Modernity and Contemporaneity in “Cambodian Arts” After Independence
Roger Nelson
A thesis submitted in fulfilment of requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
University of Melbourne 2017
Table of Contents
Abstract i
Acknowledgements ii
Notes on the Text v
List of Figures vi
Chapter 1 Introduction: Approaching “Cambodian Arts” After Independence 1
Chapter 2 Modernity and Contemporaneity: Toward a Methodology of Coextensive Conceptual Categories 37
Chapter 3 The Making of the Modern Cambodian Artist: “How to Use the Word” 77
Chapter 4 Painting the Modern: “Who Asked You to Paint?” 148
Chapter 5 Performing the Modern: Dance, Cinema, Sports and Spectacle 199
Chapter 6 Building Modern Spaces: “Tradition and Heritage Back to Life” 268
Chapter 7 Narrating the Modern: “A New Sun Rises Over the Old Land” 363
Chapter 8 War and Its Aftermath, 1975–99 Art “Without the Slightest Vestige of the Modern”? 419
Chapter 9 Conclusion 470
Appendix 1 “Ballet of the Khmero-American Friendship,” 1959 488
Appendix 2 Chheng Phon, “Views of a Representative of Artists,” 1983 490
Glossary 497
Bibliography 501 Abstract
Modernity and Contemporaneity in “Cambodian Arts” After Independence
Roger Nelson
This study of “Cambodian arts” since national independence understands modernity and contemporaneity as conceptually coextensive categories. Through detailed analyses of different artworks and their contexts—comprising painting, architecture, performance, cinema, and literature—this thesis proposes that modern and contemporary “Cambodian arts” are defined by coeval new and old forms, intersections between media, and an intertwining of art and ideology. It focuses primarily on the years 1955-1975, while also making trans-historical comparisons by interspersing more recent art practices into its discussion.
i Acknowledgements
The Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nations are the Indigenous owners of the land on which the University of Melbourne was built. As is customary, I respectfully acknowledge Indigenous elders, past and present. Living and learning as a non-Indigenous man in a settler society founded on violence and dispossession has been formative to my thinking, especially on power, “race,” colonialism, and genocide. Before offering my thanks here, I register my protest. In the time that I have been working on this thesis, 255 women, men and children have died while attempting to reach Australia’s shores in search of asylum, or else while under Australia’s care as refugees.1 Many of these people have fled wars in which Australia’s government has been instrumentally involved, largely in service of the US. Among the dead are the 23 year old Iranian man Omid Masoumali, the 30 year old Afghan man Khodayar Amini, and the 37 year old Afghan man Ali Jaffari, all of whom died as a result of auto-immolation while under Australia’s care. These numbers are small when considered in the global context of what is widely being called the world’s largest refugee crisis in over half a century, with an estimated 65 million people forced to flee their homes in 2016. This thesis is not written in protest against this political disaster. It is, however, written in its shadow.
My first thanks must go to my teachers. My thinking has been enriched by the multi- disciplinary expertise of my patient and generous doctoral supervisors at the University of Melbourne: Edwin Jurriëns and Lewis Mayo in the Asia Institute, and Nikos Papastergiadis in the School of Culture and Communication. In Phnom Penh, Chin Setha has been the finest guide to the Khmer language and to Cambodian Buddhism that I could ever hope to meet. The eminent and erudite expert in Cambodia’s history and culture, David Chandler, has generously encouraged my work here. With peerless patience, kindness and care, David has read and offered detailed comments on drafts of every chapter in this thesis. He has shared many references and suggestions, drawing on more than half a century of work on Cambodia. David’s advice, enthusiasm, questions and corrections have been invaluable. I am very grateful to him for his time, insight, and support. All remaining errors are, of course, mine alone. While focused on Cambodia, this thesis is engaged with and seeks to intervene in broader regional histories of modern and contemporary arts in Southeast Asia. I was very fortunate to enjoy the guidance and advice of colleagues and advisors from across the region in a multi-year research project titled Ambitious Alignments: New Histories of Southeast Asian Art, funded by the Getty Foundation’s “Connecting Art Histories” initiative and taking place at the University of Sydney, the Institute of Technology Bandung, and the National Gallery Singapore. I thank all my peers and advisors in the program, and especially thank John Clark, Patrick D. Flores, T.K. Sabapathy, Ashley Thompson, and Adrian Vickers for their probing questions and insightful comments on my research. One of the joys of working on this thesis has been the sense of participating in an emerging scholarly community of art historians working across Southeast Asia. At some point, several of us decided to establish a peer-reviewed scholarly journal dedicated to the arts of this region. Since then, I have enjoyed valuable advice and encouragement from colleagues on the editorial collective and advisory board of SOUTHEAST OF NOW: Directions in Contemporary and Modern Art in Asia, which together we co-founded in 2014,
ii and which launched its first issue in January 2017, published by NUS Press at the National University of Singapore. I warmly thank them all, and especially Simon Soon. I thank my colleagues in the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne, where I have taught and supervised students of art history and curatorship during the latter stages of writing this thesis; thanks in particular to Charles Green, Susan Lowish, and Anthony White. Thanks also to Michael Ewing and colleagues in the Asia Institute. Many scholars have kindly shared resources, facilitated introductions, and offered generous support for my work. For this, I thank Klairung Amratisha, Jean Biagini, Chan Vitharin, David Chandler, Che Kyongfa, Youk Chhang, John Clark, Patrick D. Flores, Moritz Henning, Koh Nguang How, Ute Meta Bauer, Adeena Mey, Milton Osborne, Pen Sereypagna, T.K. Sabapathy, Nora A. Taylor, Ashley Thompson, Thun Theara, and especially Masahiro Ushiroshoji. Thanks also to Tith Veasna, who graciously hosted a weekly class for me with the 2013-14 graduating students of painting at the Royal University of Fine Arts in Phnom Penh. Collectors who have generously allowed me to view artworks in their collections, as well as shared insights, personal archives, and anecdotes, include the Chan family, Youk Chhang, Chhang Song, Gerd Gruber, Maria Heiner, Beth Kane, Kim Hak, Kunstarchiv Beeskow, Neil Manton, the Merrillees family, Nico Mesterharm, Milton Osborne, Oum Rotanak Oudom, Sopheap Pich, the late Bruce Blowitz, Suzanne Spunner, Larry Strange, the estate of Vann Nath, and others who remain anonymous. Viewing unpublished manuscripts and other materials, as well as personal records, has been essential. For their generosity in granting me this access, I thank Sanda Men Makoth, Adeena Mey, and Lu Ban Hap in Paris; Oum Rotanak Oudom of the Cambodian Vintage Music Archive, Pen Sereypagna, Jean Biagini, Erin Gleeson, and Tith Veasna in Phnom Penh; and Suzanne Spunner in Melbourne. Archival research has formed the core of this thesis. I thank the staff of the following institutional archives: in Cambodia, the National Archives of Cambodia, the National Museum of Cambodia, the Royal University of Fine Arts, and the Bophana Audiovisual Resource Center; in Australia, the Norodom Sihanouk Archival Collection at Monash University; in the United States of America, the National Archives and Records Administration, in College Park, Maryland; in France, the Archives de la critique d'art, in Rennes, the École des Beaux-Arts, in Paris, and the Archives Nationales, in Pierrefitte-sur- Seine; and in Singapore, the National Archives of Singapore. Archives held in arts and other organizations have also been invaluable. I thank the Cambodian Vintage Music Archive, JavaArts, Romeet Contemporary Art Space, Sa Sa Art Projects, Meta House, Sa Sa Bassac, and the Vann Molyvann Project. I also thank staff at the following libraries: in Cambodia, the National Library of Cambodia, National Museum of Cambodia, Hun Sen Library, Buddhist Institute, and Center for Khmer Studies; in Australia, the National Library of Australia, State Library of Victoria, and University of Melbourne, including for facilitating countless loans from other libraries; in Thailand, Bangkok University, Chiang Mai University, Chulalongkorn University, and the William Warren Library at the Jim Thompson Art Center; in the United States of America, the New York Public Library, and the State University of New York in Binghamton; in Singapore, the National University of Singapore; and in France, the Bibliothèque Kandinsky at the Centre Pompidou. I have benefited greatly from insightful comments offered by peer reviewers and editors at scholarly journals who have published my work. Some sections of these essays have made their way into this thesis, after further revision. In particular, I thank Ashley
iii Thompson, Ang Choulean, and Pamela N. Corey at Udaya, Journal of Khmer Studies; and editorial teams at Contemporaneity: Historical Presence in Visual Culture, and Stedelijk Studies. I also thank organizers and participants at academic conferences where I have presented my work, at which comments have enriched my thinking. Taking place across several continents and contexts, these conferences are too numerous to list here, but in particular I thank the organizers of the Cornell University symposium held at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, titled Contemporary Art in Cambodia: A Historical Inquiry (2013); and the organizers of the 4th Annual International Siem Reap Conference on Special Topics in Khmer Studies, titled ផ"#វេវៀចកុំេ+ះបង់/Don’t Abandon the Indirect Road: Divergent Approaches to Cambodian Visual Cultures (2013). Researching and writing this thesis required considerable travel. For generous financial support, without which this would not have been possible, I have several institutions to thank. In addition to an Australian Postgraduate Award (2013-16), I have been fortunate to receive from the University of Melbourne an Asia Institute Scholarship (2013-16) and a Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences Fieldwork Grant (2014-15). I have also been honoured to receive additional grants from the Getty Foundation (2015-16, facilitating archival research in the US), as well as the Australia Council for the Arts (2013 and 2014), the Ian Potter Cultural Trust (2013), the Australasian Modernist Studies Network (2016), and the Southeast Asia Architecture Research Collaborative at the National University of Singapore (2017). Before officially commencing my doctoral candidature, I spent over a year in Cambodia, conducting preliminary research and learning Khmer. I thank Asialink Arts (2012) for a residency grant which made this possible. This research and writing would also have been impossible without the enrichment and support offered in conversations and correspondences I have enjoyed with friends and colleagues, near and far. They are too numerous to list, but I especially thank Vuth Lyno, Anna Cordner, Khvay Samnang, Pen Sereypagna, and Simon Soon. In Phnom Penh, thank you also to Chum Chanveasna, Lim Sokchanlina, Chhum Phanith, Kourn Lyna, Sophiline Cheam Shapiro, John Shapiro, Kong Dara, Nget Rady, Prumsodun Ok, Tith Kanitha, Yean Reaksmey, Erin Gleeson, Dana Langlois, and Chea Sopheap. In Melbourne, thank you also to Dominic Richardson, Geoffrey O’Connor, Clare McCracken, Jessica Venables, Autumn Royal, Anita Archer, Kalinda Ashton, Karen Adair, Cara Caddick Hinkson, Marion Campbell, and Justin Clemens. And elsewhere, thank you also to Vera Mey, Brian Curtin, Clare Veal, Yvonne Low, Stephen Whiteman, Pamela Corey, Gridthiya Gaweewong, Toni Shapiro-Phim, Anida Yoeu Ali, Chov Theanly, Enzo Camacho, Amy Lien, Orawan Arunrak, Nguyen Thi Thanh Mai, Joanna Wolfarth, and Phoebe Scott. And thank you to many others, not named here: you know who you are.
My final thanks are to my family: to Danielle Jarrett, Chris Roussos, and their daughters Georgia Eliza and Myrina Eleni Jarrett Roussos; to Edward and Pam Nelson; and lastly, to Elizabeth Reed, my most patient, just, committed, and wise reader and interlocutor. I dedicate this thesis to her.
______1 “Australian Border Deaths Database,” Monash University. http://artsonline.monash.edu.au/ thebordercrossingobservatory/publications/australian-border-deaths-database/ [Accessed January 2017] iv Notes on the text
On Khmer names and transliteration
In Khmer names, the family name precedes the given name. I follow this convention, except for when referring to individuals who have chosen to reverse the order: I follow each individual’s preferences. In both cases, however, I follow the Khmer convention of referring to individuals by their given names, rather than by their family names. For example, Vann Molyvann is thus referred to as Molyvann, and Sophiline Cheam Shapiro is referred to as Sophiline.
There is not a single, widely accepted system of transcription or transliteration for rendering Khmer words in roman script. No available method is without its problems, as to approximate phonetic pronunciation, through a transcription of sounds, is often to depart from the alphasyllabic origins, whereas to remain faithful to the Khmer spellings, through a transliteration of Khmer letters, is often to sacrifice phonetic legibility. Within Khmer Studies, usually a system of transliteration is used, which has the advantage of allowing interested scholars to identify elements of Indic vocabulary which are used across South and Southeast Asia. However, this system generally prevents non-specialists from gaining a sense of the sound of Khmer words.
Given that this thesis seeks to address not only scholars within Khmer Studies but also those without specialist knowledge of the Khmer language or of Southeast Asian linguistics, a practical compromise has been adopted. I give the original Khmer text for all significant terms used (except for commonly used proper nouns, such as toponyms, and names of prominent people). This allows readers with specialised linguistic interests to investigate the often Indic roots of many Khmer words. In addition, I offer approximately phonetic transcriptions of words, allowing readers without specialist linguistic skills or interests to gain some sense of the sound of key Khmer terms. In doing so, I loosely follow the system of transcription recommended by the United Nations, developed in 1972 and based on the Service Géographique Khmère system from 1959. This is the basis of the system of transcription used by the Cambodian government. I have generally omitted diacritical marks, and in some instances I have deviated from the system in an effort to more closely convey the pronunciation of words.
On “Cambodian” and “Khmer”
Throughout this thesis, I use the word “Khmer” only when referring specifically to the Cambodian language, and not as a demonym or adjective. The exception is when directly quoting; “Cambodian” and “Khmer” are often used interchangeably in discourse.
“Cambodians” are understood as those who live in, were born in, derive from, and/or identify as Cambodian. This includes many who also identify as or are identified by others as of mixed “ethnicity.” The term “Cambodians” refers not only to people within the nation’s borders, but also encompasses the nation’s diaspora.
v List of Figures
Figure 2.1: Nhek Dim, title unknown, ca. 1960s? Medium unknown, dimensions unknown. Location unknown. Image from: Lors Chinda, Nhek Dim (Phnom Penh: Lors Chinda Art Publishers, 2001). Figure 2.2: Pann Tra, Cyclo, 1960. Medium unknown, dimensions unknown. Location unknown. Image from Free World, 1961. Figure 2.3: Anida Yoeu Ali, Around Town 1, 2012. From series The Buddhist Bug Project (2009-ongoing). Digital colour print on hard foam board. Concept and performance by Anida Yoeu Ali, photography by Masahiro Sugano. Image courtesy of Studio Revolt. Figure 2.4: Khvay Samnang, Samnang Cow Taxi Moves Sand, 2011. From series Samnang Cow Taxi (2010-ongoing). Digital still from digital video. Image courtesy of the artist and Sa Sa Bassac. Figure 3.1: The “lovely façade” of the “galerie Sam Youen,” Phnom Penh, 1965. The gallery showed the work of the Association of Cambodian Modern Painters (ស1គមសិល67ៈវ9ចិ:តករែខ?រ samakum selbak vichetrakar Khmer). Image from: “Une visite à la galerie Sam Yoeun,” Réalités Cambodgiennes (5 July 1968): 28-29. Figure 3.2: Suzuki Shigenari, Self-portrait, March 1928. Tokyo University of the Arts, Japan. Image from: http://jmapps.ne.jp/geidai/ det.html?data_id=5410 [Accessed July 2016] Figure 3.3: Suzuki Shigenari, Srah Srang, 1940s. Oil on canvas, dimensions unknown. Collection of the Royal Palace, Phnom Penh. Image from: Ly Daravuth and Ingrid Muan, eds., Cultures of Independence: An Introduction to Cambodian Arts and Culture in the 1950’s and 1960’s (Phnom Penh: Reyum, 2001). Figure 3.4: Nhek Dim, Srah Srang, 1975. Medium unknown, dimensions unknown. Location unknown. Image from: Lors Chinda, Nhek Dim (Phnom Penh: Lors Chinda Art Publishers, 2001). Figure 3.5: Tô Ngọc Vân, Angkor Temple, 1937. Oil on canvas, dimensions unknown. Location unknown. Image from: http://www.geringerart.com/artists/to-ngoc- van/ [Accessed October 2016] Figure 3.6: Tô Ngọc Vân, Vue d’Angkor, 1935. Oil on canvas, dimensions unknown. Location unknown. Image from: artprice.com [Accessed January 2016] Figure 3.7: Tô Ngọc Vân in Phnom Penh, ca.1935-38. Image from: Quang Phong and Quang Viet, My Thuat Thu Do Ha Noi The Ky 20 / The Fine Arts of the Capital Hanoi in the 20th Century (Hanoi: Fine Arts Publishers, 2000). Figure 3.8: Unknown artists painting Reamker characters on the wooden shutters of the Musée Albert Sarraut, now National Museum of Cambodia, Phnom Penh, 1919-20. Image from: National Museum of Cambodia collection, reproduced in Preap Chanmara (:@ប Aេនើ1DED), :បវតFិGHរចI៖ មរតក១០០MNំៃនសិល67ៈ និងវប67ធម៌ែខ?រ [History of Sala Rajana: A 100 Year Heritage of Cambodian Arts and Culture] (Phnom Penh: Udong, 2016). Figure 3.9: Men Makoth, untitled sketch (of a design for a fountain?) from Paris sketchbook c.1960-1962. Collection of Sanda Men Makoth, Paris.
vi Figure 3.10: Men Makoth, untitled sketch (of Vann Molyvann’s Chaktomuk Conference Hall, 1961, Phnom Penh?) from Paris sketchbook c.1960-1962. Collection of Sanda Men Makoth, Paris. Figure 3.11: Men Makoth, untitled sketch (of Vann Molyvann’s yet-to-be-built private residence in Phnom Penh?) from Paris sketchbook c.1960-1962. Collection of Sanda Men Makoth, Paris. Figure 3.12: Men Makoth, Quelque part à Toulé [sic] Sap (Somewhere in the Tonle Sap), 1959. Oil on canvas, 62 x 95cm. Location unknown. Image from: Fonds Biennale de Paris/Collection INHA-Archives de la critique d'art, Rennes, France. Figure 3.13: Men Makoth, Mékong au hautes eaux (Mekong at High Water), 1959. Oil on canvas, 58 x 94 cm. Location unknown. Image from Fonds Biennale de Paris / Collection INHA-Archives de la critique d'art, Rennes, France. Figure 3.14: Chan Lay Heng, េGកIដកម? Sōk Niedakamm (The Tragedy), 1974. Acrylic and pencil on paper, 23 x 47 cm. Collection of Chan family, Phnom Penh. Figure 3.15: Koeut Nay Sim, Woman and Child, 1960. Medium unknown, dimensions unknown. Location unknown. Image from: “Contemporary Art in Cambodia,” Free World [Thailand edition?], 1961. Figure 3.16: Sam Yoeun, Sur une natte (On a Mat, 1959). Watercolour on paper, 42 x 32 cm. Location unknown. Image from: Fonds Biennale de Paris / Collection INHA-Archives de la critique d'art, Rennes, France. Figure 3.17: Sam Yoeun, Le coucher de soleil (Sunset, 1959). Watercolour on paper, 42 x 32 cm. Location unknown. Image from: Fonds Biennale de Paris / Collection INHA-Archives de la critique d'art, Rennes, France. Figure 3.18: Digital still from Apsara, written and directed by Norodom Sihanouk, Khemara Pictures, 1966. The painting is Nhek Dim, Angkor Wat, 1961. Figure 3.19: Vann Molyvann (architect), Chamkarmon State Palace, 1966. Image from: Helen Grant Ross and Darryl Leon Collins, Building Cambodia: 'New Khmer Architecture' 1953-1970 (Bangkok: Key Publisher, 2006). Figure 3.20: Nhek Dim, Untitled (Dolla and Antoinette Merrillees), 1969. Oil on canvas, 44x54cm. Image courtesy of Parvine Helen Merrillees and Robert Merrillees, private collection. Figure 3.21: Photographer unknown, 1969. Inscription: “photographs taken for Nik Dim [sic] to paint our portraits.” Image courtesy of Parvine Helen Merrillees and Robert Merrillees, private collection. Figure 3.22: Nhek Dim, Banteay Srei Temple, year unknown. Medium unknown, dimensions unknown. Location unknown. Image from Lors Chinda, Nhek Dim (Phnom Penh: Lors Chinda Art Publishers, 2001). Figure 3.23: Images of work in progress by a 2013-14 graduating student of painting at the Royal University of Fine Arts. I took these photographs with the student’s permission in March 2014. Figure 3.24: Anonymous student, in-progress painting of a Cambodian soldier returning to his village from service at Preah Vihear/Phra Wihan temple, 2013- 14. I took this photograph with the student’s permission in February 2014. Figure 3.25: Thai soldier, used by the anonymous student as a model for the painting seen in Figure 3.23. I took this photograph with the student’s permission in March 2014. Figure 3.26: Preap Sovath, a popular music singer and the face of Angkor beer, was used by the anonymous student as a model for the face of the soldier in his painting. I took this photograph with the student’s permission in July 2014. Figure 3.27: Nhek Dim, title unknown, c.1970. Purchased December 1970, Phnom Penh. Image courtesy of Milton Osborne, private collection. vii Figure 3.28: Advertisement for Men Makoth’s gallery, in Nokor Thom, 26 September 1972. Figure 4.1: Nhek Dim, កូHបមួយដង Kolab Muey Dong (A Rose), 1970. Reproduced as cover of កូHបមួយដង Kolab Muey Dong (A Rose) and អWកXេYយគូរ? Neak Na Oy Kur? (Who Asked You to Paint?), sung by Sinn Sisamouth, released by Chanchhaya Records, 1973. Image courtesy of Cambodian Vintage Music Archive. Figure 4.2: Nhek Dim, title unknown, 1974. Oil on canvas, 40 x 60cm. Collection of Youk Chhang. Figure 4.3: Nhek Dim, title unknown, c.1970. Oil on canvas, 52 x 52cm. Private collection. Figure 4.4: Nhek Dim, La Moisson (The Harvest), 1961. Medium unknown, dimensions unknown. Location unknown. Image from: Lors Chinda, Nhek Dim (Phnom Penh: Lors Chinda Art Publishers, 2001). Figure 4.5: Nhek Dim, Harvesting, 1972. Medium unknown, dimensions unknown. Location unknown. Image from: Lors Chinda, Nhek Dim (Phnom Penh: Lors Chinda Art Publishers, 2001). Figure 4.6: Detail of Figures 4.4 and 4.5. Figure 4.7: Nhek Dim, title unknown, 1970. Oil on canvas, dimensions unknown. Image courtesy of Chhang Song, USA. Figure 4.8: Photographer unknown, Heng Moniphal with his painting at the Ukrainian Academy of Fine Arts, July 1993. Image circulated online. Figure 4.9: Vandy Rattana, Takeo, 2009. From the series Bomb Ponds. Digital C print, 90 x 111cm. Image courtesy of the artist. Figure 4.10: Sam Yoeun, untitled, ca. 1963-65. Woodcut on paper, 9.6 x 15.2 cm. Collection of Gerd Gruber, Germany. Figure 4.11: Sam Yoeun, untitled, ca. 1963-65. Etching on paper, 29.2 x 40.3 cm. Collection of Maria Heiner, Germany. Figure 4.12: Sam Yoeun, untitled, 1963. Ink drawing on paper, 45.5 x 34.8cm. Collection of Maria Heiner, Germany. Figure 4.13: Sam Yoeun, La musique populaire (Popular Music), 1959. Oil on canvas, 65 x 81 cm. Location unknown. Image from Fonds Biennale de Paris / Collection INHA-Archives de la critique d'art, Rennes, France. Figure 4.14: Sam Yoeun, untitled, ca. 1963-65. Woodcut on paper, 15 x 9.8 cm. Collection of Gerd Gruber, Germany. Figure 4.15: Sam Yoeun, untitled, ca. 1963-65. Etching on paper, 13.3 x 24.3 cm. Collection of Maria Heiner, Germany. Figure 4.16: Sam Yoeun, untitled, ca. 1963-65. Etching on paper, 13.5 x 24.5 cm. Collection of Maria Heiner, Germany. Figure 4.17: Nou Roeun, Khmer Women Bathing. 1966. Medium unknown, dimensions unknown. Location unknown. Image from Intergrafik: Internationale Grafik- Ausstellung / Exposition Internationale d’Art Graphique, exh. cat. (Berlin: Altes Museum, 1967). Figure 4.18: First annual United States Information Service (USIS) painting competition, USIS Library, Phnom Penh, 1961. Image from: USA National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Maryland. RG 306/230/46/39/2 Box 2. Declassification Authority NND931622. Figure 4.19: First annual United States Information Service (USIS) painting competition, USIS Library, Phnom Penh, 1961. Image from: USA National
viii Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Maryland. RG 306/230/46/39/2 Box 2. Declassification Authority NND931622. Figure 4.20: A 1962 exhibition titled “Cambodian Scenes and Faces” by George Ann Gillespie, with Hell Sumpha, President of the Cambodian Writers Association, and a diplomat from the Indian Embassy in attendance at the opening. Image from: USA National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Maryland. RG 306/230/46/39/2 Box 5. Declassification Authority NND931622. Figure 4.21: The bilingual catalogue to a 1962 exhibition titled “Cambodian Scenes and Faces” by George Ann Gillespie. Image from: USA National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Maryland. RG 306/230/46/39/2 Box 5. Declassification Authority NND931622. Figure 4.22: Female students of the newly renamed Royal University of Fine Arts (RUFA), with founding rector, Vann Molyvann, pictured on the steps of the National Museum of Cambodia, 16 June 1965. Image from: RUFA collection. Figure 4.23: Sam Yoeun, untitled, ca. 1963-65. Etching on paper, 29.5 x 41 cm. Collection of Maria Heiner, Germany. Figure 4.24: Nhek Dim with Walt Disney, California, 1967. Image from public domain. Figure 5.1: Royal Corps of Ballet performing Ballet of Khmero-American Friendship, Phnom Penh, 1959. Image from: commemorative program, in Khmer and English. National Archives of Cambodia (NAC) Box B-311. Figure 5.2: Fan dance, under the Chinese and Cambodian flags, undated, circa late 1950s. Image from: Author unnamed, La Princesse Bopha Devi et Le Prince Chakrapong: Messagers de l’Art Khmer, n.d.: 8. In Khmer. Figure 5.3: Royal Corps of Ballet performing at United Nations headquarters, New York City, USA, 1958. Image from: commemorative publication, in Khmer: “ស េមFច :ពះឧបយុវEជ នេEតFម សីហនុ េ_សហរដ`Yេមរ9ក [Samdech Sihanouk in the United States of America],” 1958. NAC Box 338. Figure 5.4: Special issue (Khmer American Friendship Highway) of Lōk Serei (េHក េសរa Free World), volume 8, number 5, July 1959. United States of America National Archives and Records Administration (USA NARA), College Park, Maryland. RG 306/230/46/43/6 Box 231. Figure 5.5: Dancers performing on Pepsi Cola stage at American National Fair, Phnom Penh, 1963. Image from: Réalités Cambodgiennes, 17 May 1963: 28. Figure 5.6: Digital still from Norodom Sihanouk, director, La femme cambodgienne à l’heure du Sangkum [Cambodian Women during the Sangkum Reastr Niyum], Khemara Pictures, 1960s. 24 minutes, colour with sound. Bophana Center archives, Phnom Penh. Archive Reference NSI_VI_001568. Digital copies also available online. Figure 5.7: Digital still from Norodom Sihanouk, director, La femme cambodgienne à l’heure du Sangkum [Cambodian Women during the Sangkum Reastr Niyum], Khemara Pictures, 1960s. 24 minutes, colour with sound. Bophana Center archives, Phnom Penh. Archive Reference NSI_VI_001568. Digital copies also available online. Figure 5.8: Runner Meas Kheng, on the front cover of Réalités Cambodgiennes 778 (7 January 1972). The unattributed photograph is shot in Phnom Penh’s National Sports Complex, and a caption informs us that it was taken before she departed for Kuala Lumpur to compete in the SEAP (Southeast Asian Peninsular) Games.
ix Figure 5.9: Athlete Chay Kim San, on the back cover of Réalités Cambodgiennes 778 (7 January 1972). The unattributed photograph is shot in Phnom Penh’s National Sports Complex, and a caption informs us that he is a gold medallist in decathlon. Figure 5.10: Photographer unnamed, execution of Khmer Serei prisoner, 1964. While the victim is unnamed, it is almost certainly Preap In. Image from: personal archive of Bernard Hamel, reproduced in Philip Short, Pol Pot: The History of a Nightmare (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 2004). Figure 5.11: Digital still from Norodom Sihanouk, director, Apsara, Khmera Pictures, 1966. Figure 5.12: Digital still from Norodom Sihanouk, director, Apsara, Khmera Pictures, 1966. Figure 5.13: Author unnamed, “Voici encore quelques photos du concours d’élégance de Kep,” Réalités Cambodgiennes, 7 June 1963: 12-13. Figure 5.14: Sihanouk’s mode of greeting with crowds during his incessant tours of the countryside was to parade—in processional movement—past an assembled crowd, who gathered—immobile—along the sides of a road. Image from Kambuja, 1967: 48. Figure 5.15: Female rally participants welcoming Sihanouk on the occasion of national independence in 1953. A caption describes them as “brave girls.” Image from: ែផនbរ កGងឯកEជ6d:បេទសកមfgh ៃន:ពះសេមFច :ពះេIរតFម សីហនុ វរi័ន [The Plan to Build the Independence of Cambodia, of Samdech Norodom Sihanouk], Ministry publication, 1953. Figure 5.16: Sihanouk with Han Suyin at the 2nd Phnom Penh International Film Festival, 1969. Image from: Sangkum Souvenirs photo album, NAC Box 704. Figure 5.17: Sihanouk addressing the 9th National Congress. Image from: Ministry of Information publication, Cambodian Commentary: Review of Khmer Opinion, 15 March 1960. Figure 5.18: Performing “Khmer Buddhist Socialism”: the caption reads “Sihanouk sets the example of voluntary labor.” Image from: John P. Armstrong, Sihanouk Speaks (New York: Walker, 1964), 50. Figure 5.19: Ceremony to welcome President de Gaulle in 1966, held at Phnom Penh’s National Sports Complex. Photograph from newsreel footage, in the public domain. Figure 5.20: Procession to welcome President de Gaulle in 1966, passing by the Grey Building and White Building (Bassac Municipal Apartments), Bassac Riverfront Complex, Phnom Penh. Photograph from newsreel footage, in the public domain. Figure 6.1: The National Sports Complex during construction, 1963. Photograph from Vann Molyvann’s personal archive. Courtesy of The Vann Molyvann Project. Figure 6.2: Chan Lay Heng (architect), primary school for girls, constructed in the early 1960s, now named Chaktomuk School. Photograph, undated, from Chan Vitharin (ច័នk វ9lmរ9នk), ច័នk ៃឡេហង៖ ជីវ9ត និង GNៃដ Chan Lay Heng: Life and Works, English and Khmer, trans. ឃុន Gpល់ និង ច័នk វ9lmរqុង (Khun Sathal and Chan Vitharong)(Phnom Penh: Chan’s Arts Edition, 2013), 16. Figure 6.3: An all-female team plays basketball in the grounds surrounding the National Stadium. Digital film still from Norodom Sihanouk (director), Le femme cambodgienne à l’heure du Sangkum [Women during Sangkum Reastr Niyum], Khemara Pictures, 1960s. Bophana Center, Archive Reference NSI_VI_001568.
x Figure 6.4: Women sailing past the Chaktomuk Conference Hall (designed by Vann Molyvann, completed 1961). Digital film still from Norodom Sihanouk (director), Le femme cambodgienne à l’heure du Sangkum [Women during Sangkum Reastr Niyum], Khemara Pictures, 1960s. Bophana Center, Archive Reference NSI_VI_001568. Figure 6.5: Norodom Sihanouk viewing large-scale urban housing plans, while touring Singapore Polytechnic, accompanied by Yang di-Pertuan Negara Yusof Ishak and Deputy Prime Minister Toh Chin Chye, 19 December 1962. Image from: Ministry of Information and the Arts Collection, courtesy of National Archives of Singapore. Figure 6.6: Lu Ban Hap (architect), Bassac Municipal Apartments, now known as the White Building, completed 1963. Photograph 1960s, from http:// whitebuilding.org/en/photoseries/archival-images [Accessed September 2016] Figure 6.7: Georges Candilis, Shadrach Woods and Vladimir Bodiansky (architects), “Honeycomb” residence for Muslim workers, Casablanca, completed 1952. Image from: Jean-Louis Cohen, “Architectural History and the Colonial Question: Casablanca, Algiers and Beyond,” Architectural History 49 (2006): 353. Figure 6.8: Vann Molyvann (architect), National Sports Complex, Phnom Penh, completed 1964. Photograph ca.1966, from personal archive of Srin Sokmean, posted on the Facebook page “Amazing Cambodia.” Figure 6.9: Vann Molyvann (architect), National Sports Complex, Phnom Penh, completed 1964. Photograph 1966, from personal archive of Srin Sokmean, posted on the Facebook page “Amazing Cambodia.” Figure 6.10: The indoor arena of the National Sports Complex. Photograph by Pen Sereypagna, 2013. Figure 6.11: The indoor arena of the National Sports Complex. Photograph by Pen Sereypagna, 2013. Figure 6.12: The main outdoor seating of the Natioanl Sports Complex. Photograph by Pen Sereypagna, 2013. Figure 6.13: The outdoor concourse at the National Sports Complex, with concrete shades at the entrance to the swimming pool. Photograph by Pen Sereypagna, 2013. Figure 6.14: Louise-Marie Men Makoth née Jarrier (wife of artist Men Makoth), a resident in the Grey Building (Olympic Village Apartments), Bassac, Phnom Penh, poses in front of the building with her two young daughters, ca. 1967. From the personal archive of Sanda Men Makoth, Paris. Figure 6.15: Khvay Samnang, Preah Ream Thlaeng Sor, 2012. Digital C Print, 80 x 120cm. Image courtesy of the artist. Figure 6.16: Khvay Samnang, Preah Ream Thlaeng Sor, 2012. Digital C Print, 80 x 120cm. Image courtesy of the artist. Figure 6.17: V-shaped columns in an anonymous private house, Phnom Penh. Photograph by Pen Sereypagna, 2016. Figure 6.18: Mam Sophana (architect), Technical Training Institute, Phnom Penh, completed 1969. Photograph ca.1969, from personal archive of Srin Sokmean, posted on the Facebook page “Amazing Cambodia.” Figure 6.19: Vann Molyvann (architect), classroom blocks at Teacher Training College, Phnom Penh, completed 1971. Figure 6.20: Vann Molyvann (architect), library at Teacher Training College, Phnom Penh, completed 1971. Figure 6.21: Media broadcasting box at the National Stadium. Photograph by Pen Sereypagna, 2013.
xi Figure 6.22: An example of a “structurally modern house.” Monivong Boulevard, Phnom Penh. Photograph April 2015. Figure 6.23: An example of a “decoratively modern house.” (The fence is not original.) Street 294, Phnom Penh. Photograph April 2015. Figure 6.24: An example of a “flat roofed modern house.” Street 242, Phnom Penh. Photograph April 2015. Figure 6.25: A “baroque” exception to the typology of modern houses. Corner of Street 294 and Street 9, Phnom Penh. Architect unknown; reputedly built in late 1960s. Photograph March 2015. Figure 6.26: Lu Ban Hap (architect)’s private home, Phnom Penh, 1960s. Photographs courtesy of Lu Ban Hap and Mrs Armelle Lu. Figure 6.27: Rural roadside hut. Photograph 2014. Figure 6.28: Decoration on a “decoratively modern house,” Phnom Penh. Photograph April 2015. Figure 6.29: Concrete shades on a modern house, Phnom Penh. Photograph March 2015. Figure 6.30: Grandstand at the National Sports Complex. Photograph by Pen Sereypagna, 2013. Figure 6.31: “Flat roofed modern houses,” Neak Leung village, Prey Veng. Photograph March 2015. Figure 6.32: Open roof trellis on a “flat roofed modern house,” now Bophana Audiovisual Resource Center. Photograph March 2015. Figure 6.33: Later addition of a floating roof to a “flat roofed modern house,” Phnom Penh. Photograph March 2015. Figure 6.34: Vann Molyvann (architect), Military Police Academy, completed 1960s, Khmer American Friendship Boulevard, Phnom Penh. Photograph ca. 1960s, courtesy of Pen Sereypagna. Figure 6.35: A family photograph from 1989 shows a young girl practicing karate on a flat rooftop, in preparation to protect herself while studying in the Soviet Union. Presented as part of Found Cambodia, an online archive of personal and family photographs from the years after 1979. See http:// foundcambodia.com/p/?a=1986-1990#rooftop-karate [Accessed May 2015] Figure 6.36: Boxy sheds on “flat roofed modern houses,” Phnom Penh. Photograph 2014. Figure 6.37: Rounded canopy on “flat roofed modern houses,” Phnom Penh. Photograph 2015. Figure 6.38: Oversized steel framed roofing on “flat roofed modern houses,” Phnom Penh. Photograph 2015. Figure 6.39: ស"ឹកេlNត Sleuk Tnort Restaurant, a “decoratively modern house” on Street 294 in Phnom Penh. Photograph 2015. Figure 6.40: KFC Restaurant, Phnom Penh. Photograph 2015. Figure 6.41: Angkor Spa, Phnom Penh. Photograph 2015. Figure 7.1: Khmer typewriter, designed by Keng Vannsak. Image from: Derek Tonkin, Modern Cambodian Writing, special issue of Culture et Civilisation Khmères, no. 5 (Phnom Penh: Université Buddhique Preah Sihanouk Raj, 1962), 45. National Archives of Cambodia (NAC), Phnom Penh, Box B-332. Figure 7.2: Keng Vannsak in front of a portrait of his wife, with the signature of its painter Nhek Dim. Image from: Khing Hoc Dy (ឃីង ហុកឌី), ed., សមូហកម?
xii អក6tរGuសFែខ?រ ឪទkិសជូនGuសFAរ6d េកងwDន់Gក់ [Khmer Literary Collection, Dedicated to Professor Keng Vannsak] (Phnom Penh: Editions Angkor, 2006. Figure 7.3: Locations of Viseth’s and Samrith’s houses, as described in Kim Saet’s Where is my Daughter? Detail of map produced by the Royal Government’s Geographic Service, dated 1966, based on aerial photographs taken in 1958. Map from personal archive of Pen Sereypagna. Figure 8.1: Elizabeth Becker, untitled, 1978. Image from: Elizabeth Becker, “Beneath the Khmer Rouge Veil,” New Mandala, 21 February 2012, n.p. http://www.newmandala.org/beneath-the-khmer-rouge-veil/ [Accessed September 2016] Figure 8.2: Mask-making molds belonging to An Sok, which had been buried in 1975 by his former teacher, Keth Roeun, who died during the regime. Photograph c.1997-2001 by Ingrid Muan, from Ingrid Muan Papers archive, Box 8, File 44, National Museum of Cambodia Library, Phnom Penh. Figure 8.3: Kim Hak (គឹម xក់), Notebooks and Tooth of the Dead, from the series Alive, 2014. Image and accompanying text courtesy of the artist. Figure 8.4: Eng Seng Thay (េអង េសង ៃថ), Untitled (self-portrait), 1975. Oil on canvas, dimensions unknown. Location unknown. Image courtesy of the artist. Figure 8.5: Eng Seng Thay (េអង េសង ៃថ), Portrait Dr Kniest, 1975. Oil on canvas, 71 x 60cm, collection of Kunstarchiv Beeskow, Beeskow, Germany. Image courtesy of Daniel Burckhardt at Kunstarchiv Beeskow. Figure 8.6: Eng Seng Thay (េអង េសង ៃថ), Peace and War, circa 1979/80. Oil on canvas, dimensions unknown. Location unknown. Image courtesy of the artist. Figure 8.7: In a 1984 magazine, a claim that “society has stability once more” is illustrated with a photograph of a young woman studying statues in the National Museum of Cambodia. Image from: ទឹកដីអងzរបច{gប67នW [The Land of Angkor Now] (Phnom Penh: Ministry of Propaganda and Culture, printed by Karl Marx Publishers, 1984). NAC Box 373. Figure 8.8: The same magazine shows an older dancer adjusting the costume and posture of two young dancers; the caption for this image reads “both generations,” and it is positioned beneath an image of apsara bas-reliefs at Angkor Wat. Image from: ទឹកដីអងzរបច{gប67នW [The Land of Angkor Now], 1984. Figure 8.9: Aerial shots of Phnom Penh. Image from: ទឹកដីអងzរបច{gប67នW [The Land of Angkor Now] , 1984. Figure 8.10: Vann Molyvann’s National Theatre is featured prominently in ទឹកដីអងzរ បច{gប67នW [The Land of Angkor Now] , 1984. Figure 8.11: A mass rally in front of the palace, with portraits of Marx and Lenin visible on the Chan Chhaya Pavilion. Image from: ទឹកដីអងzរបច{gប67នW [The Land of Angkor Now] , 1984. Figure 8.12: Meeting room at the University of Fine Arts, with portraits of Lenin. Photograph from personal archive of Pech Song. Image from: Ingrid Muan Papers, National Museum of Cambodia Library, Phnom Penh. Box 8, File 44.
xiii Figure 8.13: Pech Song, political poster created at the University of Fine Arts, 1980s. Photograph by Ingrid Muan, ca. 1997-2000. Image from: Ingrid Muan Papers, National Museum of Cambodia Library, Phnom Penh. Box 8, File 44. Figure 8.14: Pech Song, political poster created at the University of Fine Arts, 1980s. Note the dance troupe to the left and the white sketchbook under the white- shirted man’s arm. Photograph by Ingrid Muan, ca. 1997-2000. Image from: Ingrid Muan Papers, National Museum of Cambodia Library, Phnom Penh. Box 8, File 44. Figure 8.15: Tith Kanitha, Heavy Sand, 2012. Performance, Phnom Penh. Image courtesy of the artist and Sa Sa Bassac. Figure 8.16: Khvay Samnang, Newspaper Man, 2011. Digital C print. Image courtesy of the artist and Sa Sa Bassac.. Figure 9.1: The “White Building,” originally named the Bassac Municipal Apartments, Phnom Penh, November 2016. Figure 9.2: Masterplan for the Bassac Riverfront Complex, ca. early 1960s. Image from: Helen Grant Ross and Darryl Leon Collins, Building Cambodia: ‘New Khmer Architecture’ 1953-1970 (Bangkok: Key Publisher, 2006). Figure 9.3: Pen Sereypagna and Genealogy of Bassac team, Bassac Timeformation, 2014. Digital drawing with maps sourced from National Archives of Cambodia. Image courtesy of Pen Sereypagna. Figure 9.4: Pen Sereypagna, Overlay Map, 2014. Digital drawing with Google map. Image courtesy of Pen Sereypagna. Figure 9.5: Pen Sereypagna and Genealogy of Bassac team, Genealogy of White Building, 2015. Digital drawing with digital photographs and architectural elevations. Image courtesy of Pen Sereypagna. Figure 9.6: Pen Sereypagna and Genealogy of Bassac team, Schizoanalysis of White Building, 2015. Digital drawing with digital photographs and architectural elevations. Image courtesy of Pen Sereypagna. Figure 9.7: Pen Sereypagna and Genealogy of Bassac team, Schizoanalysis of White Building, 2016. Installation of digital drawing with digital photographs and architectural elevations, printed on 16 plastic sheets. Installation view at 10th Taipei Biennial, 2016. Image courtesy of Pen Sereypagna. Figure 9.8: Children’s drawings on architectural drawing of the White Building by Vann Molyvann Project. From an Open Studio community event at Sa Sa Art Projects, 2015. Image courtesy of Pen Sereypagna. Figure 9.9: Children’s drawings on architectural drawing of the White Building by Vann Molyvann Project. From an Open Studio community event at Sa Sa Art Projects, 2015. Image courtesy of Pen Sereypagna. Figure 9.10: Children’s drawings on architectural drawing of the White Building by Vann Molyvann Project. From an Open Studio community event at Sa Sa Art Projects, 2015. Image courtesy of Pen Sereypagna.
xiv Chapter 1
Introduction: Approaching “Cambodian Arts” After Independence
“Art,” the Cambodian scholar Neak Srei [Ms] Troeung Ngea wrote in 1974,
“means any kind of work or skill that is made by hand and that is artful, which is to say, which makes people feel desirous and interested, and want to look and want to listen.”1 Neak Srei Troeung Ngea’s book was published 21 years after Cambodia gained its independence from France in 1953; her work appeared at the height of civil war between Lon Nol’s US-backed Khmer
Republic and Pol Pot’s Communist Party of Kampuchea, better known as the
1 “!ក#$ សិល#(ៈ (សំ+ស,ឹត) ឬ សិប#(ៈ (1លី) សំេ4យក6រ8រេផ#:ងៗ ជំ>ញហតAកមCDគប់ ែបប HIងែដលKនសិល#(៍ េ!លគឺេធPើឪ#$មនុស#:Tប់ចិតV Tប់WរមCណ៍ ចង់េមើល ចង់េឃើញ ចង់Z[ប់ ។ សិល#(ៈ KនេDចើនDបេភទ_ស់ […] សិល#(ៈKនន័យទូលំទូbយ ។” Neak Srei Troeung Ngea née Laay Hunki (អdកDសី Dតឹង 8 [>មេដើម eយ ហុនគី]), អរfយធម៌ែខCរ Areyathorm Khmer [The Khmer Civilization] (Phnom Penh: Editions Angkor, 2007 [1974]), 71. Emphasis in original.
1 Khmer Rouge, who would take power the following year. Intended as a textbook for final-year secondary students, her concise, insightful volume remains widely read today. “Art has a very broad meaning, and there are many kinds of art,” she concluded, before proceeding to introduce examples of various kinds of art—including architecture, dance and literature—which are boran (បុiណ), another word of very broad meaning encompassing the ancient, classical, pre-modern, and traditional.
This thesis examines “Cambodian arts” which are modern, and also arts which are contemporary. These terms, too, may be said to have a “very broad meaning.” The categories of modernity and contemporaneity in art, and the differences between them, are topics of much discussion by art historians and commentators addressing non-Cambodian contexts, with the contemporary often being seen as something that comes after and displaces the modern.
