more than 2,500 families.

The worst was Sambok Chap, a half-dozen hectares of crumbling shanties otherwise situated on primo capital real estate.

“[Homeowners] took sledgehammers to demolish their homes of corrugated iron and wooden posts before the flames consumed them. They would need these materials to rebuild,” writes journalist Robert Carmichael in John Vink’s new iPad app, Quest for Land. “Soon sirens punched holes in the smoke-filled air as the men of Phnom Penh’s fire brigade arrived, sweating in donated jackets and bulky helmets, to aim jets of water from leaky hoses. They would focus on saving one house before moving rapidly onto another, the beneficiaries of a desperate bidding war between the better-off homeowners.”

And on it goes: 20 chapters, some 700 photographs and 20,000 words of more outrage.

Quest for Land, available on iTunes, represents more than a decade of work for Vink, a member of the prestigious agency Magnum Photos. The app delves into more than just evictions. In photography and prose, Vink and Carmichael explore the significance that land holds in Cambodian life, and the profound upheaval that is caused by losing it.

Born in Belgium in 1948, Vink moved permanently to Phnom Penh in 2000, and almost immediately set upon covering forced relocations – first in Poipet, where casino heavies were pushing the poor onto minefields, then in Phnom Penh, where those newly displaced families came seeking redress from a tin-eared government.

A working photo-journalist since the early1970s, Vink says the iPad not only represents a new medium to conquer, it offers a superior way to tell the story.

A book, he says, represents the quintessential way to complete a project, the “perfect balance between content and intention”. But with print publishing, there are always compromises to be made.

“The publisher has a say,” Vink explains. “He will say ‘No, I don’t want that cover, because it’s not commercial.’ He will say ‘Sorry, you want 180 pages? No way. It’s going to be 120, for economic reasons. You want paper that thick, no, sorry, cannot. It will be a soft cover.’ And you end up with a crappy little book.”

An app offers far greater creative control and far fewer constraints. “I feel much freer here than in a book. In a book, you really have restrictions because of the technique of printing. Here, the restrictions are the ability to programme; it definitely offers much more possibility than a book.”

Sound, video and slideshows all represent new media frontiers for the modern photographer. But ultimately, it is the plight of other humans that compels Vink to risk his safety for the sake of making pictures.

“Probably to do with my past, I guess, my childhood. I am not happy when I see injustice.”

WHO: John Vink, Magnum Photos
WHAT: Quest for Land, iPad app
WHEN: Now
WHERE: iTunes, johnvink.com/quest
WHY: Best app yet by a Magnum shooter

DJ Vajra: Reigning DMC world champ

The wings of the world’s fastest hummingbird beat at an astonishing 90 strokes per second, propelling this tiny creature through the air like a torpedo at speeds of up to 71 miles an hour. To the naked human eye, its wings oscillate so quickly they appear almost motionless in midair. Thousands of minuscule feathers blur together as one – an optical illusion that calls to mind the fingers of a world-class DJ.

Few, if any, turntablists boast wing muscles that make up 30% of their body weight, but the sheer manual dexterity required to join the rank of superstar DJ is not to be underestimated. Take Vajra (real name: Chris Karns), for example: the Denver-born lad once described by a Colorado newspaper as ‘an unassuming record clerk from Boulder’ is today the reigning DMC World DJ Champion – and is flying in to play in Phnom Penh later this month.

Launched by the Disco Mix Club in London in 1985, the DMC contest swiftly proved a breeding ground for turntable tricks and tricksters alike. Props, body tricks and scratching techniques burst forth from the decks as DJs used bicycles, billiard cues, American footballs and even a kitchen sink to coax never-before-heard sounds out of vinyl records. Run DMC, Public Enemy, Janet Jackson and James Brown queued around the block to join the finalists on the podium.

Locked in their studios for months at a time, these are the DJs for whom the turntable is a musical instrument, in much the same way a guitar is to Carlos Santana.Each competitor spends up to one whole year perfecting what will ultimately boil down to 360 seconds of flawless creativity.

“To be a DMC champ, you need to be dedicated and practice endlessly until you’ve perfected a six-minute set,” says DJ Illest, one of the owners of Pontoon night club in Phnom Penh. “I’ve always been amazed at how dedicated DMC DJs are and I have much respect for the DMC, which has helped DJs evolve technically. The DJs are judged on various criteria, such as technique; creativity; energy; crowd interaction, and body tricks. They perform basically an entire musical composition using just two decks and a mixer.