Making sense of the interaction between these terms takes on a special importance, as it forms a part of a larger attempt to make sense of the turbulences and transformations in the world over the last half century, and their manifestations in art. Indeed, a central aim in what follows is to arrive at some understandings of what these terms, modernity and contemporaneity, mean in the Cambodian setting, and in Khmer discourse. Fuller definitions of both terms will be offered in Chapter 2. Following this, through a series of close readings and detailed analyses of artworks and their contexts in
2 subsequent chapters, I will suggest that modernity and contemporaneity are enacted in “Cambodian arts” in ways that are enriching to discourses in the arts more broadly, and to studies of this nation and its region. The modern, which is commonly understood as a rejection of tradition and a forward- looking embrace of innovation, can be seen in the Cambodian context to involve a finely textured interweaving of new and old forms. The contemporary, which I understand as involving art with a special relationship to the present moment, and an overlaying of multiple temporalities within the space of an artwork, can be seen in the Cambodian context to have been a quality which also often appeared in the self-consciously modern arts of the
1950s, ‘60s, and early ‘70s.
I approach modernity, contemporaneity, and “Cambodian arts” as interrelated concepts. How might they illuminate each other? And, thus illuminated, how might we hold these concepts—and specific artworks in their contexts—together in our critical gaze? I ask this with the sense that, as
Patrick D. Flores has eloquently suggested of another setting, the
“movement” of art through time and history “always takes the rhythm of a grinding against the forces of society.” Like Flores, I seek not only “to situate art in the premises of history” but also “to locate history in art.”2 How can we
2 Patrick D. Flores, Painting History: Revisions in Philippine Colonial Art (Quezon City and Manila: Office of Research Coordination, University of the Philippines and National Commission for Culture and the Arts, 1998), 3.
3 allow this art to have its history, without that history being interred under what artist and scholar Chheng Phon has called the “heavy rock [that] will weigh down on us for many hundreds of years to come”—the weight of
Cambodia’s tragic recent political history?3
The arguments in this thesis are largely built on close readings and analyses of specific artworks and their contexts. I have emphasized Khmer- language discourse about art, including much writing that has been forgotten since it was originally produced. Key contentions that recur throughout what follows will emerge, recede and overlap, according to the case studies under consideration. Four overarching propositions on the modern and contemporary may be summarized as follows:
1. In modern and contemporary “Cambodian art,” old and new forms coexist: that is, they are coeval. This does not mean that there have not been important discontinuities in this history. It does mean that the modern does not represent a clear, clean break with that which came before, and that the contemporary does not represent a clear, clean break with the modern.
3 Chheng Phon (េជង ផុន), “មតិតំ_ង សិល#(ករ” [Views of a Representative of Artists], in ឧDកិដធkកមCរបស់បនlតទី អនុតVរmពនិយមចិនេប៉6ំង និង បរflរ ប៉ុល ពទ - េអៀង Zរq - េខៀវ សំផន កdsងអំឡsងuvំ ១៩៧៥ - ១៩៧៩ [The Crimes of the Beijing-ist Clique and the Pol Pot – Ieng Sary – Khieu Samphan Stooges from 1975 to 1979] (Phnom Penh: National Advisory Alliance for Solidarity, Construction and Defence of the Motherland, 1983), 50-57. National Archives of Cambodia (NAC) Box B-637. The text is reproduced in translation as Appendix 2.
4 2. Instances of the contemporary can be found within the modern, and instances of the modern can be found within the contemporary.
Contemporaneity, understood as the presence of plural temporalities in the space of an artwork, is more productively viewed as a conceptual category than a periodizing marker. While there are distinct discourses around each concept, the contemporary does not displace the modern. Rather, they are coextensive, and in their coextensivity they are mutually illuminating.
3. Trans-media intersections recur in both modern and contemporary “Cambodian arts.” That is, artists of various kinds overlapped in personal, professional and other contexts. Their works are best understood in inter-animating relationship to each other.
4. Successive political regimes have viewed the arts as a tool for communicating ideological rhetoric. Thus, the enactment of modernity in
“Cambodian arts” involves an intertwining of art and ideology. However, this does not mean that art is subservient to politics.
In discussing each of these notions, I also address the question of how the changing role of women in the newly independent nation is reflected in and impacts on “Cambodian arts,” especially during the period 1955 to 1975.
The first of these two arguments, relating to modernity and contemporaneity as mutually constitutive conceptual categories, will be addressed in Chapter 2, where more detailed definitions of both terms will also be offered. In this chapter, I will outline the latter two contentions in 5 more detail, before introducing the scope of the thesis, the historiographical landscape into which it intervenes, and the structure of the its chapters.
On trans-media intersections
Like Neak Srei Troeung Ngea—and indeed following her model, in part—I will consider many different kinds of art in relation to each other. These include painting, novels in the Khmer language, architecture and urban planning, performance including dance and spectacle, cinema, and multidisciplinary artistic practices.
I will argue that trans-media intersections define modern and contemporary “Cambodian arts.” Underexplored in previous studies of twentieth century Cambodian culture, expressions of this “creative dynamism”4 have also been downplayed in most histories of the modern elsewhere in Southeast Asia. Whereas much of the North American and
European discussion on twentieth century modernisms can be understood as being in (direct or implicit) dialogue with the discourse of “medium specificity,”5 in Southeast Asia (and perhaps elsewhere in the decolonizing
4 The term is architect Vann Molyvann’s, from an article published in 1964. We will revisit his statement in more detail in Chapter 3. 5 See, for example, Clement Greenberg, “Modernist Painting,” [1960] in Clement Greenberg: The Collected Essays and Criticism, Volume 4: Modernism with a Vengeance, 1957-1969, ed. John O’Brian (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 85-93.
6 world) modernity in the arts was more intimately interlinked with transformations in other aspects of life. These include large, abstractly articulated changes in politics and economies, as well as small, intensely felt revolutions in the lived experience of daily life—many of which will be detected in the artworks which this thesis will address. Such transformations seem to have been especially sharp in Cambodia, given that modernization under French colonial rule occurred later than elsewhere in the region, and was less comprehensive.
The approximately concurrent appearance—within just two decades, between the late 1930s and the late 1950s—of the first Khmer modern novels, the first realist representational paintings made by Cambodians, the first
Cambodian-designed modern concrete architecture, and the first Cambodian films, is an extraordinary concentration of new artistic forms that demands sustained attention, and is best understood through the mutually informing relationships within and between these various forms. The concurrence of new artistic forms with the new nation-state’s independence meant that the deployment of arts and culture in the service of nation-building took on particular urgencies and efficacies.
An attention to trans-media intersections in “Cambodians arts” after independence helps to unsettle the centrality of the visual—and especially painting—as the privileged cultural technology of modernity, as it is has been
7 conventionally understood in much European, North American, and other art historical scholarship.6 Of course, much of the art that I will discuss is chiefly visual in nature, but it is also in various ways spatial, temporal, and even verbal or textual. Just as contemporaneity is a concept I see as working in tandem with modernity, so too the various different media and senses function and are best apprehended in a richly interwoven network of intersections and overlaps.
The relative paucity of sources and scarcity of artworks from the decades before 1975 poses a significant challenge for art historical research.
Although I have discovered numerous artworks and archival materials not previously discussed by other researchers, the fact remains that there are still only a few hundred paintings from the years 1955 to 1975 known to survive
(including in reproduction), and only around 40 of an estimated 400 films made during the years 1960 to 1975. Novels and architecture from these years have fared better, but information on their authors and designers is often scarce or nonexistent. Addressing intersections within and between different
6 This also decentres what has been termed “the primacy of painting” in Southeast Asia, a privileged position increasingly reinforced not only in scholarship but also in museological practice, for example in the first museum dedicated to the display of “modern art” from across Southeast Asia, the National Gallery Singapore, which opened in 2015. See: Seng Yu Jin, “The Primacy of Painting: Institutional Structures in the Singapore Art World, 1935-1972,” MA thesis, National University of Singapore, 2006. My critique resonates with that articulated in Simon Soon, “What is Left of Art? The Spatio-Visual Practice of Political Art in Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, and the Philippines, 1950s–1970s,” PhD Thesis, University of Sydney, Sydney, 2015, esp. 18.
8 artistic media helps to redress this problem, and has proven an especially productive line of interpretive inquiry in what follows.
Trans-media intersections can be discerned in “Cambodian arts” throughout the many political regimes since independence. The economic and political modernization projects promoted by HRH Norodom Sihanouk’s
7 Sangkum Reastr Niyum (សង{មi+សVនិយម “People’s Socialist Community” ) regime from 1955 to 1970, in all aspects of life from agriculture to manufacturing to urban planning, were accompanied by parallel modernization efforts in the arts and culture. This “creative dynamism” continued, more fitfully, under Lon Nol’s Khmer Republic from 1970 to 1975.
While artistic activity was drastically reduced during Democratic
Kampuchea, trans-media intersections can still be detected even in this period. Certainly trans-media exchanges became central to the rebuilding of the arts after 1979, which was a key priority of the Vietnam-backed People’s
Republic of Kampuchea, and which saw the arts once again employed in the service of ideological rhetoric. In the twenty first century, interdisciplinary crossovers have become widespread. This is the case in many locations around the world, and is often described as a defining hallmark of
“contemporary art.” Yet given their long history, as outlined, trans-media
7 This is the translation most often appearing in scholarly and other sources. See: David Chandler, The Tragedy of Cambodian History: Politics, War, and Revolution Since 1945 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991), 79.
9 intersections in more recent artistic practices should be understood not as an exclusively contemporary phenomenon, but rather as a continuing characteristic of “Cambodian arts” for over six decades.
On art and ideological rhetoric
This brings us to the relationship between art and ideology in Cambodia since independence. The arts have been continuously employed in the service of rhetoric by all successive regimes, but to differing degrees. This resonates with the experience in many states across Southeast Asia, and elsewhere. One aim of this thesis is to explore in detail the nature of art’s connection to ideology in the modern and contemporary Cambodian context, with the hope that in future this may be productively compared with accounts from other locations, and also with studies of pre-modern “Cambodian arts.”8 It is also hoped that a close attention to the use of art for political purposes will offer a critique of a dominant mode of interpretation, which understands political instrumentalization to render art as subservient. Art, as we shall see, often eludes the total control of those who seek it wield it for ideological purposes.
8 See, for example: Ashley Thompson, “Angkor Revisited: The State of Statuary,” in What’s the Use of Art? Asian Visual and Material Culture in Context, ed. Jan Mrázek and Morgan Pitelka (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2008), 179-213. Thompson convincingly argues that art and politics have been intertwined in Cambodia since at least Angkorian times. Detailed consideration of pre-modern arts is beyond the scope of this thesis, but would offer a rich site for further inquiry.
10 For Sihanouk, culture was central to the Sangkum’s “People’s Socialist
Community” program, and the arts were a crucial technology for the embodiment and communication of rhetoric. While the momentum created by artistic activities during Sihanouk’s reign continued under Lon Nol, the
Khmer Rouge’s takeover in 1975 transformed the status of “Cambodian arts.”
All forms of pre-revolutionary culture were outlawed and targeted during
Democratic Kampuchea, and considerably less emphasis was placed on the arts, and on culture and education more broadly. Nevertheless, the Khmer
Rouge’s program did also advocate the use of art as tool of political rhetoric, chiefly theatre, dance, and revolutionary songs. After 1979, art and culture became centrally important to the People’s Republic of Kampuchea.
Ever since the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia
(UNTAC) occupation in 1992-93, under Prime Minister Hun Sen, modern and contemporary arts have been defunded and largely ignored by the regime, meaning that most artistic activity since the 1990s has been organized without official involvement of the government, ministries, or palace.9 While official arts have continued, these have primarily been boran (ancient, classical,
9 Some archival documents on governmental spending on the arts during the 1979-89 period will be cited in Chapter 8. Records on arts spending during previous regimes are unavailable, and thus for Sihanouk’s, Lon Nol’s, and Pol Pot’s governments my analyses rely on rhetorical sources. Evidence on Hun Sen’s defunding of modern and contemporary arts since the early 1990s draws chiefly on conversations with Cambodian artists, and also on first-hand observation. While the testimony of my informants here may be coloured by their political opposition to the current regime, their account aligns with the de-emphasizing of the arts in Hun Sen’s rhetoric.
11 traditional), and will not be considered in detail in this thesis. Yet the ideology of neoliberalism, which sees the delegation of formerly state responsibilities, such as education, onto individuals at every level of society, has pervaded independent and even oppositional artistic practices in the twenty first century. In this way, even though the Hun Sen regime takes little interest in the arts when compared to previous governments, there is still a surprising degree of overlap between the ideological rhetoric of the rulers and what is performed in recent examples of contemporary art.
Since discussion of the use of art as a tool for communicating ideological rhetoric will recur throughout this thesis, it is necessary to define these terms. In the quotation with which the chapter began, Neak Srei
Troeung Ngea defined art as anything “which makes people feel desirous and interested, and want to look and want to listen.” Such an view is predicated on understanding art as a means of communication. Art may also be considered a medium of thought.
In seeing art as a tool for thinking and communicating, I deliberately sidestep questions of aesthetic or other value, and the related judgements which differentiate “art” from “propaganda.” Many of the artworks that I will discuss are objects which beholders may consider to be of great formal beauty, conceptual subtlety, and cultural virtue. But many other works that I will also discuss may be considered by some beholders to be ugly, reactionary, crude, poorly written or made, or simply not to be art at all. In 12 largely declining to engage in discussions of the aesthetic value of the works I discuss, I am instead insisting on their value as objects that reward close analysis, and which can also reveal aspects of their historical and other contexts. Even if one judges a work to be lacking in aesthetic value, this does not necessarily diminish its capacity to illuminate the nature of the interrelated concepts of “modernity,” “contemporaneity” and “Cambodian arts.”
My thinking here is in part informed by Simon Creak’s work on Cold
War-era “rhetoric” in Laos. Creak argues that “the term ‘rhetoric’ better encapsulates the complexities of state production of language [than the term]
‘propaganda,’” noting that the Lao term, khosana, has a meaning which is
“very broad, referring in different contexts to ‘information,’ ‘promotion,’ and
‘advertising’” and that “in Laos there is no clear distinction between the medium and the content; khosana can refer to both.”10 Derived from Pali, the
Khmer term េ|ស> khosana is linguistically identical and semantically cognate to the Lao word. For the purposes of this thesis, there is limited value in distinguishing between “art” and “propaganda” on the basis of aesthetic or
10 Simon Creak, “Cold War Rhetoric and the Body: Physical Cultures in Early Socialist Laos,” in Cultures at War: The Cold War and Cultural Expression in Southeast Asia, ed. Tony Day and Maya H.T. Liem (Ithaca, New York: Cornell Southeast Asia Program, 2010), 107-108.
13 other value judgements, since both can be understood as a form of thought, and both employ rhetoric in ways that repay close analysis.
On the scope of the thesis
If the temples of Angkor and Pol Pot’s crimes against humanity in the 1970s are the two things for which Cambodia is best known to outsiders, these are also two aspects of the nation’s history which this thesis will, for the most part, deliberately set aside. The Khmer Rouge atrocities in particular, directly addressed only in Chapter 8, may be considered a structuring absence throughout the discussions that follow. This is due not only to the inescapable shadow of this period of horror, but also to the loss and dispersal of artworks and sources that occurred amidst the violence and upheaval leading up to and during this regime. Looking back now to the years before the Khmer
Rouge, researchers must confront the methodological challenges caused by the intervening years of conflict.
The primary focus of this thesis is on “Cambodian arts” produced between 1955 and 1975. A few examples of more recent art, chiefly from the twenty first century, will be interspersed throughout the discussion. Modes of artistic practice which are called “contemporary” will thus be placed in comparative dialogue with those which are called “modern.” As stated, I argue for an understanding of these terms as conceptual categories, rather 14 than as periodizing markers, and I propose that their inter-animating exchange is mutually illuminating.
Cambodia won independence from France in 1953, in the wake of political reforms initiated in 1945, as a result of the Japanese occupation during the Second World War, and in the context of violent anti-colonial struggle in neighbouring Vietnam. King Norodom Sihanouk is generally cast as the most important actor in what is called a “royal crusade for independence.” After consolidating his power in a bloodless coup in 1952,
Sihanouk travelled to France to demand national autonomy in 1953. Colonial troops were withdrawn from the Kingdom following the Geneva Conference on Indochina in 1954. In 1955, Sihanouk abdicated the throne in order to rule over his newly established Sangkum Reastr Niyum (“People’s Socialist
Community”) regime as Prince, Prime Minster, and eventually Head of
State.11
After its formation in 1953, independent Cambodia's official motto has been “Nation, Religion, King.” The ideological intertwining of these three
11 See David Chandler, A History of Cambodia, 4th ed. (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 2008), 211-232. For a dramatic but effective account of the years following independence, which is revealing of the nuances in Sihanouk's character and motivations, see Hélène Cixous, The Terrible but Unfinished Story of Norodom Sihanouk, King of Cambodia, trans. Juliet Flower MacCannell, Judith Pike, and Lollie Groth (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1994). On the notion of Sihanouk’s “royal crusade,” especially influential among Cambodians born after 1979, see Vandy Kaonn (lIន់ឌី 6អុន), សុបិន និង 6រពិត Sobin Ning Karpit [Dreams and Reality] (Phnom Penh: Cambodia-Asia Association, 2012), 166-177.
15 concepts may be discerned in much of the “Cambodian arts” of the following decades, especially those made in support of Sihanouk, as part of his project of nation-building. The relationship between the arts and the idea of the nation is a recurring concern in this thesis. However, while in what follows the essential indivisibility of “Nation, Religion, King” is recognized, less space is afforded to the latter two components of this triadic formation. Part of what made “Cambodian arts” in this period modern was a shift in their position vis-à-vis religion; similarly Sihanouk's rule, although kingly, was in fact formally that of Prince and Head of State.12
The period 1955 to 1975—and especially the fifteen years of Sihanouk’s
Sangkum Reastr Niyum regime, from 1955 to 1970—are popularly remembered and imagined by many Cambodians as a “golden age” for the arts and culture. While such nostalgia belies the complexity of the period, and overlooks the repressive aspects of Sihanouk’s control and the upheaval of civil war during Lon Nol’s rule, certainly these years did see immense modernization efforts in all sectors. A kind of representational painting known as “modern,” which was in its infancy in 1955, flourished in the
12 There is much to be said about manifestations of modernity in religious art from the late nineteenth century onwards, but these developments are beyond the scope of this thesis. This question has been dealt with by other writers. See, for example: Ashley Thompson, “Drawing Cambodia's Borders: Notes on Khmer Temple Murals in Kampuchea Krom (Vietnam),” Udaya, Journal of Khmer Studies 4 (2003): 21-40. See also: San Phalla (Zន ផb~), គំនូរេÄមវតV Kumnur Nau Tam Vatt [Paintings in Wats] (Phnom Penh: Reyum, n.d. ca.2007), esp. 211-230.
16 following years, with exhibitions of “modern paintings” visited by large and diverse audiences, and with paintings appearing in movies, advertising, popular music record covers, and other mediated contexts. The newly imagined figure of the “modern artist” was rhetorically linked to this
“modern painting.” Developments in other arts were just as striking. The first
Cambodian feature film was premiered in 1960, and hundreds of feature films were made in the fifteen years that followed, with cinemas appearing in cities and towns all over the country, and cinema-going becoming a popular pastime for Cambodians of diverse backgrounds. With equally broad appeal
(but without the same mass audience), Cambodian dance was employed as a diplomatic tool by Sihanouk, with performances intervening directly in political affairs of the time. Modern novels, which first appeared in Khmer in the late 1930s, quickly entered the national educational curriculum, and from
1961 were supported by literary prizes with Sihanouk’s backing. And all of these activities took place in new, modern spaces. Cities, especially the capital, were transformed by ambitious urban planning; this included the emergence of a new kind of concrete architecture which combined modern engineering technologies with references to older Cambodian architectural forms, including both Angkorian temples and vernacular stilted housing.
While this study chiefly limits itself to considerations of “Cambodian arts,” my focus on discourses of modernity and contemporaneity intersects with larger histories of the arts in Southeast Asia more broadly, and beyond. I 17 write with an uncomfortable awareness that nationally-based art histories like this one have been the norm in late colonial and early postcolonial art histories in this region,13 and that such a focus has worked in tandem with political discourse to further nationalist ideologies that emphasize differences rather than commonalities.
I also write cognizant of the rise, in recent years, of other frames for histories of art in Southeast Asia. First, studies attentive to cities rather than countries have become more common in recent years.14 Certainly, the majority of artworks I will discuss here are chiefly associated with Phnom Penh.
However, the importance within these works of ideologies that were disseminated across Cambodia has necessitated my choice of an interpretive scope that considers the nation as a whole, and not only its capital. Secondly, and more significantly, comparative histories of art in the region, which have
13 See, for example: Claire Holt, Art in Indonesia: Continuities and Change (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1967). See also, for example: Apinan Poshyananda, Modern Art in Thailand: Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1992). Patrick D. Flores has observed that nationally-based art histories in Southeast Asia have tended to “enfold” art with national modernization. He argues that this has been a recurring tendency in the writing of art histories in the region, along with art history functioning as postcolonial critique, and art history as a form of ethnography. Patrick D. Flores, presentation at “Writing Southeast Asian Art,” workshop led by T.K. Sabapathy, Nanyang Technological University Centre for Contemporary Art, Singapore, 7-8 December 2015. 14 See, for example: Pamela N. Corey, “The Artist in the City: Contemporary Art as Urban Intervention in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, and Phnom Penh, Cambodia,” PhD Dissertation, Cornell University, Ithaca, 2015. Viet Ho Le, “Return Engagement: Contemporary Art's Traumas of Modernity and History in Diasporic Sai Gon and Phnom Penh,” PhD Dissertation, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, 2011. Milton Osborne, Phnom Penh: A Cultural History (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).
18 mitigated the erstwhile national focus, have yielded new insights into concerns—artistic and aesthetic, historical and political—that are shared across Southeast Asia. While art histories focused on the region rather than on individual nations do at times risk flattening difference, they can also illuminate experiences and challenges that were shared in many nations during the transition from colonial rule to independence. Cambodia has thus far been left out of most such intra-regional comparative histories, for various reasons which I will consider throughout this thesis, but which surely include a scarcity of scholarly sources on the nation’s modern and contemporary arts.
It is my hope that this study, although focusing on Cambodia, will also enrich broader regional understandings of modernity and contemporaneity in
Southeast Asian arts. Moreover, I hope that this study’s employment of temporal rather than geographical comparisons—considering the arts we call modern in light of arts we call contemporary—will complement the geographically comparative methodology that has been more commonly employed in regional art histories.
The very notions of a “Cambodian modern art” or “Cambodian contemporary art” is a contradiction in terms, given their imposition of a national frame on the inherently international and cosmopolitan cultural
19 logics of both modernity and contemporaneity. 15 Yet the national and nationalist approach taken by much art historical writing on the modern and contemporary has largely failed to register, let alone resolve, this fundamental problem and ambivalence. I employ the concepts of modern and contemporary “Cambodian arts” as strictly heuristic devices. They are employed strategically,16 to facilitate the interpretation of cultural productions hitherto largely overlooked in most accounts of the arts of the twentieth and twenty first centuries, both in the region and at a purportedly global scale.
That is, “Cambodian arts” are addressed directly in the very act of their deconstruction: my critique is embedded and emergent, and does not attempt total erasure of the term, which would be impossible.
15 Khmer theorizations of cultures as cosmopolitan and constituted by contact with other cultures will be addressed below. For a survey of modernist avant-gardes in diverse locations, formed through mutually generative cross-cultural contact, see: Kobena Mercer, ed., Cosmopolitan Modernisms (Cambridge, Mass. and London: MIT Press, 2005). For a discussion of cosmopolitanism as a critical strategy in contemporary art and culture, see: Nikos Papastergiadis, Cosmopolitanism and Culture (Cambridge, UK and Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2012). For a survey of arguments around the global nature of contemporary art, see: Hans Belting, Andrea Buddensieg, and Peter Weibel, eds., The Global Contemporary and the Rise of New Art Worlds (exh. cat., Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England: MIT Press, 2013). For a survey of arguments around art history’s global manifestations, see: James Elkins, ed., Is Art History Global? (New York and London: Routledge, 2007). 16 The strategic adoption of the category of “Cambodian arts” in modern and contemporary settings may be considered in light of Spivak’s notion of “strategic essentialism,” a tactic of simplification of difference adopted by certain politically subaltern groups when it is considered necessary. See: Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Subaltern Studies: Deconstructing Historiography,” in In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics (London and New York: Routledge, 2006 [1987]), 270-304.
20 Instead, “Cambodian arts” are invited here to engage in discursive dialogue with “others”: with the arts of other locations within and beyond
Southeast Asia, to be sure, but also with discourses of art and (art) history that are global in scope or in ambition. In attending to the specific nature of art’s enactment of modernity and contemporaneity in Cambodia, I aim to contribute to a growing body of literature that highlights the multiplicity of variations across different geographical and cultural settings. Such an approach does not, however, imply that the iterations of the modern and contemporary in Cambodia are in any way inherently, uniquely, or essentially
“Cambodian.” This fact is further reinforced by the numerous instances throughout the thesis in which I attend to cross-border contacts within and beyond Southeast Asia which were particularly generative on that which—for interpretive convenience alone—we call “Cambodian arts.”
That this thesis is chiefly about “Cambodian arts” and not the arts of the region more broadly is not to say that it is a study of a culture that is conceived as singular or fixed. Culture is multiplicitous and formed through contact with other cultures. This notion will be familiar from many postcolonial studies, especially those in which—to quote Flores again—“the term post-colonial is refunctioned … from a diachronic research instrument to a theoretical strategy.”17 But here, I want to situate this notion not within
17 Flores, Painting History, 7.
21 Anglophone postcolonial scholarship, but rather within Khmer discourse, and specifically within Neak Srei Troeung Ngea’s text with which we began. Her book was published during the final year of Lon Nol’s Khmer Republic, a time which saw, in Chandler’s characterization, “a wave of nationalist literature.” 18 Certainly, the text displays the kind of cultural nationalism which is often inescapable in Khmer discussions of Cambodian culture. For example, Ngea insists that “the study of foreign civilizations is not undertaken in order to follow others completely, and allow others to destroy
19 our own national characteristics.”
Yet despite this, Ngea advocates for a remarkably plural understanding of world civilizations, and even more significantly, asserts that
Cambodian culture should be seen as a kind of admixture. She writes:
“No people ever have a civilization that is purely theirs and theirs alone […] Contact between one people and another always involves mutual influence between them. Thus, the Khmer people, whose civilization was very famous long ago, were also always influenced by many foreign civilizations. […] While there have certainly been foreign influences on Khmer civilization, the Khmer do not like to follow, or to copy exactly. The Khmer always take influences and transform them, or mix them so that they have their own national characteristics (that is, nationalize them), in order to make them comfortably align with Khmer views, Khmer ways of living, and so on. Any foreign characteristics that do not comfortably align and complement Khmer
18 David Chandler, “The Assassination of Résident Bardez (1925): A Premonition of Revolt in Colonial Cambodia,” Siksācakr: Journal of Cambodia Research 12-13 (2010- 2011): 72. 19 “េរៀនអរfយធម៌បរេទស ពុំែមនេរៀនេដើម#(ីេធPើÄមេគÇំងDសុង និង បេ_Éយឲ#$េគបំ1ត់ លកÖណៈ Üតិ ឯងេទ ។” Ngea, Khmer Civilization, 2.
22 views and Khmer preferences have been discarded by the Khmer, or returned to their source. Because of this ability to integrate and give national characteristics to influences in this way, the national civilization has advanced and progressed increasingly well.”20
This statement, written by a scholar who was educated in Cambodian universities and worked as a high school teacher, predates most Anglophone postcolonial theorization of “hybridity,” a discourse of which Ngea was most likely unaware.21 It allows Ngea to insist on a kind of tolerant curiosity about and acceptance of cultural multiplicity, even despite the cultural nationalism that often dominates her text. This thesis will generally follow Ngea’s lead, sharing her interest in the plural interactions which constitute cultures.
It is relatively unusual for Anglophone studies such as this to employ critical literature in Khmer (as critical work, rather than as an object of
20 “ÜតិZសន៍_ក៏េâយ ពុំែដលKនអរfយធម៌សុទkZធែតឯកឯងេឡើយ ។ [… 6រប៉ះទង{ិចãv រlងÜតិZសន៍មួយេçនឹងÜតិZសន៍េផ#:ងៗេទៀត រែមងKន6រទទួល ឥទkិពលãvេçវfញេç មក Üដiប ។ HIង_មិញ ជនÜតិែខCរែដលè~ប់Kនអរfយធម៌ ល#(ីល#êញយូរHរមកេហើយ ក៏ ែតង 1នទទួលឥទkិពលអរfយធម៌បរេទសÜេDចើនែដរ ។ …ពិត ែមនែតKនឥទkិពលបរេទសេçេលើ អរfយធម៌ែខCរHIងេនះក៏េâយ ក៏ែខCរពុំនិយមយកមកអនុវតA Äម ឬចមëងÄមÇំងDសុងែដរ ។ ែខCរ ែតង យកឥទkិពលÇំងេ>ះមកៃចd ឬែផ#:ផ#:ំឪ#$Kន លកÖណៈÜតិ (ÜតូបនិយកមC) េដើម#(ីឪ#$Dសប Dសួល នឹងទស#:នៈែខCរ និង6ររស់េរបស់ែខCរ Üដiប ។ រqឯលកÖណៈបរេទស_ ែផdក_ែដល មិនDសប Dសួល មិនសុីãvនឹងទស#:នៈែខCរ នឹងចំណង់ចំណìលចិតVែខCរេទ DតîវែខCរïត់េTល ឬក៏Dតîវ Zបរbប ខëñនឯងេçវfញ ។ WDស័យ េâយ6រេចះសDមóល 6រេចះ6ៃឡឪ#$KនលកÖណៈÜតិ ែបបេនះេហើយ េទើបអរfយធម៌ÜតិKន 6រចេDមើនលូតbស់6ន់ែតDបេសើរេឡើង ។” Ngea, Khmer Civilization, 11-13. 21 On hybridity, see, for example: Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994). Details of Ngea Neak Srei Troeung Ngea (née Laay Hunki)’s biography are derived from notes published on the verso of her Khmer Civilization. No other secondary literature on this author has been located.
23 critique), yet while I seek to privilege relatively obscure local voices, including
Ngea’s, I do not do so uncritically. In the case of Ngea, I do not propose that her work can be adopted as a universal theory, but rather that it can be illuminating when employed in tandem with other critical sources, chiefly
Anglophone or European. In noting that Ngea’s text predates much postcolonial theorization of “hybridity,” I am not suggesting that her work in any way predicts this widely influential and globally significant discourse.
Rather, in writing a textbook in Khmer with an intended readership of
Cambodian secondary school students, Ngea does not display any apparent ambition to engage with broader readerships, let alone in global discourses.
Ngea has lived and worked for her entire life in Cambodia; she was not among the generation of scholars to study in France, and nor was she able to escape Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge regime. Married to another
Cambodian author, named Troeung Ngea, Neak Srei Troeung Ngea (née Laay
Hunki)’s work has previously circulated only in limited Khmer-language contexts. She studied Khmer literature in Phnom Penh at the same time as working as a teacher at the Lycée Sisowath, an elite high school in the capital, and her 1974 textbook seems to have been her first publication. In the twenty first century, she reportedly lives in a small rural village, and her only continuing engagement with public discourse is participating in a provincial radio programme about religion. Ngea’s textbook is thus somewhat
24 anomalous, and in drawing on its ideas here, I will do so always and necessarily in combination with other theoretical work.
Ngea’s conception of culture and cultural contact as always involving
“mutual influence” will be employed in tandem with John Clark’s notion of
“transfer,” in which he emphasizes the importance of “the receiving culture’s demand for the transfer of a specific art style at a given epoch,” while also noting that “the sending culture tends to privilege its own interpretation of
[the] accuracy” with which a “receiving culture” comes to “assimilate” this.22
Clark argues that “the art culture that receives does a great deal more than simply accept, for reception is governed by the propensity of a given art culture to receive.” 23 This conception radically refocuses conventional
Anglophone approaches to the interpretation of Asian art, by privileging perspectives from within Asia. In the case of modern “Cambodian arts” involving the “transfer” of “art styles” from France, for example, Clark’s method offers us a way to focus on what happens within Cambodia and within the work of Cambodian artists and audiences in “receiving” these modes, rather than solely on whatever took place on the French side.24
22 John Clark, Modern Asian Art (Sydney: Craftsman House, 1998), 49. 23 Clark, Modern Asian Art, 49. 24 The pre-modern “transfer” of “art styles” from India offers an equally illuminating example. For an historiographical discussion of two perspectives on these issues in relation to India’s interaction with Southeast Asia, as exemplified by George Cœdès’ monograph Indianized States of Southeast Asia and Paul Mus’ essay “India Seen from the East: Indian and Indigenous Cults in Champa,” see Ashley Thompson,
25 This conception of “transfer” offers a way out of seeing “Cambodian arts” as being “derivative,” “imitative,” or in any other way diminished by interactions with other art cultures. Partha Mitter has observed that such pejorative views are inevitable when “transfer” is considered as a matter of
“imitation.” He lampoons the “reductionist criteria employed by art historians to describe the reception of Western art in the periphery; while successful imitation was a form of aping, imperfect imitation represented a failure of learning.” 25 Mitter offers a “serious criticism of influence as an analytic tool,” namely that “it views artists as passive agents of transmission rather than active agents with the ability to exercise choice.” 26 Michael
Baxandall also dismisses “influence” as a “wrong-headed grammatical prejudice.” He observes that “If one says that X influenced Y it does seem that one is saying X did something to Y rather than Y did something to X.”27 Simon
Soon’s comparative study of modern Southeast Asian arts posits that conventional use of the term “‘influence’ demonstrates an inherent bias … privileg[ing] notions of origin and the later work is often seen as derivative.”28
It is for these reasons that Clark’s theory of “transfer” is preferable to the
Engendering the Buddhist State: Territory, Sovereignty and Sexual Difference in the Inventions of Angkor (London and New York: Routledge, 2016), 71-110. 25 Partha Mitter, “Decentering Modernism; Art History and Avant-Garde Art from the Periphery,” Art Bulletin 40, No. 4 (January 2008): 537. 26 Mitter, “Decentering”: 541. 27 Michael Baxandall, Patterns of Intention: On the Historical Explanation of Pictures (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), 59. Quoted in Soon, “What is Left,” 23. 28 Soon, “What is Left,” 23.
26 notion of “influence” in understanding cross-cultural contact in the construction of “Cambodian arts.”
On the historiographical landscape
The forms and meanings of modern and contemporary arts in Cambodia are significantly less well understood than those which are boran: that is, ancient, classical, pre-modern, and traditional. Speaking in 2013, Sopheap Pich—one of the few “Cambodian artists” widely known outside the country—described a commonly held attitude to the nation’s modern and contemporary art history, when he said:
“The history of art died, in the 70s, in the mid-70s. Visual art before that was just beginning to actually bloom. We didn’t have many painters. We only know actually maybe one or two painters … There was nobody else … So we had the ancient, and then it stopped.”29
This understanding of the history of modern “Cambodian arts” in the mid- twentieth century demonstrates the paucity of art historical research on this period. Anglophone and French scholarship on Angkor began in the colonial period, and has continued unabated; by contrast scholars of modern and
29 Speaking at “One Night After Year Zero,” panel discussion with artists Him Sophy, Sophiline Cheam Shapiro, and Sopheap Pich in conversation with Boreth Ly and Khatharya Um. Asia Society, New York, 15 April 2013. http://asiasociety.org/video arts/cambodian-arts-after-year-zero-complete [Accessed August 2013]
27 contemporary Cambodia have been primarily concerned with the Khmer
Rouge atrocities of the 1970s, and published cultural and art histories are comparatively rare. Yes, as this thesis will demonstrate, between 1955 and
1975, the “Cambodian arts” encompassed much more than only “maybe one or two painters,” and this history did not “die” or “stop,” despite the devastation of the years of war and its aftermath after 1975.
As noted, this thesis privileges detailed analyses and close readings of specific artworks and their contexts. My primary aim in what follows is not to characterize broad historical shifts across the six decades under consideration, but rather to provide focused discussions of a carefully selected sample of paintings, drawings, prints, buildings, streets, urban spaces, dances, films, performances, novels, and other texts, images and spaces. Depth of analysis is privileged over breadth of inclusion. Through these analyses, I discuss how modernity and contemporaneity are enacted in “Cambodian arts.”
I have been able to offer these analyses, and to focus on specific artworks rather than broader historical shifts, because of the important research that has already been done on modern and contemporary arts in this context. In each of the following chapters, the key scholarly studies done on various kinds of art will be discussed in more detail. The pioneering, eloquent work of the late art historian Ingrid Muan is of special significance. It will be discussed in detail in Chapter 3, and referred to throughout.
28 It is important to note that most Anglophone and Khmer scholarship on modern and contemporary “Cambodian arts” and culture has been characterized by a breadth of scope rather than a depth of analysis. Most previous studies have privileged the outlining of historical shifts over the extended discussion of specific artworks. And in most previous studies, the notion of “Cambodia” has been a dominant interpretive frame, rather than the notions of modernity or contemporaneity that this thesis addresses.
Yet without these pioneering studies, my work here would not be possible. In addition to the relatively few sources directly addressing modern and contemporary “Cambodian arts” in the period 1955 to 2015, writings on colonial-era arts and culture have also provided important context and background. Penny Edwards’ (2007) monograph on the discursive construction of the colonial nation of Cambodge in the period 1860 to 1945 draws on extensive archival research, and is especially significant for my thinking in its insistence on seeing what Edwards calls the “cultivation of a nation” as being a process enacted both by Cambodian and French historical actors.30 Panivong Norindr’s (1996) monograph on the French imagining of
Indochina during the colonial era, as well as Marco Ranjan Deyasi’s (2007) unpublished dissertation on the appropriation of Cambodian and Vietnamese culture by French artists and others during the period 1889 to 1931, have also
30 This and all subsequent references are listed in the Bibliography.
29 offered useful context. Anne Ruth Hansen’s (2007) monograph on the role of
Buddhist clergy in articulating and responding to modernity during the first six decades of the colonial period offers an important precursor to my discussions of the period after 1955.
Many sources directly dealing with modern and contemporary
“Cambodian arts” are unpublished dissertations. This reflects the smallness of this field, especially when compared to social, political and economic histories of Cambodia in the twenty first century, which have tended to focus on the atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s, and also when compared to art historical works on ancient “Cambodian arts,” chiefly those of Angkor.
Published social, political, economic and cultural histories of Cambodia have offered an essential foundation to my work, and their generally limited discussion of the arts has proven a very productive absence. David Chandler is the author of numerous texts on modern and ancient Cambodian history.
Several of these have been translated to Khmer, expanding his influence among Cambodian readers. His monograph, The Tragedy of Cambodian History
(1991), is of particular relevance here for its focus on the years after 1945.
Chandler draws on extensive archival research as well as interviews with
Cambodians conducted after the fall of Democratic Kampuchea, and also on insights gained during his employment in Cambodia in the early 1960s.
Milton Osborne’s monograph on the cultural history of Phnom Penh (2008), 30 and his biography of Norodom Sihanouk (1994), have also been useful references. Osborne’s often anecdotal approach offers a helpful glimpse into the texture of daily life during the period 1955 to 1975, although his characterization of Sihanouk and other historical actors is less relevant for my purposes here.
Studies of ancient “Cambodian arts,” including those of Angkor, are too numerous to be listed here. Yet one scholar of Cambodia in antiquity must be named, for her work has provided an important methodological influence.
Ashley Thompson’s writings include her unpublished doctoral dissertation on Cambodia’s “Middle Period” between the decline of Angkor and rise of
French colonial rule, numerous published articles on Angkor, ritual, and contemporary arts and curatorial practice, and a published monograph on
Angkor. From these, I have drawn extensively on Thompson’s attention to trans-historical forces that transcend these temporal delineations, as well as her interest in the Khmer language as a site of analysis, and most especially her insistence on the importance of gender and sexual difference in the interpretation of “Cambodian arts.”
As indicated , my methodological approach has also been informed by scholarship on the modern and contemporary arts of other nations in
Southeast Asia, including comparative studies which transcend national borders. These will be referred to periodically throughout what follows.
31 On the structure of this thesis
This Introduction has outlined my approach to “Cambodian arts” after independence: the scope of the discussion, the importance of trans-media intersections and the intertwining of art and ideological rhetoric, and the historiographical landscape into which this work intervenes. The chapters that follow are not organized chronologically, but rather in accordance with key concepts and significant media.
Chapter 2 offers a discussion of the definitions of “modernity” and
“contemporaneity,” arguing that these be understood as conceptual categories rather than periodizing delineations, and that they are rendered most productively legible in relation to one another. This methodology informs the interpretations of artworks and their contexts which follow.
Chapter 2 is chiefly theoretical in tone, whereas those that follow mostly involve discussions of specific artworks and their contexts.
Chapter 3 considers the emergence of the figure of the modern
“Cambodian artist”—a term that was at first synonymous with representational painting, but which was almost never limited to only painting alone—in the period leading up to and during the Sangkum. It discusses the multiple and transnational origins of modern painting in
Cambodia. A detailed discussion of the pioneering work on modern
“Cambodian arts” by the late Ingrid Muan is also offered, as are elaborations 32 of instances of trans-media intersection in artists’ biographies, and in artworks themselves. Shifts in terminology, as well as certain continuities in technique, between the modern “Cambodian artist” and the contemporary
“Cambodian artist” will also be considered, taking the 2013-14 graduating class at the Royal University of Fine Arts as a case study.
Chapter 4 continues the discussion of the visual arts, chiefly paintings and prints, through close analyses of selected works by key artists of the period 1955 to 1975, including Nhek Dim (ញឹក ឌឹម). The argument here centres on the relationship between art and ideology: I posit that modernity was visually enacted chiefly in images of the landscape and women. The landscape was invested with new and shifting political and rhetorical meanings during this period, beginning with Sihanouk’s policy of “Khmer
Buddhist Socialism,” only to be transformed following the spread of civil war after 1970. Images of the landscape are inextricably linked to the depiction of women in paintings of this period, including images of women performing agricultural labour, and sexualized images of women, which are considered in light of their circulation as album covers for popular music recordings. This focus on the mediated environments in which paintings were received by various publics points to the plural temporalities at work in the perception of these works: a case of the contemporaneity of the modern.
33 Chapter 5 maintains the focus on the nexus of ideology and
“Cambodian arts.” It considers various performances made during the
Sangkum period, chiefly dance and cinema, and also includes briefer discussions of sports and publicly coordinated spectacles, such as political rallies and celebrations. I suggest that these modern performances aestheticize formerly ordinary aspects of life, in the service of political power. The interplay between image and text, and between new and old forms, is central to this discussion.
Chapter 6, while still addressing ideological rhetoric, shifts focus to the coevality of old and new forms in “Cambodian arts.” It considers how modernity was enacted in built form, in what I am calling the “modern spaces” of architecture and urban environments, chiefly during the Sangkum period. It also considers how these modern spaces have been engaged in more recent multidisciplinary artistic practices in the twenty first century. Through visual and spatial analyses of the National Sports Complex designed by Vann
Molyvann (វណò ម៉ូលីវណò), as well as of numerous private homes of unknown authorship, I argue that in modern spaces, significant continuities with and elaborations of boran (ancient, classical, traditional) forms can be discerned.
This includes not only the temples of Angkor, which have been the primary focus in prior research, but importantly also domestic forms, namely vernacular stilted housing. I introduce the notion of the “anonymous
34 modern” through an analysis of how an aesthetic vocabulary from large public projects like the Stadium is shared in smaller private homes, thus revealing how modern spaces shaped and were shaped by the lived experience of their inhabitants. The chapter includes a proposed typology of
Cambodian modern houses.
Chapter 7 considers modern literature in Khmer, chiefly novels, from the period 1955 to 1975, with some mention of earlier texts from the 1930s and
1940s. A key aim here is to consider how central concerns seen in the previous chapters’ discussion of visual arts, performance, architecture and urban spaces also recur in literary form. I also introduce the notion of simultaneity as a significant trope and strategy of contemporaneity in modern Khmer literature, drawing attention to the non-linear, back and forth narrative structure of many novels from this period. Close readings of texts are thus combined with theoretical discussions of contemporaneity within modern
“Cambodian arts.” Again the interplay between the visual and the verbal is of importance here, demonstrating the ability of trans-media intersections to transcend these and other divides.
While each of the preceding chapters includes discussions of a few works from the twenty first century, their focus has been on the period 1955 to 1975, now often remembered (or imagined) as a “golden era” for arts and culture. In Chapter 8, we turn our attention instead to the years 1975 to 1999, a period characterized by war and its aftermath. Unlike preceding chapters, this 35 chapter does not focus on close analyses of specific artworks, or give a comprehensive overview of this period. Rather, I offer a theoretical argument that in the anti-modern cultural policies of the Khmer Rouge in the era of
Democratic Kampuchea (1975-1979) and the instrumentalizing of culture during the People’s Republic of Kampuchea (1979-1989) we can still discern certain continuities with the self-consciously modern arts of the preceding decades. Aside from advancing this proposition, this chapter also serves to outline areas for further research, beyond the scope of this thesis. Rather than taking an artistic medium as its organizing principle, it revolves around the notion of the rhetorical, and its relationship to the arts.
The concluding chapter asks what “Cambodian arts” may offer to understandings of modernity and contemporaneity more broadly.
36 Chapter 2
Modernity and Contemporaneity: Toward a Methodology of Coextensive Conceptual Categories
Modernity and contemporaneity are best understood not as periodizing markers but rather as conceptual categories, and as coextensive, mutually illuminating, in some ways even mutually constitutive. This methodology will inform the analyses of specific examples of “Cambodian arts” and their contexts. These in turn will form the core of the chapters that follow.