“The difference between a regular DJ and a DMC DJ – or one from any of those competitions – is that the guys who compete might be great technically, but they might not always make a great club DJ. You can be technically really good and do an amazing six-minute thing, but if you don’t feel the crowd, it’s just for show. That’s why it’s great to have Vajra here: he has the skills to be a party rocker as well.

“Vajra is one of those DJs who can combine showcasing his skills with a party-rocker set, meaning he’s going to rock the crowd all night. At some point he will do tricks, very briefly so people won’t even realise he’s doing it, or he’ll purposely make a break to get people’s attention, almost like a DMC thing. They do really amazing stuff.”

As he speaks, Illest’s hands are moving across the decks in his Tuol Kork home studio at what appears to be the speed of sound. Lithe fingers stop and start spinning vinyl, bending beats and surgically splicing compatible vocals. The cross-fader slams back and forth in a blur, blinking lights monitoring the music’s vital signs. Baby scratches, flares and chirps burst out of a wall of speakers, a mattress propped against one wall, presumably by way of soundproofing. Neatly grouped on top of an ageing PC is a small pile of discarded record needles – casualties on this sonic battlefield.

“I’m not a DMC champ, but I do what I can,” he hollers above the now thunderous hip-hop. “It was a DMC competition that first got me started about 15 years ago. It was very inspiring. I grew up in Paris, in the French hip-hop environment, so we had a lot of influence from the States, like Grandmaster Flash. It was thanks to DJ D Nasty’s radio show that I first heard scratching and thought, ‘This is different.’

“Scratching isn’t just making the record go back and forth and using a fader or cross-fader to make sounds, you can actually make a melody out of scratch, or it can be used as a percussion instrument. There are too many effects and scratches to name them all here, but basically scratching is like talking: the more scratches you know, the more vocabulary you have.

“First, world-class scratch DJs all have really quick hands. There are several training techniques. You can put a weight on your wrist, so you have something heavy on your hand while you practice. Then when you take it off to perform, your hand feels like it does after you’ve been lifting heavy weights at the gym and then pick up something light – it just floats. You can also use the same thing guitarists use to practice flexing their fingers faster and faster.

“Pontoon has brought DMC champs in the past – DJ Cash Money, the world champ in 1988; DJ ND, Belgian DMC champ in 2009, and DJ Asian Hawk, UK DMC champ – but we’ve never had the current champ before. DJ Vajra is known for his amazing DJ skills: scratching; beat juggling; recreating beats with two copies of the same record; doing scratching tricks. We expect his performance to showcase his technical skills and at the same time rock the crowd.

“As for the local scene, I hope to one day see a DMC competition here in Cambodia and I hope that DJ Gang, who I taught, and DJ Blue of the CP5 DJ crew will represent this country. Talent is everywhere: Gang and Blue are still very young and have the right DJ attitude. They’ve found their own identity.”

WHO: DJ Vajra
WHAT: Reigning DMC World DJ Champion
WHERE: Pontoon, St. 172
WHEN: 11pm June 15
WHY: See under ‘What’

 

In orb of futility, reminders of the country’s brutal past

Great artists push boundaries, expanding the definition of art until it becomes indefinable. Cambodian artists are no exception. Not long ago, Sareth Svay undertook a journey from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh which lasted more than eight nights and nine days, dragging behind him an 80kg metal sphere measuring two metres in diameter and carrying only basic food, water and a blue tarpaulin. His extraordinary feat of endurance art was called simply Mon Boulet.

Sareth grew up in the Site 2 camp on the Thai border, and it was there he first studied art (he later went on to found the Phare Phonlue Selepak art school in Battambang). His earliest memory is the blue tarpaulin on which he slept: his rudimentary bed on the floor of the forest. Decades later, the brightly coloured tarpaulin is still a significant motif among his childhood memories.

After studying in France, Sareth returned home to confront the traces of Cambodia’s recent history, and this is where the immense sphere figures into his work. “The ball is a souvenir from the past. The ball and harness allude to the European phrase ‘ball and chain’.” It signifies personal baggage, entrapment and restricted movement: Mon Boulet was a task of continual resistance against the dragging force.

The project isn’t just the metaphorical conception of a man dragging the past behind him; Mon Boulet refers to the efforts of the men, women and children who endured forced labour under the Khmer Rouge: “Men would be harnessed to carts and made to drag things behind them in the fields.”

Over the course of its journey, Sareth’s ball has been inscribed by many different hands. “People have so many questions they want to ask. I cannot remember them all, there are so many. So I have asked people to write their questions on the ball.” The sphere is thus marked by individual voices, each asking their own questions regarding the civil war; each using Mon Boulet to satisfy their need to have those questions addressed. They do not expect a verbal or written answer; they seek release from the question itself through the enduring movement of Sareth and his multifarious ball.

For those critics who continue to question the point of Sareth’s labour, there is none. That is the point. Like Sisyphus, Sareth’s journey may never have an end. He’s working through questions posed by history but probably won’t find an answer. Albert Camus, the Frech philosopher, considers that Sisyphus, being conscious of the futility of his struggle, can draw victory from his captors. That Sisyphus trundles back down the mountain to push the rock back up to the summit again, that Sareth bothers to harness himself to a metal sphere, confirms that man has not been exhausted. To make the endeavour “makes fate a human matter, which must be settled by men”. Sareth claims man’s fate from Cambodia’s tragic history and from his own past simply by enduring Mon Boulet, his self-imposed task.

Sareth prefers work that moves across great distances, which makes seeing him rather tricky. His journey was, however, filmed – and it is about to take on a different life as a film and exhibition. Mon Boulet remarks upon history by mimicking its evolution from event to museum, giving us the chance to consider Sareth’s work and the changes it is about to make to art history.

WHO: Sareth Svay
WHAT: Mon Boulet
WHEN: May 31 to June 23
WHERE: Institut Français du Cambodge, St. 184
WHY: Catch a glimpse of man’s eternal struggle

 

Speed Merchants

When the man dubbed rugby’s ‘most dangerous winger in the world’ expresses an interest in coming to Cambodia, it’s safe to assume  the country’s love for funny shaped balls is finally coming of age.

Not before time: first introduced by expats in the 19th century, when Cambodia was part of French Indochina, this ‘sport for thugs, played by gentlemen’ is, for the first time since independence, reclaiming its place in the national consciousness.

And this time, the boisterous melee of rucks, scrums and mauls is no longer the sole preserve of visiting foreigners. Of the 340-something rugby players registered with the Cambodian Federation of Rugby (CFR) today, almost 300 are native Cambodians – and, by all accounts, they’re putting their international mentors to shame.

Little wonder, then, that Rory Underwood MBE – one of the sport’s all-time greats, with a total of 91 internationals and not a single second spent on the bench – will be touching down in Phnom Penh later this month. Half Malay, England’s record try scorer and one of the highest profile names in world rugby (he chalked up 85 caps and 49 tries for England during his two-decade career) has long harboured a love of Asian rugby. And it is the inexorable rise of the sport here in Cambodia that prompted his overture to its governing body.

“This guy called Tim who runs a rugby club in Dubai is a friend of the CFR and he knows all the ex-England players,” says CFR Tournament Director James Sterling, a fellow Englishman and former prop. “I got this random email from him saying: ‘Rory fancies a gig in Cambodia. How about it?’ It was that easy. I now have a list of other players who also want to come over, including Will Greenwood and Gavin Hastings.”

With Rory’s brother Tony on the opposite flank, the Underwoods became the first siblings since 1938 to represent England in the same team during its surge to the top of world rugby in the early 1990s. Rory, a one-time Royal Air Force pilot (much of his career came during rugby’s amateur era and when not scoring tries, he could be found at the controls of winged behemoths such as the Hawk TMk1A and Tornado GR1) was part of England’s famed midfield four, alongside Rob Andrew, Will Carling and Jerry Guscott.

A member of the England squad during the inaugural Rugby World Cup of 1987, Rory made his third and final World Cup appearance in South Africa in 1995. It was a tournament of mixed emotions: Rory scored two tries in the semi-final against New Zealand; the only problem was that the All Blacks had on their side a certain Jonah Lomu, who Carling famously referred to as ‘a freak’. Standing almost two metres tall and weighing in at 125kg, this Aucklander of Tongan descent – generally regarded as rugby union’s first global superstar – ran in a devastating four tries to dump England out.