As indicated in the Introduction, the categories of modernity and contemporaneity in art, and the differences between them, are subjects of intensive discussion by art historians and commentators addressing non-
Cambodian contexts, but have rarely been considered in relation to
“Cambodian arts.” Elsewhere, in Southeast Asia and beyond, the contemporary is often seen as something that comes after and displaces the
37 modern, an understanding which I reject as teleological and overly simplistic.
While recognizing that there are distinct discourses built around the modern and the contemporary, I argue that they are best understood as unfolding alongside one another, and often overlapping: in short, as coextensive.
Although modernity and contemporaneity are by no means the only interpretive lenses through which “Cambodian arts” may be understood, I contend that making sense of the interaction between the discourses of modernity and contemporaneity is important because it offers a way to think about “Cambodian arts” in a dynamic relationship to a global discourse that is cosmopolitan, trans-historical, and not nationally bounded. Moreover, this discourse raises the fundamental question of art’s relationship to history.
Understanding the differences between the modern and the contemporary often forms a part of a larger attempt to make sense of the turbulences and transformations in the world—including of course in Cambodia—over the last half century, and their manifestations in art.
My contention, that modernity and contemporaneity are not discrete periods but rather mutually enlightening coextensive categories, rests on two observations. First, a coevality of old and new forms defines most modern and contemporary “Cambodian arts.” As a consequence, the modern does not represent a break with that which came before, and the contemporary does not represent a break with the modern. That is, coevality is itself coextensive, as it can be found in the arts of all periods, despite other differences and 38 shifts. The coextensive nature of modernity and contemporaneity in
“Cambodian arts” cannot be reduced to coevality alone—it is methodological as well as temporal—but the presence of both new and old elements in artworks is nevertheless key to my understanding of them. Second, if contemporaneity is understood as a particular relationship to the present time, and as the interplay of plural temporalities in the space of an artwork, then instances of the contemporary can be found within the modern. So too, instances of the modern can be found within the contemporary, and indeed, the decades that followed independence are a primary source of inspiration for many artists in the twenty first century. We will return to this point throughout this thesis, and in its Conclusion.
In this chapter, I will discuss the definitions of modernity and contemporaneity in the “Cambodian arts,” making special reference to Khmer terminologies. In proposing to understand these as coextensive categories, I am arguing against two powerfully pervasive ways of understanding history, including the history of art. These are viewing history as defined by ruptures, and viewing history as progressivist—as linear, or teleological.
Central to my argument is my apprehension that in Khmer, to a greater degree than in English or French, the terms used to describe the modern and the contemporary are both chiefly and explicitly concerned with temporality.
The most commonly used Khmer words for modern are samay (សម័យ,
39 literally “period” or “era”) and tomnerb (ទំេនើប, literally “recent” or
“recentness”); the most commonly used Khmer term for contemporary is a translation of the Anglophone and Francophone word, and is sahasamay (សហ
សម័យ, literally “together with the period or era”). In each of these Khmer terms, which I will discuss in more detail below, there is an implication that something (such as an artwork) that is modern, or that is contemporary, is in a special, self-conscious relationship with time, and in particular with the present time and the present era. In Anglophone and European discourse, such a claim is often made for the term “contemporary,” but less so for
“modern.” Giorgio Agamben, for example, describes “contemporariness” as
“a singular relationship with one’s own time, which adheres to it and, at the same time, keeps a distance from it.”1 That such a relationship between an artwork and its era can be discerned in the terminology of both modernity and contemporaneity, in Khmer, is significant, as it provides a method for discerning instances of the contemporary within the modern.
While I am arguing that modernity and contemporaneity are coextensive conceptual categories, I do also recognize that there are distinct discourses built around each term. Therefore, this chapter will discuss each in turn. This means that my analysis of the Khmer terminologies is necessarily
1 Giorgio Agamben, What Is An Apparatus? And Other Essays, trans. David Kishik and Stefan Pedatella (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009), 41.
40 divided into two sections. My comments on the Khmer terms for the modern
(chiefly samay and tomnerb) will be brief, and partial; however at the chapter’s conclusion, when discussing the Khmer terms for the contemporary (chiefly sahasamay), the prior consideration of the language of modernity will be brought back into play, and its significance more fully elaborated.
To argue that the modern and contemporary are coextensive is not to deny that significant social, cultural, political and environmental transformations have taken place in the late twentieth century. Frederic
Jameson pithily encapsulated a seismic shift in political thought and cultural attitudes when he wrote, in 2003, that “it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism.”2 This is as true in Cambodia as it is anywhere. Indeed, events in Cambodia in the 1970s have rendered revolutionary Marxism unpopular and unpalatable in much of the world, including in Southeast Asia. This includes both the atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge, and the subsequent invasion/liberation by forces backed by another nominally communist regime in Vietnam.3 Cambodia, like most other places, has in many ways profoundly transformed.
2 Frederic Jameson, “Future City,” New Left Review 21 (May-June 2003): 76. 3 Benedict Anderson opened his influential monograph on nationalism with an observation that “the Vietnamese invasion and occupation of Cambodia in December 1978 and January 1979 represented the first large-scale conventional war waged by one revolutionary Marxist regime against another.” Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, revised edition (London and New York: Verso, 2006 [1983]), 1.
41 Yet despite these seismic changes in the world, coevalities in art persist, just as they do in thought and in daily life. Modernity and contemporaneity, rather than being mutually exclusive periods, are concepts that can be employed to illuminate and interpret the redeployment of old forms in new ways within the world of an artwork.4
Before moving on to definitional discussions of the modern and the contemporary, I will first offer a concrete illustration of what I mean by coevalities and plural temporalities in art. I will do this by comparing two paintings of cyclos: a pedalled rickshaw, once in wide use in Phnom Penh, and a symbol of the modern and new during the 1960s.5 The paintings were made within a few years of each other, within a decade of the nation’s independence. In one painting, by Nhek Dim (ញឹក ឌឹម 1934-1978)(ca. 1960s,
Figure 2.1), we see both old and new forms coexisting in the picture—the new cyclo passing architectural structures displaying stylistic elements that are
4 My understanding of redeployments of old artistic and cultural forms is informed by Alexander Nagel, Medieval Modern: Art Out of Time (London: Thames and Hudson, 2012). I draw also on scholarship on the pre-modern in Cambodia, and on the modern and contemporary in South Asia and the “third world.” See: Ashley Thompson, Engendering the Buddhist State: Territory, Sovereignty and Sexual Difference in the Inventions of Angkor (London and New York: Routledge, 2016). See also: Geeta Kapur, When Was Modernism. Essays on Contemporary Cultural Practice in India (New Delhi: Tulika Books, 2007 [2000]). 5 The cyclo was invented in Phnom Penh in 1937 by French engineer Maurice Coupeaud, and subsequently exported to Saigon and elsewhere. Milton Osborne, Phnom Penh: A Cultural History (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 91. Notably, the invention of the cyclo coincides with the emergence of Khmer modern novels, and representational painting techniques.
42 centuries old—in a way that reveals the ideological redeployment of
Angkorian and other old tropes in new ways during Sihanouk’s Sangkum era. In its prominent interest in coeval elements, which I will discuss in more detail below, and in the plural temporalities we see at work in the image,
Nhek Dim’s painting may be said to display aspects both of modernity and contemporaneity. In the other painting, by Pann Tra (01ន់ 34 1931-
2009)(1960, Figure 2.2), we see almost nothing that is not explicitly new: the cyclo is shining in its newness, and the only identifiable feature in the background is the historically recent electric wiring. While Tra’s too is a complex image open to numerous interpretations, in a way, this painting is exemplary of the modern, as it is most commonly understood: of the bewildering charm of the neoteric. The more singular relationship to time in
Pann Tra’s image, the near-total absence of anything that does not signify the modern and the novel, means that it does not display coevalities of old and new and multiple temporalities in a prominent way. Contemporaneity is not an especially useful concept for interpretation of Pann Tra’s work, unlike when considering Nhek Dim’s painting.
These two paintings of cyclos embody many of the challenges of research on pre-1975 “Cambodian arts.” They are the only known paintings depicting cyclos, yet given that cyclos were a popular subject in many novels from the Sangkum era, it is likely that the vehicles would have been depicted
43 in other paintings. Like the vast majority of artworks from the years between
1955 and 1975, these other paintings have been lost.
Nhek Dim and Pann Tra were two of the best known artists of the
Sangkum era, but little is known about the cyclo paintings, including their current locations.6 Neither work has been discussed in scholarly or critical literature. Indeed, before I came across an image of Pann Tra’s painting in
2016, it had never been seen by the late artist’s surviving family.
In addition to all of these practical obstacles to the study of these works, there is also a conceptual challenge. Without a contextually informed analysis, both paintings could be dismissed as sentimental. They are unmistakably modern in a Cambodian context, but may not appear so when compared to contemporaneous paintings from elsewhere in Southeast Asia.
Indeed, the post-impressionist style of Pann Tra’s work in particular may appear “belated,” if examined in relationship to French post-impressionism, which was in France already passé by 1960. Yet there is more to see than this.
6 It is highly likely that at least the Pann Tra painting, and possibly also the Nhek Dim, was lost in a 1964 riot in which hundreds of paintings were destroyed. This event is discussed in detail in Chapter 4.
44
Figure 2. 1
Figure 2. 2
45 Comparing cyclos: On coevalities and plural temporalities in art
As suggested above, I am going to argue that like most examples of modern and contemporary “Cambodian art,” Nhek Dim’s painting of a cyclo prominently displays both old and new forms, and plural temporalities may be discerned within the work. By contrast, I will propose, Pann Tra’s painting of a cyclo does not include coevalities or multiple temporalities, at least not in an overt way. Before comparing the works on these terms, however, I will first introduce the known historical facts of each painting.
Pann Tra’s Cyclo was shown in the first of three annual exhibitions of paintings by Cambodian artists, organized by the United States Information
Service (USIS) in 1961. The painting won a prize, and was chosen to be included in a wall calendar in the same year, which according to the organizers, meant that its image was soon to be found in the homes of
“thousands of people in the kingdom,” as well as being “displayed in schools and government offices, in market places, and in stores throughout the country.”7 We will discuss the USIS exhibitions in greater detail in Chapter 4.
It is unknown when Nhek Dim’s painting of a cyclo was made,
7 Author unnamed, “Contemporary Art in Cambodia,” Free World [Thailand edition?], 1961. With thanks to Chov Theanly.
46 however the fluid (rather than scumbled8) nature of the brushstrokes, and the compositional emphasis on the Independence Monument and naga fountain
(both inaugurated in 1961), suggest that the work was made before 1964, when Nhek Dim relocated to the US for four years of study.
The cyclo is the primary focus of both paintings, and, alongside the very medium of representational easel painting, it functions as the central emblem of the new in these works: representing modern, urban life. In Nhek
Dim’s work, the man driving the cyclo is hunched against the heavy rain, his face obscured from view by the brim of his hat. The elegantly dressed young woman who is his passenger looks somewhat anxiously out to the middle distance, but she is, at least, sheltered from the rainstorm under the vehicle’s retractable roof, and behind a makeshift tarpaulin. We can imagine that this urbane woman has important business to attend to, for her to be travelling in such weather: this is new, the kind of activity one would only see in the city, and perhaps too this is a new kind of woman, one that would only be seen in the city. In Pann Tra’s painting, by contrast, the sun is shining brightly in a clear, blue sky. The cyclo driver leans into his task of pedalling, the skin and muscle of his lean limbs exposed to the sun in short sleeves and trousers. The man is a model of physical vitality, perhaps a symbol of the health of the new
8 Formal analysis suggests a shift in the artist’s handling of paint over the course of the 1960s. However, this can only be stated tentatively, given the shortage of works available for view in the original.
47 nation (a trope we return to in Chapter 5). Yet as much as we admire him for his strength and effort, we also pity him. Pedalling under the fierce sun would be exhausting, and the man has no passenger, meaning that he is earning no fare. As we will see in Chapter 7, modern Khmer novels often centred on the figure of the cyclo driver, whose precarious economic situation was described in detail by authors to reveal the inequalities of the new Sangkum society, and the hardships endured by the lower socioeconomic classes. Knowing that
Pann Tra was a member of the Association of Modern Khmer Painters, an organization conspicuously not affiliated with either Sihanouk or the US, and headed by a communist and friend of the Khmer Rouge leader Khieu
Samphan, we may deduce that Tra’s painting is intended both to celebrate the cyclo driver’s labour and to lament his struggle.
Yet while the cyclo is the primary focus of both paintings, their compositional structures differ significantly. In Pann Tra’s work, the cyclo is the sole point of interest. The vehicle and its shadow take up the entire width of the canvas, and its driver dominates the vertical plane, with his white shirt attracting our eye, his extended limbs maximizing the space occupied by his frame, and the overall shape of the driver and vehicle together forming a pleasing triangulation that fills the canvas. Trees and pedestrians visible in the background are rendered indistinct in Tra’s pointillist brushstrokes, and in no way detract our attention from the cyclo and its driver.
48 In Nhek Dim’s work, by contrast, the cyclo is the principal focus and largest object in the picture, but is rivalled in both size and visual interest by the overlapping forms of the naga fountain and Independence Monument, and by the soaring roof of the Wat Lanka temple, which gleams in a patch of sunlight. Together, these stylistically “old” architectural forms occupy almost as much pictorial space as the “new” vehicle. They are positioned at precisely the same height on the canvas, and equidistant from the left edge as the cyclo driver is from the right edge, with the overall picture organized into vertical thirds. Whereas Tra’s white-shirted cyclo driver forms the brightest point in the painting, Nhek Dim’s driver is clad in dark clothes, close in colour to the indistinct mass of trees in the background. It is not the driver, but rather the temporary rain shelter strung up across the cyclo that is the brightest element in Nhek Dim’s painting, and its position at the centre of the canvas draws our eye to the similarly light-hued form of the Independence Monument, in the background, bathed in sunlight as if in a clearing in the storm.
These compositional differences point to the deep divergence in the two paintings. In Pann Tra’s work, the sole focus is on the historically novel mode of transport that is the cyclo, and the historically novel occupation that is driving a cyclo. Underscoring this singular fascination with the artist’s present day, the newness of the cyclo is also emphasized, with its chrome mudguards gleaming in the sun, and its bright seat upholstered in a jolly red.
Cutting horizontally across the top third of the image, electricity wires point 49 to another, even more important aspect of urban modernization.
Electrification took place in Phnom Penh while the majority of rural areas had no electric facilities (a situation which has been slow to change). Moreover,
Tra’s staccato brushstrokes prominently announce the novelty of the visual technology of representational painting. Of course, given that the work was seen by “thousands of people” and “displayed in schools and government offices, in market places, and in stores throughout the country,” as a result of its publication in the USIS calendar, it is entirely possible that among its viewers at the time, more complex and plural relationships to time may have been discerned. Perhaps the graphically simplified, centralized and symmetrical composition may have recalled depictions of figures and vehicles in temple paintings, or in Angkorian bas reliefs. Yet it is clear that such interpretations, while possible, are not central. The most prominent aspect of
Tra’s painting of the cyclo is not a plurality of temporalities, but rather a singular fascination with the new.
Whereas the cyclo is a symbol of the new in these paintings from the early 1960s, pointing to changes heralded by modernization and the promise of the future, in several artworks from the early 2010s, the cyclo instead functions as a nostalgic talisman of a romanticized past. One example can be found in a series of photographs, videos, and performances by Anida Yoeu
Ali (5និ7 យឺ 5លី born Battambang, 1974, educated in the United States)
50 titled The Buddhist Bug (2009-ongoing). In it, the artist—who identifies as
Cham Muslim—appears dressed in a costume which combines the saffron colour of Theravada Buddhist monks’ robes with the hijab head covering of
Muslim dress. In many images, this otherworldly and somewhat futuristic- looking personage is posed against signifiers of continuity with a deep past, including buffalo-drawn carts, wooden fishing boats, and in more than one image, a cyclo (2012, Figure 2.3). Similarly, in a video and performance by
Khvay Samnang (ៃខ= សំ>ង born Svay Rieng, 1982) titled Samnang Cow Taxi
Moves Sand (2011, Figure 2.4), the artist uses a rickshaw to cart sand from
Phnom Penh’s streets to a site outside the city that is affected by erosion.
Samnang refers to environmental problems that were perceived as new and specific to the historical moment of the work’s creation, especially those caused by the dredging of sand from rivers, and the filling of Phnom Penh’s lakes, most prominently Boeung Kak. But the work contrasts these topical concerns with references to a romanticized past in which greater care was taken of the environment and its inhabitants. This is symbolized by the old
Bodhi tree to which Samnang carries the sand, in a gesture of repairing its eroded root system, which renders its continued existence precarious. In both of these works of “contemporary art,” multiple temporalities are at play, and in both, the cyclo functions to signify not the present, the new, and the future,
51 as it did in Nhek Dim’s and Pann Tra’s paintings, but rather the past, as it is nostalgically remembered and imagined from the perspective of the present.
Figure 2. 3
Figure 2. 4
To return to the 1960s paintings: in clear contrast to Pann Tra’s singular focus on the neoteric, in Nhek Dim’s work, newness is offset by forms that are familiarly boran (ancient, classical, traditional). The new appears in the form of the cyclo, as well as in the depiction of an urban lifestyle that necessitates
52 travelling through a rainstorm, and in the electric streetlights visible in the background. Yet alongside these novel elements are the boran ornamental forms of the naga fountain, the spires of the Wat Langka pagoda, and the
Independence Monument. According to its architect, Vann Molyvann, the
Monument’s details were (at the request of Sihanouk himself) modelled on the tenth century temple of Banteay Srei, and these were affixed to a rectilinear tower structure based on modern mathematical principles devised by Le Corbusier.9 Yet at this distance, the Monument’s form recalls the central towers of Angkor Wat, reminiscent of the elegant, organic shape of lotus buds.
Like Pann Tra, Nhek Dim was clearly seduced by newness, and specifically by the modern city, yet his painting also demonstrates the continued appeal of older architectural forms as well. The plural temporalities at work in the picture are compounded by the coevality of new and old forms within the naga fountain and Independence Monument themselves. The combination of the ornamental details from a tenth century temple, the pointed tower form of a twelfth century temple, and the rationalist geometry of a twentieth century architect in the Independence Monument has already been mentioned. The siting of the Monument points to another layer of trans-
9 See Helen Grant Ross and Darryl Leon Collins, Building Cambodia: ‘New Khmer Architecture’ 1953-1970 (Bangkok: Key Publisher, 2006), 88-89. See also: Darryl Collins, “Vann Molyvann: Situating the Work of Cambodia’s Most Influential Architect,” Perspecta 45: Agency (2012): 78-82.
53 historical complexity. It is aligned both to Wat Phnom, and to two massive urban planning projects that would, within a decade of the Monument’s construction, come to transform the city. These two projects, the National
Sports Complex and the Bassac Riverfront Complex, would both also be overseen by Vann Molyvann. 10 Wat Phnom, originally established in the fourteenth century and rebuilt during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, was the old centre of the colonial city, located north of the Royal
Palace, and equally close to the banks of the Tonle Sap river. The location of the Independence Monument signalled the ambitions of Sihanouk, Molyvann, and the Sangkum to expand the nation’s capital, shifting the city’s centre away from Wat Phnom, to the south of the Royal Palace, and inland from the river. The Monument’s location also points to the ideologically charged layering of temporal references that underpinned urban planning in this moment: references to the Angkorian past, to the colonial past, to the present needs of the Sangkum era, and indeed to the future, with all its promise.
That each of these multiple temporalities are at play in the combination of old and new forms within Nhek Dim’s painting, and indeed within several of the architectural forms that it depicts, is typical of the coevalities that define most “Cambodian arts” during the Sangkum era and after. Pann Tra’s painting is, in different ways, just as complex: it exalts the cyclo driver’s
10 With thanks to Pen Sereypagna for our many conversations on this matter, from 2014 to 2016.
54 physical prowess, and yet it may also be understood as revealing his lamentably precarious class position. Yet Tra’s painting lacks the plurality of temporal references found in Nhek Dim’s work: it is chiefly fascinated by all that is new (even if somewhat ambivalent in attitude toward the new proletarian precarity), with no obvious sign of anything older.
In pointing to a glorious past and a hopeful future, while also celebrating a transforming present, Nhek Dim’s painting can be said to enact both modernity and contemporaneity, in the senses of the terms which I will now outline.
On the modern
In much Anglophone art historical and literary discourse, “modernism” has come to refer to avant-garde movements in Europe and North America, whereas “modernity” is used to refer to the historical conditions of the era in which such movements arose. In this thesis, as in most scholarship on modern arts and culture in Asia, no such distinction is made; the terms “modern” and
“modernity” are used more or less interchangeably, and the term
“modernism” is mostly avoided.
My understanding of the modern is founded on its inherent multiplicity. Older notions of the modern as originating in Europe and then spreading across the planet have been widely discredited. Instead, scholars 55 now acknowledge “the existence of culturally specific forms of modernity shaped by distinct cultural heritages and sociopolitical conditions. These forms will continue to differ in their value systems, institutions, and other factors.”11 As we saw in Chapter 1, Neak Srei Troeung Ngea’s conception of
(Cambodian and other) cultures as hybrid and essentially constituted through cross-cultural exchanges indicates that a productive understanding of multiplicity and cultural difference can be found in Khmer discourse as well.
Within this potentially endless plurality, certain groupings of modernities in art have been proposed. Geographically comparative studies of Southeast Asian modern art have worked toward what Simon Soon terms a
“regional art history” which “could not emerge if [he] were to focus on the development of a particular art movement within one country.” 12 More broadly, John Clark has outlined the distinct contours of an “Asian
Modern.”13 Still more broadly, Geeta Kapur, writing from the perspective of postcolonial India, suggests the possibility of a pan-“third-world” modernity.
While noting that “the persistence of terms ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity’ as they
11 Nicholas N. Eisenstadt, Jens Riedel and Dominic Sachsenmaier, “The Context of the Multiple Modernities Paradigm,” in Reflections on Multiple Modernities: European, Chinese and Other Interpretations, ed. Dominic Sachsenmaier and Jens Riedel with Nicholas N. Eisenstadt (Leiden, Boston and Köln: Brill, 2002), 1. 12 Simon Soon, “What is Left of Art? The Spatio-Visual Practice of Political Art in Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, and the Philippines, 1950s–1970s,” PhD Thesis, University of Sydney, Sydney, 2015, 22. 13 John Clark, “The Worlding of the Asian Modern,” in Contemporary Asian Art and Exhibitions, ed. Michelle Antoinette and Caroline Turner (Canberra: ANU Press, 2014), 67-88.
56 figure in third-world debates are best appreciated if we see them as notations within the cultural polemic of decolonization,”14 she argues that “third-world art is not to be predicated on the question of protest alone: it has to be structurally different.”15 Notions of a “global South” have also been proposed.16
The Cold War in significant ways shaped the modern in art in postcolonial Cambodia, as in much of the region and the decolonizing world.
This was especially pronounced during the 1950s and 1960s, which saw extensive deployment of “cultural diplomacy” by all sides in the conflict, including through exhibitions and performances, which will be addressed in later chapters. Events related to the Cold War also caused the destruction of lives, artworks, and historical records in Cambodia. The shadow of the Cold
War is thus cast over all that follows.
The geopolitics of the Cold War also meant that Cambodia excluded itself or was excluded from transnational art exhibitions and related gatherings from the 1950s onwards which have, in recent historiographical accounts, been cast as formative of a pan-regional artistic modernity. Thus, the legacy of the Cold War continues to be felt even in the neoliberal
14 Geeta Kapur, When Was Modernism: Essays on Contemporary Cultural Practice in India (New Delhi: Tulika, 2000), 267. 15 Kapur, When Was Modernism, 294. Emphasis added. 16 The discourse of the “global South” has largely failed to gain traction in the economically less privileged nations of Southeast Asia, perhaps in a sign of the troubling tendency of this discourse to flatten difference: to see southern Italy with its stigmatized dialects and northern Cambodia with its unexploded landmines as being, at least at some level, part of the same “global South.”
57 contemporary, as Cambodia—like other formerly “neutralist” or communist- aligned countries—continues to be set aside from new art historical narratives, as a result of the nation’s non-participation in events half a century ago. For example, the First Southeast Asia Art Conference and Competition in
Manila in 1957 is emerging as a canonical, watershed event in regional art historical discourse, described in a recent study as “the first survey exhibition” of the region.17 While Cambodian painter Nhek Dim travelled to and worked in Manila in 1957, Cambodia did not participate in the Conference and Competition, almost certainly due to Sihanouk’s fraught relationship with the US Information Service at the time, which we discuss in detail in Chapter
4. To put it crudely, Cambodia’s non-participation in the regional exhibition in 1957 has resulted in the nation’s exclusion from a productive regional discourse six decades later. Discussing related phenomena in more general terms, Pamela N. Corey has observed that just as art historical discussion of
Southeast Asia in antiquity has been centred on what are called “Hindu
Buddhist” frameworks, so too art historical discourse on the modern “has focused on a core group of countries tied to the foundation of ASEAN [the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations]: Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines,
17 Kathleen Ditzig, “An Exceptional Inclusion: On MoMA’s exhibition Recent American Prints in Color and the First Exhibition of Southeast Asian Art,” Southeast of Now: Directions in Contemporary and Modern Art in Asia 1, No. 1 (2017): 39-80.
58 Malaysia, and Singapore.” 18 With this simple but significant observation,
Corey identifies an historiographical blind spot which comparative accounts of the region in the postcolonial era have thus far largely failed to apprehend.
Let us move on from the geopolitical construction of modernity, to the linguistic and other discursive nuances at play.
There are several different terms in Khmer discourse to describe the
19 modern, all of which are predicated on a sense of its temporality. “New” (ថAី thmei) or “new era” (សម័យថAី samay thmei) are common, as is the use of the loan-word moderne. The word for era, samay (សម័យ), is also used by itself to refer specifically to arts of the modern era. Perhaps the most common and striking of the terms for modern is tomnerb (ទំេនើប), also used together with the word for “era,” as samay tomnerb (សម័យទំេនើប). A neologism, tomnerb derives from terb (េទើប), which is a conjunctive morpheme used to indicate recentness,
18 Pamela N. Corey, “Image and Text in Vietnamese Art After Doi Moi,” unpublished lecture delivered at Java Café and Gallery, organized by Vetika Brovoat Selapak Art History Forum, Phnom Penh, 21 June 2016. Corey makes a related point about discourse on contemporary art, noting that “the artists that came to represent Southeast Asia in the 1980s and 90s were largely from the more economically developed nations … those countries that comprised the core group of ASEAN when it was founded in 1967.” Pamela N. Corey, “Metaphor as Method: Curating Regionalism in Mainland Southeast Asia,” Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art 13, No. 2 (March/April 2012): 72-73. 19 Novels published during the years 1955 to 1975 suggest that these terms were commonly used during that time. This is supported by the memory of older Cambodians. In Chapter 7’s discussion of literature from this period, we will see that novels were filled with discourse on the modern.
59 as in “I just recently arrived” (ខBCំេទើបែតមក khnhom terb tae mok). As such, the use of the word tomnerb to describe the modern is to characterize something that is modern as being recent; to describe the modern era as samay tomnerb is, literally, to describe the modern era as “the era of recentness.”20
That temporality is at the root of Khmer terminologies of the modern is significant to my understanding of the modern and contemporary as coextensive. Anglophone and European discourses on the definitions of the contemporary emphasize the term’s semantic performance of being in step with time, and with the current epoch. We will discuss this in detail below; my comments above on the Khmer terminologies of the modern, and their basis in descriptions of temporality, will thus be revisited in our discussion of
Khmer terms for the contemporary.
In Anglophone and European discourse, the modern in terms of art is generally understood as involving a turn away from tradition towards innovation: an orientation of artists toward the new. Recent scholarship has productively complicated this simplistic understanding. Boris Groys, for
20 Quirkier terms do appear, such as “the era of Apollo” (សម័យ5ប៉ូឡI samay apollo), in reference to the US space exploration program. While memorable, such phrases do not have the circulation and currency of the more temporally-based terms cited. “The era of Apollo” appears on the label of several records by Sinn Sisamouth, the most famous popular musician of the 1955-75 period, who will reappear in several chapters of this thesis. This term was also discussed in a presentation by doctoral researcher Phally Chroy at the Centre for Khmer Studies in Phnom Penh on 26 July 2016.
60 example, does acknowledge that “thought in modernity, unlike thought in most earlier periods, set out from the assumption that universal truth could manifest itself not just in the past, but in the present and future as well.” In other words, the modern is, of course, different from that which came before.
Yet Groys also helpfully insists that:
“Today it is widely held that the attitude toward the new changed completely in modernity, which is supposed to have celebrated it without reserve. The change was in fact not as radical as it might seem.”21
An argument against a notion of the modern as a precise and decisive rupture is also made by Stephen Bann. He attends to numerous instances of
“repetition precisely across the modernist break,” 22 thus undermining the very notion that it was a “break” at all. He also notes that coevality of old and new forms is not accounted for in typical art historical periodizations which often rely on the turn of a century as a marker of a shift in artistic forms.
Bann’s understanding of the multiple origins of the modern in any given context, and his “preferred tactic … to give some weight to all of these diverse constructions of the past”23 are important influences on my thinking here, and
21 Boris Groys, On the New, trans. G.M. Goshgarian (London and New York: Verso, 2014 [1992]), 22-23. 22 Stephen Bann, Ways Around Modernism (New York and London: Routledge, 2007), 64. 23 Bann, Ways, 32.
61 in particular on the discussion in Chapter 3 of the origins of the figure of the modern artist in the Cambodian context.
In his influential discussion of the modern in Asian art, John Clark suggests that “modernity in artworks” is not “a singular conception” but rather a “discursial field,” and that this shifting terrain is best understood as being characterized as moving between four key “modes,” to varying degrees. Clark has précised these four modes as follows:
1. “A deliberate putting behind of the past by distancing of the artwork from an earlier set of artistic tastes.” 2. “A conscious awareness by the artist and audience of the constraints on expression or formal exploration.” 3. “Formal criticism of art media or forms takes place from within the art discourse itself, by making the process of artmaking part of the subject of art.” 4. “Any customary or modern element can be quoted as techne or form with eclectic freedom.”24
Clark’s notion that the modern is defined not by any fixed attribute but rather by a varying shift between these four attitudes is especially useful in this thesis given my discussion of multiple art forms, and my employment of chronological comparisons. In some cases, as in Pann Tra’s painting of the cyclo, discussed above, the “deliberate putting behind of the past” is of central importance, but in other examples, this “mode” is eclipsed by other factors.
24 John Clark, Modern Asian Art (Sydney: Craftsman House, 1998), 29. This fourth “mode” may also be described as “parody” or “pastiche,” and in European and North American discourse is often regarded as being an attribute of postmodern, rather than modern, art.
62 Like Groys, Clark does register that newness is essential to any understanding of modernity. The Khmer term, samay tomnerb (សម័យទំេនើប), literally “the era of recentness,” also conveys this fundamental notion. Yet, crucially, this orientation to the new is not the whole story, and it does not mean that the modern is not also deeply invested in continued redeployments of old forms, old concepts, and old tropes.
The nature of the modern will emerge with greater clarity, I hope, in the close analyses of specific artworks. Such a gradually cumulative and roving understanding, rather than a neat or precise definition, is fitting for the migratory and multiple nature of the modern, as I understand it.
Before moving on to the concept of “the contemporary,” I want to underline that in its multiplicity, the modern includes not only heroic or hopeful moments, but also instances of barbarism. The barbarism of the modern amplifies already existing horrors inherent in humanity: it amplifies them not only with new technologies of warfare and violence, but also with new technologies of thought. Yet the ugliness in modernity is often obscured or downplayed, including in the new institutions dedicated to studying, collecting, and exhibiting the modern arts of Southeast Asia.
An investment (ideological, and sometimes also financial) in the notion of modernity as progress remains pervasive, persistent, and seems to be especially strong in Southeast Asia. This is the case despite the efforts of
63 postmodernism to unsettle and undermine the values in and achievements of that which we call modern. Here, as in other postcolonial regions, the notion of modernity-as-progress is bolstered by a narrative of national liberation from colonial oppression, often coupled with or else leading to a transition to political democracy.
Cambodia’s experience of modernity offers a challenge to such ideologically informed optimism. The Cambodian modern—most hideously, of course, the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge—reveals the modern to be capable of, in Chheng Phon’s words, “evil misfortune” and “suffering that has no boundary, that is limitless.”25 Zygmunt Bauman describes the horror of realizing that the European Holocaust of the 1930s and 1940s was not “an aberration” or “a deviation from an otherwise straight path of progress,” but was, rather:
“not an antithesis of modern civilization and everything (or so we like to think) it stands for. We suspect (even if we refuse to admit it) that the Holocaust could merely have uncovered another face of the same modern society whose other, more familiar face we so admire. And that the two faces are perfectly comfortably attached to the same body.
25 Chheng Phon (េជង ផុន), “មតិតំ>ង សិលMNករ” [Views of a Representative of Artists], in ឧ3កិដធSកមAរបស់បនTតទី អនុតVរWពនិយមចិនេប៉Zំង និង បរ[Tរ ប៉ុល ពទ - េអៀង ]រ^ - េខៀវ សំ ផន ក`CងអំឡCងabំ ១៩៧៥ - ១៩៧៩ [The Crimes of the Beijing-ist Clique and the Pol Pot – Ieng Sary – Khieu Samphan Stooges from 1975 to 1979] (Phnom Penh: National Advisory Alliance for Solidarity, Construction and Defence of the Motherland, 1983), 50-57. National Archives of Cambodia Box B-637. See Appendix 2.
64 What we perhaps fear most, is that each of the two faces can no more exist without the other than can the two sides of a coin.”26
In histories of Southeast Asian art and culture, the colonial modern has been permitted to be viewed through a similarly negative lens, but the postcolonial nation-building projects have tended to be seen, rather, as bearing only what
Bauman terms the “more familiar face we so admire.” This thesis troubles the notion that the “two sides of a coin” can be separated. Often, the singular figure of Norodom Sihanouk embodies at once the inseparable barbarism and beauty of the modern in this context. For example, one cannot celebrate
Sihanouk’s visionary patronage of Vann Molyvann’s modern architecture without also noting Sihanouk’s use of cinema to force an entire nation to watch scenes of an alleged traitor being brutally killed, after having endured prolonged physical abuse.27
The interwoven forces of affirmation and obliteration that are radically intensified by modernity can be taken to be a source of a distinctly modern creativity. Marshall Berman, whose study of modernity registers both its ugliness and its beauty, argues that “modernization of the city at once
26 Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995), 7. 27 Vann Molyvann’s architecture will be discussed in Chapter 6, and Sihanouk’s filming and broadcasting of the execution of a rebel fighter named Preap In will be discussed in Chapter 5.
65 inspires and enforces the modernization of its citizens’ souls.” 28 This simultaneous “inspiring” and “enforcing” will be seen in many of the artworks discussed in the chapters that follow.
On the contemporary
Just as defining the modern involves an apprehension of both its generative and its destructive potentials, it also requires an awareness that the modern is now inescapably viewed through the prism of what we call “contemporary.”
The notion that we have passed from a time and a mode of art-making called “modern” to one called “contemporary” is widely accepted, yet often with minimal theorizing of the nature of this imagined shift, or its meaning.
The term “contemporary art” is used to describe artworks made by artists who participate in the transnational (but predominately Anglophone) discourse of “contemporary art,” in a kind of self-fulfilling definitional tautology. New forms of infrastructure, and massive expansions and proliferations of older forms of infrastructure—most significantly the transnational biennale and other large-scale institutionally supported
28 Marshall Berman, All That Is Solid Melts Into Air: The Experience of Modernity (London: Penguin, 1988 [1982]), 147.
66 exhibitions,29 and also increasingly residencies—support this categorization of certain kinds of new art that circulate in certain kinds of patronage networks and platforms as “contemporary art.” Yet despite the publication of verbose
“questionnaires” and roundtable discussions on the topic,30 the nature of the contemporary itself remains slippery and ill-defined—as does the nature and meaning of contemporaneity in artworks from any era, a more challenging question than the fait accompli of declaring new and recent artworks to be
“contemporary art.” It is widely held that “things really are different than they were before.”31 As to how, or why, there are a dizzying array of scholarly and curatorial suggestions, many of them so vague as to be inscrutable.
There are structural factors that perpetuate the slipperiness of contemporaneity as a concept in art. Agamben, we will recall, called contemporariness “a singular relationship with one’s own time, which adheres to it and, at the same time, keeps a distance from it.”32 This “keep[ing] distance” poses a challenge. It is structurally difficult for many figures active
29 See Charles Green and Anthony Gardner, Biennials, Triennials, and Documenta: The Exhibitions that Created Contemporary Art (West Sussex: Wiley Blackwell, 2016). 30 See, for example: “An Expanded Questionnaire on the Contemporary,” Field Notes 1 (2012): 11-90. Several of the dozens of contributors to this Asia Art Archive online journal referred to a similar questionnaire which had addressed the question of the contemporary from an unapologetically European and North American perspective: Hal Foster et al, “Questionnaire on ‘The Contemporary,’” October 130 (Fall 2009): 3- 124. Foster has further reflected on this survey in Hal Foster, “Contemporary Extracts,” in e-flux journal: What is Contemporary Art?, ed. Juliet Aranda, Brian Kuan Wood, and Anton Vidokle (Berlin and New York: Sternberg Press, 2010): 141-151. 31 Terry Smith, Thinking Contemporary Curating (New York: Independent Curators International, 2012), 179. 32 Agamben, What Is An Apparatus, 41.
67 in today’s infamously opaque art worlds to maintain the distance Agamben deems necessary for a cogent theorizing of the contemporary. Many influential figures play several interrelated roles: theorists are also curators and/or collectors and/or consultants, and these multiple and often overlapping roles may in many cases be seen to (symbolically but also materially) profit from the very vagueness and malleability of the concept of the contemporary in art.
Much theorizing of the contemporary in art and culture revolves around discussion of art’s relationship to the economic and geopolitical shifts that have taken place in the world: contemporaneity is understood as a phenomenon linked to globalization and the proliferation of neoliberalism.
While transnational trade and exchange is hardly new, the rapidity of travels and real-time communications, and the complexity of networks, is widely seen to be an unprecedented phenomenon made possible by new digital technologies. The contemporary, for many artists and theorists, is chiefly characterized by a new understanding of “the global.”33 Cities are seen to be global in fundamentally new ways, and the proliferation of global exhibitions and institutions of art, such as biennales, is understood as related to this.
Understanding the newly global and networked nature of the contemporary world, and the economic and geopolitical transformations of
33 See, for example: Saskia Sassen, “The Global City: Introducing a Concept,” Brown Journal of World Affairs 11, No 2 (2005): 27-43.
68 capitalism that underpin it, is undeniably crucial, yet an exclusive focus on these still-unfolding transformations may lead to an ahistorical understanding which overemphasizes “newness.” In terms of their manifestations in art, changes in the world—including in digital technologies—most fundamentally give rise to an increasing proliferation of multiple temporalities in art and in the perception and interpretation of it. This relates also to the understanding of contemporaneity as articulated by Agamben (and as embedded within the
English, French, and Khmer words for “contemporary,” which we will turn to below): of having a particular relationship to one’s own time. This relationship, since the rise of digital and other technologies, has often been described as being accelerated.
A sense of accelerated time may seem like a movement toward a singular moment of the “now,” yet the very notion of acceleration also necessarily implies an apprehension of multiple temporalities. After all, to accelerate is to move from one speed or time to another, seemingly faster one—thus for an artwork to embody or reflect this sense of accelerated time is for that artwork to enfold these multiple speeds or times within itself, either within its ontology or within its circulation and interpretation, or both.
Contemporariness, as Agamben suggests, necessitates not only adhering to one’s own time, but also maintaining a certain distance from it.
It is for these reasons that I privilege plural temporalities in the space of an artwork for my definition and understanding of contemporaneity, as 69 being more fundamental than any of the other trajectories that have been associated with the contemporary, such as the global, the networked, and so on—although these are also undeniably important. Plural temporalities in art proliferate in contemporary art, but are by no means unique to it. They are found also in modern and pre-modern arts, in Cambodia as elsewhere.
While the contemporary is widely claimed as an escape from modernist progressivism, this is often not the case in Anglophone scholarship.
Terry Smith is among the most prolific and influential theorists of the contemporary. While he recognizes that “shifts from modern to contemporary art [have] occurred in every cultural milieu throughout the world” and, significantly, contends they these shifts have taken place “distinctively in each
[cultural milieu],”34 his thinking can nevertheless often be seen to be deeply
Eurocentric and, despite his claims to the contrary, teleological. Smith has repeatedly asserted that that “the shift … from modern to contemporary art” was:
“nascent during the 1950s, emergent in the 1960s, contested during the 1970s, but unmistakable since the 1980s.”35
34 Terry Smith, What Is Contemporary Art? (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 8. 35 Smith, What Is Contemporary Art, 5. Smith repeats this assertion, verbatim, in Terry Smith, “The State of Art History: Contemporary Art,” Art Bulletin 92, no. 4 (2010): 369. Smith’s defenders will observe that he writes with much greater nuance elsewhere against a teleological view of history. Yet the reappearance of this assertion in at least two of Smith’s publications may perhaps be taken as a sign of latent progressivism underlying his approach.
70 Like any universalist claim about history, such a statement elides the significant extent to which the experience of those decades was radically different in different parts of the world. The 1970s in Cambodia, of course, were “contested” in a tragically singular manner. And despite the global economy’s “unmistakable” incursions during the 1990s and 2000s, there is much in “Cambodian arts” and culture that remains unchanged, alongside and in inter-animating relationship with those “things” that “really are different than they were before.”
I oppose such teleological, universalist claims like Smith’s not only for their Eurocentric and progressivist view of history, but also for the implicit definition of contemporaneity as at once a period and an aesthetic. The attitude is widely held. Groys asserts that:
“the term ‘contemporary art’ does not simply designate the art that is produced in our time. Rather, today’s contemporary art demonstrates the way in which the contemporary as such shows itself—the act of presenting the present.”36
As stated, the term “contemporary art” has come to refer to particular kinds of art of the twenty first century, rendered visible through particular kinds of exhibitionary and other patronage networks, most importantly biennales and other large-scale survey exhibitions, and increasingly also residencies. Here,
36 Boris Groys, “The Topology of Contemporary Art,” in Antinomies of Art and Culture: Modernity, Postmodernity, Contemporaneity, ed. Terry Smith, Okwui Enwezor and Nancy Condee (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008), 71.
71 though, I am primarily interested in a different understanding of contemporaneity.
Contemporaneity in art, in the sense that I find most productive and revealing, is not an aesthetic category any more than it is a periodizing marker.
Rather, contemporaneity refers to a special relationship of the artwork with time, and especially with the present time, and the present era. It may be in step with time, or in dialogue with the times; it may be a reflection of its moment, or a navigation of the layered temporalities within the moment.
Contemporary art may, as Agamben suggests, “keep a distance” from the present time, or it may be too close to the moment to achieve this.
Regardless, of most significance is the notion that having a particular relation to the present time opens up the possibility of plural temporalities in the space of an artwork. This may also be understood as a defining feature of contemporaneity in art. It is especially common in “contemporary art”: in art of recent years, circulating in platforms such as biennales. Yet multiple and layered temporalities are also found in earlier examples of art, including in objects which institutions call “modern art,” and in various pre-modern creations, as well.37 Nhek Dim’s painting of the cyclo, discussed above, offers a
37 Here I draw on Nagel, Medieval Modern. See also: Alexander Nagel and Christopher S. Wood, Anachronic Renaissance (New York: Zone Books, 2010), esp. 7-20.
72 neat example of an artwork in which many conceptions of time overlap; many other examples will follow.
The terminology of the contemporary, in Khmer and in English, gives rise to my understanding of the term as a conceptual category, indicating that an artwork or idea is in sync with the era, or indicating the presence of multiple temporalities within the space of an artwork. The most commonly used Khmer term for “contemporary” is សហសម័យ sahasamay, a neologism
“translated” from English or French. The components this term are thus
38 identical to its English language equivalent. The Pali word សហ saha means
“together with;” សម័យ samay means “period” or “era.” The English prefix
“con” also means “together with,” and the origin of “temporary” is “tempus,” the Latin for “time,” “season,” or “portion of time.” So one understanding of the term “contemporary,” in Khmer and in English, could be “together with the time,” or even more pertinently in Khmer, “together with this time,” since
38 It is not known when the word sahasamay was created, or by whom (and this information does not appear in standard Khmer dictionaries), but it seems to have first appeared in the twenty first century. Comparisons could also be made, of course, with other languages using similar or related words. In the interests of focus, I will limit our discussion here to English and Khmer. The similarity between sahasamay and សហសMgវតMgរh sahassavat (millennium) has led to some confusion. Some commentators suggest that saha is short for sahassavat (millennium), rather than a prefix meaning “together with.” However, this is not how most of the artists and other Cambodians I have spoken with understand the term, and as such I have chosen to set this interpretation aside as a possible misunderstanding.
73 the word សម័យ samay on its own is generally understood in context to refer specifically to the present era.
Terry Smith has discussed the implications of the Anglophone etymology of the word “contemporary.” He argues that “con tempus came into use, and remains in use, because it points to a multiplicity of relationships between being and time.”39 Moreover, Smith insists that “the concept of the
‘contemporary,’ far from being singular and simple—a neutral substitute for
‘modern’—signifies multiple ways of being with, in, and out of time.” 40
Literary theorists of contemporaneity, Roger Luckhurst and Peter Marks, make a similar proposal that “the contemporary is thought as the con- temporal, conjoined yet incommensurate ‘times together’.” 41 While acknowledging the impossibility and undesirability (given its colonial, totalizing overtones) of “conceiving a ‘total’ history of the contemporary moment,” 42 they posit that part of what defines both the word
“contemporary” and the nature of our “contemporary moment” is a certain kind of “together”-ness, something that is shared translocally, that brings together places as well as times, collapsed into a shared present. All of this
39 Smith, What Is Contemporary Art, 4. Emphasis in original. 40 Smith, What Is Contemporary Art, 6. 41 Roger Luckhurst and Peter Marks, “Hurry Up Please It’s Time: Introducing the Contemporary,” in Literature and the Contemporary: Fictions and Theories of the Present, ed. Roger Luckhurst and Peter Marks (London and New York: Longman/Pearson, 1999), 3-4. 42 Luckhurst and Marks, “Hurry Up,” 4.