Rory retired from international rugby the following year, but many of his statistics still outshine those of the best 15 years after his bowing out: the 49 tries he scored for England is still 18 ahead of joint second-placed Will Greenwood and Ben Cohen, with Jeremy Guscott next in the list on 30. Today, his focus is more on rugby development, hence his planned tour of the country’s most notable teams and guest speaking at the CFR’s annual fundraising gala dinner on May 26. And perhaps nowhere is rugby developing faster than right here on Cambodian soil.

“Our biggest hope is to boost rugby’s presence in the country,” says James. “The number of people coming to watch matches has increased massively. If it’s Garuda, which is a very Khmer team, you’ll get maybe 100 Khmers coming to watch. If it’s the Sisowath Knights, you’ll probably get about 200 expats coming to watch and at least 100 Khmers. It’s bizarre, but it’s getting there.”

The fan base may be a little lop-sided (at one final, 300 spectators turned up but they were all Cambodian and all rooting for the same team), but the CFR claims several coups. “We’ve had one huge coup: the undersecretary of state for the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports is a rugby fan and he’s signing off on rugby joining the state curriculum, on a voluntary basis. School kids have never been allowed to play before without permission. Most of our kids come from disadvantaged backgrounds. In the Russei Keo team, most of the kids are from the slums, but they play at the local high school and the students wanted to join in. Now, that’s no problem.”

Slightly less lop-sided is the teams’ gender make-up. “In Cambodia, there are three women’s teams and they beat the French every time. Last year at the Angkor 10s, on the main day, to give the guys a break, we put in two women’s teams – and the best match performance, as voted for by the 300 guys who were playing, was the women.

“Our head referee is a woman and we have eight or nine trainees, six of whom are women – they’ll all be going to referee school. All the women Khmer players came from the NGO Pour un Sourir d’Enfant. They’re all ex-rubbish dump kids – break your arms as soon as look at you – but they’re really good girls. At the Angkor 10s, they were all rough and ready, beating the crap out of each other on the pitch, then they turned up to the dinner afterwards in ball gowns. Lovely.

“What I find amazing is that we’re starting to get more and more into the social side of rugby, which is huge. Our national team is great fun – and they’re mostly Khmer. They used to be really introverted, but the social side is just kicking in. The men are really getting into it; the girls are slowly catching on. I can’t explain why; it just happened. They’re real party animals. Trust me, I saw them in Laos…”

What exactly transpired in Laos may be a closely guarded secret, but the now 12-year-old CFR is less reticent about its biggest milestone yet. “Nearly ready for release is the architectural tender for the Cambodian National Rugby Stadium, which we’d like to have completed by the Angkor 10s 2014. It’s completely donor-funded, with a national pitch made big enough so that we can rent it to people like cricket clubs and the AFL; two training pitches; a 3,000-people stand; gym; medical centres and everything.” Half the required funding has already been secured, thanks to Japan’s World Cup Legacy Fund (Japan will become the first Asian nation to host rugby union’s ultimate contest in 2019), and the rights to televise matches are currently being discussed with two Cambodian networks.

In the meantime, Cambodia is readying itself for a grudge match against Laos on June 30; national team The Koupreys are preparing to compete in the South East Asian Games in 2013 and the Asian Games in 2014; and the return of rugby to a place of prominence is a matter of national pride. “Pre-war, there were some French rugby teams here,” says James. “There’s a little old Khmer lady in Tuol Kork, the neighbour of one of my staff; we were talking about rugby and she said: ‘I remember rugby. I remember back in the 1960s and 1970s, kids playing rugby here. It’s great, I love it!’

“The Cambodian teams, particularly our young deaf team, The Tigers, are so excited that someone from England is coming especially to see them – and he’s famous.”

Tickets for the gala dinner ($85 in advance; $95 on the door) can be bought online via events@nullcambodiarugby.net, or at Score Bar, The Green Vespa, or Aussie XL.

WHO: Former England rugby player Rory Underwood
WHAT: Cambodian Federation of Rugby’s Annual Gala Dinner
WHERE: NagaWorld Grand Ballroom
WHEN: 6:30pm May 26
WHY: To help fund Cambodia’s growing love of funny shaped balls

 

Filmmaking’s new guard to celebrate Chaktomuk Short Film Contest winners

From 1960 to 1975, Cambodian directors made some 500 films, an average of more than 30 per year. But then the Khmer Rouge came and wiped the film industry out of existence. It has never really recovered. Today, maybe one or two movies make it to the screen every year.