74 can apply equally to the Khmer term សហសម័យ saha samay as it does to
“contemporary,” since both terms mean “together with this time.”
Moreover, the Khmer terminology—and its colloquial usage—actually points to an understanding of the contemporary as a concept, and one that inheres also in that which we call modern. The word សម័យ samay, on its own, literally means “age,” “period,” or “era,” and is usually specified by an adjoining adjective—as in សម័យអងiរ samay Angkor (the Angkorian period).
Yet in current vernacular usage, samay on its own is also understood to refer particularly to the current era: that is, the word samay also means
“contemporary.” Significantly, this usage was also common during the years
1955 to 1975, when the word samay on its own was used by artists to mean
“modern”: it is also found in interviews with artists active at that time.
That the word samay, which means “period,” can be used to refer either to the modern or to the contemporary—or to both—means that the two terms are intuitively understood in Khmer as coextensive. It also means that to regard either the modern or the contemporary as a discrete and distinct era is nonsensical in Khmer, linguistically and therefore also conceptually.
In the chapters that follow, we will hold these coextensive concepts of modernity and contemporaneity together in our minds. Most artworks we will discuss display a coevality of old and new forms, and a layered and
75 multiple relationship to time. This temporal interplay—like the intersections within and across media, as outlined in Chapter 1—will recur in all that follows.
76 Chapter 3
The Making of the Modern Cambodian Artist: “How to Use the Word”
Figure 3. 1
In July 1968, a photograph was published in the magazine Réalités
Cambodgiennes, showing the façade of artist Sam Yoeun’s Phnom Penh gallery, emblazoned with a then-new word used to refer specifically to modern representational painters, វ"ចិ%តករ vichetrakar. The word has since come to have a much broader meaning, referring to a modern or contemporary
“Cambodian artist” working across most visual media. The gallery’s glass window cabinet displayed representational paintings of Cambodian landscapes, and a container of paintbrushes (Figure 3.1). According to an
77 accompanying review, also reflected in the glass of this display case was the
“audacious” National Sports Complex, directly across the road from the gallery (although this is not visible in the newsprint publication, and the original photograph cannot be located). The reviewer notes that “alongside the traditional ‘figurative,’” the interested public could also see “Cambodian landscapes in a much less conventional way.”1 Interestingly, the reviewer refers to the gallery as “Sam Yoeun’s gallery,” but the window sign, as visible in the photograph, reveals the place’s name to in fact be %គឹ+,នសហវ"ចិ%តករ kroeusthan saha vichetrakar, the “gallery (or home) of the collective (or union) of painters.” In the concluding pages of the previous chapter, we saw how the the Pali word saha, meaning “together with,” was used in the translation of the Anglophone term “contemporary,” to mean “together with the times.”
Here, saha refers not to temporality but to collectivity: to the collaborative nature of Sam Yoeun’s gallery and artistic activity, a collectivism that was rooted in communist belief, as we will see.
This chapter considers some early appearances of the modern in
“Cambodian arts,” taking representational painting as a case study, while also addressing the emergence of the discursive figure of the modern “Cambodian artist.” By first tracing some historical origins of modern “Cambodian arts” in the realm of representational painting, which I argue are multiple and
1 Author unnamed, “Une visite à la galerie Sam Yoeun,” [A visit to the Sam Yoeun Gallery], Réalités Cambodgiennes (5 July 1968): 28-29. In French. 78 transnational, the chapter builds on and at times challenges existing accounts, which have tended to privilege a singular moment of the “arrival” of the modern, and thus a narrative of modernity as a break or rupture with that which came before. In addition to this, by attending to trans-media intersections between the various arts, I demonstrate the ways in which the modern form of representational painting was produced and received in dynamic inter-relation with other “Cambodian arts,” including music, cinema, and so on. This proposition is complicated by the fact that the term
វ"ចិ%តករ vichetrakar—used during the Sangkum era to refer specifically to representational painters—was central to the making and naming of the figure of the “modern Cambodian artist.” In other words, representational painting was crucial to the making of the “modern Cambodian artist,” yet modern “Cambodian arts” are characterized by dynamic trans-media intersections, not by the elevation of painting as the preeminent form, or its relegation as discrete from other forms of modern culture.
I begin with the visual and textual image of the “វ"ចិ%តករ vichetrakar” sign in the window at Sam Yoeun’s gallery (Figure 3.1) because I take its juxtaposition of differing, coexisting aesthetics and ways of being modern to be emblematic. The poetic juxtaposition of the internationally familiar modern aesthetic of the National Sports Complex’s brutalist concrete architecture
(which will be discussed in Chapter 6) with the more regionally and locally
79 familiar trope that is realist paintings of tropical landscapes (which will be discussed in Chapter 4) embodies the multiple origins and trans-media intersections that are defining of the modern in “Cambodian arts.” This apposition and layering takes place—literally in the space of the picture, but also in a way metaphorically—under the physical and semiotic sign that is the neologism, វ"ចិ%តករ vichetrakar. The term វ"ចិ%តករ vichetrakar was a new word used to describe the new figure of the modern “Cambodian artist,” and also more specifically the new activity of representational painting. We’ll return to this sign, and specifically to this word, at the end of this chapter, when I examine how representational painting contributed to new conceptions (and definitions) of what it is to be an “artist” in this context.
Forty-seven years after that image and review were published, in 2015 the National Sports Complex and several other buildings designed by Vann
Molyvann (represented by four small black-and-white archival photographs) were among the only works from Cambodia included in the new National
Gallery Singapore’s inaugural exhibition on modern art in Southeast Asia, and also among the only architectural images. The images were displayed alongside contemporaneous abstract paintings from Indonesia, the
Philippines and Myanmar.2 In this museological context, and in the twenty
2 Low Sze Wee, ed., Between Declarations and Dreams: Art of Southeast Asia Since the 19th Century, exh. cat. (Singapore: National Gallery Singapore, 2015), 192-195. I viewed the exhibition numerous times between December 2015 and January 2017. It is 80 first century, Vann Molyvann’s architecture is apparently more legible as modern than the realist paintings of landscapes and women that dominated
Cambodia’s visual art from 1955 to 1975. Yet during this period, it was representational painting that was central to the making of the modern
“Cambodian artist.”
We turn now to the early origins of the modern in “Cambodian arts,” concentrating on the early appearances of representational painting and other visual imagery. I will then outline the importance of trans-media intersections in the “Cambodian arts” more generally, before concluding with some comments on the emergence of the figure of the “modern Cambodian artist.”
Respecting Muan; disagreeing with Muan
No history of modern and contemporary “Cambodian arts” can proceed without acknowledging a great debt to the scholarship of the late Ingrid
Muan (1964-2005). Muan’s archival research, as well as crucially the interviews and conversations that she conducted from 1997 to 2000 with those
difficult to speculate about why relatively few works from Cambodia were included in the exhibition. Certainly, a scarcity of available artworks, and a shortage of institutional expertise on Cambodia, would have been a key factor. Nevertheless, it is notable that well-known artists from other countries whose work aesthetically resembles Cambodian modern painting, such as Indonesia’s Basuki Abdullah, are also under-represented. This suggests that paucity of materials alone does not explain the small number of Cambodian works in this otherwise outstanding and rigorous exhibition, but rather that aesthetic or other judgements of value were perhaps also at play. 81 few artists who had exhibited during the 1955-75 period and survived the succeeding devastation under the Khmer Rouge, are especially invaluable.
Indeed, without Muan’s pioneering work in reconstructing a narrative of the key names, dates, institutions and events in Cambodia’s twentieth century art history, my own work here would have been impossible.
After first visiting Cambodia in 1994, Muan, who was born in the US, completed a doctoral dissertation at Columbia University, New York, on the
“Cambodian arts” from 1918 to 2000.3 The account of history proposed in that thesis, especially around the establishment of the School of Cambodian Arts
(later Royal University of Fine Arts, or RUFA) and adjoining museum in 1918, has been repeated in almost every account written since, including in the first
Khmer monograph on the history of the University, published in 2016 in anticipation of the centenary of the institution.4 It is also repeated verbally, including by teaching staff at RUFA. For example, Tith Veasna, a teacher of painting at the University since 2012, shares with her students a version of the
3 Ingrid Muan, “Citing Angkor: The ‘Cambodian Arts’ in the Age of Restoration 1918-2000," PhD Dissertation, Columbia University, New York, 2001. 4 Preap Chanmara (%1ប 3េនើ6787), %បវត9ិ+:រច;៖ មរតក១០០@AំៃនសិលEFៈនិងវបEFធម៌ ែខMរ Bravott Sala Rochana: Morotok 100 Chhnam Nai Selpak Ning Vobbathorm Khmer (History of Sala Rajana: A 100 Year Heritage of Cambodian Arts and Culture) (Phnom Penh: Udong, 2016). Chanmara was a longtime employee of Reyum, who worked under Muan’s supervision. It is ironic that Muan’s account of history has come to be universally repeated, given that her study of a colonial survey of “Cambodian artists” undertaken by George Groslier makes a fascinating argument about the long “afterlife of Groslier’s figures.” Muan provides examples of Groslier’s dubious findings being quoted uncritically (and often without direct acknowledgement) decades after their original publication, and describes this circumstance as “alarming.” 82 institution’s history that is derived from Muan. Veasna studied Art History under Muan in the early 2000s, and wrote several sections in her own graduating thesis on RUFA’s history, closely following the narrative proposed by Muan.5
Alongside her scholarly research, Muan was also co-founder and co- director, with Cambodian-French artist Ly Daravuth, of Phnom Penh’s
Reyum Institute of Arts and Culture, established in 1998 and active until around 2010.6 Reyum’s activities included exhibitions, publications, and art classes, and the institution had a profound influence on the development of artistic practices that are referred to (and circulate internationally as)
“contemporary art.” Muan also taught for several years at the Royal
University of Fine Arts, and among her former pupils are some of the most prominent and influential contemporary artists active in the years after 2010.
Despite never having met Muan, I am aware of the close personal as well as scholarly relationship that she enjoyed with many of the preeminent scholars of Cambodian arts and culture.7 In what follows, and throughout this
5 Tith Veasna (ទិតEO Pស;), “រQំេRះអែ%ង” Robam Koh Angre [The Dance of Koh Angre], unpublished Bachelor’s thesis, Department of Plastic Arts (Painting), Royal University of Fine Arts, 2004-2005. With thanks to Veasna for kindly providing me with this document, talking with me about her studies under Muan, and allowing me to join her class at RUFA weekly during 2013-2014. 6 On Reyum, see Ashley Thomson, “Forgetting to Remember, Again: On Curatorial Practice and ‘Cambodian Art’ in the Wake of Genocide,” diacritics 41, No. 2 (2013): 82-109. DOI: 10.1353/dia.2013.0009 7 See, for example, Ang Choulean and Ashley Thompson, “From the Editors,” Udaya, Journal of Khmer Studies 6 (2005): 1-14. 83 thesis, I strive to convey my deep respect for her work and my gratitude for her rigorous scholarship.
Nevertheless, I will take issue with some key aspects of Muan’s still unpublished doctoral thesis. Firstly, I posit that Muan’s account is insufficiently cognizant of the irresolvable methodological challenges posed by the loss and dispersal of archival and other sources in Cambodia. There is insufficient evidence to state with absolute confidence, as Muan does, that the visually modern in Cambodia had a broadly consistent aesthetic; moreover, as we will see, sources that have come to light subsequent to Muan’s study suggest the existence of significantly more diverse forms of painting (both representational and semi-abstract) than Muan accounted for. Related to this, the paucity of sources—including most especially of surviving artworks from the 1955-75 period—means that an approach which attends to the dynamic trans-media intersections among the various arts, is not only desirable but methodologically advantageous.
First, though, I am going to propose that Muan’s contention that the visually modern—in the specific form of the technology of representational drawing and painting from life—“arrived” to Cambodia during the 1940s with the arrival of a French-trained Japanese teacher named Suzuki8 is a claim for which there is insufficient evidence, and which problematically privileges a notion of the modern as defined by rupture with that which came before it.
8 Muan, “Citing Angkor,” 266-284. 84 Even in this critique of Muan’s analysis, I rely heavily on her painstaking research, and any insights I offer remain dependent on and respectful of
Muan’s work. From 1935 to 1938, I will show, a well-known artist from Hanoi named Tô Ngọc Vân taught dessin—almost certainly involving representational painting and drawing—at Phnom Penh’s Lycée Sisowath.
Predating Suzuki by a decade, Vân’s instruction likely had important consequences in the later adoption of the Japanese teacher’s methods. We will look in more detail at these previously unexplored issues shortly.
My motivation in exploring these uncertainties is to destabilize the powerful and pervasive notion of the modern as a rupture or break from that which came before. An argument against this trope of history writing has broad applicability, as the nature of the modern (and its relationship to the
“pre-modern” and the postmodern or contemporary) continues to be worked through in art historical and other discourses. But while the larger argument against a narrative of modern-as-rupture is one with wide relevance, much of what follows will be necessarily finely detailed. This is especially the case when I draw on archival sources, or challenge some of Muan’s specific suggestions.
Muan’s assertion that the arrival of Suzuki brought about a precipitous transformation in visual art in Cambodia is one that I take to be exemplary of a certain kind of historical writing which privileges moments of rupture in narratives of modernity. Muan is of course by no means the worst culprit of 85 such a mode of history. Far from it: Muan wrote often and exquisitely on cultural and other continuities, with her passages on the Cambodian shadow theatre (េ:UនែសEFក lkhon sbek) as a precursor to Cambodian cinema among her most affecting.9 It seems unlikely that Muan ever intended to present a vision of the modern as predicated primarily in rupture; certainly a privileging of breaks and discontinuities is not something that dominates her scholarship, although there is some evidence that it was a specific interest.10
Nevertheless, Muan’s account of the conjoined “arrival” of the visually modern technology of drawing and painting from life and the arrival of
Suzuki overstates Suzuki’s centrality by overlooking important precursors, and thus overemphasizes a sense of rupture in the emergence of the modern in “Cambodian arts.”
Before examining precursors to Suzuki, as a brief detour it is instructive to compare Muan’s narrative with that advanced by Apinan
Poshyananda, who was known to Muan, and wrote a comparably ground- breaking history of modern art in Thailand, in which such foundational
9 Ly Daravuth and Ingrid Muan (លី W8វុធ និង អ៊Zន%កិដមូ]ន), កំេណើតកុនែខMរ Komnaeut Kon Khmer (The Birth of Cambodian Cinema) (Phnom Penh: Reyum, 2009). 10 Ingrid Muan’s unpublished Papers are held in the library of the National Museum of Cambodia (hereinafter NMC), Phnom Penh. Among these are her handwritten and undated notes from a Columbia University course titled “20th Century Art: Modernism and Semiotics” in which readings by Rosalind Krauss, Benjamin H.D. Buchloh, and other US scholars associated with the October journal predominate. In the margins to her notes from week 1, which was taught by Buchloh, Muan has scrawled: “like any discipline the formal characteristics are organized into ruptures / grouped into breaks.” Box 14, File 50. 86 transformations are described in more gradual, cumulative terms. In his discussion of the Thai monarch’s summoning of Italian sculptor Corrado
Feroci (1892-1962, later renamed Silpa Bhirarsi), who would settle in Thailand and go on to be instrumental in the founding of the nation’s prestigious art school in Silpakorn University, Apinan is careful to avoid hailing this moment as one of sudden transformation or rupture. He notes that the 1923 “arrival of
Feroci appeared to be nothing out of the ordinary as there had been many
Italian artists hired before him.” While he goes on to observe that “there was a major difference: all his precursors but one … were painters [rather than sculptors],” it is notable that even this “major difference” is mitigated by the
“one” precursor who was also a sculptor.11 Given that later accounts in Thai would hagiographically hail Feroci as the single “father” of modern art in
Thailand,12 Apinan’s caution in pointing to “precursors” and avoiding an over-emphasis on rupture is striking.
My interest in tracing prehistories and precursors that downplay a sense of rupture and instead point to gradual, incremental, back-and-forth and partial shifts in history is one that is informed by an attention to transnational, even cosmopolitan forces, rather than solely Cambodian actors,
11 Apinan Poshyananda, Modern Art in Thailand: Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Singapore, Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 21. 12 With thanks to Gridthiya Gaweewong, Thanavi Chotpradit, and Clare Veal for describing this burgeoning genre of Thai-language historical accounts. 87 and also by a sense that the colonial project was always necessarily a site of resistance and cooperation, and not only of domination.13
The emergence of representational painting: On Suzuki and his precursors
In 1935 in Thailand, M.C. Ithithepsan Kritdakorn, who had advocated the expansion of understandings of “art” to include “artisans,” also proposed the
“urgent” teaching of art history and theory in Thai art education.14 By 1940 in
Hanoi, Nguyen Gia Tri was making large-scale paintings that combined a complex array of visual vocabularies, including local lacquer techniques,
Chinese landscape compositional tropes that he adapted to depict tropical vegetation and housing, and European graphical perspective. Indeed, by the time of the Japanese occupation of Southeast Asia during the Second World
War, examples of visual modernism that represent radical aesthetic transformations can be found in almost every country in the region.15
13 I recognize that these motivations are also, in part, political; my attempt to “reconcile [my] political consciousness and [my] research or writing activity,” as Foucault described. More specifically, I write cognizant of the fact that in Cambodia, the role played by foreign (and especially Vietnamese) actors is one that is often ignored due to nationalist prejudices. 14 Poshyananda, Modern Art in Thailand, 29. 15 For a survey of the situation of modern art across the region before World War II, see Masahiro Ushiroshoji, “An Introduction: The Seed Will Grow into a Great Garuda With Mighty Wings That Will Bear You Heavenward,” in The Birth of Modern Art in Southeast Asia: Artists and Movements, ed. Masahiro Ushiroshoji and Rawanchaikul Toshiko, exh. cat. (Fukuoka: Fukuoka Art Museum, 1997), 217-221. 88 Cambodia is an exception; here, French colonial policies and their local interlocutors worked to actively forbid most innovations in the visual arts, and in particular to resist European forms, other than in ways that made for objects profitably marketable to European audiences. Assembling for the first time this history from colonial archives, Muan skilfully narrates the panic of
George Groslier, who saw the “Cambodian arts” as in “turmoil” caused by
“our [that is, French] appearance on these shores,” and as a result embarked on a quest to “rescue” the “traditions” in order that Cambodians might
“refind their lost prestige.”16 This led eventually to the establishment of the
School of Cambodian Arts in 1918 (although as Muan notes, this was “really the Palace workshops ‘placed under the authority of a French director’”) adjoining the Musée Albert Sarraut, now the National Museum of Cambodia.
At the School of Cambodian Arts, as Muan evocatively describes it, Groslier insisted that “only ‘local or traditional tools and materials’ were to be used and ‘only the known rules of the ancestors’ were to be ‘applied’: thus training was to return to the way it was ‘in Cambodia before the arrival of the
French.’” 17 Unsurprisingly, as Muan carefully documents, these “rules” intended to “preserve” and “rescue” ancient “traditions” were unevenly applied, especially when the French required certain innovations in order to make commodifiable objects more appealing to small but profitable European
16 Quoted in Muan, “Citing Angkor,” 15-71. 17 Muan, “Citing Angkor,” 74. 89 markets. 18 Nevertheless, the conservative, anti-modernizing agenda—in rhetoric, as well as often in actual curriculum—of the School of Cambodian
Arts is markedly at odds with the art schools established by the French elsewhere in Indochina.19 The history of the arts in Cambodia under French rule, as told by Muan, is a history of anti-modernizing domination and control of the colonized by the colonizers. It was, it seems, motivated by a sense that Cambodians were helpless victims of the colonial adventure, in ways quite at odds with the experience of the Vietnamese.
But what if this history, as it is told by Muan, is reimagined from the perspective of its Cambodian actors? There is, after all, an extreme paucity of sources on the Cambodian response, if any, to the policies of Groslier and his
French colleagues.20 Penny Edwards’s account of the discursive construction
18 Muan, “Citing Angkor,” 72-183. 19 For a comparison of Groslier’s school with that of his Hanoi-based counterpart, Victor Tardieu, see Caroline Herbelin, “Deux conceptions de l’histoire de l’art en situation coloniale: George Groslier (1887-1945) et Victor Tardieu (1870-1937)” [Two conceptions of art history in a colonial situation: Groslier George (1887-1945) and Victor Tardieu (1870-1937)], Siksācakr: Journal of Cambodia Research 12-13 (2010-2011): 206-218. 20 The only substantial exception, as detailed by Muan, is that of the 1940 invention by a Cambodian man named Say of a machine that could replicate the metalworking tasks erstwhile only carried out by hand. This invention enraged Groslier, who saw it as a threat to Cambodian traditions but also to the livelihoods of the “artisans” his School by now employed. The newly-formed Khmer newspaper, Nagara Vatta, mounted a sustained and articulate counter-attack, arguing in 1940 that Say’s machine demonstrated “the clear desire of the Cambodian people to evolve and the proof that they will succeed in what they wish.” Muan, “Citing Angkor,” 179-183. It is noteworthy that this sole surviving archival record of explicit resistance to the anti-modernizing cultural policies of Groslier and his French colleagues is from 1940: after Tô Ngọc Vân had already completed three years of teaching in dessin 90 of Cambodge emphasizes instances of negotiation between the French and the
Cambodians to a greater degree than Muan.21 Artist Heng Moniphal, in 2014 the head of fine arts (painting) at Phnom Penh’s Royal University of Fine Arts
(RUFA), also offers a differing perspective on this history which privileges the agential position of the colonized rather than the colonizing. He explains:
“Before the French came, we Cambodians already knew how to draw/paint. But we liked to draw/paint in a boran [ancient, classical, traditional] way. That’s why the French and the Cambodians together made this school, because they loved the Cambodian way of making art.”22
This claim is not based on any archival or other research done by Moniphal, but rather it rests on a differing interpretation of the narrative that Muan and others have outlined: an interpretation seemingly based largely in an instinctual affective identification with Cambodian historical actors, yet also informed by the important historical research undertaken by Muan and others. Moniphal, who studied in Ukraine for nine years from the 1980s, obtaining a Masters degree and PhD in fine arts, was among the faculty at
RUFA when Muan taught there in the 1990s. As well as teaching, Muan assisted in numerous funding applications for the Department of Plastic Arts, and in 1998 organized an exhibition on campus celebrating the 80-year
at Lycée Sisowath, and after at least a decade of cross-border exchanges with Laotian students and Vietnamese officials: we will return to these precursors shortly. 21 Penny Edwards, Cambodge: The Cultivation of a Nation, 1860–1945 (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2007). 22 Interview, Phnom Penh, August 2014. 91 anniversary of the Department’s founding. 23 Moniphal was thus certainly aware of Muan’s research on the early history of the School of Cambodian
Arts (in 1965 renamed RUFA), and like everyone else in the Department,
Moniphal continues to speak very warmly of Muan and her contribution to
“Cambodian arts.”
Moniphal’s counter-interpretation of the historical narrative that Muan had proposed reveals the possibility of at once deeply respecting Muan, and also disagreeing with her emphasis on the role of the French rather than
Cambodian actors, in the establishment of the School of Cambodian Arts as in other aspects of this art history. Moniphal’s view, cited above, represents the possibility of seeing beyond the control of the colonized by the colonizers.
Pivotal in the historical narrative of modern painting which Muan assembles is the “arrival” of drawing and painting from life—forbidden under Groslier—with the arrival of a Japanese artist named Suzuki, who began teaching at the School of Cambodian Arts “by the late 1940s.”24 Suzuki was in Phnom Penh during the war, and then spent a time in Saigon before returning to take up his teaching position.25 Most of the information Muan
23 Ingrid Muan Papers, NMC. Documents on the 1998 exhibition can be found mostly in Box 14, File 58 and Box 10, File 46. Information on grants and other extracurricular collaborations between Muan and the Department of Plastic Arts are found throughout the archive. 24 Muan, “Citing Angkor,” 266. 25 With thanks to David Chandler for this information, derived from his in-progress research on other foreign actors in Cambodia during the 1940s. Personal communications, 2016. 92 recounts regarding Suzuki is drawn from her interviews and conversations with an older generation of artists who had studied under Suzuki, chiefly
26 Pann Tra (Q7ន់ %W ), Sam Kem Chang (សំ គឹមេចង) and Tang Hor Yi (Wំង េ`
27 យី). Muan conducted these interviews and conversations from 1997 to 2001; regrettably all have since either fallen ill or passed away, and I have not been able to speak directly with any of Suzuki’s former students. Nevertheless,
Muan’s unpublished thesis, and her published interviews with Pann Tra and
Sam Kem Chang,28 provide rich descriptions of Suzuki’s character, teaching methods, and impact on his students. However, some important details, including Suzuki’s given name and background, remain unanswered questions in Muan’s work.
Suzuki’s given name was Shigenari. According to a November 1950 payroll document from the School of Cambodian Arts—a document which
Muan located, and which is collected in her papers, but which is not cited in her published essays or in her unpublished dissertation—Suzuki Shigenari was married, and was paid a salary equivalent to $3265, which was almost double that of the next-highest paid Cambodian instructor, and three times as
26 Muan mistakenly romanizes Pann Tra as Pen Tra. The artist himself preferred the former spelling, according to his grandson, artist and curator Vuth Lyno (វុធ លីណb born 1982). I follow Muan’s romanization of other names. 27 Muan, “Citing Angkor,” 267, n. 32. 28 In Cultures of Independence: An Introduction to Cambodian Arts and Culture in the 1950’s and 1960’s, ed. Ly Daravuth and Ingrid Muan (Phnom Penh: Reyum, 2001), 271-316. 93 much as the average wage paid to Cambodian instructors.29 This disparity in wages was common during the Protectorate, with French officials and educators paid much more than their Vietnamese counterparts, who were in turn paid more than most of the Cambodians employed in civil service.30
With the benefit of knowing Suzuki’s given name, more information on this figure comes to light; he had been in Muan’s account pivotal and yet mysterious. Records show that Suzuki Shigenari studied at the Tokyo
University of the Arts, in March 1928 producing a self-portrait held in that institution’s collection (Figure 3.2).31 After completing his studies in Tokyo,
Suzuki travelled to Paris. The artist is mentioned in a 1929 edition of Paris
Shujo, a weekly newsletter published in Japanese in the 1920s.32 While brief,
29 École des Arts Cambodgiens, Budget du National [sic], Chapter 37, Article 2-3-4-5. Held in Ingrid Muan Papers, NMC, Box 2, File 18. Shigenari is incorrectly romanized in this document as Shiguenari; the correct spelling was kindly confirmed by Ushiroshoji Masahiro, based on the Japanese spelling he located in Paris Shujo (see below, note 35). 30 This trend continues in the twenty first century neoliberal contemporary, with foreign employees in local and international non-government organizations (NGOs) frequently paid as much as ten times what their equally qualified and experienced Cambodian colleagues are paid. On Protectorate pay, see annual reports in the RSC files at the National Archives of Cambodia (hereinafter NAC). On NGO pay, I draw on anecdotal evidence and conversations with Vuth Lyno, a former employee of several national and international NGOs (including the United Nations’ International Labour Organization), 2013. See also Sophal Ear, Aid Dependence in Cambodia: How Foreign Assistance Undermines Democracy (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013). 31 Tokyo University of the Arts, “Collections Information.” http://jmapps.ne.jp /geidai/det.html?data_id=5410 [Accessed July 2016]. With thanks to Che Kyongfa for assistance in locating this record. 32 Paris Shujo (28 October 1929): 219. In Japanese. Sincere thanks to Professor Masahiro Ushiroshoji of Kyushu University for his enthusiasm and assistance, as well as for locating this important document in the Fukuoka University library, and for translation. Professor Masahiro is the foremost scholar on the artistic 94 the article is illuminating. It confirms that Suzuki was a student in Paris in
1929. He therefore must have been aged in his mid-thirties at least when he arrived to Phnom Penh, and probably older. It further suggests that he was probably in France at the time of the 1931 Colonial Exposition in Paris, an event of unprecedented spectacle as well as controversy, at which parts of
Angkor Wat were “reconstituted” in life-size, and at which Vietnamese anti- colonial demonstrators were matched by a Surrealist counter-exposition.33
Figure 3. 2
repercussions of Japan’s Second World War occupation of Southeast Asia, and I am immensely grateful to him for his help with research that would not have otherwise been possible for me. 33 See Panivong Norindr, Phantasmatic Indochina: French Colonial Ideology in Architecture, Film, and Literature (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1996), esp. 24-28 and 33-51. 95 In other words, Suzuki Shigenari was in Paris at a time of swift and sharp transformations in relations between the colonizing and the colonized in the Métropole. Panivong Norindr notes that in 1929, an overwhelming majority of the five thousand Indochinese living in France were under police surveillance, 34 and in the same year, anti-colonial declarations combined national liberationist agitations with Marxist ideology and French Republican rhetoric.35
The Paris Shujo article also suggests ways in which Suzuki’s French education shaped his way of working (and teaching) later in life in Cambodia.
It reports that Suzuki left Paris to travel in the south of France for ten days with a fellow Japanese student, before returning to Paris. Pann Tra, the artist who studied under Suzuki, later recalled that Suzuki forbade painting from photographs or from the imagination, and instead encouraged his students to
“go outside” and draw or paint from direct observation at landmarks around
Phnom Penh, like “Wat Phnom at noon, for example.”36 Yet, as Pann Tra recalls, one of the only known surviving paintings by Suzuki—Srah Srang,
1940s, in the Royal Palace collection (Figure 3.3)—was done not “outside” but
“in the classroom.” Pann Tra further explains that this was because the Srah
34 Norindr, Phantasmatic Indochina, 37. 35 Norindr, Phantasmatic Indochina, 43-48. 36 Pann Tra (Q7ន់ %W, romanized in the text as Pen Tra), “A Conversation with Pen Tra,” in Cultures of Independence: An Introduction to Cambodian Arts and Culture in the 1950’s and 1960’s, ed. Ly Daravuth and Ingrid Muan (Phnom Penh: Reyum Institute of Arts and Culture, 2001), 280-81. Khmer with English; I have at times slightly amended Reyum’s translations. 96 Srang painting “is too big, and [Suzuki] couldn’t go there, because it’s very far. But he didn’t paint it from photographs, either … He made sketches and took notes at Srah Srang as a model for the painting.”37 So, in the 1940s in
Cambodia, Suzuki took a short trip to the rural area of Siem Reap in order to sketch and take notes in the landscape there, before returning to the national capital where he made a painting modelled on these sketches and notes. One can speculate he learned this modus operandi in France, where his short trip was also to an area famed for its picturesque vistas, and where he also returned thereafter to his classroom in the capital. This is a small yet suggestive example of ways in which colonial (as well as Japanese) pedagogical and artistic models were “transferred” (to use John Clark’s term38) to the Cambodian setting in indirect and roundabout ways.
Figure 3. 3
37 Pann Tra (Pen Tra), “Conversation,” 283. 38 John Clark, Modern Asian Art (Sydney: Craftsman House, 1998), 49-69. 97
Figure 3. 4
Suzuki’s Srah Srang painting clearly had a very strong impact on his student, Nhek Dim, who as late as 1975 painted precisely the same scene with precisely the same composition (Figure 3.4). We can safely assume that Nhek
Dim’s later painting was made either from memory or from observation of
Suzuki’s work, since by 1975 travel from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap was largely impossible given the escalating civil war, and Srah Srang was in a
Khmer Rouge zone. Yet as we shall see in Chapter 4, Nhek Dim often painted landscapes entirely in situ, despite also making other paintings entirely from photographs.39
Suzuki’s Srah Srang predates any known surviving easel paintings made by Cambodians realistically depicting the temples of Angkor, although
39 Chhang Song, Nhek Dim’s friend and colleague since the 1950s and after 1970 Minister of Information, recalls Nhek Dim painting at the Teuk Chhou rapids in Kampot. Robert Merrillees, an Australian diplomat in Phnom Penh in the late 1960s, recalls Nhek Dim requiring no sittings for portraits, preferring to paint entirely from photographs which he combined together into new, semi-invented compositions. Personal communications, 2014 and 2015. Sincere thanks to Youk Chhang and Dolla Merrillees, respectively, for facilitating introductions. 98 Cambodian temple paintings made in decades prior had also included representations of Angkor in the temples, albeit rendered in a somewhat less naturalistic style.40 Suzuki’s is not, however, the earliest known surviving easel painting of Angkor to be made by an Asian artist; that distinction may belong to the Hanoi artist Tô Ngọc Vân (1906-54), whose impressionistic paintings from the mid-1930s emphasize the encroachment of trees, vines and other flora into the crumbling temples (Figures 3.5 and 3.6).41 In this respect,
Tô Ngọc Vân shares with colonial artists such as Louis Delaporte a preoccupation with the might of nature and the decay of the temples. Yet
Vân’s pictures steadfastly avoid the monumentalizing tendencies of Delaporte and his peers; whereas the French artists emphasized the immensity of
Angkor, Vân’s paintings demonstrate his fascination rather with fleeting moments, intimately scaled environments, and smaller details (Figures 3.5 and 3.6). This is echoed in his written impressions of Cambodia, which describe “blocks of stone … heaped up together haphazardly, embracing the roots of giant trees,” and linger in “the thick corridors of Ta Prohm.” Vân imagines that “a simple painting” could convey the Cambodia of his memory:
40 See: Ashley Thompson, “Drawing Cambodia's Borders: Notes on Khmer Temple Murals in Kampuchea Krom (Vietnam),” Udaya, Journal of Khmer Studies 4 (2003): 21- 40. See also: San Phalla (+ន ផ:d), គំនូរេeWមវត9 Kumnur Nau Tam Vatt [Paintings in Wats] (Phnom Penh: Reyum, n.d. ca.2007), esp. 211-230. 41 A similar painting by Tran Binh Loc (1904-1941) is in the Vietnam National Museum of Fine Arts, Hanoi. Titled Angkor Temple, 1936, it is oil on canvas, and 37 x 46.3cm. Whether Tran accompanied Van, and what Tran’s interactions were with “Cambodian artists” and others, are questions to be explored in future research. 99 “a painting needn't be drawn in any shape,” as colour rather than form dominate his impressions. “To the upper part apply some saffron and canary- colour, next to the dark green of the sky,” he muses.42
Figure 3. 5
Figure 3. 6
42 Tô Ngọc Vân, “Cao-mien duoi mat danh-hoa Tô Ngọc Vân” [“Cambodia Under the Eyes of a Famous Painter, Tô Ngọc Vân], Trung Bac Chu Nhat 107 (19 April 1943): 17- 19. With thanks to Phoebe Scott for kindly sharing this document. Translation from Vietnamese to English by Ahkara Translation. 100 Tô Ngọc Vân was not the first Vietnamese artist to paint in oil.43 Yet his paintings have been celebrated for their modern subject matter, depicting
“fashionable women, street scenes, and slices of everyday life in Vietnam.”44
According to Nora A. Taylor, Vân’s reputation as a “great master of modern art” was largely based in him having been awarded the title of “revolutionary martyr” after dying in the Battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1949. Decades later in
1994, this reputation was questioned by those claiming he was a “terrible painter,” challenged by others whose answer to this was simply that “he was a hero.”45 This art historical narrative is clearly contested.
More important than his posthumous reputation, for our purposes, is
Tô Ngọc Vân’s role in introducing representational painting to Cambodian students, a full decade before Suzuki. Vân taught art classes at Phnom Penh’s
Lycée Sisowath from 1935 to 1938.46 Ironically, Muan’s thesis mentions in passing Vân’s time at the Lycée Sisowath, but does not record what he
43 Tran Viet Son, “Vietnamese Modern and Contemporary Art,” in The Birth of Modern Art in Southeast Asia: Artists and Movements, ed. Masahiro Ushiroshoji and Rawanchaikul Toshiko, exh. cat. (Fukuoka: Fukuoka Art Museum, 1997), 241. 44 Rawanchaikul Toshiko, “To Ngoc Van and the Last Graduates of the College,” in The Birth of Modern Art in Southeast Asia: Artists and Movements, ed. Masahiro Ushiroshoji and Rawanchaikul Toshiko, exh. cat. (Fukuoka: Fukuoka Art Museum, 1997), 191. 45 Nora A. Taylor, “Why Have There Been No Great Vietnamese Artists?,” Michigan Quarterly Review 44, No. 1 (Winter 2005): 155. 46 With thanks to Phoebe Scott for alerting me to Tô Ngọc Vân’s Phnom Penh connection. Colonial records confirm that “To-ngoc-Van” was employed as a “5th class professor” from 24 October 1935 to 14 March 1938. “Annuaire Administratif de l’Indochine 1938-1939” (Hanoi: Imprimerie d’Extrême Orient, 1938), 610. NAC Box B- 405. 101 taught. 47 Archival sources confirm that Vân’s position was professeur de dessin.48 A photograph depicts him at the entrance to the National Museum in
Phnom Penh (Figure 3.7). Muan does, however, helpfully record that the artist presented an exhibition at the Salles des Fêtes during the Water Festival in
1938, and she quotes a letter by the artist in which he described the exhibition as primarily including “landscapes which Cambodia has inspired in me during the last three years.”49
Figure 3. 7
Given that we now know he taught art classes at Lycée Sisowath, it is certainly safe to assume that Tô Ngọc Vân taught some version of
47 Muan, “Citing Angkor,” 265. 48 This is noted in the artist’s handwritten signature to a letter addressing the Résident Supèrieur, dated 4 November 1938. NAC RSC File 12276. In French. 49 Muan, “Citing Angkor,” 265, n. 29. 102 representational painting, or drawing from life. He himself studied and taught these skills at Hanoi’s École des Beaux-Arts de l’Indochine, where he was the first Vietnamese member of faculty, and later president.50 Moreover, he would of course have had no education in Khmer kbach ornamental designs, or any of the other “traditional” forms being taught at the School of
Cambodian Arts under Groslier’s leadership.
Tô Ngọc Vân’s students, in other words, learned the visually modern technology of representational figuration, up to a decade before Suzuki’s arrival to teach the same skills. As Cambodia’s only lycée, Sisowath was the school for the Cambodian elite, as it continues to be in the twenty first century; it was also a hotbed of anticolonial sentiment during the 1930s and
40s.51 Therefore, many of Vân’s students are likely to have gone on to be officials in Sihanouk’s Sangkum regime, implementing many of the modern cultural and educational policies which we will return to soon. Vân’s significance is thus not only in predating Suzuki, but also in helping to facilitate a situation in which Suzuki’s impact on national school curricula could be most rapidly and deeply felt.
While Tô Ngọc Vân is the only Asian artist known to have taught in
Cambodia before Suzuki’s arrival, there are numerous other traces of cross- border cultural and educational exchange within French Indochina which
50 Toshiko, “To Ngoc Van,” 191. 51 Edwards, Cambodge, 210-211. See also David Chandler, A History of Cambodia, 4th ed. (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 2008), 198-200. 103 have bearing on the history of the visually modern here, and which have hitherto been under-explored. Panivong Norindr records that “in the late
1930s there were no French lycées in Laos” yet that “a few who excelled were allowed to pursue their education further.” The author’s father, Pheng
Norindr, “was sent to Phnom Penh” to study at the Lycée Sisowath, where he received his Baccalaureate. 52 Pheng Norindr would go on to become a prominent diplomat, representing Laos at the 1962 Geneva Conference. He has since passed away, and regrettably no information survives about the nature of his studies at Sisowath, specifically as to whether he was among Tô
Ngọc Vân’s dessin students. Yet late in life Pheng Norindr could still recite songs he had learned while in Phnom Penh, suggesting that the experience of study here had a lasting impact on him.53
Records of exchanges within Indochina include some more specifically related to the visual arts. In 1939, for example, two Laotians were admitted for study at the School of Cambodian Arts, with Groslier’s approval.54 Other records point to numerous intersections with the colonial jurisdictions that would later become Vietnam. In 1936, the School of Cambodian Arts’
52 Panivong Norindr, “On Photography, History, and Affect: Re-Narrating the Political Life of a Laotian Subject,” Historical Reflections 34, no. 1 (Spring 2008): 93-94. Doi:10:3167/hrrh2008.340106. 53 Panivong Norindr, personal communications, September 2015. 54 The Laotian students were Thao Boun Leuam, aged 16, and Thao Koune Mi (also spelled Thao Kounmi), aged 20. No records survive as to when they completed their studies, or whether they returned to Laos. Communication dated 18 December 1939, NAC, Résidence Supérieure Cambodge records (hereinafter RSC), R.16 File 27015. 104 “Corporations Cambodgiennes” participated in the Hue Fair (“Foire de
Hue”), with an “autocar” including several “coolies” travelling from Phnom
Penh to Saigon, at considerable expense.55 Whether such exchanges had any impact on the students or Cambodian professors at the School of Cambodian
Arts is unknown, but the participation of “coolies” would at least have meant that at least some Cambodians of lower socio-economic classes were exposed to the kinds of modern art being produced elsewhere in Indochina, including perhaps the painting and drawing from life that was being taught in Hanoi.56
Such exposure also took place within the more elite class of colonial officials.
In 1939—the same year that the Laotian students came to study at the School of Cambodian Arts—for the first time a second secretary is listed as working at the School, alongside long-serving Cambodian official Meas Ponn and several French officials.57 His name was Nguyen Van Luan. While nothing more is known about him, it is surely possible that he brought with him to
Phnom Penh a knowledge of and appreciation for modern painting and drawing from life as it was already well-known in the areas which would become Vietnam.58
55 Correspondence dated February 1936. NAC RSC R.16 File 20165. 56 For an account of modern art in Hanoi in the 1930s, see Phoebe Scott, “Forming and Reforming the Artist: Modernity, Agency and the Discourse of Art in North Vietnam, 1925-1954,” PhD Thesis, University of Sydney, 2012. 57 On Meas Ponn, see Muan, “Citing Angkor,” 160-162. 58 Article 1334, February 1939. NAC RSC R.16 File 20169. 105 Such cross-border exchanges in education and the arts during the colonial period have been under-explored. The focus of Muan’s thesis, when addressing the early decades of the School of Cambodian Arts, is instead on outlining important biographical details of Cambodian (and some French) individuals. Studies of the contemporary, by contrast, in Cambodia as elsewhere, tend to more frequently focus on transnational and/or cosmopolitan dialogues. The few examples offered above serve to suggest that the intra-regional movement of humans, and by extension of ideas and technologies, is not a new phenomenon exclusive to the contemporary: it was also a feature of the colonial period.
The significant implication of this is that cultural shifts—including the adoption of modern painting and drawing from life—might best be understood as being cumulative processes, brought about by numerous actors from multiple locations. The modern does not always “arrive” as a singular moment of rupture, or with a single individual, and a view which privileges such radical breaks may overlook important cross-border precedents.
The emergence of representational painting: On the circulation and interpretation of images
Aside from this circulation of individuals within Indochina, which included at least one human precursor to Suzuki in the teaching of representational art techniques, we might also consider the circulation of images across borders,
106 especially in the form of exhibitions and commercial design. Muan notes that a “steady stream of painters passed through Phnom Penh during the 1920s and 1930s, exhibiting their landscapes and frequent views of Angkor at Hotel le Royal and other venues in the city.”59 Given the absence of newspapers or magazines from these decades in Cambodian archives, and the lack of archival materials at the Hotel le Royal itself, it has not been possible to trace more detail regarding these exhibitions. Muan provides no citation for this assertion, which suggests it was likely recalled to her in conversation with the older painters previously mentioned. The very fact of their having taken place can itself be regarded as significant. After all, it would have meant that at least some sectors of the Phnom Penh population would have been exposed to the visually modern form of representational painting from beyond
Cambodia’s borders, in a setting other than that of the School of Cambodian
Arts.60 Thus, through these exhibitions, we can speculate that painting and drawing from life would have become, at least for some city-dwellers, a mode of representation that was no longer the sole preserve of Groslier and his
French colleagues at the School.
59 Muan, “Citing Angkor,” 265. 60 Paintings by George Groslier, as well as his successor Louis Rollet, were displayed at the School of Cambodian Arts. Rollet’s work was also displayed in the National Museum of Cambodia until at least the mid-1950s. Muan, “Citing Angkor,” 268. Two of Rollet’s paintings of Phnom Penh are displayed in the National Museum in 2016; another rural scene is at the National Gallery Singapore. 107 Muan also provides valuable evidence of this familiarity being integrated by at least one Cambodian artist, yet again she does not conclude from this that the visually modern predated Suzuki. Muan writes of a series of woodcut prints published in 1942 which were attributed as “drawings by
Louis Rollet, woodcuts by Tonn Khieu.”61 These are realist compositions in which various agricultural products are combined together in a kind of montage to graphically represent each province’s economic strengths. Muan concedes that “these images open a view of Cambodia previously rejected by the curriculum of the School” yet insists that “they still follow the logic of
Groslier’s system” since a “drawn plan is given and the Cambodian hand simply obeys its contours, providing the hand labor for realizing a pre- determined object.”62 Such a view perhaps disregards the authorial agency involved in the making of a woodcut. Perhaps Rollet considered that Khieu was simply reproducing his drawing, but it is possible, and indeed likely, that
Khieu experienced the process quite differently, as woodblock carvers must typically make numerous decisions about line, shading, composition and so on in order to “translate” a pen or pencil drawing into a printable plate.
Regardless of how important a role Tonn Khieu played in the production of these prints, their circulation is nevertheless significant in the sense that they are representational realist images, drawn from life, at least
61 Muan, “Citing Angkor,” 268. Four images of the prints are reproduced on pages 270-271. 62 Muan, “Citing Angkor,” 268-272. 108 partly authored by a Cambodian, which predate Suzuki. Many other commercial designs, such as company logos, circulated in Cambodia before
Suzuki’s arrival, and also featured realist representations. The scarcity of newspapers predating 1945—and the likelihood that their readership among
Cambodians was very limited—makes it impossible to ascertain how widely these images were seen. And there is no evidence to suggest that any of these commercial logos and related images were designed by Cambodians. Yet numerous receipts and invoices from the 1920s and 1930s display designs that are realist (if stylized) representations, and these surely played some role in reshaping the way that Cambodians saw.