“It’s not good,” says Seila Prum, summing up the general state of Cambodian filmmaking. “You can’t really call it an industry today.”

Prum, an independent filmmaker and videographer himself, wants to do something about that. He joined up with other film lovers to form the collective Kon Khmer Koun Khmer (‘Cambodian Film, Cambodian Youth’) to make films and show Cambodia what their country used to be able to do with celluloid.

He and his partners’ most recent project was the Chaktomuk Short Film Contest 2012, which asked aspiring filmmakers under 30 to create short films from one to five minutes. In March, an international jury chose three prizewinners. Now, the wider public will get to see those stand-outs as well as the other entries at Meta House on May 23 and get a taste of what the future of Cambodian film might well look like.

The theme of this year’s contest was ‘love’, and the films’ subjects ran the gamut from blossoming affection between two people to love found, lost and then regained for a bicycle, to a more destructive love affair with wine. Jury members, who hailed from as far away as Australia and France, looked at criteria such as scriptwriting, camera use and editing, as well as how the young filmmakers used the medium to tell their stories.

None of the contest participants are professional filmmakers, and while some of them had semi-professional equipment, others were armed only with small digital cameras with a video function. The results speak to their enthusiasm and love of the craft.

“Our goal is to reach people who want to make films and encourage them to do it,” said Seila. “A lot of them simply lack confidence.”

Seila acknowledges that the Cambodian film scene still has a long road ahead of it. There is a serious skills deficit, he says, and then there’s the money issue. Seila is realistic enough to know that Cambodian films aren’t going to see big international distributors knocking on the door anytime soon, but he does think some of these young people, given the right encouragement and mentoring, could get future films on the festival circuit. Who knows, next stop Hollywood?

The important thing, Seila says, is to nurture that early spark to see where it leads. “People who submitted to the contest are continuing to make their own films and try new things out,” he said.

A big turnout at Meta House could go far in giving budding filmmakers a little boost to keep on going. Viewers might just get a glimpse of the early work of a Khmer Jean-Luc Godard or a Steven Spielberg. Now that would be something to tell the grandkids.

WHO: Aspiring filmmakers
WHAT: Entries of the Chaktomuk Short Film Contest 2012
WHERE: Meta House, #37 Sothearos Blvd
WHEN: 7pm May 23
WHY: The next generation of Cambodian filmmakers at work

Facing a new future

French archaeologist Maurice Glaize, conservator of the ancient temples of Angkor between 1937 and 1945, once wrote of the gigantic grinning visages at Bayon: “Wherever one wanders, the faces of Lokesvara follow and dominate with their multiple presence.”

The enigmatic smile etched onto endless facades across the crumbling complex has the same bewitching quality as that of Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. Much has been written about who may have served as the model for the carved faces, some of which bear more than a hint of resemblance to 12th century Khmer king Jayavarman VII in the guise of Avalokitesvara, the great bodhisattva (enlightened being) in Buddhist lore who embodies the compassion inherent to all Buddhas.

To this day, it is a face many Cambodians turn to when confronted with the quest for national identity. And it’s a face 40 artists are about to brand with their own interpretation of precisely what that identity should be.

The Cambodia Mask Project, the end results of which will be given their public unveiling later this month, is a collaborative endeavour uniting Cambodian artists, old and new, with colleagues from across the globe, each tasked to interpret the same 60cm x 60cm papier mache face in their own way. Billed as an ‘exploration of the concepts of identity, role and history – past, present and future – in Cambodian society’, it’s a contest without limitations: the artists have been given complete freedom to chisel, spray, or otherwise decorate as they see fit.

“Masks have a distinct connection with Cambodia,” says project coordinator Steinunn Jakobsdóttir. “You see these faces everywhere, often on religious masks. The idea was to try to capture Cambodia’s identity through the use of masks, without making it religious. It’s a fun format for the artists to work with, because there are so many little details in the mask. They can build on it, they can add to it – absolutely 100% freedom of expression.

“We have 40 artists – a very good mix, both local and international, but mostly Cambodians. I started contacting artists in January, and with each artist I spoke to, I got introduced to another one and another one. It was a kind of snowball effect. There was so much interest and excitement. We have sculptors, street artists such as Peap Tarr and Lisa Mam, and painter Bo Rithy, a very exciting artist from Battambang. Among the internationals we have French street artist Julien ‘Seth’ Malland, an illustrator from Australia, and a photographer from the US.”