We can add to these already circulating modern representational images a much older, more familiar, and ultimately more significant realm of images which must also be understood as precursors to the visually modern in that they are also, in a way, representational. These are the images seen in bas-reliefs in Angkorian temples and also in temple (and temple-style) paintings. Muan recounts that artists Dy Proeung and Sam Kem Chang pointed this out to her, and suggests that the “reliefs of the Bayon, the plants and animals of the Reamker painting in the Palace, even the names of the
[kbach] ornaments … all speak to a tradition of observation and representation from nature.”63 Artist Heng Moniphal echoes this sentiment, adding that:
63 Muan, “Citing Angkor,” 281. 109 “people say Cambodians have no tradition of drawing, only of sculpture. But how do we make a sculpture? First, by making a drawing. Angkor is a symbol of our ability to draw, too.”64
Similarly, Sam Kem Chang stated in a 2001 interview that “I think we already had [‘representational painting’ in Cambodia before Suzuki came]” because
“modern painting and representational painting have been here since the land began. Since people have existed, people have always drawn. They looked at the world and then drew it in the sand or sculpted. All art is born of observation.” 65 Temple and temple-style paintings made in the early 20th century, such as the Reamker murals in Phnom Penh’s Royal Palace, and notably also the ovoid paintings of Reamker characters that adorn the wooden window shutters at the Museum, are also strikingly realistic in their representation of figures (Figure 3.8).
Figure 3. 8
64 Interview, Phnom Penh, August 2014. 65 “A Conversation with Sam Kem Chang (May 14, 2001)” in Cultures of Independence, ed. Muan and Ly, 301. 110 Cambodian scholar San Phalla has published important iconographic as well as historical evidence that the Reamker murals in Phnom Penh’s Royal
Palace display evidence of interactions with Siamese temple painters, especially those who worked on the murals in Bangkok’s Grand Palace.66
Siamese painters—most famously Krua In Khong—rendered architectural space using techniques of illusionistic perspective that reveal their awareness of European painting styles; it has also been claimed that Burmese, Chinese,
Khmer, and other artistic elements can be found in Siamese temples and temple paintings from at least the nineteenth century.67 Cambodia’s painterly exchange with Siam can be understood as part of a much larger political and cultural interaction between the two kingdoms, one which also had lasting effects on the performing arts in both settings. This constitutes yet another form of cross-border exchange—one not wholly bound by French Indochinese colonial relations—which was important in the gradual and cumulative emergence of modern painting in Cambodia.
Given the conceivably representational origin of many boran (ancient, traditional, classical) Cambodian images such as temple paintings, as well as the circulation of modern images in exhibitions and commercial designs, it is reasonable to assume that Cambodians were already familiar with
66 San Phalla. “The Influence of the Ramakien Murals in the Grand Palace of Siam on the Reamker Murals in the Royal Palace of Cambodia.” Udaya, Journal of Khmer Studies 8 (2007): 179-217. 67 Apinan Poshyananda, Modern Art in Thailand, 1-27. 111 representational images—painting and drawing from life—before Suzuki’s arrival. This familiarity would have extended beyond the small but influential group of people who would have studied representational dessin under Tô
Ngọc Vân at Lycée Sisowath in the 1930s. This is not to deny that Suzuki’s teaching was understood, as Muan suggests (drawing on conversations with three of his former students), as being “new” and “modern” “in its local context.”68 And that this is how Pann Tra and Sam Kem Chang recalled it, some fifty years after their studies, clearly suggests that Suzuki was the most prominent figure for them in the introduction of this “new” and “modern” kind of image.
The emergence of representational painting: On the rapid and comprehensive adoption of the technique
Beyond Suzuki’s impact on individuals who were his direct students, we must account for the much larger impact of the visually modern technology of representational drawing and painting on the Cambodian education system more broadly. Muan bases much of her argument for the singular importance of Suzuki on the important fact that “Suzuki and his way of painting were quickly accepted.”69 She quotes from several former students of Suzuki’s who later went on to teach at the School of Cambodian Arts (and later the Royal
University of Fine Arts). These men attribute their own methods to Suzuki.
68 Muan, “Citing Angkor,” 273. 69 Muan, “Citing Angkor,” 278. 112 More significantly in terms of impact on the broader population at large,
Muan recounts how numerous schools—especially those funded by US aid, since the USIS was already employing Cambodians as artists and designers, as we will see in Chapter 4—introduced representational drawing as an essential component of “modern education.”70 Muan paraphrases an article from the US-made, Khmer-language Lōk Serei (េ:កេសរf “Free World”) magazine which asserts that “art could not only help children to ‘express themselves’ but also could be used to explain other fields of knowledge,” including by “developing observational skills.”71 She also cites documents produced by the Ministry of Education in the late 1950s which further suggest that drawing from life was broadly integrated into the secondary school curriculum at that time.72
For the visually modern technology of representational drawing and painting to have been taking up so wholeheartedly, we must look not only to
Suzuki as its sole source. This is not to say that Suzuki’s arrival and impact were not momentous, as they surely were for his students. But we have seen that Suzuki’s arrival had important precedents, both in terms of individuals and images.
70 Muan, “Citing Angkor,” 284-289. 71 Muan, “Citing Angkor,” 289. 72 Muan, “Citing Angkor,” 296-298. 113 Most significantly, many of the Ministry of Education officials who implemented visually modern technologies in the 1950s, concurrent with
Suzuki’s teaching at the School of Cambodian Arts, would have studied at the
Lycée Sisowath. How many of them were taught modern representational drawing skills by Tô Ngọc Vân in the 1930s? How many of them studied alongside students from Laos or the jurisdictions of what would come to constitute Vietnam, and learned from these regional peers of the visually modern images and techniques which were being circulated and taught there? How many of them visited exhibitions by Tô Ngọc Vân and other international artists in Phnom Penh during the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s? How many of them saw representational images used in commercial designs through this period? How many of them shared an understanding of boran
Cambodian images, including the temple-style paintings at the Palace and
Museum, as being representational in origin?
These are rhetorical questions. The passage of time, the destruction of lives and dispersal of materials, and the paucity of records have rendered them unanswerable. But this very unanswerability is itself instructive, for it points to an understanding of the modern as a mode of seeing and rendering that is constituted cumulatively, haltingly, in fits and starts, over a period of decades, and not in a single moment.
114 Having considered the multiple origins of the visually modern in
Cambodia, let us now turn to the many exchanges between modern painting and other forms of modern “Cambodian arts.”
“Unprecedented creative dynamism”: On modern trans-media intersections
In 1964, the renowned Cambodian architect Vann Molyvann wrote of an
“unprecedented creative dynamism in my country after a long period of decline.” He sensed this upon his return to Phnom Penh in 1956, after a decade of study in France.73
Essential to this “creative dynamism” was the exchange and interplay within and among the various arts. Painters, dancers, filmmakers, musicians, architects and writers overlapped in personal, professional and creative contexts. Vann Molyvann embodies a polymathy common at the time; he studied not only architecture but also Cambodian classical art history; his government positions went from state architect to Minister of Culture, responsible for transforming the School of Cambodian Arts into the Royal
University of Fine Arts.74
73 Vann Molyvann, in La Dépêche du Cambodge, 1964. Quoted in Helen Grant Ross and Darryl Leon Collins, Building Cambodia: 'New Khmer Architecture' 1953–1970 (Bangkok: Key Publisher, 2006), 129. 74 “A Conversation with Vann Molyvann (October 13, 2001)” in Cultures of Independence. An Introduction to Cambodian Arts and Culture in the 1950’s and 1960’s, ed. Ly Daravuth and Ingrid Muan (Phnom Penh: Reyum, 2001), 319–23. Khmer and English. 115 One important implication of the “creative dynamism” of trans-media intersections in the arts of post-independence Cambodia is that “medium specificity” (of the kind expounded by US critic Clement Greenberg and others) is a notion without relevance here. Instead, the effects of the networked relationships across and between various media can be seen in the biographies of artists, in their artworks, and in the various mediated contexts in which their works were received by their publics. We will now turn to look at each of these in turn, beginning with artists’ biographies.
Many artists during the Sangkum era studied and/or worked in fields adjacent to but distinct from “fine art” (វ"ចិ%តសិលEFៈ vichet selpak) or painting.
We may assume that this was at least in part out of necessity, due to the availability of educational and employment opportunities. Yet regardless of the reasons, the intersections—both formal and personal—that this historical circumstance facilitated or contributed to are rewarding of attention. I will now sketch the biographical trans-media intersections of a few of the more prominent figures.
Men Makoth (ែម៉ន មhiដ), born in Kampong Trabek on 29 August 1935, studied during the 1950s at the School of Cambodian Arts, and subsequently studied stage design in Paris while housed at Le Cité Universitaire
Internationale, from 1960 to 1962. While there, he painted a mural in the
116 Maison Cambodge, which has since been destroyed. 75 In two surviving sketchbooks from his time in Paris are numerous renderings of what appears to be a design for a fountain (Figure 3.9) as well as several line drawings which depict Vann Molyvann’s Chaktomuk Conference Hall (Figure 3.10) and private residence (Figure 3.11).76 Since construction of the architect’s private residence did not begin until after 1966,77 these sketches can perhaps be taken as evidence of the artist’s personal association with Molyvann. The sketchbooks also include drawings of Cambodian dancers overlaid with copies of Egyptian designs. In all, there is a loose approach to rendering, a free and at times gestural use of line which can be seen also in paintings
Makoth exhibited in the 1959 Biennale de Paris (Figures 3.12 and 3.13).78 Only black and white reproductions of these works are known to survive, yet even in these images the simplified compositions and clear interest in non-mimetic qualities of brushstrokes suggests an awareness of and interest in abstraction
75 Interview with the artist’s daughter, Sanda Men Makoth, Paris, 2015. Thanks to Adeena Mey for his kind assistance. Regrettably, the Maison Cambodge has no archival records of the mural. With thanks to Phoebe Scott for confirming this. 76 Interview with Sanda Men Makoth, Paris, 2015. All references to sketches by Men Makoth are from Sanda Men Makoth’s private collection, and are unpublished. 77 Helen Grant Ross, “The Cambodian Taliesin: Unloved Modern House, Shunned Architect,” unpublished paper presented at ICOMOS [International Council on Monuments and Sites] Sydney Conference, July 2009, 6. Document courtesy of Pen Sereypagna. 78 Première Biennale de Paris, exh. cat. (Paris: Musée d’art modern de la ville de Paris, 1959). With thanks to Adeena Mey for assistance, and to archivist Laurence Le Poupon of Fonds Biennale de Paris / Collection INHA-Archives de la critique d’art, Rennes, for his kind help in locating and digitizing images from this catalogue and associated archival records. 117 and non-figurative arts, and raises questions about the generally held belief that there was no abstraction in Cambodian art before 1975.
Figure 3. 9
Figure 3. 10
118
Figure 3. 11
Figure 3. 12
Figure 3. 13
119 The question of abstraction is also raised by Chan Lay Heng (ច័នk ៃឡ
េហង 1934–2011). Lay Heng was born in Kampong Cham, and studied architecture and poster design at the School of Cambodian Arts from 1961 to
1964. He went on to have a successful career working in construction for the
Phnom Penh Municipality immediately after graduating. Lay Heng is responsible for designing several schools in the city—we will return to this aspect of his work in Chapter 6—as well as extensions at the art school, religious structures, and other works. Alongside his construction design work, Lay Heng was active as a painter. He exhibited annually in the USIS exhibitions in the early 1960s, which we will turn to look at in detail in
Chapter 4.79 Records show that for the 1963 exhibition, he contributed five works, the titles of which include La vie du cultivateur (The Life of a Farmer),
Au marché (At the Market), and Les pêcheurs (The Fishing People).80 None of these works are known to survive, yet their titles suggest that the paintings conformed to the norm of realist depictions of landscape and daily life, especially in the countryside, which dominated these exhibitions.
79 Chan Vitharin (ច័នk វ"W,រ"នk), Chan Lay Heng: Life and Works ច័នk ៃឡេហង៖ ជីវ"ត និង +Aៃដ (Phnom Penh: Chan’s Arts, 2013). Khmer and English. 80 Peintures Cambodgiens: Troisième Exposition Annuelle d’oeuvres realisées par des Artistes Khmers, exhibition catalogue, United States Information Service, Phnom Penh, 1963. NAC RSC 11122. 120 Yet an acrylic painting on paper, completed in 1974-75 and titled េ+ក
;ដកមM Saok Niedakamm (The Tragedy)(Figure 3.14) stands as perhaps the sole surviving example of an abstract (or strictly speaking, semi-abstract) artwork from Cambodia completed in this period. In it, wide-eyed and skull-like faces jumble with disembodied limbs and sharply angular forms in a composition that seems to explicitly reference Pablo Picasso’s iconic Guernica (1937). The picture is overlaid with a fine pencil grid, suggesting that this small work on paper may have been a study for a larger canvas. Its composition appears carefully planned, and the colours are bold and flatly applied, in a manner consistent with the poster design skills in which Lay Heng was formally trained.
Figure 3. 14
121
Figure 3. 15
Another semi-abstract painting, titled Woman and Child and painted by
Koeut Nay Sim in 1960 (Figure 3.15) further challenges the notion that modernity in pre-1975 “Cambodian arts” was found exclusively in representational forms. In this painting, which was exhibited in the first USIS exhibition in 1960, and selected for inclusion in the resulting wall calendar the following year, 81 angular and more organic, rounded blocks of colour intersect with dynamic intensity. A woman carrying water and a child, the principal subjects of the painting, are the only elements in which any kind of
81 Author unnamed, “Contemporary Art in Cambodia,” Free World [Thailand edition?], 1961. With thanks to Chov Theanly. Nothing more is known about the artist, Koeut Nay Sim, and no other works are known to survive, or exist in reproduction. 122 tonal rendering has been applied: their skin is painted in two or three shades.
Trees, huts, shadows, and all other parts of the picture are painted in flat, unmodulated, and decidedly unnaturalistic colour.
Sam Yoeun (សំ យឺន born 6 January 1933, died late 1960s or early 1970s) also studied first at the School of Cambodian Arts from 1949 to 1952, then at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris from 1952 to 1955. After his return to
Cambodia, he was employed at the National Bank in the design of banknotes.
Muan notes that several other artists of the same generation were also employed in what would now be known as graphic design. For example,
Pann Tra made advertising posters for the Ministry of Tourism, Ouk Yin made recruitment posters for the Ministry of Defense, 82 while Nhek Dim worked in the design of posters and other materials for the United States
Operations Mission (USOM) and United States Information Service (USIS), as we shall see in Chapter 4.83
Trans-media intersections appear not only in artists’ biographies, but also within artworks themselves. We have already touched on this, in our discussion of Chan Lay Heng’s semi-abstract painting, which displays qualities consistent with his training in poster design.
82 Muan, “Citing Angkor,” 289. 83 Nhek Dim was the only one of three “exhibits artists” employed by the US to receive a pay rise after two years of employment in 1956. USA NARA. RG 469/250/80/15/5.3 Box 14. 123 My research has uncovered nineteen artworks by Sam Yoeun, consisting of twelve etchings, four drawings, as well as three paintings that survive in black and white reproduction only. In all of these nineteen works, the artist employs a pronounced use of line, consistent with his employment as a designer. The three paintings were exhibited in the 1959 Biennale de Paris; in the exhibition catalogue, a short text authored by Cambodia’s ambassador to Paris describes Sam Yoeun’s work as “following realistic art,” in contrast to
Men Makoth, whose paintings are described as “tachiste” (a term used to describe a kind of French abstraction, during and after the 1940s) and
“adapting something of a Western influence.”84 Two watercolours, Sur une natte (On a Mat, 1959; Figure 3.16) and Le coucher de soleil (Sunset, 1959; Figure
3.17) both evoke the texture of the walls and roofing of Khmer rural homes made with dried leaves through a use of lines of varying thicknesses. With knowledge of his employment as a designer for the National Bank, we can discern a certain similarity between the artist’s handling of the watercolour brush and his approach to printmaking. We will see more of his prints in
Chapter 4.
84 Samreth Soth, “Cambodge,” in Première Biennale de Paris, exh. cat., 15. French. It is surely telling that in Samreth’s account, “realistic art” is not cast as being of “Western influence” in the way that the more abstract “tachisme” is. Might this be an effect of representational techniques having been introduced by Suzuki, and before him by Tô Ngọc Vân? 124
Figure 3. 16
Figure 3. 17
125 We have considered trans-media intersections as seen in artists’ biographies, and also as they are enacted in artworks themselves. In Chapter
4, we will consider the networked nature of modern Cambodian culture as it is played out in terms of reception: in the mediated contexts in which visual artworks were encountered by their various publics. Of central importance here will be the record covers that Nhek Dim (ញឹក ឌឹម 1934-1978) painted for popular music recordings by Sinn Sisamouth (សុីន សុី+មុត 1932-1976), Ros
Sereysothea (រស់ េសរfសុqr 1948-1977) and other singers, and the appearance of
Nhek Dim’s paintings in films directed by Norodom Sihanouk. Nhek Dim, who we will discuss at length in Chapter 4, is widely regarded as the best- known painter of the Sangkum period.
Both Nhek Dim and Sinn Sisamouth were favourites of Sihanouk’s, and the patronage of the Prince and Head of State was crucial to their reputation. Sisamouth’s music was featured in many of Sihanouk’s films, and the singer made several appearances. Nhek Dim’s paintings adorned the walls of Sihanouk’s residences, also appearing as part of the lavish modern mise-en-scène in several of his films. Angkor Wat (1961) can be seen hanging prominently by the dining table in Chamkarmon Palace in a scene in Apsaras
(1966), the first feature film Sihanouk directed (Figure 3.18). This demonstrates that such figurative realism, framed in elaborate European-style
126 gilt, epitomized a visually modern aesthetic, understood to be perfectly complementary to the angular and largely unornamented modern architecture of Vann Molyvann’s design for the Chamkarmon State Palace
(Figure 3.19).
Figure 3. 18
Figure 3. 19
Not only did Nhek Dim’s paintings appear in Sihanouk’s films and on the covers of pop music albums, but Nhek Dim also collaborated with Sinn
127 Sisamouth in the writing of several songs.85 We will consider these in more detail in Chapter 4, where the trans-media intersections I have outlined here will be employed in the detailed analysis of specific artworks. At this point, however, it is revealing to look at the way the figure of the modern painter is characterized in the lyrics and performance of two popular music songs.
“How to use the word”: On modern and contemporary conceptions of the artist
In អsកtេ]យគូរ? Neak Na Oy Kur? (Who Asked You to Paint?), a song for which Nhek Dim composed the lyrics, a female voice interrupts the male singer’s description of a picture that he has “very carefully painted … for three days without complaint” with the intention to “exchange it for love.”86
Sung by Sinn Sisamouth, the song is in the crooning style; the woman’s shrieking interjection starkly contrasts with the lilting verses. This woman demands, “give it to me! Who asked you to paint?” The response offered by the singer/painter is simply “I paint beautifully, my darling!” For him, this clearly is sufficient justification.
85 Moreover, according to Lors Chinda (Lors Chinda, Nhek Dim [Phnom Penh: Lors Chinda Art Publishers, 2001], v–viii), Nhek Dim also wrote fiction. No trace of this work can be located, however, and it is not mentioned in any prior research on modern Khmer literature in English, French or Khmer. With thanks to Klairung Amratisha for confirming this, in personal communications, 2015. Thanks also to Youk Chhang for help in searching for Nhek Dim’s fiction. 86 Originally released by Chanchhaya Records, 1974. Thanks to Vuth Lyno for advice on my translation. 128 Significantly, the song’s lyrics cast the labour of an artist as a form of compulsion. The singer, playing the role of a painter, boasts:
“Even at night I don't sleep I just sit and paint you.”
He mentions repeatedly the intensity of effort involved in making the picture: it is “very carefully painted,” he has been “trying to make it for three days,” he has “tried to paint it well.”
In another Sinn Sisamouth song, titled រuដួលដងសkឹងសែងh Romdoul Dong
Steung Sangker (Fragrant Flowers Along the Sangker River),87 the lyrics also participate in the discursive (re)defining of the figure of the “artist.” Again the notion of art-making as a compulsion appears; an “artist” has no choice whether to “bother to paint.” While Nhek Dim was not involved in the writing of this song, it was widely understood to have been in dialogue with him, and he reportedly took offence at its lyrics, which he claimed were a
“veiled insult” directed at him.
In this song, the term used for “artist” is វ"ចិ%តករ vichetrakar, the neologism invented during the linguistic “Khmerization” movement following independence, and the term used in the window display at Sam
87 Originally released on cassette, Sakura Records, 1974. Thanks to Cambodia Vintage Music Archive, Phnom Penh, for confirming this. Complete (Khmer) lyrics at http://www.khmeroldies.org/track/romduol-dong-stung-songkae [Accessed September 2015] 129 Yoeun’s gallery, with which this chapter began (Figure 3.1). Whereas older terms for “artist” can refer equally to dancers, musicians, sculptors, and so on, the new term វ"ចិ%តករ vichetrakar was used during the decades between independence and 1975 solely to refer to representational painters. Pann Tra explains that “វ"ចិ%តករ vichetrakar means artiste peinture,” using French loan- words. Significantly, he further notes that the “old teachers didn’t know how
88 to use the word វ"ចិ%តករ vichetrakar.” The emergence of new Khmer terminology—understood only by a few of Nhek Dim’s generation—allowed for the performative constitution of a (semi-) exclusive community of modern
89 “Cambodian artists,” or វ"ចិ%តករ vichetrakar.
And yet, the figure of the modern “Cambodian artist” was never reducible to representational painting alone: the figure of the representational painter was central to the making of modern conceptions of the “artist,” yet a modern “Cambodian artist” was almost never solely a representational painter. The centrality of trans-media intersections to modern and contemporary “Cambodian arts” has already been outlined, and we have seen
88 Pann Tra (Pen Tra), “Conversation,” 286–87. 89 In a twenty first century setting, the use of the loan-word performance functions similarly. See Roger Nelson, “‘Performance is Contemporary’: Performance and its Documentation in Visual Art in Cambodia,’ Udaya, Journal of Khmer Studies 12 (2014): 95–143. 130 numerous examples of it, including in Nhek Dim and other representational painters who would have described themselves as វ"ចិ%តករ vichetrakar.
It is worth noting that Sihanouk himself—patron of the arts, but also self-styled artist—served as a model for the modern “Cambodian artist” as a polymath, a figure with many talents and interests. Sihanouk, who was also fond of painting, told a journalist in 1973:
“I am an artist. I was born an artist and what I like best is the cinema, music, literature…”90
That Sihanouk himself used the term “artist” with such expansiveness is revealing. The word វ"ចិ%តករ vichetrakar may have referred in the years before
1975 specifically to a representational painter, but behind this new term lay a much larger new understanding of the role of an artist: innovative, unconventional, and possessed of many talents across multiple media.
Nhek Dim embodied this new kind of artist in several ways. He reportedly smoked cigarettes and drank beer as he painted,91 in keeping with bohemian attitudes familiar from European avant-gardes, and also from neighbouring Hanoi in the 1930s, where, according to Phoebe Scott, “the idea of ‘the artist’ that was promoted by [popular Vietnamese-language press]
90 Quoted in Gerard Brissé, “Introduction,” in Norodom Sihanouk, War and Hope: the Case for Cambodia, trans. Mary Feeney (New York: Pantheon, 1980), xxiii. 91 Pech Song, personal communications, 2015. 131 cartoons is that of a creative intellectual, driven by an idiosyncratic personal vision.”92
Nhek Dim’s unconventional working methods extended beyond smoking and drinking, and into the combination of different technologies of representation. Robert Merrillees, an Australian diplomat in Phnom Penh from 1967–69, recalls that “Nhek Dim did not require sittings for his portraits but preferred to work from photographs.”93 The composition of a portrait
Merrillees commissioned of his two daughters (Figure 3.20) combines and adjusts several separate photographs (Figure 3.21), demonstrating that the artist did not copy from them exactly, but rather adapted their mode of representation to his own needs.94
92 Scott, “Forming and Reforming,” 92. See also cartoons from Hanoi in the 1930s Scott reproduces on pages 82, 95, and 97. No such comic or caricatured images or textual descriptions of “Cambodian artists” from the 1950s and 60s are known to survive. Thus, fragmentary descriptions of the behaviour of Nhek Dim, and the wording used by Sam Yoeun and Pann Tra’s group, take on extra significance, in the absence of other evidence that is more comparable to that in Vietnam or Europe. 93 Personal communications, 2014. 94 Muan, “Citing Angkor” claims that most of his contemporaries did copy directly. 132
Figure 3. 20
Figure 3. 21
133 At this point, I want to shift focus from the decades before 1975, to the years 2013-14, to consider how techniques of representational painting have been repurposed and redeployed, and to consider what implications this has for the figure of the វ"ចិ%តករ vichetrakar, or modern “Cambodian artist.” After discussing the work and working processes of some students from the Royal
University of Fine Arts (RUFA) from these more recent years, we will return to the years before 1975, concluding with some comments on the contexts in which modern “Cambodian artists” showed their work during this period. 95
Since around 2010, the most commonly used Khmer word for “artist,” especially for those who circulate in international exhibitions and would describe what they make as “contemporary art,” is not វ"ចិ%តករ vichetrakar, with its close association with representational painting, but rather សិលEFករ selpakar, a much broader term that is closest to the Anglophone “artist,” with its root, សិលEFៈ selpak, meaning “arts” in the most expansive sense. The term
សិលEFករ selpakar does not refer to any specific medium or technique, and thus suits the many artists in the twenty first century who work across media.
Indeed, the term can be used not only by visual artists—those whose work
95 The following discussion of RUFA draws on my observations while joining a weekly class with final-year students for ten months from 2013 to 2014. My thanks go to the teacher, Tith Veasna, for inviting me, and to the students, for generously granting me access and permission. 134 circulates primarily in exhibitionary contexts—but also by dancers, choreographers, and other performing artists, whose work primarily circulates in stage settings.
However, for students of what is still called “Plastic Arts” at RUFA in
2013-14, there was no possibility to work across media. Painting was the only permissible medium, and representational painting made with oil on canvas was the only acceptable kind. Some teachers, especially those who are younger and who occasionally participate in the Phnom Penh gallery scene, privately suggest that this situation is not ideal. None of these, however, feel it is within their power to change it.
Despite being restricted to representational painting by the institution’s requirements, painting students at RUFA (all of whom are aged in their early twenties) work in ways reflective of the predominance of digital photographic images and online environments in their lives. Nhek Dim’s technique of devising a painting’s composition from multiple, separate photographs lives on, albeit now in the expanded realm of the digital. Among the graduating class of painting students in 2013-14, every one painted from photographs. In one particularly striking example, one student used two different photographs of two different horses—one printed and one displayed on his telephone—as a model for his painting of a single horse pulling a cart to market.
135 The figure of the pre-1975 វ"ចិ%តករ vichetrakar is one which the 2013-14 students sought to emulate and wished to pay homage to, in ways which demonstrate both some continuities with the techniques used by Nhek Dim, and also some departures made possible by new digital technologies. For example, one student, “Sophal,”96 chose to paint the Banteay Srei temple, by deliberately selecting a composition that had been previously painted by
Nhek Dim. The student Sophal explained in his final examination in 2014 that he believed Nhek Dim’s painting of the temple to have been unfinished (year unknown, Figure 3.22), and that he had therefore chosen this subject for his final project in order to pay tribute to the late artist by “completing” Nhek
Dim’s work.
This is a typical example of the fascination with pre-1975 arts among young “Cambodian artists” and students in the twenty first century. It exemplifies the ways in which the contemporary in “Cambodian arts” is deeply interested in recovering and championing artefacts of the modern from the decades before 1975, and the ways in which to be a contemporary
“Cambodian artist” is in large part to try to emulate what one imagines
(based on very limited art historical information) a modern “Cambodian artist” to have been.
96 Students’ names have been changed. 136 Yet in Sophal’s painting, despite the composition having been chosen in homage to Nhek Dim’s painting, the source imagery was in fact neither
Nhek Dim’s work nor direct in situ observation of the temple itself, but rather an image of the temple found online and printed out. The digital photograph included foreign tourists admiring the site, and to it, Sophal added a hand- drawn grid to aid in replication (Figure 3.23).
There is a quintessentially contemporary overlaying of temporalities
(and authorships) at play here: within the space of the student’s painting, we find the 10th century temple, as rendered by Nhek Dim sometime between
1955 and 1975, and also the same temple as imaged in an anonymous digital photograph sometime after around 2010. Moreover, the technique of replication using a grid is however indirectly derived from the colonial pedagogical methods introduced by Groslier, as discussed by Muan.97 While this plurality of temporalities appears strikingly contemporary, a coevality of old and new forms also defined many pre-modern “Cambodian arts,” including many Angkorian temples. Ashley Thompson describes the continuous building and restoring of temples throughout the Angkorian period as a “cycle” of repeated “returns,” and emphasizes the importance of
97 Ingrid Muan, “Haunted Scenes: Painting and History in Phnom Penh,” in Udaya, Journal of Khmer Studies 6 (2005): 15-39.
137 Angkorian inscriptions which describe events that took place within the kingdom often centuries prior.98
Figure 3. 22
Figure 3. 23
98 Ashley Thompson, “Angkor Revisited: The State of Statuary,” in What’s the Use of Art? Asian Visual and Material Culture in Context, ed. Jan Mrázek and Morgan Pitelka (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2008), 179-213. 138 Whereas Sophal himself chose to “complete” Nhek Dim’s painting of
Banteay Srei temple, most students did not themselves choose but rather were assigned the subject for their final year projects. This is common at RUFA, as students’ final paintings remain the property of the school rather than the student, and can thus be used as official Ministry gifts, and as decoration for officials’ offices. Just as Nhek Dim—the quintessential វ"ចិ%តករ vichetrakar who smoked and drank as he painted—also made paintings commissioned by others (as in the example of the portrait of Robert Merrillees’ daughter, discussed above, and in a commissioned painting of a soldier, which we will see in Chapter 4), so too RUFA students decades later are commissioned to make paintings that suit the needs of the institution and Ministry.
One such student, “Theara,” used multiple photographic source materials in his work to point to the dynamic interplay between different kinds of imagery which promulgate contemporary Cambodian popular nationalism. Theara had been asked to paint images of Cambodian soldiers who were working on the defence of the Preah Vihear/Phra Wihan temple, which is located on the Thai-Cambodian border and which was in 2013 the site of intensified military struggle between the two nations, which had been intermittent for several decades.99
99 See Charnvit Kasetsiri, Pou Sothirak, and Pavin Chachavalpongpun, Preah Vihear: A Guide to the Thai-Cambodian Conflict and its Solutions (Bangkok: White Lotus Press, 2013). 139 Theara decided to visualize this charged topic by painting a
Cambodian soldier returning home to his village from his post at the temple, in order to greet his family during a holiday (Figure 3.24). The student’s idea was approved, but the only problem was that he could not locate any photographs that depicted the kind of triumphant home-coming scene he imagined, and it was not possible for him to travel to shoot such a photograph himself. Fortunately, Theara eventually located online a photograph of a soldier returning from the temple, looking suitably heroic in his military uniform.
However, the soldier in the photograph Theara found was not
Cambodian, but Thai (Figure 3.25). Untroubled by the implications of this for his nationalist message, the student simply changed the details of the soldier’s uniform as necessary. However, after several months of working on the painting, he remained dissatisfied by his rendering of the soldier’s face.
Theara could not put the reasons for his dissatisfaction into words, but felt that it was just somehow “not appropriate” (អត់សម). Only a month or so before his final examination, the student hit on the idea of changing the Thai- turned-Cambodian soldier’s face into that of someone else, by working from several different photographs, as several of his peers had done with their paintings, and also as Nhek Dim had done with the portrait commissioned by
Robert Merrillees, mentioned above.
140 The face that Theara chose instead of the soldier’s belonged to Preap
Sovath (%1ប សុវត9ិ born 1975), one of Cambodia’s most popular singers, whose career began in 1996, and who is perhaps best known as the face of the nation’s most popular beer, a brand called Angkor (Figure 3.26). While the juxtaposition of a military scene with a pop singer—and indeed with a beer company—may seem incongruous, to Theara and his peers, these are all equally valid symbols of contemporary Cambodian nationalist pride. The advertising catchphrase for Angkor beer, after all, is “my country, my beer,” and this phrase is closely linked with the singer Preap Sovath’s face through his appearance in many advertising commercials and billboards promoting the beer.
Figure 3. 24 141
Figure 3. 25
Figure 3. 26
142 This student’s painting, intended by both the RUFA authorities who commissioned it and by Theara himself to be an emblem of contemporary
Cambodian nationalist pride, thus achieved this goal by combining military with musical imagery, and by drawing on multiple source photographs.
Adopting a technique that had been in use since Nhek Dim’s time, the student’s painting demonstrated many continuities with the pre-1975 figure of the វ"ចិ%តករ vichetrakar. This extended beyond the compositional technique: like Nhek Dim and other វ"ចិ%តករ vichetrakar in the years 1955 to 1975, Theara’s painting embodied trans-media intersections, in particular an interplay between representational images and popular music, as well as of course between photography and the painted image.
While many “contemporary artists” now refer to themselves as សិលEFករ selpakar—a broader term than វ"ចិ%តករ vichetrakar—the activities of painting students at RUFA demonstrate the flexibility of this latter term, and the continuities in the techniques to which it refers. The figure of the វ"ចិ%តករ vichetrakar, and of the modern “Cambodian artist,” was a distinctly modern invention, tied up with broader social, cultural and artistic transformations in the decades after national independence. While both the terminology and technology has shifted, the overlap between the contemporary សិលEFករ
143 selpakar in 2013-14 and the modern វ"ចិ%តករ vichetrakar in the years 1955-75 suggest that the categories of modernity and contemporaneity are best viewed as coextensive.
Conclusion: On modern galleries in the modern city
The making of the modern “Cambodian artist” was a process involving the new technique of representational painting, and the new terminology of វ"ចិ%ត
ករ vichetrakar. Moreover, the settings in which these artists work was shown were also new.
Historian Milton Osborne recalls purchasing one of Nhek Dim’s paintings (Figure 3.27) in 1970 from “a small shop selling luxury goods” in central Phnom Penh.100 The artist also had two addresses from which he sold paintings, as well as making house calls.101
100 Personal communications, 2015. 101 Merrillees. I have also seen the two addresses written, in the artist’s hand, on the verso of several of Nhek Dim’s canvases. 144
Figure 3. 27
Several artists during the two decades after 1955 showed their work in galleries, a type of venue previously unknown in Cambodia. Muan suggests that having a gallery set Nhek Dim apart from other artists. Yet at least two of his contemporaries, Men Makoth and Sam Yoeun, also had their own galleries at this time. Men Makoth sold paintings in a showroom beneath his modernist villa home;102 advertisements placed in author Soth Polin’s Nokor
Thom newspaper advertised Makoth’s gallery (described as a វ"ចិ%ត +ល vichetra sal, Figure 3.28) as opposite The Cambodiana, a large modern hotel, designed by Lu Ban Hap (who we meet again in Chapter 6).103
102 Sanda Men Makoth, interview, Paris, 2015. Thanks to Adeena Mey for assistance. 103 Nokor Thom, 26 September 1972, 5. Khmer. 145
Figure 3. 28
This advertisement functions as a synecdoche of many of the key issues explored here, and thus will serve as a point of conclusion for this chapter.
While boasting of its location opposite the modern architectural landmark that was the Cambodiana—much as Sam Yoeun’s gallery, with which this chapter began, was hailed for being opposite another modern architectural landmark, the National Sports Complex—Men Makoth’s advertisement is a monochromatic print of the quintessentially rural and boran scene of water buffalo. In its graphic use of line and its stylized rendering of form, the print points to Makoth’s training in the applied arts, and his interest in design; as we have seen, such intersections between modern painting and other arts was prevalent during this period. Moreover, in its use of the neologism វ"ចិ%ត +ល vichetra sal to name the gallery, the advertisement combines the Sanskrit- derived vichet with sal, familiar both in Khmer and in French.
146 Taken together, all this reveals the ways in which new forms of representational imagery—with roots, as we’ve seen, in 1930s intra-
Indochinese exchange and older forms of boran “Cambodian art”—were combined with new Khmer terminologies, in a complex discursive construction of the modern “Cambodian artist” in which representational painting was central, and yet in which trans-media intersections were defining.
In the next chapter, we continue our focus on painting, again situating it in a broader cultural context involving multiple mediations, including in film and popular music. We will, however, be paying much closer attention to specific artworks, and to the enactment of ideology within them. Works and their worlds will be taken to be mutually illuminating.
147 Chapter 4
Painting the Modern: “Who Asked You to Paint?”
“Cambodian landscapes in a much less conventional way” 1 were described in the review of Sam Yoeun’s gallery, as addressed in Chapter 3 (Figure 3.1). In this chapter, I will argue that the relationship between painting, the landscape, and the female figure is central to understanding the visually modern in Cambodia. The Cambodian landscape was invested with specific yet shifting meanings in the decades after independence, beginning with
Sihanouk’s promotion of the Sangkum policy of “Khmer Buddhist Socialism” from the late 1950s, and ending with a sense of longing for and loss of the landscape—conjoined with an imagined figure of the rural woman—amidst
1 Author unnamed, “Une visite à la galerie Sam Yoeun,” [A visit to the Sam Yoeun Gallery], Réalités Cambodgiennes (5 July 1965): 28-29. 148 escalating civil war after 1970. Intimately and inextricably linked to the imaging of the landscape was the depiction of women. That women were called on to play new and active roles in the rhetorical (and indeed literal) building of the new nation is a significant discursive context—both visual and ideological—within which I will consider the depiction of women in paintings by male artists. Interpreting paintings from the period 1955 to 1975 in light of contemporaneous discourses not directly or explicitly linked to visual art provides access to that which is distinctly modern in these paintings, which may not otherwise be legible as such.
Alongside considering how modernity was enacted in paintings of landscapes and women made between 1955 and 1975, this chapter will also consider the multiple, mediated environments in which these images circulated, and in which they were first encountered by Cambodian audiences. Continuing the attention to trans-media intersections as outlined in previous chapters, this discussion will emphasize the interplay between the visual and the verbal, especially in painter Nhek Dim’s collaborations with singer Sinn Sisamouth. This focus on mediation reveals multiple temporalities at play in the reception of paintings: an instance of contemporaneity within the modern. Issues of patronage are also at play here; in considering both
Sihanouk-sponsored artists such as Nhek Dim and oppositional artists such as
Sam Yoeun, I sidestep the fetishizing of the “avant-garde” which dominates much scholarship on the modern in the region, as elsewhere. 149 There is a sense, in the twenty first century, that artists aligned with the
Sangkum regime were “romanticised” and “uncritical.”2 This echoes Muan’s earlier claim that their depictions of the landscape represented little more than “nostalgia,”3 which we will return to below. By employing a contextually informed analysis, as well as drawing on many artworks that have been unavailable to previous scholars, I argue here that such views elide the significant extent to which modernity transformed the way in which
Cambodians saw—and thus drew and painted—their world. The effects of these transformations continue to be felt in the twenty first century, yet given the very limited access to paintings from the 1955 to 1975 period, there is little awareness of these continuities of the modern within the contemporary. Even
Nhek Dim, whose early paintings may be understood as affirmations of
Sihanouk’s policy of “Khmer Buddhist Socialism,” can be seen to be critically engaging with the new and modern meanings being invested in the landscape through this rhetoric.
2 The widely held misconception is articulated in these words by curator Erin Gleeson, quoted in Audrey Wilson, “Bringing Khmer-influenced Art Full Circle,” The Phnom Penh Post, 22 July 2016. http://www.phnompenhpost.com/post- weekend/bringing-khmer-influenced-art-full-circle [Accessed October 2016] 3 Ingrid Muan, “Citing Angkor: The ‘Cambodian Arts’ in the Age of Restoration 1918-2000," PhD Dissertation, Columbia University, New York, 2001, 305. 150 Introducing Nhek Dim (ញឹក ឌឹម)
Nhek Dim’s biography and many works have been ably assembled elsewhere,4 and while they are largely unknown outside Cambodia, they are canonical within the nation and among its diaspora. My purpose in what follows is to contribute to closer studies of his work and his world, through particular attention to ways in which his representations of women and landscapes, and his participation in United States-organized cultural activities, engaged with various ideological discourses of modernity in
Cambodia.
Let’s begin with the lyrics to a song, recorded by Sinn Sisamouth—a peer of Nhek Dim’s—and widely understood by to have been in dialogue with him.
“វ'ចិ*តករេអើយកុំ3ច់គូរអី េ8ក9:ងេ<កិយ*សីល?@Aនេទ DនែតរFដួលដងសIឹងសែងJែដលខL:ំលួចេស9ហ៍ េOះរយខួបែខក៏េ8Sំចង ។”
“Oh, artist, don’t bother to paint, For in this world, there are no good women, Except for those fragrant flowers along the Sangker River that I adore; Even after hundreds of months, I still remember.”
4 Lors Chinda, Nhek Dim (Phnom Penh: Lors Chinda Art Publishers, 2001). Muan, “Citing Angkor,” 306-19. Seng Dara [េសង UV], Dសេ*Wបនគរ Xគ១០ Meas Srōb Nokor, Phiek 10 [Gold Plated Nokor, Part 10], (Phnom Penh: Angkor Thom Book Center, 2009), 9-52. 151 — រFដួលដងសIឹងសែងJ Romdoul Dong Steung Sangker [Fragrant Flowers Along the Sangker River], lyrics by Kong Bunchhoeun, sung by Sinn Sisamouth5
Nhek Dim’s paintings share certain recurrent tropes with these lyrics: a sentimental love of the Cambodian landscape as the locus for nationalist discourses, a melancholic air of longing and loss, and a complex and distanced attitude to women, generally tending to the objectifying. The
“fragrant flowers” named in the song may be understood as metaphors for the women of the rural Battambang province, through which the Sangker
River flows. While the lyrics may at first appear simplistic in their nostalgia, careful analysis will reveal them to be deceptively complex.
Born into an affluent agricultural family in Prey Veng province in 1934,
Nhek Dim’s early schooling was reportedly disrupted by the Japanese military incursion. In 1949 he entered the School of Cambodian Arts in
Phnom Penh, studying under Suzuki Shigenari, who we discussed in Chapter
3. He graduated in 1954, and commenced employment for the US Operations
Mission (USOM) as an artist and illustrator. In 1957, the US sponsored a six- month trip to the Philippines for Nhek Dim to study printing and publishing
5 Originally released on cassette, Sakura Records, 1974. Thanks to Cambodia Vintage Music Archive, Phnom Penh, for confirming this. Complete (Khmer) lyrics at http://www.khmeroldies.org/track/romduol-dong-stung-songkae [Accessed September 2015] 152 techniques. 6 In 1961, 1962 and 1963 he joined and won prizes at US
Information Service (USIS) annual exhibitions in Phnom Penh, and from 1963 to 1967 he studied animation in the US studios of the Walt Disney
Corporation. Upon his return, Nhek Dim opened a gallery, and confirmed his position as Cambodia’s “most famous” artist. 7 His paintings were widely used in advertising, record covers, and diplomatic publications. Nhek Dim continued painting until the forced evacuation of Phnom Penh in 1975, and died in unknown circumstances during the Khmer Rouge’s reign, reportedly in 1978.8
Nhek Dim was the most prominent visual artist of the post- independence period, and remains widely known in Cambodia decades later.9
He is the only artist from before 1975 by whom a substantial number of paintings are known to have survived. In a 2001 volume compiling images of surviving works as well as some images of lost works, collector and publisher
Lors Chinda assembles over 170 pictures, including several cartoons and
6 January 1957 telegrams between USOM (United States Operations Mission) Manila and USOM Phnom Penh. United States of America National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Maryland (USA NARA). RG 469/1948–61/1952-58/7-17. 7 Memories vary as to whether the gallery was opened before Nhek Dim went to study. See Muan’s unpublished notes from conversations with Nhek Dim’s peers. Ingrid Muan Papers, NMC, Box 3. 8 This paragraph synthesizes Chinda, Nhek Dim; Muan, “Citing Angkor;” and Dara, Nokor. 9 See Sopheap Pich, “One on One: Sopheap Pich on Nhek Dim,” ArtAsiaPacific 86 (November/December 2013): 23. 153 watercolour illustrations. 10 In addition to these, I have located ten more paintings by Nhek Dim, as well as several cartoons. Copies of Chinda’s publication were donated to the Royal University of Fine Arts, ensuring that new generations know Nhek Dim’s work—albeit only in representation, as no institution presently collects or exhibits modern “Cambodian art” from the period 1955 to 1975. Already heavily mediated during his lifetime, through the appearance of his paintings in films, advertising, and record covers, Nhek
Dim is still widely known in Cambodia through reproductions, and now also as a kind of digital spectre, circulating on online social media and websites.
He embodies the longevity of the modern, and its persistent claim in the contemporary.
While Nhek Dim was the most prominent visual artist of his time, and although substantially more of his paintings survive than of his peers, there remain several gaps and uncertainties in his history. The loss and dispersal of sources poses a methodological challenge for all research on pre-1975
Cambodian arts and culture, even of such a relatively well-documented figure as Nhek Dim, and it is with this in mind that I consider the artist’s paintings in various local contexts, looking also to contemporaneous sources and creations, including songs with which the artist was associated. Often taken to
10 Chinda, Nhek Dim. According to artist Heng Moniphal, head of Fine Art at Phnom Penh’s Royal University of Fine Arts, Lors Chinda’s success in locating and acquiring so many of Nhek Dim’s works was largely due to the businessperson-collector’s wealth, compared to the erstwhile owners of many paintings. Interview with Heng Moniphal, Phnom Penh, August 2014. 154 be a distinctly contemporary phenomenon, proficiency in multiple media, and circulation of “fine art” images within popular media, were both also features of modernity, too.
Perhaps an attentiveness to intersections across media within a single locality, while here born partly of necessity, may also prove enriching elsewhere: many histories of the Southeast Asian modern privilege intra- regional (rather than trans-media) comparisons, and the sense of modernity in the region’s arts that emerges, while productive, is necessarily partial.
“Who Asked You to Paint?”: On Nhek Dim’s depiction of modern women
In Chapter 3’s discussion of the new figure of the modern “Cambodian artist,” we considered Sinn Sisamouth’s song អ9ក[េ\យគូរ? Neak Na Oy
Kur? (Who Asked You to Paint?), for which Nhek Dim composed the melody.11 There, we focused on ways in which the song cast the labour of an artist as a form of compulsion. Here, we turn our attention to the interplay between the record cover, painted by Nhek Dim, and the shrieking interjection of a female voice in the song, interrupting Sisamouth’s crooning
11 Originally released by Chanchhaya Records, 1974. Thanks to Vuth Lyno for advice on my translation. 155 lyrics about having “very carefully painted … for three days without complaint” to loudly demand: “give it to me! Who asked you to paint?”
Nhek Dim’s painting used as the record cover typifies the artist’s depiction of women (Figure 4.1). Painted in warmly golden hues, a near-nude figure sits in a rocky riverbed; she is bathing. Chhang Song, Minister of
Culture in Lon Nol’s government at the time, and a close friend of Nhek
Dim’s, recalls that this was painted in situ at Teuk Chhou in Kampot, however no identifiable geographical features can be found in the painting.12
The woman’s posture highlights her elongated arms and fingers, considered ideals of Cambodian feminine beauty.
Figure 4. 1
12 Personal communications, 2015. 156 Most striking is the placement of a corner of the woman’s sarong in her mouth, compositionally drawing attention to her open lips. Listening to the song while looking at this image—seeing the dynamic trans-media intersections at work, in the way in which they would have been first received by Cambodian publics—we assume that this is the woman whom the singer is addressing, and indeed that this painting on the record cover is the painting that the singer is describing, as having been “very carefully painted.” This woman in the painting is thus, surely, that woman in the song, whose voice we hear interrupting the singer/painter to demand, “who asked you to paint?”
Looking again to the sarong held between her lips, we realize that when this woman opens her mouth to cry out “who asked you to paint?”—as she will, each time the song plays—the sarong will fall from her lips, exposing her breast. Posed like this, the woman cannot verbally defend herself without physically revealing herself. Yet she cannot keep quiet, so indignant is she at being painted in this way.
In another (untitled) painting, dated 1974, Nhek Dim again depicts an attractive young woman bathing in a flowing stream, again with the corner of her sarong placed between her full and slightly open lips (Figure 4.2).13 The
13 In Youk Chhang’s private collection, this painting was given to him by a Vietnamese former soldier, who collected it from Phnom Penh’s Royal Palace in 1979. Conversations with Youk Chhang, Phnom Penh, 2015. The painting is now in poor condition, but a photograph of its original vibrancy is in Chinda, 105. 157 same pose is seen in another (untitled) painting, from ca. early 1970s (Figure
4.3).
Figure 4. 2
Figure 4. 3
158 These women are objectified, yet they are also somehow irrepressible, like the woman in the song អ9ក[េ\យគូរ? Neak Na Oy Kur? who refuses to silently assent to being painted by the sleepless man. Perhaps it was the artist’s intention to depict these women, with their sarongs in their mouths, as entirely passive and submissive. But the possibility for this counter-reading, which identifies the defiance of these women in the improbable yet resounding shriek of the woman on the cover of the record, suggests that the women that Nhek Dim painted also escaped the artist’s total control: they took on a life of their own. This is the case regardless of whether these women were real or imagined—which is unknown, and probably unknowable.
Perhaps the unruliness of these women was not intended by the artist, but rather emerges as a kind of unconscious reflection of the zeitgeist—a sign of the growing confidence of women in some areas of public life at that time, including of popular female singers such as Ros Sereysothea and Pen Rorn
(both of whom Sinn Sisamouth collaborated with on occasion). Or perhaps this uneasy hovering between passivity and passion was, after all, what the artist had intended to convey in these women.
Regardless, the palpable tension between submission and objectification on the one hand, and loud verbal self-defence on the other hand, epitomizes the contradiction at the heart of the image of modern women in the Cambodian setting: called on to participate in the nation-
159 building project (in ways that we will turn to shortly), while also to maintain their “traditional” roles. Nira Yuval-Davis argues that “Women usually have an ambivalent position within the collectivity. On the one hand … they often symbolize the collective unity, honour, and the raison-d’être of specific national and ethnic projects.” Concomitant with this, however, women “are often excluded from the collective ‘we’ of the body politic, and retain an object rather than a subject position.”14 The contradictory image of women in
Cambodia is by no means unique to this context.
It is significant that the women in Nhek Dim’s paintings are most often in rural settings. Women are coupled to the landscape, an especially loaded site of political and other rhetoric in this as in other contexts. Yuval-Davis notes that the “figure of a woman … symbolizes in many cultures the spirit of the collectivity,” arguing that economic circumstances in peasant societies
(which would include Cambodia) contribute to a “close association between collective territory, collective identity and womanhood.”15 Ashley Thompson makes a similar point in a specifically Cambodian context, noting the literary coupling of female deity-monarchs with the land. An Angkorian queen, in
Thompson’s historically informed textual reading, “embod[ies] the earth” and thus “gives new form to an old trope of power and sexual difference by which
14 Nira Yuval-Davis, Gender & Nation (London: Sage, 1997), 47. 15 Yuval-Davis, Gender & Nation, 45. 160 the king conquers and possesses the land as his wife.”16 This “trope of power and sexual difference” linking women to the landscape can be seen again in
Nhek Dim’s paintings of female peasants harvesting rice. Having considered the artist’s representation of near-nude women, let us now turn to his depiction of the land.
“The work the nation depends on”: On agricultural landscapes in Nhek Dim’s paintings
The land—the ទឹកដីែខ]រ toek dei Khmer, literally “Khmer water and soil”—is central to modern Cambodian constructions of the nation. Entrenched, overlapping factors contributing to this include: intensification of long- standing perceptions of threatened borders; loss of historically Cambodian territory to neighbouring nations; pride in agricultural and riverine fertility and abundance; and spiritual beliefs.
The (pictorial and discursive) image of the landscape is also of defining importance here. Examining shifts in meanings invested in imaged landscapes from the early Sangkum era to the years after Lon Nol’s 1970 coup
16 Ashley Thompson, “Performative Realities: Nobody’s Possession,” in At the Edge of the Forest: Essays on Cambodia, History, and Narrative in Honor of David Chandler, ed. Anne Ruth Hansen and Judy Ledgerwood (Ithaca, NY: Southeast Asia Program, 2008), 115. Thompson’s thesis on the linking of the feminine to the land is further developed in her Engendering the Buddhist State: Territory, Sovereignty and Sexual Difference (London and New York: Routledge, 2016), esp. 71-110. 161 enriches our understanding of Nhek Dim’s repeated painting of remarkably similar landscapes throughout these years, which in turn reveals shifts in cultural attitudes during this period. This is illuminated through a temporal comparison of two images, both depicting harvesters, painted eleven years apart.
In 1961, Nhek Dim painted La Moisson (The Harvest), one of five canvases exhibited in the second USIS annual exhibition in 1962.17 This is almost certainly the picture reproduced in Chinda’s publication, under the title Harvesting (Figure 4.4). It depicts a group of farmers harvesting rice. Also visible are cows and stilted thatched houses, in the typical Cambodian style.
Tall, lean silhouettes of sugar palms, a symbol of Cambodian nationalist pride, dominate the background. Everything in the painting is imbued with the golden hue of the ripe rice—even the trees and sky—conveying an all- encompassing sense of fertile abundance.18
17 Catalogue, Scènes de la Vie Cambodgienne: Une Exposition de Peintures (Scenes of Cambodian Life: An Exhibition of [Modern] Painters), NAC, Box 215. Reproduced in Ly and Muan, Cultures of Independence, 259–62, with the date incorrectly ascribed as “1960(?).” 18 Economically speaking, at least, the sense of abundance was illusory. Cambodia’s agricultural productivity, then as later, was among the lowest in Southeast Asia. 162
Figure 4. 4
A review at the time proposed that “Harvest depicts strikingly the sunburned face of the man of the soil, diligently doing the work that the nation depends on.”19 This comment is significant in two ways. Firstly, its naming of the “man of the soil” is odd, given that five of the eight adults in the foreground are women, including the most prominent figure, facing the viewer directly from her central position. Disregarded by the reviewer, the women are not only compositionally central but also vital bearers of a key ideological message in the image: for it is only the women who wear the krama chequered scarf, understood in local contexts to be specifically
Cambodian.20 It is the conspicuous presence of the krama on the women that
19 La Depeche du Cambodge, 10 January 1962, quoted (in translation) in USIS Phnom Penh, “Second Annual USIS Art Contest, Exhibition of Paintings and Calendar,” 4 April 1962. USA NARA. RG 306/230/46/39/2 Box 5. 20 The krama is akin to the Thai textile known as pha khao ma. Chequered fabrics are also found elsewhere in the region, as evidenced in the Malay origin of the English word “gingham.” 163 signals to local audiences that these farmers are “ethnic Cambodian,” rather than “ethnic Vietnamese.” Centuries-old tensions between these neighbours intensified during escalating war in Vietnam at the time. That it is women chosen as bearers of this nationalist symbol is telling; in the process of modern nation-building, women were called on to play active roles in many fields from which they had previously been marginalized. Documentary films directed by Sihanouk include scenes of women playing active sports, as well as working in factories and laboratories, and driving tractors and other large machines.21 We will revisit these scenes in Chapters 5 and 6.
The review’s linking of Nhek Dim’s painting of the harvest to the
“diligent…work that the nation depends on” is also significant for coupling the pictorial image of the landscape to the discursive elevation of agriculture from a practical and economic necessity to an ideologically freighted act, the basis of what was termed “Khmer Buddhist Socialism.” Propounded by
Sihanouk’s Sangkum Reastr Niyum (People’s Socialist Community) from the late 1950s, “Khmer Buddhist Socialism” posited that “cooperative, communal farming”—and especially harvesting—that had been practiced “since very long ago” as being the “source of Khmer socialism,” and of “equality” and
“democracy.” Irrigation, hospitals and other innovations of the Angkorian era
(9-15th century CE) were seen as the origin of this “cooperative, communal
21 See Norodom Sihanouk, director, Le Femme Cambodgienne à l’heure du Sangkum [Women during the Sangkum], Khemara Pictures, 1960s. Bophana Center archives, Phnom Penh. NSI_VI_001568. Unofficial duplicates also available online. 164 farming” which continued to the modern day.22 In a statement published in
1960—the year before Nhek Dim’s painting of the harvest was made—
Sihanouk elaborated this theory, announcing that “Khmer Buddhist Socialism bears no relation to the socialism of Marx and Engels, because … Buddhist theory teaches the led to respect their leaders.”23 In a recent Marxist critique of
“Khmer Buddhist Socialism,” Diep Sophal argues that the movement was created to oppose the Left, and that far from being “real” socialism, its reform of the emerging capitalist system served to “halt the progression of socialism
(of the Marxist kind).”24
Nhek Dim’s depiction of harvesting in this 1961 painting, seen by viewers at the time who were familiar with Sihanouk’s contemporaneous expounding of “Khmer Buddhist Socialism,” would have been striking for its emphasis on harvest as a communal activity, in which both men and women actively participate. Leaning down to gather, cut and bundle the ripe rice, the harvesters form a human chain, their figures overlapping in the picture plane, visually underscoring their inter-dependence. The presence of the krama
22 Diep Sophal (េដៀប សុផល), របបសង`មVaសbនិយម (១៩៥៥-១៩៧០) មfជ័យជំនះនិងវ'បតbិ Robab Sangkum Reastr Niyom (1955-1970). Mohaa Chey Chumneah Ning Vibatt [Sangkum Reastr Niyum Regime: Great Victory and Crisis], 2nd ed. (Phnom Penh: Jauk Jey, 2009), 124-26. 23 Sihanouk, in អ9កiតិនិយម Neak Cheat Niyom [The Nationalist], 1960, 208, quoted in Diep, 127. See also Norodom Sihanouk, “Le Socialisme Bouddhique,” in Doux et Amers (Paris: Hachette, 1981), 259-268. 24 Sophal, Sangkum, 146. Diep Sophal studied in the former Soviet Union. 165 identifies these farmers as Cambodian; their collectivity further marks them as the “source of Khmer socialism.”
These layered and contextually specific meanings inherent in imaging the landscape have generally been overlooked. Muan regards such paintings as “nostalgia” since “they did not portray the new although they used a new form of representation” and “factories of the Sangkum, the televisions and cars of everyday life, in fact the city as a whole is missing here.” She contends that artists “turned to archetypes of the countryside … to secure the
‘Cambodian’ label for their ‘modern paintings.’”25
Muan’s comments are insightful, but stop short of registering the significant fact that the “countryside” itself took on ideological connotations that were “new” at this time. The timeless landscape, and the collective farming activities which had been linked by Sihanouk to the time of Angkor, were redeployed in wholly new ways during the Sangkum period, directly responding to political challenges arising after national independence. The coevality of old references and new ideologies, in their combination, constituted the modern in Cambodian political discourse, as in “Cambodian arts.” For artists such as Nhek Dim to, in Muan’s terms, turn to “archetypes of the countryside” was thus as much if not more about “securing” the
“modern” label for their paintings, as it was about “securing” the “label” of
“Cambodian.”
25 Muan, “Citing Angkor,” 305. 166 Representing a more cynical view, artist Pann Tra charges that Nhek
Dim painted “to sell” rather than “have an important meaning.”26 Yet Tra was involved with an Association that opposed Sihanouk’s policies, a point to which we will return shortly. Thus, it is understandable that he is less attentive to the interplay between Nhek Dim’s paintings and the Sangkum’s programme of “Khmer Buddhist Socialism.”
Having examined how the 1961 Harvest painting ideologically functioned in its context of “Khmer Buddhist Socialism,” let us turn to another painting by Nhek Dim, also titled Harvesting, made eleven years later
(Figure 4.5). The visual similarity of these two paintings is striking. Again, a group of men and women are arranged just off-centre, with stilted houses and vegetation in the background, and sugar palms dominating the horizon-line.
The handling of paint is also similar, with visible brushstrokes in both paintings, particularly in rendering of stalks of ripe rice. The krama is again prominent in the 1972 painting, dispelling any doubt regarding the “ethnic” identity of the farmers. And again several of the harvesting figures overlap, visually linking them and thus emphasizing the communal nature of their labour.
26 Pann Tra (3jន់ *U, romanized in the text as Pen Tra), “A Conversation with Pen Tra,” in Cultures of Independence: An Introduction to Cambodian Arts and Culture in the 1950’s and 1960’s, ed. Ly Daravuth and Ingrid Muan (Phnom Penh: Reyum Institute of Arts and Culture, 2001), 291. 167
Figure 4. 5
Figure 4. 6
Yet upon closer inspection, we will find several points of contrast making the 1972 painting even more idealizing in its depiction of farmers than the 1961 picture. In both canvases, one centrally positioned woman looks directly to us (Figure 4.6). In the 1961 painting, she is hunched slightly, in loose, dark clothing; her face stern and weary, looking off to the middle-
168 distance as if pondering her future. By contrast in the 1972 picture, the woman stands proud and tall, her slender silhouette revealed by a closely fitting sampot and pale figure-hugging blouse. Her face appears youthful and carefree, looking directly—seductively?—to us. This woman’s fellow villagers, in the 1972 painting, are engaged in a notably more diverse range of activities than their 1961 counterparts. A man climbs a palm tree, suggesting that it bears ripe fruit; a woman builds a haystack; another tends to chickens.
Taken together, these constitute an emphatic display of fecund abundance, even greater than in the 1961 picture, in which the golden hue of ripe rice suggested such riches, but the image itself neglected to demonstratively illustrate them. Moreover, the wealth of the village in the 1972 painting is revealed in the pristine stilted houses, their horizontal wooden boards distinctly visible, in clear contrast to the leaning, ramshackle thatched huts in the 1961 picture.
What are we to make of this idealization of landscape in the 1972 painting? If the 1961 picture was made in a moment when cooperative farming was rhetorically linked to Sihanouk’s optimistic policy of “Khmer
Buddhist Socialism,” then what contextual and discursive meanings were attached to the imaged landscape by 1972? Youk Chhang, a child at the time, recalls wistfully: “at that time, we really missed the countryside. It was really a
169 longing.”27 With civil war raging after 1970, and much of the country subjected to bombing by the US and fighting by the Khmer Rouge, Phnom Penh’s population swelled with internal refugees fleeing rural areas, and the city’s residents were largely unable to travel. 28 Optimism had given way to a growing sense of melancholy and catastrophe. As Sinn Sisamouth sang in the song quoted above, “Even after hundreds of months, I still remember.” The sense of yearning conveyed in the 1974 song’s lyrics and melody is akin to that in Nhek Dim’s 1972 painting.
The subtle but significant shifts in the artist’s imaging of landscape may help to explain his continued prominence despite the regime change of
1970. Nhek Dim was a prominent figure in the late 1960s, due not only to his work but also his wealth and affiliation with Sihanouk. It is thus perhaps surprising that his success was uninterrupted by Lon Nol’s 1970 coup. Youk
Chhang suggests that this is because his paintings were simply “not political.”
Yet evidence from Youk’s own cousin contradicts this: Chhang Song, as Lon
Nol’s Minister of Information, commissioned from his friend Nhek Dim a portrait of a female soldier (1970, Figure 4.7),29 which suggests that the painter was capable of a certain political malleability when necessary. “If we weren’t
27 Personal communications, Phnom Penh, 2015. 28 Youk Chhang. See also William Shawcross, Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon and the Destruction of Cambodia (London: Hogarth, 1993), 317–19. 29 Chhang Song, personal communications, 2015. 170 flexible, we couldn’t live,” explains Pech Song (1947–), an artist who was employed by five consecutive regimes, beginning with Lon Nol’s.30
Figure 4. 7
But perhaps the subtle adjustments to the detail in Nhek Dim’s depiction of landscape, attuned to larger shifts in the ideological meanings invested in the imaged landscape, offer a more substantial explanation for the artist’s continued and apparently uninterrupted prominence.
The imaged landscape, which in 1961 was a locus of quasi-socialist political fantasy, had by 1972 become a nexus for the “longing” and loss (both
30 Personal communications, Phnom Penh, 2015. See also Muan, “Citing Angkor,” 389–96. 171 physical and emotional) brought about by war. An attention to similarities and differences in Nhek Dim’s imaging of the landscape across this period is revealing of broader Cambodian attitudes to the landscape, which take on special significance since rhetoric of the rural would again be central to Pol
Pot’s regime, and to the regimes which followed.31
In the years that followed the war, the landscape took on new resonances as a site of longing for Cambodian artists in the diaspora. A photograph taken in July 1993 of Heng Moniphal’s work at the Ukrainian
Academy of Fine Arts (Figure 4.8) shows that the artist was also painting images of harvesters in the Cambodian countryside, even while studying fine arts on the other side of the planet. Such paintings, as well as works depicting the temples of Angkor, are nearly ubiquitous in the homes of Cambodian diaspora across Asia, North America, Australasia, and Europe.
Figure 4. 8
31 This will be addressed in Chapter 8 on the years 1975-1999. 172 In the twenty first century, the landscape as imaged in the photographic series Bomb Ponds (រេklេប 2009) by Vandy Rattana (វណnី រតo born 1980) remains a site of longing and loss, and still bears the physical scars of war. Consisting of nine colour photographs, each depicting a crater caused by the secret bombing of Cambodia carried out by the US between 1964 and
1975, the Bomb Ponds series also includes a single-channel video documentary, in which farmers and rural villagers recount their relationship to these craters.32 A recurring concern in their descriptions is the poisoning of the earth, and of the water held within these “ponds.” This speaks of the scars on the landscape in the wake of war as being not only physical, but also emotional, psychological, and deeply symbolic. These resonances are emphasized in the composition of the photographs. In Takeo (2009, Figure 4.9), for example, the “bomb pond” is centrally positioned, in a lush green scene that is eerily tranquil, devoid of human and animal life. The technology and political context is immensely different from Nhek Dim’s, of course, and yet the classical beauty of the image, and the emphasis on the ideological associations inherent in the landscape, may be seen to be broadly similar.33
32 Vandy Rattana, The Bomb Ponds, exh. cat. (Phnom Penh: Sa Sa Bassac, 2011), n.p. 33 The “deceptively peaceful, bucolic” images have also been compared with “the idyllic rural landscapes” of the kind sold in shopfront galleries in Phnom Penh contemporaneous with Rattana’s creation of the series. Pamela N. Corey, “The Artist in the City: Contemporary Art as Urban Intervention in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, and Phnom Penh, Cambodia,” PhD Dissertation, Cornell University, Ithaca, 2015, 370. 173
Figure 4. 9
While remaining on the topic of the imaged landscape, we will now turn our attention away from Nhek Dim to consider another artist who has been cast as being in some ways his opposite, Sam Yoeun. My research has uncovered nineteen artworks by Sam Yoeun, consisting of twelve etchings, four drawings, as well as three paintings that survive in black and white reproduction only. None of these have previously been discussed in English or Khmer.
On depictions of landscape in works by Sam Yoeun (សំ យឺន) and other communist-affiliated artists
Nhek Dim was publicly aligned with Sihanouk through the appearance of his works in the prince’s films, and the prince’s patronage of his work. Artists
174 involved with the Association of Modern Cambodian Painters (សDគមសិលqrៈ
វ'ចិ*តករែខ]រ samakum selpak vichetrakar khmer), a grouping headed by Sam Yoeun whose gallery we discussed in Chapter 3 (Figure 3.1), were at the opposite end of the political spectrum. According to a later interview that Ingrid Muan conducted with Khmer Rouge leader Khieu Samphan, Sam Yoeun himself was a member of the Communist Party of Kampuchea during the 1960s.34
While this claim cannot be independently verified, and the affiliations of other artists in the Association are unknown, the fact that several of them participated in exhibitions held in then-communist East Germany—organized without any involvement from Sihanouk or Nhek Dim—can be taken as a sign of their oppositional politics.
Yet those opposed to Sihanouk in the decades after independence were—like the rhetoric of the prince’s policy of “Khmer Buddhist
Socialism”—broadly aligned with a politics of agrarian socialism, and this is reflected in their artworks. Several of Yoeun’s prints and drawings depict agricultural labour. While he emphasizes the hardship of such labour much more then Nhek Dim’s paintings, making the aesthetic and emotion of their works quite different, Yoeun still heroizes farming and the landscape in broadly similar terms. In an etching of three men harvesting sugar-cane (ca.
34 Khieu Samphan, interviewed by Muan, ca. early 2000s. Unpublished notes, NMC Box 3. 175 1963-65, Figure 4.10), and in another etching of men and women harvesting rice (ca. 1963-65, Figure 4.11), the human figures overlap in the picture, emphasizing their collective effort in a manner not unlike that in Nhek Dim’s paintings, discussed above. The same device of overlapping figures is seen also in an ink drawing by Yoeun (1963, Figure 4.12), which appears to have been very quickly executed. This suggests that perhaps such a compositional mode came naturally to him.
Overlapping figures are seen not only in images of agricultural labour, but also in Yoeun’s pictures of performing artists. In La musique populaire
(Popular Music, 1959; Figure 4.13), which was shown in the 1959 Paris
Biennale (seemingly the only time in which Yoeun exhibited alongside Nhek
Dim), men in a musical troupe gather together closely, in a manner suggestive of their harmonized performance. In an untitled etching (ca. 1963-65, Figure
4.14), female dancers overlap, in testament to their coordination and grace.
Figure 4. 10
176
Figure 4. 11
Figure 4. 12
177
Figure 4. 13
Figure 4. 14
178
Figure 4. 15
Figure 4. 16
In other works, we find an emphasis on the fertility of the natural environment. In this way, even without depicting the overlapping figures of harvesters or other labourers, Yoeun and other artists were able to implicitly link the depiction of the Cambodian landscape with the celebration of the nation’s agricultural abundance. Etchings by Yoeun depicting both a beach scene (ca. 1963-65,, Figure 4.15) and a riverside village (ca. 1963-65, Figure
4.16) are dominated by the tall and graceful forms of palm trees, suggestive of fruit-bearing fertility. In a linocut by Nou Roeun, abundantly lush foliage 179 dwarfs the human figures. Named in the work’s title as Khmer Women Bathing
(1966, Figure 4.17), these figures are rendered in a black ink that blends with the black of the forest stream. Thus here, as in Nhek Dim’s paintings, women are compositionally tied to the rich Cambodian landscape. Significantly,
Roeun is a generation older than Nhek Dim, Sam Yoeun and their peers: born in 1921 in Oudong, he studied at the School of Cambodian Arts from 1940 to
1944, which was before Suzuki Shigenari began teaching representational techniques there.35
Figure 4. 17
Several works by Roeun, Yoeun and others were exhibited in East
Germany in 1967, in an exhibition titled Intergrafik 67: International Exhibition
35 “Kambodscha,” in Intergrafik: Internationale Grafik-Ausstellung / Exposition Internationale d’Art Graphique, exh. cat. (Berlin: Altes Museum, 1967), n.p. 180 of Graphic Art. The multilingual catalogue’s foreword was written by East
German artist Lea Grundig (1906-1977), listed as the President of the
Association of Pictorial Artists of Germany.36 In 1963, Grundig had visited
Cambodia and met with Sam Yoeun. In their private correspondence,
Grundig told Yoeun that she and her East German compatriots had “great sympathy” for Yoeun’s “beautiful country” and for “the upright political line of its governance.” Yoeun in turn told Grundig that the prints sent to be shown at Intergrafik would be selected from an exhibition to be held first at his
Phnom Penh gallery.37 Since the Association of Cambodian Modern Painters had no official affiliation with Sihanouk or the Sangkum, theirs may be regarded in twenty first century terminology as an “artist-run space.” Their decision to exhibit works in Cambodia before sending them to East Germany suggests a commitment to local audiences which remains prominent in the twenty first century context, in which biennales and other international exhibitions are a primary source of exposure and income for Cambodian artists, who nevertheless often prioritize finding ways to show their work locally.
36 Lea Grundig, “To Be Effective in this Period…,” in Intergrafik: Internationale Grafik- Ausstellung / Exposition Internationale d’Art Graphique, exh. cat. (Berlin: Altes Museum, 1967), n.p. 37 Letters dated between 28 July and 21 October 1964, between Lea Grundig and Sam Yoeun. With thanks to Gerd Gruber for kindly translating and sharing these documents. 181 While opponents of the Sangkum, such as Yoeun and the Association artists, would have been critical of Sihanouk’s policy of “Khmer Buddhist
Socialism,” they nevertheless shared his (and Nhek Dim’s) vision of rural life, agricultural labour, and the landscape as heroic symbols of national identity.38
We have seen how Yoeun and other communist-aligned artists enjoyed the patronage of the East German artist Lea Grundig, and of East German exhibitions in the later 1960s. At the beginning of the decade, however, it was the United States which was the single most important organizer of exhibitions and opportunities for modern “Cambodian artists.”
Examining US-organized cultural activities highlights the nature of the emerging infrastructure for modern “Cambodian arts” in the period, and also brings us back to our consideration of Nhek Dim, and specifically to the relationship of his works to shifts in Cambodia’s political climate during the years 1955 to 1975.
“Atomic cloudburst”: On modern US cultural diplomacy
While cultural diplomacy was popular for states on both sides of the political spectrum during the Cold War period, the US was more active and more
38 Records are not known to have survived which might provide us insight into the specific political views held by Sam Yoeun or the Association artists. This limits the possibility for further analysis of the relationship between their politics and their art, or of their divergences from Sihanouk and Nhek Dim. 182 heavily invested in Cambodia than any other power during the late 1950s and early 1960s. Moreover, the US National Archives contains a wealth of useful sources. For these reasons, in this section I will concentrate on US cultural diplomacy. It should be noted, however, that for researchers with access to
Russian language sources in the former Soviet Union, and/or to Chinese sources, there is likely more work that can be done on communist cultural diplomacy which would provide valuable context for this discussion of US activities.
More than any other Cambodian artist, Nhek Dim enjoyed the patronage of the US, but his work seems to have been remarkably unaffected by this experience. A study of Nhek Dim’s intersections with the US reveals ways in which cultural diplomacy shaped the modern in this context.
Art exhibitions organized by embassies as part of a Cold War program of cultural diplomacy take on an important position in the Cambodian context, as (unlike in many neighbouring nations) no records survive that indicate the existence of any large-scale exhibitions that preceded them which were focused solely or even primarily on “Cambodian arts.” Earlier prominent exhibitions included “arts” alongside diverse other displays. Muan describes in detail the colonial-era exhibition known as Tang Tok (Uំងតុ), which was initiated during the latter nineteenth century and by 1912 had
183 become dominated by “European images.” 39 Tang Tok included various
“antiquities and oddities,” and sections dedicated to the School of Cambodian
Arts offered objects for sale. It is unknown whether the Japanese organized exhibitions more focused on artworks during their occupation, but Muan records that during that period, the French constructed “History Museums” to project the image of Indochina as having been impoverished before the
French “rescue.”40 An “International Exposition” in 1955 included sports and
“national displays,” but no special focus on paintings.41 Embassy-organized exhibitions during the early 1960s would thus appear to have been among the first focused solely on visual arts in this setting.
It was not only the US which engaged in cultural diplomacy during the period, but they were most active in organizing exhibitions, and seemingly only US-organized exhibitions included Cambodian artists. Moreover, the US sent significantly more Cambodians for study than the communist bloc.42 Yet in 1961, reproductions of Soviet art were exhibited on the royal field,43 and in
1965 the Russian Embassy sponsored an exhibition of Russian artists at the
39 Muan, “Citing Angkor,” 186–201. 40 Muan, “Citing Angkor,” 215–218. 41 NAC Box B-183. French and Khmer. 42 In 1963, there were between 270 and 290 Cambodians studying in the US. In 1962, there were only 45 Cambodians studying in the communist bloc. (“Youth Programs in Cambodia: Background,” 19 June 1963. USA NARA. RG 59/250/63/10/5-7 Box 11. ‘Communication Fact Book Cambodia,’ 28 May 1962. RG 306/230/46/39/2 Box 6.) 43 Cambodian Commentary, no. 11, September 1961. 184 Lycée Sisowath.44 In the arena of newspapers and radio, various communist governments were more active, and the US was keenly aware of its inability to connect to broad Cambodian audiences through touring performances, and of the communists’ success in doing so. We return to this issue in Chapter 5.
By the end of the 1950s, the US was the single largest source of military and other “aid” to Cambodia, as the nation took on immense strategic significance due it its proximity to the escalating war in Vietnam, and
Sihanouk’s insistence on non-alignment. “Cambodia is probably the most critical area in Southeast Asia today,” the US Ambassador wrote in 1959.45
Nonetheless, a 1955 letter from an earlier US Ambassador explained “in this neutralist and Buddhist country we find it necessary to use feather brush techniques.”46
The challenge to proceed with “feather brush techniques” in the
“sensitive” neutralist environment was no deterrent; another USIS document from 1955 announced (with rather shocking insensitivity and violence, just a decade after the US bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki) that the “scope” of their “efforts … has taken on the form and shape of an atomic cloudburst.”47
44 Réalités Cambodgiennes, 5 November 1965. French. 45 Letter to Major General Williams, Washington DC, 29 October 1959. USA NARA. RG 59/250/63/10/5-7 Box 5. 46 To George Hellyer, USIA, Washington, 12 July 55. USA NARA. RG 59/250/51/26/3- 4 Box 1. 47 Memo by John Anspacher. USA NARA. RG 59/250/51/26/3-4 Box 1. 185 Nhek Dim’s place in this “cloudburst” has been outlined, including his prize-winning participation in the three USIS exhibitions in 1961, 1962 and
1963, and his study at Disney from 1963 to 1967. US records reveal that Nhek
Dim was hired in 1954, and among three “exhibits artists,” Nhek Dim alone was promoted in 1956, his salary increased and his “continuous training” and
“ability” praised.48
Muan noted in 2001 that USIS exhibitions were “still remembered by artists in Phnom Penh today as a crucial forum for new work,” a claim that drew on conversations from 1997-2001 with eight then-elderly artists who had also attended or participated. Several photographs from the first (1961) exhibition show crowds of Cambodians attending; significantly the many bicycles parked by the entrance suggests that these were a wide cross-section of the population (Figures 4.18 and 4.19).49 A report in a USIS magazine claimed that the calendars produced after the 1961 exhibition “found their place in the homes of … thousands of people in the kingdom,” as well as being “displayed in schools and government offices, in market places, and in stores throughout the country.” The report also boasted that some of the calendar’s owners “have even expressed their plans to preserve the calendar
48 USA NARA. RG 469/250/80/15/5.3 Box 14. 49 USA NARA. RG 306/230/46/39/2 Box 6. 186 pictures—an evidence of the people’s appreciation for the work of their own artists.”50
Figure 4. 18
Figure 4. 19
50 Author unnamed, “Contemporary Art in Cambodia,” Free World [Thailand edition?], 1961. With thanks to Chov Theanly. 187 The rules for the first exhibition were broad, stipulating only that
“entries must be scenes of Cambodia or must depict some aspect of
Cambodian life.”51 Perhaps this requirement encouraged production of one kind of painting to the exclusion of others—with the promise of a cash reward adding to the incentive, since the exhibitions were also competitions. But all available evidence suggests that Cambodian painters were already primarily painting “scenes of Cambodia or … some aspect of Cambodian life.”
According to Pann Tra, the Association of Cambodian Modern Painters had organized group exhibitions by Cambodian artists before the USIS exhibitions, in either 1958 or 1959. These exhibitions consisted of “mostly pictures of the life of people in the countryside, climbing palm trees, and fishing too.”52
This subject matter was encouraged by the Association, which Tra explains “wanted to show about the life of the Khmer people.” 53 Their motivations were likely different, given the communist affiliations of Sam
Yoeun, and likely other members. Yet the aesthetic and subject matter seen in actual artworks by Yoeun and fellow members of the Association was broadly similar to Nhek Dim’s, as we have seen.
Realist depictions of Cambodian rural life and landscapes by American artists were also exhibited at the USIS Library. A 1962 exhibition titled
51 USIS Exhibits Division, ‘Rules for 1960 art competition for Cambodian painters,’ 29 April 1960. USA NARA. RG 306/230/46/39/2 Box 6. 52 Pann Tra (Pen Tra), “Conversation,” 286–298. 53 Pann Tra (Pen Tra), “Conversation,” 289–290. 188 “Cambodian Scenes and Faces” by George Ann Gillespie included paintings almost indistinguishable from those done by Nhek Dim or his Cambodian contemporaries, and was attended by prominent cultural figures including the president of the Association of Khmer Writers, an organization we will revisit in Chapter 7 (Figure 4.20). In the bilingual catalogue (Figure 4.21),
Gillespie explains that she “find[s] the countryside very beautiful and peaceful” and has tried “to depict the traditional methods of work— agriculture, fishing, all,” praising “the people” for their “hospitality and gracious generosity.”54 Gillespie’s statement could almost be mistaken for a treatise by Sihanouk on “Khmer Buddhist Socialism.”
Figure 4. 20
54 USA NARA. RG 306/230/46/39/2 Box 5. 189
Figure 4. 21
Gillespie’s was not the only exhibition of paintings by female US artists, yet there is no evidence of any female Cambodians exhibiting at this time, despite many women being art school students in 1965, when the School of Cambodian Arts became the Royal University of Fine Arts, under Vann
Molyvann’s direction (Figure 4.22).55 A telegram from the USIS Phnom Penh
55 Depicted in photographs, Royal University of Fine Arts uncatalogued collection, Phnom Penh. It is entirely possible that many of the woman seen in photographs who studied painting at RUFA continued their art practice, but in different settings from the exhibitions where only men were present. Regrettably, despite my efforts I have found no records on this topic. Yvonne Low’s unpublished PhD thesis examines how in Singapore, Malaya and Indonesia women have been excluded from many art historical accounts due to what she terms the “professionalization” of artistic practice during the modern period, which saw men entering exhibitions as well as employment in art academies while women instead practiced and shared their work 190 from May 1963 states that the “American Women’s Club … presented a very successful exhibition of about 70 paintings of Cambodian scenes and people done by five American ladies, wives of officers of the American mission.” The report continues that Cambodian media “expressed surprise and gratification that there were so many painters among American ladies” and that
“approximately 9000 persons came to see the paintings.”56 A year earlier, internal advice to prominent US politician and former Secretary of State, Dean
Acheson, who was visiting Cambodia, suggested one of his wife’s paintings be presented as a gift to Sihanouk, “in view of the Prince’s marked artistic tastes,” to “carry a personal touch hard to devise any other way.”57
Figure 4. 22
in different, less “professionalized” settings. See Yvonne Low, “Becoming Professionals: Women artists in Singapore, Malaya and Indonesia,” PhD thesis, University of Sydney, 2015. 56 USA NARA. RG 306/250/64/03/06. Box 4. 57 US Embassy, Phnom Penh to Dean Acheson, “Briefing for your Visit to Cambodia, January 1962.” USA NARA. RG 59/250/63/10/5-7 Box 9. 191
While Muan skilfully outlines the history of the three annual USIS exhibitions, her account overlooks the reason for their sudden discontinuation: a riot in March 1964 which destroyed the entire USIS Library.
This was an episode of immense and lasting importance, not least because of the destruction of “some 400 paintings by local artists stored against annual exhibit.”58 We know from US correspondence relating to the previous annual exhibits that many paintings were kept for use as gifts or “office decoration.”59
Many more had been submitted in advance of the planned next instalment in the annual series of exhibitions. This loss of paintings, predating by more than a decade the destruction wrought by the Khmer Rouge—which is usually cited as the reason for the dearth of paintings from the Sangkum period— constitutes a catastrophe with clear implications for art historical research.
Also casualties of the destruction were 10,000 books and magazines—the
“building and neighborhood” were “ankle deep in loose paper”—as well as furniture, windows, vehicles, and other equipment. There were no injuries.60
The circumstances catalysing the attack are not recorded in the US
National Archives, and the event is not covered in standard histories in either
English or Khmer. It seems almost certain, however, that the riot was a
58 US Embassy, Phnom Penh to USIA, Washington, 12 March 1964. USA NARA. RG 306/230/46/39/2 Box 5. 59 USA NARA. RG 306/230/46/39/2 Box 6. 60 Telegram, 12 March 1964. USA NARA. RG 306/230/46/39/2 Box 5. 192 follow-up to the attack on the US Embassy in the same month.61 Anecdotally,
Cambodians who were students at the time still recall that they were occasionally directed to participate in political demonstrations; they understood the instruction to originate with Sihanouk. Historian Milton
Osborne concurs, stating that “you can be sure that [the riots] would not have occurred without either [Sihanouk’s] direct involvement or after one of his associates deciding a riot was appropriate and seeking his approval.”62 In an account of a similar attack on the British Embassy on the same date as the attack on the USIS Library, British novelist Nicholas Shakespeare—then a child—vividly recalls a crowd throwing missiles including “rocks and bricks
… and, most terrifying of all, deep-frozen legs of lamb;” these had been taken from the Ambassador’s freezer. After the crowd dispersed, a personal messenger from Sihanouk appeared.63
While, as Chandler notes, “few people noticed at the time that a crossroads had been reached,” the riots of 1964 were only the beginning of several years of growing political disquiet in Cambodia, culminating in the
1966 elections.64 Significantly, these years of turmoil were precisely the years that Nhek Dim was away studying. While slight in comparison with what
61 Chandler, Tragedy, 142–43. 62 Personal communications, 2015. 63 Nicholas Shakespeare, “Beyond the Killing Fields,” Intelligent Life, January/February 2013. http://intelligentlifemagazine.com/content/places/nicholas- shakespeare/beyond-killing-fields?page=full [Accessed October 2015] Thanks to David Chandler, for bringing my attention to this. Personal communications, 2015. 64 Chandler, Tragedy, 158. 193 was to come after 1970, the upheaval of the mid-1960s was nevertheless a striking contrast with the illusory calm of the preceding years. An etching by
Sam Yoeun conveys something of the mood of the time, depicting the weary but hopeful faces of protesters, holding aloft a placard that reads, “US Go
Home” (Figure 4.23).
Figure 4. 23
Mapping the timing of Nhek Dim’s US study onto the political landscape of Cambodia is revealing. Chandler describes the years 1963 to
1966 as “the first act of the nightmare that terrorized Cambodia after 1970,” a period in which the popularity of Sihanouk and his Sangkum Reastr Niyum regime began to be seriously challenged.65 Nhek Dim returned to a culturally and politically quite different Cambodia than the one he had left.
65 Chandler, Tragedy, 122–58. 194 The artist was sent for study in the US as part of a large-scale program of cultural diplomacy. It had been in effect for over a decade, but was significantly expanded—doubling in size—around the time of souring official relations at the end of 1963 (when Sihanouk severed US economic aid) and
1964. 66 Nhek Dim returned in 1967 to a Cambodia that had no formal diplomatic relationship with the US, and yet in which a new class of pro-US elites had emerged, and been substantially empowered in the 1966 elections.67
This contradictory circumstance, combined with his elevated reputation and immediate enmeshment in Sihanouk’s milieu (and perhaps also with an understandable desire to reacquaint himself with his nation) help to explain the artist’s immediate resumption of painting recognizably Cambodian landscapes.
Few records survive of Nhek Dim’s experience of study in the US, but an impression can be constructed from fragmentary accounts, and from the experiences of his peers who also studied in or were invited to the US. A photograph, circulated online, shows the artist at work with Walt Disney
(Figure 4.24); but Pann Tra and others recall that upon his return Nhek Dim claimed to have met Disney only twice during his four years.68 According to
66 In May 1962, there were 141 Cambodians studying in the US. (“Communication Fact Book Cambodia.” USA NARA. RG 306/230/46/39/2 Box 6.) By June 1963, there were between 270 and 290. (“Youth Programs in Cambodia: Background.” RG 59/250/63/10/5-7 Box 11.) 67 Chandler, Tragedy, 122–24, 153–56. 68 Muan, unpublished notes, NMC, Box 3. 195 Chhang Song, his training took place in Oakland, California. That he studied on the west coast and not in the south was fortunate, since in 1963, internal
US documents noted “the serious situation relating to certain Cambodian students … in Southern universities and colleges” as racist riots in southern
69 states targeted African Americans as well as Asians and other non-whites.
Figure 4. 24
Despite (or perhaps because of) such challenges, the US offered
Cambodian students and visitors special hospitality. Architect Lu Ban Hap, who was invited to the US on several occasions in the 1960s, recalls visiting
Frank Sinatra’s house and swimming pool. 70 Internal US documents repeatedly refer to preparing “red-carpet treatment” and “full Hollywood treatment” for invited Cambodian guests. That Nhek Dim returned to
69 Letter from Henry Koren, Director Southeast Asian Affairs, to Philip Sprouse, US Ambassador, Phnom Penh, 1 April 1963. USA NARA. RG 59/250/63/10/5-7 Box 10. 70 Interview, Paris, June 2015. 196 Cambodia importing the only Ford Mustang car in the country is surely suggestive of his experience abroad.71
Conclusion: Seeing the modern and the political
While the paintings Nhek Dim made after his return from the US may appear perhaps surprisingly unchanged by his time spent studying, the artist’s experiences in the US would surely have transformed his understanding of his time and his world, and the possibilities for art. As we have seen in our comparison of his deceptively different paintings of remarkably similar harvest scenes from 1961 and 1972, an attention to the interplay between paintings and contextual discourses reveals aspects to the works which are distinctly modern and political, yet which may not otherwise be discernible as such. Similarly, we have seen that artworks by Sam Yoeun and other communist-affiliated artists from the Association of Cambodian Modern
Painters also intersected with nationalist and agrarian socialist discourses of the period. This can be discerned not only in images of agricultural labour, but also in depictions of the landscape which emphasize its fertile abundance, and even in portraits of performing artists.
In the next chapter, we turn our attention to performing arts. In considering how modernity is enacted in dances, films, sports and spectacle
71 Muan, “Citing Angkor,” 306–7. 197 during the years 1955 to 1975, our discussion will centre on the interweaving of politics and performance. As in the preceding chapter, an attention to trans-media intersections between various art forms, and also to contextual discourses in which artworks can be understood to be participating, will prove especially illuminating.
198 Chapter Five
Performing the Modern: Dance, Cinema, Sports and Spectacle
This chapter considers how the modern was enacted in performance in
Cambodia. It chiefly consists of formal and discursive analyses of various kinds of performances made during Sihanouk’s Sangkum Reastr Niyum regime (1955-70). As in the previous chapter, these performances are considered also in light of the various mediated contexts in which they were represented and encountered. The inherently plural temporalities at work in these processes of representation and mediation make the performances contemporary in important ways, even while they are also exemplary of the modern.
In arguing for a view of various performances as enactments of modernity, the central contention here, simply stated, is for an understanding
199 of performance as being tightly intertwined with power, and in particular with politics. I consider this intertwining to be both hermeneutic and ontological; this will become clearer with a definition of performance, and then with each detailed analysis offered. Essentially, I will propose that modern performances of all kinds engage in a process of aestheticizing various aspects of life, often as spectacle; in rendering formerly ordinary activities as aesthetically extraordinary, modern performance sees them operate in the service of ideology.
It is important to note that there are important pre-modern precursors for this modern intertwining of art and ideology. As Ashley Thompson succinctly proposes, “in Cambodia, art, religion and politics have always gone hand in hand.”1 Her analysis of the use of Angkorian and Middle Period
“Cambodian arts” for political ends demonstrates that much of the instrumentalization of performance by Sihanouk, which this chapter will discuss, was certainly not an entirely new phenomenon.
Within my general insistence here on modern performance’s political and aestheticizing nature are several other overlapping lines of inquiry. These include: the gendered nature of performance and the centrality of women’s performing bodies; the special ability of performance to engage mass publics that transcend class distinctions and urban/rural divides; and the
1 Ashley Thompson, “Angkor Revisited: The State of Statuary,” in What’s the Use of Art? Asian Visual and Material Culture in Context, ed. Jan Mrázek and Morgan Pitelka (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2008), 181. 200 methodological challenges that arise from the study of performance, or rather of its traces and remains, in memory and in archival fragments.