As with so many things, there’s more to the project than what appears at face value. During the exhibition, on June 3, a silent auction will be held to raise funds to support artists in a country where very few are able to make a living through art alone.

WHO: 40 local and international artists
WHAT: The Cambodian Mask Project
WHERE: The Plantation Hotel, #28 St. 184
WHEN: May 24 – June 23 (auction May 24 – June 3)
WHY: Witness the new Cambodia being unmasked

Proud & Loud

In May 1885, notorious Irish writer Oscar Wilde was definitely ‘out’. Convicted of gross indecency, he was sentenced to two years’ hard labour as penance for his homosexuality. As he was taken from the dock, Wilde asked the judge: “And I? May I say nothing?” The answer, apparently, was no; the trial’s spectators silenced Wilde with cries of “Shame!” Outted, certainly. Proud and loud… unhappily not.

Fast forward 117 years to Cambodia May 2012, and the last thing on anyone’s mind is shame or silence. Since 2009 the Kingdom’s LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) community has celebrated being ‘same same but different’ proudly and loudly with Gay Pride Week. Pride mixes activism, art and a week-long party, turning up the volume on those whose voices were previously marginalised and muted.

The unacknowledged silence frequently imposed on LGBT culture is examined and challenged by New Girl Law, a collaborative work by American writer/artist Anne Elizabeth Moore and a group of young Cambodian women. The work lays down 20 ‘new girl laws’ promoting gender equity for women in Cambodia, whatever their sexual orientation. In 2011 these ‘laws’ were published as a book, complete with an audio piece of the creation process.

Then the silencing began: first the audio was censored in the United States; then the laws themselves were disavowed by some of the very women with whom Moore had worked; finally, Moore herself has ‘censored’ New Girl Law for its Meta House premiere, blanking out the most controversial statements and leaving silent spaces throughout the exhibition. So what happened to being proud out loud?

“Demanding space for silence is my way of reminding people to listen,” explains Moore. “Maybe people will hear other voices. Once you begin to note where silence occurs, it becomes easier to see who is failing to be invited to speak.” However, Moore refuses to see her work as a clarion call for gender queer rights, bristling when asked if she agrees with the description of New Girl Law as ‘an account of teaching free speech where it’s least wanted’: “No, not at all. I guess it depends on who you ask.”

Picking up on the quiet questions posed by New Girl Law, the exhibition is designed to turn passive viewers into active participants. While part of the space is inhabited by New Girl Law, the show also features a Pride 2012 zine made by lesbian groups in Cambodia, and a ‘creative corner’ packed with zine-making materials. Exhibition-goers are encouraged to respond to the works around them by making their own zines or contributing to a larger group piece; by the close of Gay Pride Week this organic work will be hung alongside New Girl Law. And to those nay-sayers at the back asking “But is it Art??” (yes, you know who you are), Moore has a riposte ready: “Art is not possible without action. So of course, if you have some self-published work on the wall, you will also want to create a space for people to make their own. Why not?”

Exhibition curator Roger Nelson agrees, emphasising that the blurring of genres and forms “adds to our experience as audiences, and adds to the power and potential of both art and activism.” Nelson hopes that this admixture of art and action will lead to “conversation and dialogue – between artists, artworks and audiences – one of the primary functions of art and exhibitions”.

The exhibition therefore has a tidy circularity: acknowledging the historical silencing of LGBT culture, challenging you to engage with this silence, and creating a forum for everyone, gay, straight or curious, to make their voice heard. As Nelson says, “LGBT communities have so much to be proud of and so much to offer. They need to express this in each and every way they can.” Oscar Wilde would have been proud.

WHO: Anne Elizabeth Moore
WHAT: Conversations with Proud People
WHERE: Metahouse downstairs gallery
WHEN: May 11
WHY: If you’re out, you’re in

Price & Prejedice

Eight years ago, after watching televised footage of gay weddings being conducted in San Francisco, Cambodia’s ageing constitutional monarch did what for many conservative Buddhists would be the unthinkable.

The frail 81-year-old Norodom Sihanouk seated himself at his desk and, with pen in hand, proceeded to map out on paper his personal musings on same-sex marriage. The handwritten note, later posted on the king’s personal website, proved that advancing years are no barrier to an open mind.