The chapter is organized into a series of analyses of specific performances, rather than structured more thematically at the expense of detail in scrutiny; there is, however, a cumulative logic to this sweep of case studies. Beginning with a discussion of the role of dance in rhetorical nation building, we move to considering the vital body in sport, then the destroyed body in execution and film, and we conclude with a discussion of cinema that combines elements of each of these. Viewed in this way, performing the modern centres on the body politic, and the specific performances discussed are powerful exemplars of a logic that pervades both the political imaginary and the manipulation of aesthetic techniques.
Performance is a notoriously difficult term to precisely define, and here is used to refer variously to dance (រ"ំ robam) and theatre (េ%&ន lkhon), cinema, sports, music, and other activities which are generally regarded and discussed as performance ((រសំែដង kar somdeng), in English and Khmer. The chapter opens with a discussion of the 1959 Ballet of the Khmero-American
Friendship, performed by Sihanouk’s Royal Ballet to commemorate the opening of a highway paid for by US “aid.” It then moves through a brief discussion of sports to a consideration of a 1964 film of the execution of a
Khmer Serei rebel. The chapter concludes with some observations on Apsara,
201 a feature-length fiction film directed by Sihanouk in 1966. As a consequence of the sources available, only performances made by or with the support of the ruling Sangkum government are discussed here.
The presence of human bodies links these seemingly disparate media, making them meaningfully legible as performance; moreover, performances of all kinds have an inherently plural relationship to time, and thus even while exemplifying the modern are also contemporary in important ways. My thinking here is positioned in dialogue with the scholarly field of Performance
Studies. Following André Lepecki, I consider the disciplining of the human bodies in performance as essential to its inherent politics. Lepecki sees the discipline in modern performance—for him epitomized in the use of a fixed choreography—as being a specifically modern formation. “It is not by chance that the invention of this new art of codifying and displaying disciplined movement is historically coincidental with the unfolding and consolidation of the project of modernity,” Lepecki writes. Referring specifically to dance in the European tradition, but in terms which I propose to expand and adapt to the Cambodian context, Lepecki writes that dance operates “in tandem with the consolidation of that major project of the West known as modernity.
Dance and modernity intertwine in a kinetic model of being-in-the-world.”
The crucial consequence of this is that “performance of choreography is first of all a performance centered on the display of a disciplined body performing
202 the spectacle of its own capacity to be set into motion.”2 As we will see in the diverse case studies which follow, this “display of a disciplined body” took many forms in post-independence Cambodia. These will be our focus, although it should also be noted that dance and ritual had already been, in
Lepecki’s terms, codified, displayed and disciplined in “pre-modern”
Cambodia, as evidenced in Angkorian sculptures and bas reliefs.
In choosing to focus on ways in which performance can be understood to function as an enactment of modernity, I have had to set aside questions around not only the pre-modern functions of Cambodian modes of performance, but also their origins and their transnational exchanges. In the nationalist context of post-1979 Cambodia, these have been vexed questions.
They arose with renewed ferocity during June 2016, in the form of a
Cambodian outcry against moves in Thailand to win United Nations
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) recognition of the Thai masked performance genre known as khon, which Cambodians argue is derived from the Cambodian masked performance genre known as lkhon
3 khol េ%&នេ-ល. But a fraught relationship between the Cambodian and Thai
2 André Lepecki, Exhausting Dance: Performance and the Politics of Movement (New York and London: Routledge, 2006), 7. 3 In a comparatively even-handed intervention in the debate, Cambodian-American choreographer and dancer Prumsodun Ok argues: “The reality then is that the art form of khon is only so Thai as it is Khmer in origin. And the responsibility of Thai people, as those laying claims of ownership over the tradition, is to acknowledge and respect the hybridity and complexity of their history and identity.” “មិតិេលើ 203 court dance traditions is much older than this, and is evoked to great comic effect in the novel Saramani: Danseuse Khmèr, published in French in 1919, and written by Russian-born French colonial official, Roland Meyer; a Khmer translation was published in 1970. 4 In the novel, Cambodian dancers constantly remind their King (Sisowath, r, 1904-1927) to speak Khmer instead of Thai. Sasagawa Hideo has argued that Thai influence on Cambodian dance has been understated in both colonial and postcolonial discourse. 5 Toni
Shapiro describes the “extremely diplomatic” way in which a senior
Cambodian dancer responded to a Thai journalist’s question regarding the
“complicated history” of the two nations’ relations.6 Thai films were regularly screened in Cambodia during the Sangkum period, often with live Khmer voiceover narration, a technique a Cambodian had learned in Thailand during the early 1950s. 7 Soviet-produced Khmer language magazines
េ-ល/Thoughts on Khaol,” unpublished manuscript, circulated online, June 2016. In Khmer and English. 4 Roland Meyer, 34565នី Saramani, trans. Chan Bophal (ចន9 បូផល) (Phnom Penh: Angkor Book Shop, 2005 [1970]). 5 Sasagawa Hideo, “Post/Colonial Discourses on the Cambodian Court Dance,” Southeast Asian Studies 42, no. 4 (2005): 418-441. 6 Toni Shapiro, “Dance and the Spirit of Cambodia,” PhD Dissertation, Cornell University, Ithaca, 1994, 105. 7 Ingrid Muan and Ly Daravuth, “A Survey of Film in Cambodia,” in Film in South East Asia. Views from the Region. Essays on Film in Ten South East Asia-Pacific Countries, ed. David Hanan (Hanoi: South East Asia-Pacific Audio Visual Archive Association, 2001), 98-99. 204 regularly included features on Russian dancers.8 All these and other issues of cross-border exchange in the development of Cambodian modern performance have been set aside from this chapter, in order to focus on the rhetorical functions of selected case studies.
When studying performances that took place several decades ago, it is impossible to consider the “live” act of performance. Instead, it is necessary to draw on the (always partial and subjective) memories of performers and audiences, as well as on visual and textual archival sources. Given the paucity of archival materials—some of which never existed (as in the case of performances that were not documented in photography or film, for example), and some of which have been lost, dispersed, or destroyed—the original “live” moment of each performance can only be glimpsed and imagined to significantly varying degrees, and in fundamentally differing ways. Following Philip Auslander, I regard “live” and “mediatized” (or mediated, or otherwise documented) actions as equally legible as performance, and equally rewarding to study.9 In what follows, the nature of the textual and contextual detail offered in discussions of various performances will differ according to the sources available.
8 See 1963 issues of ជេ>មិត?@ពរBងCបDជនែខFរ និង សូេវៀត Cពិត?ិប័Cតពត៌6ន [News Bulletin Celebrating Friendship Between the Cambodian and Soviet Populations] in the National Library of Cambodia. 9 Auslander questions “whether there really are clear-cut ontological distinctions between live forms and mediatized ones.” Philip Auslander, Liveness. Performance in a Mediatized Culture (London: Routledge, 1999), 7. 205 Performing diplomacy: the Ballet of the Khmero-American Friendship, 195910
A 1959 dance performed by Sihanouk’s Royal Ballet for a visiting US politician, titled (in English) the Ballet of the Khmero-American Friendship,11 is particularly revealing of the relationship between performance and politics.
The work embodies several key features of performance in this context. These include: the ability of performance to intervene directly and concretely into specific topical affairs; the manner in which existing, “pre-modern” and boran
(បុ4ណ traditional, classical, ancient) choreographic and other forms were remade to perform distinctly modern functions; the failures of the US in employing performance as cultural diplomacy (which, we will see, was in contrast to the deft use of performance by various communist nations); and the ways in which women’s bodies were invested with complexly layered, often contradictory responsibilities as representatives of Sihanouk’s royal- political power, and as rhetorical defenders and ambassadors for the new nation. In all this, we can understand the performance to be the aestheticization of diplomacy and political expression.
10 Earlier versions of some parts of this section have been published in Roger Nelson, “Pathways in Performance (in and around Cambodia)?” Stedelijk Studies 3 (2015).
In the middle of the twentieth century, after gaining independence from colonial rule by various European powers, many Southeast Asian regimes used dance and other kinds of performance as part of a larger strategy of nation-building. Charismatic new leaders such as Sihanouk and
Sukarno would routinely bring dancers and other performers with them on their travels. Large transnational gatherings in the region, starting with the pivotal Asian-African Conference in Bandung, Indonesia in 1955, provided important opportunities for many newly independent nations to showcase their cultures to one another. For various reasons including portability, performance was the preeminent medium for such displays. In a study that casts the entire Bandung Conference as “diplomatic theatre,” Naoko Shimazu argues that the city was transformed into a “stage” for the event, and that politicians became “actors” whose “performances” cohered new national as well as regional and political identities. 12 This analysis recalls Clifford
12 Naoko Shimazu, “Diplomacy As Theatre: Staging the Bandung Conference of 1955,” Modern Asian Studies 48, 1 (2014): 225–252. doi:10.1017/S0026749X13000371 207 Geertz’s characterization of Bali as a “theatre state,” based in part on his sense of Balinese having an innate dancing ability.13
In mid-century Cambodia, the connection between political rule and performed diplomacy was especially intimate, with deep roots in the colonial era, as well as quite particular modern-day circumstances.14 Sihanouk was always keenly interested and personally active in the performing arts, releasing several pop music albums of his own compositions, and later directing (and starring in) numerous films. 15 Sihanouk’s mother, Sisowath
Kossamak (1904-1975), assumed control of the royal dancers when Sihanouk ascended the throne in 1941, initiating numerous choreographic as well as diplomatic innovations. Paul Cravath, an historian of Cambodian dance, neatly encapsulates the triangulation of royal, political and performative power when he writes that “Kossamak knew that the dancers were
13 Clifford Geertz, Negara: The Theatre State in 19th Century Bali (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980). Nora Taylor cites Geertz in a discussion of what she terms “live art” in contemporary (twenty first century) Cambodia. She argues that Geertz’s account “when applied to the present” may “run the risk of classifying Southeast Asian artists as ‘natural born dancers’ and thus permanently locking them in the category of the ‘native’ or the ‘traditional.’” Nora Taylor, “Performing Bodies: A History of Live Art Practices in Cambodia, in Phnom Penh: Rescue Archaeology. Contemporary Art and Urban Change in Cambodia, ed. Erin Gleeson, Barbara Barsch and Ev Fischer (Berlin: ifa, 2013), 123. 14 For discussion of Cambodian dancers performing in Colonial Expositions in France during the late 1800s and early 1900s, see Panivong Norindr, Phantasmatic Indochina: French Colonial Ideology in Architecture, Film, and Literature (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1996), 28. See also Penny Edwards, Cambodge: The Cultivation of a Nation, 1860-1945 (Chiang Mai: University of Hawai’i Press, 2007), 38-39. 15 See Norodom Sihanouk Archival Collection, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. See also Linda Saphan, “Norodom Sihanouk and the political agenda of Cambodian music, 1955–1970,” The Newsletter 64 (Summer 2013), 4-5. 208 Cambodia’s best possible ambassadors. In allowing them to leave the palace and the kingdom, she understood that they lent authority to Sihanouk’s presence.”16 Indeed, as Cravath further notes, for decades “the visible political activity of the Cambodian king would be identified with the art of his personal dancers.”17 This rhetorical union of the king and his dancers relied on repetition and reiteration: over and again the dancers would “leave the palace and the kingdom” in order to continually maintain the “authority” of
Sihanouk’s “presence.” Prior to Sihanouk’s reign, royal dancers almost never left the palace, with the sole exception of their accompanying King Sisowath’s tour of France in 1907, and appearances at colonial expositions.
While pioneering scholars of Cambodian dance, Paul Cravath and Toni
Shapiro,18 have pointed to the broad outlines of modern dance’s relationship to politics, the very specific nature of its direct interventions has not been charted. This topical timeliness may be considered an instance of contemporaneity within this distinctly modern artistic form. My discussion builds on the foundational scholarship of Cravath, Shapiro and others, while extending our analysis into finer details of modern Cambodian political life.
As well as travelling incessantly with dancers as his frequent companions and politico-cultural “ambassadors,” Sihanouk also arranged for
16 Paul Cravath, Earth in Flower: The Divine Mystery of the Cambodian Dance Drama (Holmes Beach, Florida: DatASIA, 2007), 165. 17 Cravath, Earth in Flower, 154. 18 Shapiro, “Dance and the Spirit.” 209 foreign dignitaries visiting Cambodia to be entertained by performances by the Royal Ballet, often with specially composed librettos and alterations to the choreography.
A commemorative program in Khmer and English was produced to accompany the 1959 Ballet of the Khmero-American Friendship, and includes an image of the Royal Corps of Ballet during a performance (Figure 5.1).19 This shows the dancers with the United States national flag raised in one hand and the Cambodian flag in the other. Otherwise, the troupe’s attire is strictly boran
(traditional, classical, ancient): the young and shapely women wear the intricately woven costumes of gold and silk worn by Cambodian royal dancers for over a century, with many elements dating back hundreds of years more, perhaps even to Angkorian times. 20 Indeed, scholar and choreographer Chheng Phon, who was active during the Sangkum period and who we will meet again in Chapter 8, has argued that the boran gestures
19 National Archives of Cambodia (NAC), Box B-311. Unless otherwise noted, all subsequent references to this event are draw from this document. All translation from Khmer to English is by the author. Hereinafter, all references to these archives will be abbreviated as NAC. 20 For an introduction to បុ4ណ boran (traditional, classical, ancient) costumes in Khmer, see Neak Srei Troeung Ngea, née Laay Hunki (អTកCសី Cតឹង U (Vមេដើម Wយ ហ៊ុនគី)), អរ\យធម៍ែខFរ Areyathorm Khmer [The Khmer Civilization] (Phnom Penh: Editions Angkor, 2012 [1974]), 94-100. In English, see Toni Samantha Phim and Ashley Thompson, Dance in Cambodia (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1999). 210 of dance and theatre, and the Royal Ballet, are defining of what he calls “the popular boran gestures of art.”21
Figure 5. 1
The 1959 dance itself was also boran, yet its meaning reshaped to be unmistakably modern, too. The precise choreography of the Ballet of the
Khmero-American Friendship has not been recorded; other than the commemorative program, no other documentation is known to have survived. This prevents further analysis of what might have been new about this dance, and what might have been consistent with Angkorian dance and its deployment for political purposes. (To be sure, the presence of flags was new, but national flags themselves were of course an exogenous form introduced during the colonial period.) Yet we know from accounts of many
21 Chheng Phon (េឆង ផុន), ត`ន?ី រ"ំ និង េ%&នែខFរ Tontrei Robam Ning Lkhon Khmer [Khmer Music, Dance and Theatre] (Phnom Penh: Buddhist Institute Book Shop, 2006), n.p. 211 other dances by the Royal Ballet at this time that the piece would certainly have employed the “classical” Khmer choreographic vocabulary, in which every gesture (កabច់ kbach) is codified and embodies cultural ideals of beauty as well as poetic details of narrative.22 These slow and repeated gestures, many of them fabled to have been in use for centuries, while boran were also clearly legible as modern, too. The dance’s tempo had been quickened and its duration abbreviated, among the many innovations introduced under
Kossamak’s control.
This was one of numerous occasions in which the royal dancers performed with flags in their hands. 23 Only a year after the Ballet of the
Khmero-American Friendship was performed, the same troupe presented the
Ballet of Khmer-Chinese Friendship (1960), again with the use of flags. Another kind of dance, known as the “Fan Dance,” was often performed during
Sihanouk’s rule using fans decorated with flags,24 or else under the flags of two nations (Figure 5.2).
22 Cravath, Earth in Flower, 153-186. See also Menh Kossany (មិញ កុសនី), កabច់"តVង Kbach Bat Neang [Female Dance Gestures], (Phnom Penh: Khmer Arts Media, 2011). 23 Cravath, Earth in Flower, 164. Cravath notes that the first known occurrence of dancers performing while holding national flags was during the Japanese occupation of Cambodia, in 1945. Cravath further proposes that in the 1945 performance can be traced the origins of the “Friendship Dance,” an especially elastic form that was performed for numerous politicians and delegates from a variety of nations throughout the coming decades, both in Cambodia and “on the road.” 24 Shapiro, “Dance and the Spirit,” 423. 212
Figure 5. 2
That the gesture of raising national flags was repeated numerous times foregrounds Cambodia’s political and performative flexibility in the midst of the Cold War. 25 Despite the nation’s small size, Sihanouk was aware of
Cambodia’s strategic importance to larger powers competing for influence in the region. He was keen to maximize its prominence in what came to be known, in Khmer as in English and French, as the “international stage” (eក
អន?រDតិ chhak antarachiet). During a 1958 visit to the US, Sihanouk’s dance troupe performed in front of the flags of all member nations of the United
Nations in New York; an image of the event, in which the number and scale
25 For an introductory overview of the Cold War context in Southeast Asia, see Malcolm H. Murfett, “Introduction,” in Cold War Southeast Asia, ed. Malcolm H. Murfett (Singapore: Marshall Cavendish, 2012), 1-10. See also Tony Day, “Cultures at War in Cold War Southeast Asia: An Introduction,” in Cultures at War: The Cold War and Cultural Expression in Southeast Asia, ed. Tony Day and Maya H.T. Liem (Ithaca, New York: Cornell Southeast Asia Program, 2010), 1-20. 213 of the flags is compositionally emphasized, is reproduced in a commemorative publication in Khmer that followed the visit (Figure 5.3).26
The linking of performance to politics was by no means a uniquely
Cambodian phenomenon, although it took on specific characteristics in this context. Sihanouk was especially fond of theatrical metaphors in his discussion of transnational power plays, remarking at a press conference in
1964 that since China “is the most important and the largest country in Asia” therefore “China is Asia’s [Maria] Callas,” referring to the celebrated opera singer, and “when Callas comes onstage everyone else looks like a walk-on.”27
Figure 5. 3
26 “សេម?ច Cពះឧបយុវ4ជ នេ4ត?ម សីហនុ េhសហរដNiេមរ\ក” [Samdech Sihanouk in the United States of America], commemorative publication, 1958. NAC Box 338. 27 Quoted in Jean Lacouture, The Demigods: Charismatic Leadership in the Third World (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1970), 212-213. 214 The Royal Ballet performed for visiting foreign dignitaries with great frequency during the late 1950s and early 1960s: just one month before the
Ballet of the Khmero-American Friendship, the troupe performed for Indonesia’s
President Sukarno, and a month before that, for the Japanese Minister for
Foreign Affairs.28 While special librettos at these performances do not appear to have been standard, they were not uncommon; for example, when the troupe performed for Sri Savang Vatthana, King of Laos, on 18 March 1963, he was honoured with a poem in French written especially for him by Princess
Norodom Viriyane, and reprinted in Lao and Khmer.
Reviewing the schedule of dances in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the recurrence of certain key features within them is instructive. Just as the repetition of actions in rituals performatively reaffirms their spiritual power, so too the reiteration of these diplomatic or “ambassadorial” performances, and of charged gestures within them—including the use of special librettos and flags—serves to strengthen the symbolic bond among Sihanouk’s regime, his dancers, and the newly independent nation of Cambodia. As we have seen, such dances took place both in Phnom Penh’s Royal Palace and in various international settings during Sihanouk’s travels.
28 The NAC’s collection of official programs from Royal Ballet performances date mostly from the years 1956-1964, although it is not possible to know how complete this archive is. These documents are held in NAC Box B-311, and unless otherwise noted, all subsequent references to Royal Ballet performances for foreign dignitaries draw on this archive, with translation by the author. 215 The frequency and flexibility of such performances notwithstanding, the Ballet of the Khmero-American Friendship was singular in its intervention into political affairs of the day. The occasion for the creation of this dance and libretto—and for the US politician’s visit—was the opening of the much-feted
Khmer American Friendship Highway, a major arterial road from Phnom
Penh to the new seaport of Sihanoukville.29 The construction of this large, strategically valuable road was freighted with challenges and controversies.
At its completion, in the same month as the performance of the Ballet of the
Khmero-American Friendship, the US produced a special issue of its monthly magazine Lōk Serei [េ%កេសរj Free World](Figure 5.4).
Figure 5. 4
29 The creation of a seaport at Sihanoukville, also known as Kampong Som, was a strategic initiative of Sihanouk’s regime, intended to reduce reliance on the former thoroughfare in Vietnam. Vann Molyvann, who oversaw the project, explains: “Under the [French] Protectorate, all goods entering and leaving Cambodge were channeled through the port in Saigon (present-day Ho Chi Minh City). With independence in 1953, Cambodia needed an ocean port within its own national boundaries.” Vann Molyvann, Modern Khmer Cities (Phnom Penh: Reyum Publishing, 2003), 192. 216 Whereas for the preceding eight years the magazine had consistently offered a mix of cultural, educational, political and other topics, the July 1959 issue was focused solely on the Khmer American Friendship Highway. The first issue of Lōk Serei, published in October 1951, had a circulation of 15,000 copies; according to internal documents of the US Embassy and State
Department, by the time of the Khmer American Friendship Highway
“special issue” in July 1959, the circulation had reached 100,000. 30 Yet this would prove—unexpectedly—to also be the final issue of Lōk Serei that the US was permitted to publish: Sihanouk forbade any further issues, reportedly taking offence at a recent edition’s placement of his image under a heading announcing the “leaders of the Free World,” since Sihanouk’s policy of
“neutralism” and non-alignment for Cambodia was intended to be seen as distinct and separate from both the “Free World” and the Soviet bloc.31 The
US’s immensely popular travelling cinema program was also discontinued at this time,32 under pressure from Sihanouk, further demonstrating the extent of the impact on US-sponsored cultural activities caused by the diplomatic upset
30 A complete set of Lōk Serei [េ%កេសរj Free World] is held in United States of America National Archives and Records Administration (USA NARA), College Park, Maryland. RG 306/230/46/43/6 Box 231. 31 េ%កេសរj Lōk Serei [Free World], volume 7, number 12 (1958). 32 Confidential Despatch from Arthur R. Lee, Acting Country Public Affairs Officer, USIS [United States Information Service], Phnom Penh to USIA [United States Information Agency],Washington, 26 October 1959, headed “Country Plan for Cambodia FY 1960”. USA NARA. RG 306/490/42/13/7 Box 2. 217 that arose in the context of heightened tension during the Highway’s construction.
Just as Sihanouk’s neutralism sought to politically distinguish
Cambodia from the “Free World” and the Sino- Soviet bloc, so too the royal performers can be understood as asserting a distinctly Cambodian cultural and artistic identity, in a context of a global competition for pre-eminence in the performing arts. Modernist US dancers and choreographers were promoted by their government with a zeal that matches the (more clandestine) promotion of US visual artists, including most famously the
Abstract Expressionists. 33 Similar dynamics were at play in the generous governmental support offered to Russia’s ballet dancers and companies. The rise to international prominence of Southeast Asian dance traditions, including those of the new nations of Indonesia, Thailand and Cambodia, can be productively considered within this context of “Cold War” cultural competition, taking place quite literally on the “international stage.”
Through the act of dancing while holding the US and Cambodian flags, the royal dancers were symbolically announcing that Cambodia’s friendship with the US would always be balanced by Cambodia’s own national interests.
Moreover, the troupe’s demonstrated ability to shift from celebrating
“friendship” with the US to “friendship” with China and other (rival) powers
33 See Serge Guilbaut, How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art: Abstract Expressionism, Freedom, and the Cold War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983). 218 sent a clear message underscoring Cambodia’s commitment to its official
“neutralist” stance in the Cold War. 34 Indeed, the fact that this genre of performances came to be known as “the friendship dance” may perhaps be seen as suggesting that the very notion of (political and diplomatic) friendship was being rhetorically claimed as the property and domain of
Sihanouk’s Cambodia and, by extension, Kossamak’s Royal Corps of Ballet.
The use of art, and specifically performance, to articulate—at once assertively and with nuance—Cambodia’s political priorities is revealing not only of Sihanouk’s personal interest in culture, but also perhaps of a certain pragmatism: a sense that on the literal stage, the small, economically weak nation could perform with an autonomy and power that were beyond its reach financially and militarily on the “international stage.” Having remarked that “China is Asia’s Callas” in 1964, Sihanouk continued that Cambodia “is ready and waiting to become a spectator or a walk-on, provided the play is good and the ending brings peace.”35
34 For an introduction to Cambodia’s “neutralist” policy in Khmer, see Diep Sophal (េដៀប សុផល), របបសងQម4`ស?និយម (១៩៥៥-១៩៧០) មpជ័យជំនះនិងវ\បត?ិ Robab Sangkum Reastr Niyom (1955-1970). Mohaa Chey Chumneah Ning Vibatt [Sangkum Reastr Niyum Regime: Great Victory and Crisis], 2nd ed. (Phnom Penh: Jauk Jey, 2009), especially Chapters 2 and 3. In English, see Ek Madra/Ek Tha, The Factors Contributing to Cambodia’s Civil War, 1950s-1980s. Lessons Then and Now (Phnom Penh: Ek Tha & Madra Associates, 2015) and David Chandler, The Tragedy of Cambodian History: Politics, War, and Revolution since 1945 (Chiang Mai: Silkworm, 1999 [1991]), esp. Chapters 3, 4, and 5. See also Bruce Lockhart, “The Fate of Neutralism in Cambodia and Laos,” in Cold War Southeast Asia, ed. Malcolm H. Murfett (Singapore: Marshall Cavendish, 2012), 195-223. 35 Quoted in Lacouture, Demigods, 212-213. 219 At the time of the performance of the Ballet of the Khmero-American
Friendship, in 1959 the US was providing the majority of Cambodia’s military budget. A confidential document from the period explicitly links US strategic
“aid” with the post-independence project of nation-building, asserting that
“though it has accepted economic aid from communist sources, Cambodia is continuing to rely upon the U.S. for major support during these critical formative years of its national existence.”36 If external powers quite explicitly saw their “aid” as playing a “formative” role in the new nation’s identity, then perhaps we can see performance in Cambodia as one arena in which
Sihanouk was able to effectively compete, where he could draw on historical strength rather than being hamstrung by modern-day economic and strategic challenges.
As we saw in Chapter 4, the US in 1959 considered that “Cambodia is probably the most critical area in Southeast Asia today.” 37 Yet in many internal documents, the US displayed its disdain for Sihanouk, frequently referring to him as “the little prince,” “vain,” “pathetic,” and worse.
Cambodian ambivalence toward US “aid”—and perhaps duplicity— can be discerned in a comparison of the Khmer and English versions of the
36 “Far East. Cambodia: Defense Support,” 1959. USA NARA. RG 59/250/51/26/3-4 Box 1. Emphasis added. 37 Letter from US Ambassador Trimble to Major General John C. Williams, Assistant Chief of Staff, Intelligence, Dept of the Army, Washington DC, 29 October 1959. USA NARA. RG 59/250/63/10/5-7 Box 5. 220 libretto composed for the Ballet of the Khmero-American Friendship. 38 In
Appendix 1, I have reproduced both the original English and Khmer texts, as well as my own translation of the Khmer. The versions differ markedly, and significantly the grandiloquent title is printed only in English, not in Khmer.39
The English libretto speaks of:
“Americans and Khmers United by destiny in a heartfelt friendship.”
By contrast, the Khmer version makes no mention of “destiny” (despite it being a commonly expressed and popular notion in Cambodia) but instead implies that the “friendship” with the US should be understood as recent and based in strategic (rather than “heartfelt”) alliance:
“Khmers and Americans That have become friends Joined their idea To build happiness.”40
38 The French term “ambivalence” has been explained in Khmer by a respected scholar of history and philosophy as a “situation of conflict in the mind (chet) between two ideas or desires or sentiments.” Vandy Kaonn (B5នឌី (អុន), កarsន ចិត? 3`ស? Kbuen Chettasastra [Principles of Psychology] (Phnom Penh: Mittapheap, 1973 [1970]), 16. In Khmer. The emphasis on conflict is at odds with most English and French definitions of “ambivalence,” which tend instead toward a notion of mixed “ideas or desires or sentiments.” 39 My analysis of differences in the English and Khmer versions of the libretto is informed in part by Thompson’s discussion of Khmer and Sanskrit inscriptions at Sdak Kok Thom. Thompson employs Sheldon Pollock’s notion of “hyperglossia” to discuss “bilingual texts where a clear ‘division of labor’ is established between the two languages.” Ashley Thompson, Engendering the Buddhist State: Territory, Sovereignty and Sexual Difference in the Inventions of Angkor (London and New York: Routledge, 2016), 32. 40 Emphasis added. 221 Moreover, the English version suggests that Cambodia’s “progress”—as epitomized in the Highway—is owed entirely to US assistance: “Friends, how priceless was your help.” By contrast, the Khmer text is careful to state that
“Friends […] / Helped Khmers to quickly progress”: implying that this
“progress” (and this Highway) was a collaborative process, the work of both
Cambodians and the US: the Americans “helped” but did not do it all. Such nuances in the way that the newly independent nation saw itself and its relationship to global superpowers are revealed in the libretto itself, the lyrics of which would likely have been sung repeatedly during the performance of the dance.
Within two years of the Khmer American Friendship Highway’s completion (and the performance of the Ballet of the Khmero-American
Friendship), the United States was in full-scale damage control as the road itself had fallen into considerable disrepair, potholed due to its rushed construction. A telegram from the US Embassy in Phnom Penh to the
Secretary of State, dated May 1961, tersely states that the “deplorable condition” of the Highway is a “matter [of] grave concern to me because of its potential for dealing [a] severe blow to U.S. prestige and good faith.” The telegram goes on to recall that the “Highway [had been] inaugurated with great fanfare July 1959 with Secretary Interior Seaton in attendance, represents most conspicuous impact project in Cambodia funded under U.S.
222 Aid program.” 41 The mention of “great fanfare” clearly indicates that performances such as the Ballet had an impact that was registered by foreign political players just as much as by their Cambodian counterparts.
Performing for multiple publics: “The communists have been far more successful [than the US]”
The failure of the Khmer American Friendship Highway to convey a lasting image of “U.S. prestige and good faith” was part of a larger diplomatic failure of the US in intervening in cultural affairs in Cambodia; importantly for our purposes, this failure is revealed especially clearly in the area of performance, and grappling with the reasons for the US incompetence points productively to key issues in understanding the broadly appealing nature of modern performance here. The US’s ineptitude can be understood as emerging from an understanding of culture as being divided by “high” and “low” forms.42
Yet modern performance in Cambodia, including dances by the Royal Ballet such as the 1959 Ballet of the Khmero-American Friendship, are striking for their
41 Telegram from the US Embassy in Phnom Penh to the Secretary of State, 17 May 1961. USA NARA. RG 59/250/4/18/3 Box 2559. 42 It should also be kept in mind that the US was relatively inexperienced in cultural and diplomatic interventions in this region. In his study of US public diplomacy from the end of the Second World War to the fall of the Soviet Union, Nicholas J. Cull notes that there was a “shift of the Cold War into the new theater of the developing world during the early Eisenhower years” (ie, after 1953) and that the “USIA’s output in Asia focused on the containment of China.” Nicholas J. Cull, The Cold War and the United States Information Agency: American Propaganda and Public Diplomacy, 1945-1989 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 123-127. 223 ability to engage audiences from diverse class backgrounds, both urban and rural.
We have seen in Chapter 4 on modern visual arts that US interventions in the field of exhibitions, while short-lived, were highly successful in terms of engaging a large number of artists and audiences. By contrast, numerous internal communications between the US Embassy in Phnom Penh and various US agencies reveals a sense of disconnect between the kinds of performers that the US was sending to Cambodia and the perceived expectations of local audiences.
The essence of the problem was the perception by US personnel in
Cambodia that they were providing only “high-class” performances rather than events that could appeal to the mass of the overwhelmingly rural population. A 1959 tour of Cambodia by acclaimed US singer Marian
Anderson “was lost on all but a handful of Cambodian guests,” according to a report on the United States Information Service in Phnom Penh. 43 Ingrid
Muan also quotes this report’s lament that “Ballet soloists, symphony
43 Confidential “Inspection Report: USIS Cambodia” by USIA, by Inspector James L. Meader, 27 March 1959. USA NARA. RG 306/490/42/13/7 Box 2. According to a biography of Marian Anderson, the performance in Cambodia was one of twenty-six concerts given in twelve countries throughout Asia. The US State Department arranged the tour, “aware of the impact that Anderson’s Met debut was having abroad….Shackled with their own histories of subjugation by white colonial powers, the Asian countries were particularly sensitive to civil rights issues in the United States.” Allan Keiler, Marian Anderson: A Singer’s Journey (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2002), 282. 224 orchestras and sophisticated dramas, so popular in other parts of the world, are a complete waste of time and money here.”44
It is worth noting that such correspondence reveals not only a misunderstanding of the broad, cross-class appeal of much Cambodian performance, and not only an implicit dismissal of the critical capacities of
Cambodian audiences, but importantly also a disagreement between US agents stationed in Cambodia and their central supervisors back in
Washington. An organizational structure as large as the US’s various diplomacy bodies, including the United States Information Service (USIS) and others, does not constitute a unified and unitary whole. The USIS and related agencies are no more monolithic than the French colonial empires had been.
And if power breeds resistance, then this friction emerges in forms both large and small, predictable and unexpected, internally as well as outside the organization.
The US’s solution to the perceived problem of being unable to engage
Cambodians through performance was to look to and emulate what they understood their geopolitical and cultural competitors to be doing: “The communists have been far more successful [than us] in their cultural presentations programs,” the 1959 report notes. This anxious jealousy is a recurring theme in internal documents from the period, especially in relation
44 Quoted in Ingrid Muan, “Citing Angkor: The ‘Cambodian Arts’ in the Age of Restoration,” PhD dissertation, Columbia University, 2001, 242. 225 to performances of all kinds. Another report, from the previous year, asserts that “what we need here is precisely what the Communists are sending, namely ‘low brow’ variety acts with good troupers who are willing to learn one or two songs in Cambodian and tour the provinces” since “the bulk of our attractions should be aimed at the masses.”45 The report continues that
“high-class cultural attractions should be sent only on rare occasions and for reasons of prestige. We should understand that they will appeal only to a very small Cambodian élite.” Four years later, the Americans demonstrated a continuing lack of sensitivity to the special ability of Cambodian classical dance to appeal to broad publics, even if not attracting mass audiences. At
1963’s “American National Fair,” the Pepsi Cola company organized for dancers to perform beneath its corporate logo (Figure 5.5),46 presumably in a vain attempt to “aim at the masses.”
45 Letter from Edmund H. Kellogg, Counselor, US Embassy, Phnom Penh, to Laurin Askew, Cambodian Desk Officer, Office of Southeast Asian Affairs, Washington DC, 19 November 1958. USA NARA. RG 59/250/63/10/5-7 Box 6. 46 Author unnamed, “L’Exposition Nationale Américaine,” Réalités Cambodgiennes, 17 May 1963: 14. See a further discussion of a 1963 trade fair organized by the US in the conclusion to Chapter 6 on modern spaces. 226
Figure 5. 5
The notion of “low brow” as counterposed to “high-class” performance reveals a striking misunderstanding on the part of the US of one of the defining features of the Royal Ballet dances that Sihanouk had presented to them. Cambodia’s Royal Ballet, like many other official and state-sponsored performances throughout Southeast Asia in this period, successfully appealed at once to a mass population of rural peasants and to an urban “elite” of cosmopolitan and self-consciously modern citizens. Of course, this is not to say that the royal dance was universally admired, but rather that there is no evidence to suggest that there was any significant division along class lines in terms of its audiences or admirers. Although the private thoughts of rural
Cambodians—especially those aligned with the growing anti-royalist political movements during the time—are of course beyond reach, numerous accounts suggest that performances by the royal dancers were greeted with
227 enthusiastic crowds throughout the Kingdom. 47 According to historian
Anthony Reid, this unity between what the US thought of as “high-class” and
“low brow” culture was longstanding. Reid writes that “it is impossible to distinguish between court and popular culture” in Southeast Asia during the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries.48 Most importantly, though, rather than guessing at the reception of this performance, we can see within the text itself a multivalence: encompassing political duplicity, formal coevality, and contradictory gender relations.
Even the location of many performances by Cambodia’s Royal Ballet attests to the dance form’s ability to successfully address multiple publics simultaneously, including royal and political elites, visiting dignitaries, as well as ordinary citizens. The Ballet of the Khmero-American Friendship, like many other dances of its kind, most likely took place in the Royal Palace’s
Chan Chhaya Pavilion. Open on three sides and located at the edge of the grounds adjoining busy Sothearos Boulevard, the pavilion is the Palace’s most public stage. It was here that the French had ordered the performance of
French classical music at the conclusion of the Great War in 1918,49 and it was from here that, following US President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in
47 See Shapiro, “Dance and the Spirit,” 99-130. 48 Anthony Reid, Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, vol. 1 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), 202. Quoted in Shapiro, “Dance and the Spirit,” 100. 49 Dik Keam (ឌីក Rម) and Doeuk Om (េឌៀក អំ). ភូមិតិរuvន Phum Terechan [The Bestial Village] (Phnom Penh: Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports, 2009 [1971]), 10. 228 1963, Sihanouk would broadcast music and command his citizen-subjects to dance in the streets in enforced celebration.50
In each of the multiple publics that are addressed in a dance such as the Ballet of the Khmero-American Friendship, women were playing an increasingly active role in newly independent Cambodia. As such, the fact that it was female dancers who performed this politically charged piece takes on a new and specifically modern form of gendered significance. Women had always been the dancers in the Cambodian royal tradition, and indeed among the innovations that Sisowath Kossamak had introduced after Sihanouk came to power was the incorporation of male performers from other traditions into the Royal Ballet.51 Yet with women from all sectors of society being called on to engage in politics and the workforce in new ways during the mid-century period, the performing bodies of women can be understood to also be communicating in new ways. Sihanouk produced a short film on the subject of women in the Sangkum that included scenes of women playing active sports of various kinds, as well as working in a range of settings including
50 Kennedy’s assassination occurred in November 1963, a few weeks after Sihanouk’s partial severance of diplomatic ties with the US. Historian Milton Osborne recounts that it was when the Thai “dictator,” Marshal Sarit, died in December 1963 that Sihanouk announced that Kennedy, Sarit and recently assassinated South Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem would “all meet in hell” and called on Cambodians to celebrate. Milton Osborne, Sihanouk: Prince of Light, Prince of Darkness (Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 1994), 163. 51 Cravath, Earth in Flower, 156-157. See also Suppya Hélène Nut, “Lokhon Luang, the Cambodian Court Theatre: Toward a Decline of Women’s Supremacy?” Asian Theatre Journal 32, no. 2 (Fall 2015): 416-439. Doi: 10.1353/atj.2015.0033 229 factories, farms, and laboratories (Figure 5.6 and Figure 5.7).52 Dances such as the 1959 Ballet suggest that the performance of nationalism amidst neutralism was another of the new and modern duties that women were called on to enact.
Figure 5. 6
Figure 5. 7
52 Norodom Sihanouk, director, La femme cambodgienne à l’heure du Sangkum [Cambodian Women during the Sangkum Reastr Niyum], Khemara Pictures, 1960s. 24 minutes, colour with sound. Bophana Center archives, Phnom Penh. Archive Reference NSI_VI_001568. 230 Both versions of the libretto for the Ballet of the Khmero-American
Friendship make special mention of the gender of its dancers. The Khmer text concludes with a celebration of the “girls” (Vរj neari) who “move and dance holding up the successful nations’ flags.” It is notable that the “success” of both nations is mentioned, further underscoring the sense of Cambodia as independently capable, not wholly reliant on the US. The English version of the text concludes with an exhortation to “Dance, dance young girls, /
Entwine the colours of our two nations.” There is no mention here of either nation’s “success,” but instead a hope that “our fruitful friendship” may “live for ever.” This may be read as another kind of the duplicity discussed earlier, however slight: Cambodian audiences are reminded of their own nation’s capable agency, whereas for the Anglophone US guests, the emphasis is instead placed on “friendship.” It is significant that despite this asymmetry in the Khmer and English versions’ discussions of the political role of each nation in their partnership to build the Highway, there is a parity in both texts naming the dancers as female.
Sporting bodies: Performance as “psychological warfare”
We have seen that the US was aware that they were failing in their attempts to use performance for cultural diplomacy, and that they viewed “the
231 communists” as having “been far more successful.” The US’s inability to provide dance or other kinds of performance that appealed to multiple publics in Cambodia was at odds with its success in organizing exhibitions of visual arts, as discussed in Chapter 4, and distributing Khmer-language publications such as Lōk Serei, which by 1959 had a circulation of 100,000 copies.
We might view this not only as a product of the US misunderstanding of the capacity for performance in this context to engage multiple publics, including across class lines, but also as a sign of differing strategies and priorities. A brief look at the field of organized sports is revealing of this. The emphasis on healthy, vital bodies—a recurring trope in many modernities— will also serve as a point of comparison for our next discussion, of a filmed execution.
Whereas US activities in Cambodia during the Sangkum era were more cerebral in nature, Chinese and Soviet cultural diplomacy clearly saw the corporeal bodies of Cambodians as a key site of what was known, in Khmer as in English, as “psychological warfare” (ស`Uwមចិត?3`ស? sangkream chettasastra). An internal US memo from 14 October 1963 expresses alarm that
“Chinese remain the most enthusiastic support” for transnational sporting events in Jakarta and elsewhere in Southeast Asia, and that “there is no question that Peking is cultivating Cambodian youth through sports. For the
232 past year, Chinese Communist sports and youth groups have paraded regularly through Cambodia.” The memo explains that such “activity might be considered a minor aspect of Peking’s people’s diplomacy if the development of Khmer athletic capability had not become, over the past several years, almost an obsession of Prince Sihanouk and the government.”
This expression of alarm followed a November 1962 memo, which noted that
“three Chinese Communist coaches” had come to work with “Cambodian
Army teams, the first known penetration by the [communist] Bloc of the
Cambodian Military Establishment.”53
The use of the masculinist term “penetration” to describe Soviet investment in the sporting arena, while revealing of the phallocratic nature of inter-government political machinations, belies the active promotion of organized sports as a nation-building activity for both men and women in
Sihanouk’s Cambodia. We have already mentioned briefly Sihanouk’s 24- minute film, titled La Femme Cambodgienne à l’Heure du Sangkum [Cambodian
Women during the Sangkum Reastr Niyum], in which women are shown playing competitive sports—often in the new architecture such as the
National Stadium, as will be revisited in the next chapter’s discussions of modern buildings—as well as engaging in other physically active tasks.
The film’s repeated shifts from scenes of agriculture (Figure 5.6) to depictions of sports (Figure 5.7) is particularly revealing. Agriculture was not
53 USA NARA. RG 306/250/67/19-20/07 Box 1. 233 only the economic foundation for the nation, but also the basis of Sihanouk’s policy of “Khmer Buddhist Socialism,” as discussed in Chapter 4. The film treats farming and sporting as of relatively equal value and interest: a comparable amount of time is spent on each, and both are filmed in close-up as well as in wide-angle views.
During the period of Lon Nol’s Khmer Republic (1970-75), the valorization of the healthy Cambodian body continued unabated, often visually depicted with Sangkum-era architecture as a background. Both male and female athletes were photographed training in otherwise empty National
Sports Complex, the muscularly angled near-vertical lines of its concrete structure visually emphasizing the sporting prowess of the Cambodians
(Figure 5.8 and Figure 5.9). We will return to a discussion of the rhetorical functions of this architecture in the next chapter.
234
Figure 5. 8
Figure 5. 9
235
A linking of the physical performance of sporting prowess with ideological progress is, of course, by no means unique to Cambodia, or to the
Sangkum and Khmer Republic periods. In his study of “physical culture” in
Laos after 1975, Simon Creak argues that the French introduced “physical instruction and military preparation” to Indochina in the 1920s, acting “in response to perceived ‘physical deficiencies’ in the colonies” and thus initiating a continuing process “to link the physical form to concern with progress and identity.”54 Creak argues that such “rhetoric” is rewarding of close analysis, and should not be dismissed as mere “propaganda.”55
Execution as performance: The power of Sihanouk, the power of cinema
If the fundamental efficacy of organized competitive sports as a site for political contestation lay in the familiar exaltation of the strong, vital body as a metaphor for the nation, then how might we make sense of the display of a powerless body, destroyed by the nation’s leader?
In January 1964, a Khmer Serei rebel named Preap In (Cxប អ៊yន) was executed by firing squad, at Sihanouk’s behest; also under Sihanouk’s
54 Simon Creak, “Cold War Rhetoric and the Body: Physical Cultures in Early Socialist Laos,” in Cultures at War: The Cold War and Cultural Expression in Southeast Asia, ed. Tony Day and Maya Ht Liem (Ithaca, New York: Cornell Southeast Asia Program, 2010), 103. 55 Creak, “Cold War Rhetoric,” 107. 236 command, the execution was filmed, and the footage was screened in every cinema in the nation, before every feature film, for an entire month.56 Prior to this, Preap In had been imprisoned in an iron cage, which was brought to
Phnom Penh for mobbed public derision, including, according to one account, garbage being hurled at the prisoner for a period of two hours.57 According to retrospective testimonies gathered in various secondary sources, the film footage of the execution lasted around fifteen minutes, was gruesomely explicit, and left many cinema-goers feeling ill.58
This film embodies some of the key features of modern performance in
Cambodia: it intervenes directly and concretely in political matters of the day, it combines “pre-modern” with distinctly new forms (an execution by firing squad), and it presents confounding methodological challenges for research.
In studying this film of an execution, we must rely exclusively on contextual
56 During the 1960s, were at least 33 cinemas in Phnom Penh, as well as at least six in Battambang, and at least four in Kampong Cham, according to ongoing research being conducted by the collective of architectural historians, Roung Kon Project. See: https://roungkonproject.com/introduction/ Accessed May 2017. Anecdotal evidence suggests there was at least one cinema in most smaller towns, such as Kampot, Kratie, Banlung, Kampong Thom, Kampong Som (Sihanoukville), and so on. For an evocative account of cinema’s mass appeal before 1975, see Davy Chou (director), Le Sommeil d’Or (Golden Slumbers), produced by Vycky films, Bophana Production, Araucania Films, 2011. 57 Philip Short, Pol Pot: The History of a Nightmare (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 2004), 155-56. 58 Justin J. Corfield, Khmers Stand Up! A History of the Cambodian Government, 1970- 1975 (Melbourne: Centre of Southeast Asian Studies, Monash University, 1994), 34. Corfield asserts that “there can be few Cambodians who did not hear of it. It was a show of gratuitous violence that upset many people,” and further comments that “in one stroke, this film undid much of the good name that Sihanouk had had. It was the beginning of Sihanouk’s decline.” See also Osborne, Sihanouk, 162. 237 sources and retrospective oral testimonies, without any access to what we might, perversely, term the “live” performance of death, or to the film itself.