As a “liberal democracy”, wrote the now retired king, Cambodia has a duty to allow “marriage between man and man… or between woman and woman”. He acknowledged his respect for the gay community, noting that they were the way they were because God loved “a wide range of tastes”. Transvestites too, Sihanouk urged, “should be accepted and well-treated in our national community”.

Sihanouk’s message stands in stark contrast to a public declaration made by Prime Minister Hun Sen just three years later. During a graduation ceremony in October 2007, the premier – hardly known for his liberal attitude – told students he was “disappointed” that his 19-year-old daughter, who he had adopted in 1988, was a lesbian.

“I have my own problem – my adopted daughter has a wife,” he said in front of more than 3,000 people. “Now I will ask the court to disown her from my family… We sent her to study in the US, but she did a bad job. She returned home and took a wife.” In the same breath, apparently unaware of his own hypocrisy, Hun Sen called on Cambodians to adopt a more tolerant attitude: “I urge parents of gays not to discriminate against them, and do not call them transvestites.”

The prime minister’s most stinging remarks were edited out of official versions of the speech that later aired on state media, but their memory still raises the hackles of more progressive audiences today. Among them is Hem Sokly, a project coordinator with the Cambodian Centre for Human Rights’ (CCHR) sexual orientation and gender identity project, launched in 2010.

Softly spoken and impeccably dressed, this bespectacled, slight-of-build young man (heterosexual himself, although one of his sisters is gay) is one of many squaring up against the prejudices of the past. Via training workshops, outreach programmes, and the novel marketing of a rainbow-coloured krama crafted by a lesbian cooperative in Kompong Som now available at most gay bars in town (“Everyone knows that the rainbow represents diversity. The young generation doesn’t call themselves ‘gay’, they call themselves ‘rainbow’”), Sokly and his colleagues are bent on dragging public and political perception out of the dark ages.

“The first problem many people encounter is discrimination by their own family,” he says, perched on the edge of a plush cream-coloured sofa at 2 Colours, the capital’s newest gay bar, on Street 13. “When a family has a gay son or daughter, other community members may talk badly about them. Once gay people come out, their families often disown them and they become homeless, with no way of supporting themselves. Prime Minister Hun Sen disowned his adopted daughter when she came out as being gay, which sends a very bad message to the general population. Then he called on Cambodian people not to discriminate against the LGBT community, so he’s sending very confusing messages.”

Perhaps nowhere is the message more confused than within Cambodia’s staunchly conservative corridors of power. “Government officials say that now is not the time for Cambodia to think about sexual minorities,” says Sokly. “They say that economic development is the priority for the government, and political stability. They think that we can integrate the study of sexuality into the gender concept because gender works for the equality of everyone, but the word ‘gender’ in Cambodian just means equality between man and woman, so we are not included.”

Fear of exclusion remains all-pervasive, particularly in parliament. According to a CCHR source who has “a strong network in the National Assembly”, at least ten of Cambodia’s 123 members of parliament – including members of the ruling Cambodian People’s Party and the opposition Sam Rainsy Party – are closeted members of the LGBT community. “But because they want to maintain their title, they cannot be open about their sexuality.”

Little wonder, then, that those at the opposite end of the power spectrum are still subject to arbitrary persecution. A case in point is that of 20-year-old former factory worker Phlong Srey Rann, currently serving a five-year sentence in Prey Sar prison for having sex with her girlfriend. Although there are no laws expressly banning homosexuality in Cambodia, the authorities use other legislation – such as anti-human trafficking laws – to discriminate.

It’s for precisely this reason that CCHR, in a new report about to be made public, is lobbying to be heard during drafting of the Asean Declaration on Human Rights. “References to sexual orientation and gender identity were put in the draft by Thailand,” says British-born CCHR volunteer Philip Barron, “but they have since been removed, according to leaked documents, by Malaysia and Singapore. The draft is due to be signed into law later this year, so it’s an extremely pressing issue.”

In the meantime, a little light relief is en route courtesy of Cambodia’s first Asean Pride Week. Between May 12 and 20, art galleries, cinemas, cultural centres, nightspots and temples will play host to upwards of 40 events celebrating sexual diversity. Find the full schedule at www.facebook.com/cambodiapride.

WHO: Everyone
WHAT: Cambodia Asean Pride Week
WHERE: Art galleries, cinemas, night spots and temples
WHEN: May 12 to 20
WHY: You’re proud, not prejudiced