Indeed, this entire discussion of the film may appear perverse: it is not an
“artwork,” its action was not “performed,” and the film itself appears to be lost, or at least inaccessible. I have chosen this event for discussion because I contend that its strange status as a text that exists now only as memory, only as traces in its discursive context, may be instructive for our thinking about how the modern was performed in Cambodia, and importantly also about how modern performance can be researched and engaged from the vantage point of the post-war contemporary.
But first, a brief survey of the historical context of filmed executions:
Preap In’s was one among many politically motivated state-sanctioned killings which were made into public spectacle. These have taken place throughout Southeast Asia and beyond, during the 1960s, as well as earlier, and also continuing today. Also killed by firing squad in 1964, Nguyễn Văn
Trỗi was the first publicly executed member of the Viet Minh communist forces in Saigon, and his execution was also filmed, although the footage was not screened as widely as Sihanouk’s film of Preap In. The example of
Nguyễn Văn Trỗi is notable in pointing to the historical moment of 1964 as one of turmoil and turning points not only within Cambodia’s national borders, but in the larger context of the Indochina conflict. Another example, from 1968, is the summary execution of Nguyễn Văn Lém. Although not 238 filmed, a photograph of this point-blank shooting in a Saigon boulevard became one of the most iconic images of the American War in Vietnam.59
Filmed executions are by no means unique to mainland Southeast Asia.
Further afield, the former Turkish prime minister Adnan Menderes was hanged to death in 1961, while being filmed. Nazi perpetrators had been publicly hanged in some of the earliest trials after 1945, with their corpses photographed and the images widely disseminated. In the twenty first century, filmed executions are perhaps most commonly associated with
Islamist militants, for whom digital dissemination of video is intimately linked with close-contact violence. However, it must be noted that by far the greatest perpetrators of filmed executions in the twenty first century are not
Islamists but rather their attackers, the US army’s ever-expanding fleet of drones, which commit violence that is not close-contact but is of mass impact.
Drones combine the technology of filming with that of killing in a single, seamless unit. 60 Drones are a logical extension of—but also technological expansion of—the linking of political power with cinematic representation in filmed executions such as Sihanouk’s filming of Preap In’s execution, as we will now demonstrate.
59 The black and white photograph was taken by photojournalist Eddie Adams of Associated Press, and won a Pulitzer Prize in 1969. 60 On drones, see Grégoire Chamayou, Drone Theory, trans. Janet Lloyd (Great Britain: Penguin, 2015). 239 The event of Preap In’s execution, and of its filming and public broadcast, has been mentioned as a turning point in Cambodian politics.
David Chandler, we will recall, describes the years 1963 to 1966 as “the first act of the nightmare that terrorized Cambodia after 1970,” and mentions outcry at the execution as being one sign that Sihanouk and his Sangkum
Reastr Niyum regime had begun to be seriously challenged.61 Soth Polin, a novelist and later an oppositional newspaper owner who we will meet again in Chapter 7, told David Chandler in 1988 that “it was at that point that I began to hate Sihanouk,” speaking of his viewing of the execution film.62 Ian
Harris, in his history of Cambodian Buddhism, characterizes the caging of the arrested Preap In, and his subsequent execution and its filming and broadcast, as “one of Sihanouk’s most outrageous and bestial acts, one that particularly appalled Buddhists,” and discusses this in the context of a growing sense at the time that “the Buddhist credentials of the Sangkum were beginning to look like nothing more than window dressing.”63
Taken together, these various secondary accounts of the execution and its broadcast suggest that the event may be remembered chiefly as an important moment in the rising tide of anti-Sihanouk sentiment. Significantly, however, none of the major historians to have discussed this event cite any
61 Chandler, Tragedy, 122 and 133-137. 62 Chandler, Tragedy, 341 n.26. 63 Ian Harris, Cambodian Buddhism: History and Practice (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2005), 153. 240 primary sources, other than the retrospective oral testimony of Cambodians who recalled witnessing the broadcasts. There are no photographs reproduced in any surviving newspapers. Milton Osborne, who returned to
Cambodia in 1966, informs us that “Two years later Cambodians still spoke of the revulsion many had felt at the sight of the rebel’s body, riddled with bullets, slumping at the execution stake.”64 Chandler records discussions of the event among oral informants in the late 1980s,65 which certainly suggests that it continued to loom large in these survivors’ memories—although of course the effects of the civil war and Khmer Rouge atrocities in shaping these memories should not be overlooked. There is some evidence of the event living on in some sections of what might be termed the public consciousness: in 2005, Prime Minister Hun Sen reputedly threatened to broadcast the film of the execution again as a rebuke to Sihanouk for meddling in current affairs, perhaps suggesting that he had access to the film at that time, and in 2007 anti-Sihanouk leaflets were anonymously distributed in the capital, under the name “Spirit of Preap In.”
As well as marking something of a turning point in anti-Sihanouk sentiment, the filming of Preap In’s execution also embodied a forceful demonstration of four interlocking forms of power. These are:
- the power of Sihanouk, to disregard principles of law or fairness;
64 Osborne, Sihanouk, 162. 65 Chandler, Tragedy, 341 n.26. 241 - the power of cinema, to reach a mass audience both of urban elites
and rural peasants, and to shock and appal that audience to the
point of bodily revulsion;
- the power of Sihanouk to control the power of cinema; and
- the power of cinema, to solicit affective and political responses that
go beyond the control of the filmmaker, even of Sihanouk.
That is, the execution film demonstrates not only Sihanouk’s political power—his ability to execute his more powerless enemies, without fear of reprisal—but also and simultaneously the power of cinema itself, to shock and outrage and disgust and warn (both in the ways intended by Sihanouk, and in ways and with consequences that ultimately went quite beyond his control). That is, the power of cinema to communicate, and to do so viscerally and forcefully and with a great mass of the population. And behind this, of course, linking these two key functions of the execution footage, is a demonstration of Sihanouk’s immense—but still limited—power to control cinema: that is, to control this powerful tool of forceful communication.
This is significant, as the execution footage predates Sihanouk’s first forays into feature filmmaking. Indeed, coming as it did within the first half- decade of films being produced in Cambodia by Cambodians, we might imagine that the film of Preap In’s execution fundamentally shifted various
Cambodian publics’ understandings of the power of cinema and of Sihanouk, and fused these mechanisms of power tightly together. As such, the film of 242 the execution “set the scene” for Sihanouk’s own filmmaking career, which began in earnest just two years later, in 1966, with the feature-length fiction film Apsara. We will return to this film soon.
The film of Preap In’s execution itself appears to be lost. Neither
Osborne nor Chandler were in Cambodia in 1964, and Chandler as well as
Sihanouk’s former advisor Julio Jeldres have said that they have never seen the film.66 Both Chandler and Short have published a photograph described as
“Execution of Khmer Serei prisoner, 1964”: the unnamed victim is almost certainly Preap In (Figure 5.10).67
Figure 5. 10
66 Personal communications, 2015. 67 Chandler, list of “Illustrations” in Tragedy, vi. Short, “Illustration Credits” in Pol Pot, xii. 243 It is noteworthy that none of the major histories of modern Cambodia reflect upon their necessary reliance on secondary and retrospective sources in their account of Preap In’s execution and its filming. This is but one of many instances—and perhaps a relatively minor one, at that—in which significant historical events are accessible to historians of modern Cambodia only through memory, rather than through primary documents. In particular, the heavy reliance on oral testimonies offered by refugees and exiles after the fall of the Khmer Rouge regime points to a great deal of unavoidably subjective reconstruction of events, through the intervening years of turmoil.
Yet this is rarely addressed in standard histories of modern Cambodia. While a significant body of scholarly literature engages with questions of memory in
Khmer Rouge survivors,68 this very rarely intersects with standard political, social and cultural histories.
This historiography of Preap In’s execution film is not only a neat illustration of the larger situation of dependence on memory in secondary and retrospective sources, but is also of relevance in discussions of art in the contemporary setting. In my observations of the final year classes of painting students at Phnom Penh’s Royal University of Fine Arts from 2012 to 2015, it was rare to find a student who did not know Nhek Dim’s work through the
68 See, for example, Cathy J. Schlund-Vials, War, Genocide, and Justice: Cambodian American Memory Work (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012). For contextual discussion of memory scholarship elsewhere in Southeast Asia, see Roxana Waterson and Kwok Kian-Woon, eds., Contestations of Memory in Southeast Asia (Singapore: NUS Press, 2012). 244 collection published by Lors Chinda. Yet, as has already been mentioned in
Chapter 4, none of these students had ever had the opportunity to see Nhek
Dim’s work in person. Even more striking and more pertinent here, most of these art students were aware of some of the best-known Cambodian contemporary artists such as Sopheap Pich, but many have never seen their work, even in reproduction. Art so often becomes a matter of rumour and reputation,69 just as the filming of Preap In’s execution becomes a site of speculation as much as of memory.70 And this is never more the case than with performance, the discussion of which is always necessarily dealing with traces and remnants after the fact, never with the “original.”
On this latter point, performance theorist Randy Martin argues that
“the shifting place of performance in the world can help us to understand how the very conditions for theoretical reflection are produced.”71 The same could be said of the conditions in which historical reflection are produced.
69 “Figuring out who had a name, who had a reputation among other artists was also easy; the difficult part was figuring out what gave those artists that reputation.” Nora A. Taylor, “The Southeast Asian Art Historian As Ethnographer?” Third Text 25, no. 4 (2011): 485. Doi: 10.1080/09528822.2011.587948 70 I have avoided discussing the Preap In film in terms of trauma, although as an event that was sickening in its first viewing, and quite inescapable given its presentation in every cinema nation-wide, and has become literally unviewable thereafter, the footage may lend itself well to a psychoanalytic reading. For a discussion of the “lost” and thus equally unviewable photographic documents of political violence in 1973 and 1976 in Thailand, see Clare Veal, “Thainess Framed: Photography and Thai Identity, 1946-2010,” PhD thesis, University of Sydney, Sydney, 2016, esp. Chapter 6. 71 Randy Martin, “Dance and Its Others: Theory, State, Nation, and Socialism,” in Of the Presence of the Body: Essays on Dance and Performance Theory, ed. André Lepecki (Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 2004), 47. 245 Martin points to the inherent reflexivity of performance as a mode of representation. He posits that, “if performance not only produces images of life, but acts as the very mirror through which we reflect on life, then it is possible to study not only certain depictions of the world, but how the world is depicted.”72 This discussion of Sihanouk’s filming of Preap In’s execution has argued that the event may be considered as a “performance” which acts as a mirror through which we reflect on death. Performance brings alive the inseparable nature of history and historiography.73
In this image of death, the long afterlife of performance can be discerned in memory; moreover, the vitality of Sihanouk’s political power and cinema’s representational power are strikingly illuminated.
Power and spectacle: Sihanouk’s Apsara (1966)
I have argued that the significance of Preap In’s 1964 execution lay not only in its extravagant violence, and not even in the fact that it was filmed, per se, but rather in the distribution of that footage to every cinema in Cambodia, and its compulsory screening before every feature film for a whole month. This
72 Martin, “Dance and Its Others,” 47. 73 Writing of the Sdok Kak Thom inscription, one of the most-scrutinized artefacts of the Angkorian empire, Ashley Thompson argues for the “irreducibility of the partnership between history and historiography … the ultimate inadequacy of any initiative to establish the former in the absence of critical attention to the latter.” Thompson, Engendering, 24. 246 ensured, of course, maximum exposure for the film, which is significant given what I have argued is performance’s special ability to engage mass publics that transcend class lines and urban/rural divides.74 More than this, though, this enforced distribution demonstrated Sihanouk’s seemingly unchallenged, unilateral power over the cinema, and his awareness of the political and other values of that power.
Cinema was a new industry in Cambodia at that time; an abbreviated history of the form will provide a context for our more detailed consideration of the 1960s period. The first cinema was reportedly opened in Cambodia in
1909, with an audience of Europeans. By 1914, educated Cambodians were attending film screenings. Between 1917 and 1921, the French colonial authorities established a system for censoring what films would be permitted to screen. By 1920, travelling cinemas toured rural Cambodia, some of them owned and operated by Cambodians. American, Chinese and French films were screened. By the 1920s, foreign filmmakers were shooting films in
Cambodia; most were officially-sponsored projects publicizing the wealth of
French Indochina and its appeal for tourism. Most films were documentaries,
74 To observe that cinema has mass appeal is far from new. Rancière eloquently encapsulates this predominant view when he calls cinema “the people’s art of the twentieth century, the art that made it possible for the greatest number, for those who did not get into museums, to delight in the splendour of a light effect on an everyday décor, the poetry in the clink of a glass or banal exchange in a bar.” Jacques Rancière, The Intervals of Cinema, trans. John Howe (London, New York: Verso, 2014), 137. I reiterate this claim of cinema’s broad reach here specifically in order to point to its links to the cross-class appeal of other forms of performance, which have been discussed in some detail in relation to classical dance, and sports, above. 247 but at least one feature-length fiction film was produced by a French director during the 1920s. Little is known of cinema during the 1930s. In 1941,
Sihanouk—who had just been crowned King—bought a film camera. His experiments with it during the 1940s are considered the first films made by a
Cambodian, although they were never publicly screened. The first film made by a Cambodian to be publicly screened was in approximately 1958, made by soldiers using military equipment. By the early 1960s, huge crowds attending films made by Cambodians confirmed the industry’s potential, and filmmakers received support from a special government department. 75 In
1960, a feature film titled Blooming Flower, Faded Flower made by two unnamed
“Cambodian technicians, trained at the French Institut des Hautes Études
Cinématographiques in Paris has been shown commercially at the Capitol
Cinema in Phnom Penh.” Tep Chhieu Kheng, who was dubbed “Cambodia’s leading film critic,” heralded the screening as “First Steps in the Cambodian
Cinema.”76 Movie-going quickly became a favourite nationwide pastime for
Cambodians of all classes.77
75 This summary draws on Muan and Daravuth, “Survey of Film in Cambodia,” 93- 106. The authors draw primarily on colonial records in the National Archives of Cambodia, and also on oral testimony from artists and filmmakers recorded in the late 1990s. The same research is available in Khmer in Ly Daravuth and Ingrid Muan (លី z4វុធ និង អ៊{នCកិដមូiន), កំេណើតកុនែខFរ Komnaeut Kon Khmer [The Birth of Cambodian Cinema] (Phnom Penh: Reyum, 2009). 76 Author unnamed, “Cambodian Film,” Cambodian Commentary: Review of Khmer Opinion 9 (June 1960): 32. 77 The urban and rural craze for movies was driven not only by the novelty of Cambodian-made films and international imports, but also by affordable ticket 248 From this brief sketch of cinema in Cambodia, we can observe that the form had a mass appeal in the countryside as well as in the city since at least
1920, which is relatively early for such a mass lower-class audience to be reached; yet also that the first films to be produced by Cambodians came comparatively late.78 As stated elsewhere in this thesis, I am not interested in notions of belatedness in culture. However, the approximately concurrent appearance within two decades of Khmer modern novels, realist representational paintings, modern concrete architecture, and Khmer cinema is worthy of reflection. As we have already seen, this concurrence of modern innovation here led to dynamic trans-media exchanges between these various forms, which have hitherto been underexplored. The concurrence of the emergence of new forms of art and culture with independence from colonial rule also coupled modern arts with the rhetoric of nation-building in profound ways. Sihanouk’s place in this cultural-political project, always central, was never more dominant than in the field of cinema. In choosing to explore this circumstance, I acknowledge that it is not possible to characterize the overall nature of Sangkum-era cinema with any confidence. Only around
prices, constant screenings, and an abundance of cinemas. This is described in many novels of the period, and evocatively remembered in the 2011 documentary Golden Slumbers (Le Sommeil d’Or, produced by Vycky films, Bophana Production, Araucania Films), directed by Cambodian-French Davy Chou, the grandson of a prominent film producer before 1975. 78 For example, Vietnamese-made films appeared as early as the 1920s. For a comparative view, see the other essays in David Hanan, ed., Film in South East Asia. Views from the Region. Essays on Film in Ten South East Asia-Pacific Countries, (Hanoi: South East Asia-Pacific Audio Visual Archive Association, 2001). 249 40 films from an estimated 400 produced between 1960 and 1975 are known to survive. Generalized comments about Cambodian-made films are thus inherently limited; specific and detailed analyses may offer a more fruitful line of inquiry.
Sihanouk was not only the first Cambodian known to have made a film, he also dominated the cinema industry throughout the 1960s through his own filmmaking and his patronage of film festivals and other events.
According to Eliza Romey, who has conducted the only sustained study of
Sihanouk’s cinematic output in English or Khmer, Sihanouk produced twenty-one films between 1960 and 1970, of which nine were documentaries and twelve fictions.79 A study of his first feature-length fiction film, Apsara
(1966) reveals the interlinking of political power and aesthetics in performance, especially in light of other forms of political spectacle which
Sihanouk orchestrated.
Apsara features Sihanouk’s daughter, Princess Norodom Bopha Devi, as a star ballet dancer named Kantha. She has promised to marry a military pilot named Phally, played by Prince Sisowath Chivan Monirak, but must abandon this romance in order to marry the much older military General named Rithy, at the insistence of her mother.80 After their marriage, Rithy learns of Kantha’s love for Phally, and returns to his own former mistress,
79 Eliza Romey, “King, Politician, Artist: The Films of Norodom Sihanouk,” Master of Arts thesis, La Trobe University, Australia, 1998, 19. 80 Details of the film’s cast are from Romey, “King, Politician, Artist,” 136-137. 250 allowing Kantha to be with her pilot lover. Alongside this dramatic romance, the Cambodian air force engages in border skirmishes with Thailand and
South Vietnam.
Visually, the film revolves around two paradigmatic images: an efficient, disciplined and technologically advanced air force, and also a series of luxurious modern spaces, both urban and rural. Long, wide-angle panning shots showcase the architecture of Vann Molyvann and others, and the wide boulevards and parklands of Lu Ban Hap and others. (“Modern spaces” such as these will be the subject of Chapter 6.) The cast of Apsara are attired in glamorous modern fashions, and it is filmed on location in Sihanouk’s various residences, appointed in a cosmopolitan mix of Cambodian and foreign décor, including a painting by Nhek Dim, as noted in Chapter 4.
Apsara’s coupling of modern aesthetics with topical political and military matters is in itself a neat encapsulation of the aestheticization of power in Sangkum era performance. As Jessica Austin argues, the film “is as much a romance between Sihanouk and the idea of the modern nation-state as it is a romance between the two couples who appear together in just enough scenes to thread together the central love story.”81 The comment is insightful insofar as it allows a registration that Apsara functions not as an allegory—a hidden political rhetoric disguised as superficial romance—but
81 Jessica Austin, “Gender and the Nation in Popular Cambodian Heritage Cinema,” Master of Arts in Asian Studies thesis, University of Hawai’i, Mānoa, 2014, 77-78. 251 rather operates simultaneously as both a tale of “the idea of the modern nation-state” and also as a tale of two couples’ romance.
Conceiving of modern performance as an aestheticization of power also allows for an understanding Apsara as not merely “reflecting” politics, but actually enacting it. To conceive of cultural expressions as “reflections” of political dynamics is to imply an understanding of art as lesser than the larger force of history—to see the two as related but distinct. Such a view is articulated by the artist and scholar LinDa Saphan, writing not on Sihanouk’s cinema but rather on his music, but in terms which are representative of a widespread mode of understanding films such as Apsara. Saphan writes that the “many radical political changes” of the second half of the 20th century “are reflected in the changing nature and role of popular music.” She continues that Sihanouk “used popular music as a propaganda tool to advance his political agenda and enhance his image as a popular leader.”82 While such an interpretation is clearly grasping toward an account of the interrelationship between art and politics, it stops short of seeing the two domains as mutually informing, instead subordinating and hermeneutically instrumentalizing cultural expression, and distinguishing without justification between art and
“propaganda.” To conceive of art as a mode of thinking and communicating, as proposed in Chapter 1, allows us to avoid such limiting judgements.
82 Saphan, “Sihanouk and music,” 4. 252 Many of the most striking scenes in Apsara—in terms of their pivotal plot function, and their visual affect—involve processional movement. The film opens with a sleek, imported car driving past the Independence
Monument (designed by Vann Molyvann in 1958)(Figure 5.11), along
Norodom Boulevard with its wide open spaces, streamlined modern concrete architecture and lush tropical trees, and then along Monivong Boulevard to the striking modernist compound of Chamkarmon, Sihanouk’s official residence. In less than a minute of footage, accompanied by a mid-tempo trumpet ensemble, the film’s opening scene establishes Phnom Penh as a city of well-planned grandeur, and the protagonist driving the car as a woman who will enjoy respect for her wealth, beauty and sophistication. Austin suggests that the appearance of the Independence Monument also alludes to
“the history of colonialism and the struggle for liberation.”83 It implicitly situates this history in a past that is firmly resolved. Political allusions continue in several extended sequences of military aircraft, orchestrated to proceed along a pristine runway, almost like performing machinery.
83 Austin, “Gender and the Nation,” 78. 253
Figure 5. 11
Figure 5. 12
A second scene of processional movement is at Kantha’s wedding to
General Rithy. Dozens of glamorous cars arrive to the wedding, their attractively attired occupants greeted by pristine and efficient valets (Figure
5.12). Images of new-model cars with attractive female drivers would have been familiar to some viewers from the publication of such photographs in
254 Réalités Cambodgiennes (Figure 5.13).84 This repetitive procession is then echoed by these guests’ greeting of the bride and groom, in a modernized adaption of the typical Cambodian wedding tradition. We might imagine that the display of opulent wealth in such scenes would have transfixed its Sangkum era viewers, very few of whom could enjoy such extravagance. Indeed, as
Chandler observes, Apsara (as well as several of Sihanouk’s subsequent films of this decade) “reveal[s] the hothouse character of the Phnom Penh elite” and
“depict[s] the raffish behaviour of Sihanouk’s circle. None of the films,”
Chandler continues, “had any footage of ordinary people.”85
Figure 5. 13
84 See, for example: Author unnamed, “Voici encore quelques photos du concours d’élégance de Kep” [Here are some photos of the Kep beauty contest], Réalités Cambodgiennes, 7 June 1963: 12-13. 85 Chandler, Tragedy, 153. 255 Although “ordinary people” do not appear onscreen, it is significant that the extraordinary “elite” people who do populate Apsara are choreographed to perform in a manner which is common and legible to an imagined “ordinary” viewer, and never moreso than in the many scenes of processional movement. Sihanouk depicts these “hothouse” elites—flaunting their extraordinary wealth while conducting the most ordinary of wedding rituals, in proceeding past the bride and groom—in a manner to which
“ordinary people” could relate, at least insofar as the bodily movements themselves are familiar.
Moreover, there is a special significance in the location of such relatable performances of ordinary bodily activity in processional movement. Boris
Groys observes that, while film is often “a celebration of movement, it paradoxically drives the audience to new extremes of immobility never reached by traditional art forms.” After all, as Groys continues, “it is possible to move around with relative freedom while one is reading or viewing an exhibition”—or, we might add, viewing a Cambodian dance (robam) or theatre (lkhon) performance—“but in the movie theater the viewer is cast in darkness and glued to his or her seat.”86 It was not socially acceptable or
86 Boris Groys, “Iconoclasm as an Artistic Device: Iconoclastic Strategies in Film,” trans. Matthew Partridge [2002], in Art Power, (Cambridge, Massachusetts and London: MIT Press, 2013), 73. 256 permissible to exit from the screening of one of Sihanouk’s films, and to do so, even for a privileged foreigner, was a source of great embarrassment.87
That Sihanouk repeatedly directs scenes of lavish yet relatable movement (in Apsara and in many of his other films) while the medium of communication necessarily requires the audience’s immobility, is a way to at once distance himself (and his “raffish circle” of “elites”) from his viewers, as is proper for a semi-divine prince, and also to identify himself with them, in affective union. If we recall that the initial viewers of Apsara had just two years prior been effectively forced to watch the sickening film of Preap In’s execution, also while “glued to his or her seat,” this dynamic of recurrent processional movement onscreen observed by immobility on the part of the viewers takes on additional gravity. Watching Preap In’s execution, we might imagine that viewers may have wanted to flee, but this would of course not have been possible. Watching the procession of guests arrive to the wedding in Apsara, viewers may have felt tempted to join in this movement, but instead we can presume that they remained still, perhaps as if allowing
Sihanouk and his “raffish circle” to act on their behalf.
This would likely have been a familiar experience for some, given that
Sihanouk’s mode of greeting with crowds during his incessant tours of the countryside was to parade—in processional movement—past an assembled
87 See one account in Milton Osborne, Before Kampuchea: Preludes to Tragedy (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1979), 57. 257 crowd, who gathered, clapping and waving but otherwise immobile, along the sides of a road (Figure 5.14). Such parades pre-dated the Sangkum, and women had always been prominent participants (Figure 5.15). Photographs published of the lavish events attending the launch of Sihanouk’s films during the Sangkum period also visually juxtapose immobile spectators with the procession of dignitaries. This is seen clearly in an image of the prince- director with Chinese-born and then Hong Kong-based author Han Suyin
(Figure 5.16), the “honorary president” of an “International Film Festival”
Sihanouk organized apparently with the aim of awarding himself first prize, which was reportedly “a solid gold statue of an apsara.”88
88 Osborne, Sihanouk, 183. 258
Figure 5. 14
Figure 5. 15
259
Figure 5. 16
Although the textual functions of Apsara, and Sihanouk’s other
Sangkum-era films, may be analysed in the manner proposed, and we may even choose to assume that such functions were at some level intended by the director, we cannot judge with any accuracy what the reception of such films was at the time. No critical reviews in Khmer, French or English from the popular press survive, which is unsurprising given Sihanouk’s tight control over the media (and its archiving) during the 1960s, 89 and a generalized climate of fear around open criticism of him. Romey’s unpublished Master’s thesis is the only sustained attempt to credit Sihanouk’s films with being
“politically elaborate and sophisticated” and “part and parcel of Sihanouk’s strategy to maintain his relationship with the Khmer population.”90 Austin’s unpublished Master’s thesis, while not centred on Sihanouk’s films, does
89 Chandler, Tragedy, 123-124. 90 Romey, “King, Politician, Artist,” 1. 260 engage with them in some detail.91 Yet the leading historians of the Sangkum era either completely overlook Sihanouk’s cinema, or else dismiss it. Chandler derides the films as “amateurish and self-indulgent,” devoting less than two pages to the topic in his history of modern Cambodia.92 Osborne devotes more space in his political biography of Sihanouk to discussion of the films, and not only echoes Chandler’s judgement that the films are “amateurish in the extreme” but also details how Sihanouk’s expenditure of time and public money on films was at the direct expense of attention to matters of national urgency.93 For this aspect of Osborne’s critique, his perception of the films’ lack of aesthetic value is secondary; what matters is that filmmaking was not a proper activity for the Head of State to prioritize.94 Diep Sophal’s cautiously critical Marxist account of the Sangkum regime in Khmer makes no mention of Sihanouk’s filmmaking at all.95
It is worthwhile to briefly reflect on the possible causes—and effects— of this scholarly dismissal of Sihanouk’s cinema. Romey asserts that “negative assessments have their origins in the critic’s failure to take into account the socio-cultural and political context within which these films were made.”96
Such a claim is unconvincing, given that Chandler (who co-supervised
91 Austin, “Gender and the Nation.” 92 Chandler, Tragedy, 152-153. 93 Osborne, Sihanouk, 177-183. 94 Osborne, Before Kampuchea, 44-58, esp. 57. 95 Diep Sophal, របបសងQម Robab Sangkum [Sangkum Regime]. 96 Romey, “King, Politician, Artist,” 1. 261 Romey’s thesis) and Osborne are surely two of the most knowledgeable scholars of that “socio-cultural and political context.” Putting aside the subjective nature of taste, how else to explain the dismissal of Sihanouk’s films by Chandler, Osborne, Diep Sophal and other historians of the Sangkum era? Perhaps it is rather a case of not seeing the connection between these films and the “socio-cultural and political context” that Romey mentions.
These scholars are not wrong, per se, but rather they are not primarily interested in the relationship between politics and aesthetics. If, like Saphan, one views art (and specifically performance, including cinema) as a
“reflection” of political circumstance, then one is free to dismiss or ignore such works of art, as one has any number of other “reflections” at one’s disposal for the narrating of political history—archival, anecdotal, oral, statistical, and otherwise. The alternative to this—the argument being put forward here—is to consider art not as a “reflection” but rather as an enactment of modernity, including of political power. Sihanouk’s films were not only depictions of but enactments of his rule. They were, in Chandler’s terms, “part of the suffocation.”97
Sihanouk’s films, and especially Apsara, constitute a heightened aestheticization of politics, of something resembling daily life, and of the modern spaces of concrete architecture and landscaped boulevards. While depicting an “elite,” they relish in processional movements to which
97 Personal communications, 2016. 262 audiences could conceivably have related; in this appeal to publics transcending class lines and urban/rural divides, the films relate to the various other forms of performance discussed in this chapter, including dance and sports.
Films such as Apsara must also be understood as contiguous with
Sihanouk’s repeated characterization of inter-governmental politics as a kind of theatre—with China as “Asia’s Callas”—and also his many other repeated public spectacles. In the next chapter, on modern Khmer literature, we will return to the topic of Sihanouk’s regular public congresses. Writing of these events, contemporaneous foreign commentator, Jean Lacouture, suggested in
1970 that “nothing could describe Sihanouk’s power more aptly than his
‘popular audiences,’ which usually were held once a month at the royal palace.” Most significant for this discussion of performance, Lacouture continued that “these proceedings were broadcast: the Prince used the microphone like a rock-and-roll star”98 (Figure 5.17). We may also think of
Sihanouk’s appearances in the countryside participating in agricultural labour, as part of his campaign for “Khmer Buddhist Socialism” (as discussed in relation to Nhek Dim in Chapter 4).
98 Lacouture, Demigods, 215-216. 263
Figure 5. 17
Numerous photographs depicting Sihanouk at work as a farmer
(Figure 5.18) reveal his closeness to, yet difference from, the peasants surrounding him. Chandler, who was present for several of these performances, attests that the Prince generally worked for only a short spell, and then enjoyed champagne with his advisors and attending foreign diplomats.99 Images of Sihanouk’s pretense of agricultural labour, and related footage (as seen in Sihanouk’s Cambodia, 1965 [1965]) epitomize modern performance’s process of aestheticization. Lacouture evoked the theatricality of such scenes:
“At the head of a row, in shorts and a T-shirt, the Chief of State had been attacking the clay with a sturdy pick-ax for three hours running, in the glaring sun that does nothing to encourage sporting ventures.
99 Personal communications, 2016. 264 And as soon as the digging was done, he was back at the microphone, apparently tireless, making the peasants rock with laughter.”100
Figure 5. 18
In a final example of Sihanouk’s orchestration of political life as theatrical spectacle, in keeping with films such as Apsara, we may think also of the grand festival he organized to welcome visiting French President
Charles de Gaulle in 1966. Osborne reports that “for weeks before de Gaulle’s visit, virtually all government departments were subordinated to this task” of preparing, and that “along the routes the president would travel, the trees
100 Lacouture, Demigods, 217. Not a Cambodia specialist, Lacouture was clearly seduced by the spectacle; no one works this intensively for this long in the Cambodian climate. 265 were whitewashed and private houses were ordered repainted.”101 Chandler argues that “in terms of spectacle, grandeur, and stage management, the general’s visit was the apogee of Sihanouk’s years in power.”102
Figure 5. 19
Figure 5. 20
In a further display of the importance of orderly modern spaces to the welcoming events, the National Sports Complex, designed by Vann
Molyvann and inaugurated in 1964, was the epicentre of this spectacle,
101 Osborne, Sihanouk, 186. 102 Chandler, Tragedy, 150. 266 including through elaborate displays involving imagery of the Cambodian and French flags (Figure 5.19). The event also involved processions through the city (Figure 5.20) taking in its boulevards, concrete buildings, and other modern spaces.
These modern spaces will be our topic in the next chapter. In their built forms, as in the various kinds of performance we have discussed, aesthetics and politics are inextricable, and daily life is exalted in ways that are strikingly new, even while also drawing on older forms. If the aestheticization of the previously ordinary is key to understanding the enactment of modernity in performance, then a coevality of old and new forms will be key when considering modern spaces.
267 Chapter 6
Building Modern Spaces, 1955-1975: “Tradition and Heritage Back to Life”
“Modernity should not be inspired superficially by Western ideas that destroy all traces of the past. New building should bring tradition and heritage back to life.” —Vann Molyvann1
It is a surprisingly little-known fact that Phnom Penh’s National Stadium was built with funds raised by special taxes imposed on ice, alcohol, and ice cream:2 goods that as well as being in one sense luxuries are also generally regarded as essentials. Inaugurated in 1964, the National Sports Complex, as
1 Quoted in Helen Grant Ross and Darryl Leon Collins, Building Cambodia: 'New Khmer Architecture' 1953-1970 (Bangkok: Key Publisher, 2006), 205. Emphasis added. 2 The tax on ice and “a local type of ice cream” was five per cent, and the tax on alcohol was one riel per litre for “domestic alcohol” and 10 riels per litre for “imported alcohol.” Confidential Foreign Service Despatch from US Embassy, Phnom Penh to Department of State, Washington, headed “1963 SEAP Games May Be Financial Problem.” United States of America National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Maryland, USA. RG 59/250/4/18/3 Box 2558. Declassification Authority NND949601. Hereinafter, these archives will be abbreviated as USA NARA. This detail of the Stadium’s financing has not previously been discussed; Ross and Collins simply state that “The $30 million tab came out of the national budget” (Building Cambodia, 208). Ross and Collins’ extensive archival research in preparing their invaluable foundational survey did not include the USA NARA. 268 it is officially known, may also be seen as an absolutely necessary extravagance—in the spatial and ideological construction of the new
Cambodian nation and of its modernity. Large-scale and centrally planned projects such as the Stadium operated, spatially and rhetorically, in discursive alignment with smaller, private structures in the articulation of modern space.
Smaller, private structures have often been overlooked in studies of modern architecture, including in Cambodia; in this chapter such houses will be a primary focus.
This chapter considers the way in which Cambodian modernity was constituted in built form: in what I am calling the “modern spaces” of architecture and urban environments. I argue that in these modern spaces significant continuities with and elaborations of “pre-modern” built forms can be discerned. Although many studies of modernities have noted the ways in which architectural modernisms have engaged with historical and “pre- modern” forms—especially in postcolonial nation-building projects—it remains widely accepted in most literature on modernity, including on modern architectures, that the modern constituted and indeed was defined by a break from the past and a turn to the future. In contrast to this prevailing notion, I identify in Cambodian modern spaces a coevality of old and new forms and meanings that significantly complicates standard understandings of modernity as being defined by a break with the past and an exclusive (or
269 even a primary) orientation to the future, and to the new. 3 Multiple temporalities—a defining feature of contemporaneity—are at play in the apprehension of modern spaces, and attention to these is revealing also of the contemporary moment from which we view modern spaces.
As previously noted, a coevality of old and new forms is not unique to modern or contemporary cultural artefacts, and indeed was a key feature in pre-modern “Cambodian arts,” including architecture, as argued by
Thompson and others. My focus is on the plural temporalities at work in the historically novel form of modern concrete architecture, but a similar approach could also be taken to Angkorian temples, or many other pre- modern spatial formations in the Cambodian context.
I base my contention on detailed stylistic and interdisciplinary analyses of privately initiated smaller-scale residences, as well as in officially sponsored grand projects, chiefly the National Stadium in Phnom Penh. My focus on housing (and references to housing in larger structures) informs a second key argument here, about the importance of considering the domestic and the anonymous in understanding modernity.
3 Similar claims have been made in revisionist accounts of European and North American modern architecture. “As early as 1960, Reyner Banham argued that despite the claims of the modern movement’s chroniclers and practitioners, a profound engagement with the past was a formative element of the style … the assertions of Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, or Ludwig Mies van der Rohe notwithstanding, the employment of new technologies and a ‘rational’ approach to structure never determined the look of the new architecture.” Sarah Williams Goldhagen, “Coda: Reconceptualizing the Modern,” in Anxious Modernisms: Experimentation in Postwar Architectural Culture, ed. Sarah Williams Goldhagen and Réjean Legault (Montreal: Canadian Centre for Architecture, 2000), 301. 270 Although I will draw on private archives not hitherto accessed by researchers, as well as national archives in the US and Cambodia, and interviews I have conducted in Cambodia and France, my primary focus in what follows is not on the task of uncovering new factual data about the under-studied private buildings of the Sangkum era. Rather, this chapter is primarily analytical. In what follows, my chief intention is to offer detailed interpretations of built forms and their uses.
On the singular Vann Molyvann and the multiple “anonymous”
It is widely recognized in art historical discourse that with the rise of modernity in art came the ascendance of the notion of individual genius, the singular artist/author whose works shape broad artistic and cultural formations. In what follows I will propose several interrelated arguments for paying close attention not only to canonical architects but also to the numerous other designers and shapers of modern space, who appear to us as anonymous. Some of these figures, such as construction workers or less well- known designers, were in a way always unknown. Others have been rendered unknowable by forces of history, chiefly war and its attendant destruction and dispersal of records. Some factors motivating my advocacy of an attention to what I call the anonymous modern—which I will elaborate
271 below—include the collaborative nature of design and construction, including the involvement of transnational teams in most large-scale projects during the
Sangkum era; the disputed authorship of some projects, and the similarity of more routine designs such as schools and government buildings; and the overlooked importance of private houses and smaller buildings in the shaping of modern spaces, alongside and in tandem with the larger-scale public projects.
Vann Molyvann (វណ# ម៉ូលីវណ#)—architect and urban planner, later
Minister of Culture, and later still historian of urban form4—is an icon of
Cambodia’s “golden age” of Independence, beloved both of scholars of his generation, and of lovers of Cambodian culture who were born after 1979.
Born in 1926 in Kampot province, Molyvann passed his baccalaureate at
Lycée Sisowath in 1944. He continued his studies in Paris from 1946 to 1956, initially in law, then chiefly in architecture, but also with two years study of
“classical” Khmer arts at École du Louvre, from 1950-52. After working for two years as an architect in Paris, Molyvann returned to Cambodia and was in 1956 appointed by Sihanouk as chief architect for state buildings and Head of Urban Planning and Housing Development in Phnom Penh. He was only thirty years old at the time. In 1965 he was appointed founding rector of the
4 For an introduction to the breath of Vann Molyvann’s “long, multifaceted career” and the depth of his expertise, see Ashley Thompson, “Preface” in Vann Molyvann, Modern Khmer Cities (Phnom Penh: Reyum, 2003), iii-viii. 272 Royal University of Fine Arts—formerly the School of Cambodian Arts, which George Groslier had founded in 1917—and in 1967 he became national
Minister for Education and Fine Arts. He left Cambodia in 1971, after Lon
Nol’s coup but before completion of his National Teacher Training College.
He remained active internationally throughout the following decades, returning to Cambodia in 1993, when he resumed an active advisory role in government and culture, including as a Minister of State with three portfolios for much of the 1990s, with responsibilities including the conservation of
Angkor, encompassing management of urban planning and tourism as well.5
Molyvann’s influence over the architecture and urban environments of the Sangkum era is greater than that of any other individual. Many other
Cambodian architects active during the period, such as Lu Ban Hap (លូ )ន
6 +ប់ born 1931, also educated in France, and distantly related to Molyvann ) and Mam Sophana (ម៉ម សូ/ន់0 born 1936), cite Molyvann’s importance in insisting on the need for architects and public buildings. 7 However, this chapter will not include substantial discussion of Molyvann’s life or oeuvre
(apart from a visual and spatial analysis of specific projects, chiefly the
Stadium). There is no need to do so because Building Cambodia, Ross and
5 Biographical information chiefly drawn from Ross and Collins, Building Cambodia, 230-231. 6 Interview with Lu Ban Hap, Paris, France, June 2015. 7 As mentioned several times in Ross and Collins, Building Cambodia. 273 Collins’ foundational survey of Sangkum-era architecture, has already made strong contributions to this important task, significantly extended by the architectural research of The Vann Molyvann Project, a collaboration initiated by US architect Bill Greaves in 2009, with Cambodian architect and urbanist
Pen Sereypagna playing an increasingly central role in the years since.
Gathering teams of students and researchers from Cambodian and foreign universities, The Vann Molyvann Project documents Molyvann’s built projects, partly through interviews and archival research, and primarily through detailed architectural surveys resulting in technical drawings and models; a publication is being planned. 8 The Project is, in effect, reconstructing an archive: a recurrent trope in the post-war and digitally enabled contemporary context. Several extensively researched documentary films profiling
Molyvann have also been produced.9 A survey essay and edited interview was also published in a leading US architecture journal,10 and further archival research has been made into Molyvann’s Japanese collaborators.11
8 See http://www.vannmolyvannproject.org [Accessed January 2017]. In June to September 2015, I joined an intensive research gathering of the Project, titled “Summer School 2015” and lead by Pen Sereypagna. I was also able to observe at close proximity the planning of this event. This participant observation research offers me an insight into the thinking and activities of The Vann Molyvann Project, including its strengths and its shortcomings. 9 The Man Who Built Cambodia, a 35-minute documentary directed by Christopher Rompré and written by Christopher Rompré and Haig Balian, was released in 2015. Another short film by artist Hyun-Suk Seo is currently in production. 10 Darryl Collins, “Vann Molyvann: Situating the Work of Cambodia’s Most Influential Architect,” Perspecta 45, “Agency” edition (2012): 77-86. Vann Molyvann. “The Agency Interview: The Litany of Power, The Legacy of Modernism,” excerpts 274 What all these efforts share is a primary attention to recording historical data and architectural details, rather than to the interpretive analysis of this information. This not only relates to the archival impulse of the post-war contemporary, but is also an effect of the solely architectural focus of much research into Molyvann’s work, without the analytic or interdisciplinary possibilities of broader histories of arts and culture.
While Vann Molyvann is the undisputed architect of the Stadium and dozens of other structures, numerous others were involved in the process; design is always a collaborative act, and especially so in such large-scale projects. This is recognized by many architects. For example, Mam Sophana,
Molyvann’s contemporary, who was trained in the US from 1958 to 1963, has observed that “architecture is an artistic achievement, integrating the ideas of the architect, the engineer, the client, and the contractor.” 12 Some of the transnational collaborators in the Stadium and other works will be discussed below, in light of the relationship between (political) neutralism and
(architectural) modernism. As shall be seen, not only were engineers and designers from numerous countries involved, but each in turn embodied in
of interviews conducted by Bill Greaves (2010) and Dutin Roasa (2010), Perspecta 45: Agency (2012): 89-98. 11 Kosuke Matsubara, “Japanese Collaborators in the Golden Age of Modern Khmer City and Architecture in Cambodia,” The 15th Science Council of Asia Board Meeting and International Symposium, Siem Reap, Cambodia, May 2015. 12 Quoted (in translation) in Rann Samnang, “Air, Light and Water: Veteran Architect Mam Sophana Talks About His Work,” in Sthapatyakam: The Architecture of Cambodia, ed. An Danhsipo et al (Phnom Penh: Department of Media and Communication, Royal University of Phnom Penh, ca. 2012), 12. 275 various ways a cosmopolitan attitude to architecture and a transnational training.
Immense spaces such as the Stadium are shaped not only by a complexly collaborative design process, but also by hundreds of construction workers, whose names are lost to history. These men and women are, as
Vikramāditya Prakāsh has written of their counterparts in Chandigarh,
“classic subaltern subject[s], silenced and unrepresented.”13 Literal traces of their role in the process are imprinted in the rough and evidently hand- rendered surfaces of the building’s raw concrete.14 This makes an attention to the typically overlooked role of construction workers in the literal making of modern spaces especially compelling.
Yet whereas Le Corbusier frequently published photographs of the anonymous construction workers who built Chandigarh, archival images
13 Vikramāditya Prakāsh, “Béton Brut and the Rough Poetry of Le Corbusier’s Capitol in Chandigarh,” in Gavin Hipkins: Leisure Valley, exh. cat., ed. Charlotte Huddleston and Kristen Wineera (Auckland: St Paul St Publishing and Ilam Press, 2014), 14. 14 Writing of deliberately rough-surfaced concrete such as this in the “brutalist” buildings of Le Corbusier in Chandigarh, Prakāsh notes that “Traditionally in India, the roughness of the construction was covered over with fine stonework….By deciding to leave the concrete as it came out of the shuttering, he was thus taking a risk—a risk that, some today might argue, has not panned out. The sense that the buildings were left unfinished, rough and incomplete has been interpellated by their later [sic] day inhabitants as the freedom to not bother maintaining the buildings ‘as they were,’ to not clean them, to let rain darken them with residue, to insert cheap additions wherever they felt the need, to run new infrastructure such as air conditioners and air-conditioning lines wherever they want through the buildings, to find ever novel and ever uglier ways of water-proofing them, to paint them or otherwise despoil them as per their own needs and expectation.” Prakāsh, “Béton Brut,” 12. There are clear parallels in the post-war treatment of many Sangkum era buildings in Cambodia, including the painting of the Stadium’s external concrete surfaces which began in 2013. 276 from Molyvann’s own collection that show the Stadium in the process of being built are devoid of human presence (Figure 6.1). The privileging of the heroic architect not only casts his workers as anonymous, but indeed renders them invisible. It is as if the rough-finished concrete lifted and shaped itself, without any workers involved at all—or, better, as if the building was not only designed by Vann Molyvann alone, but constructed single-handedly by him too. Tellingly, one of these eerily evacuated images was selected by Pen
Sereypagna for promotion of a three-month program intensive research as part of The Vann Molyvann Project, titled “Summer School” and running from
June to September 2015. 15 The image received favourable comments from
Cambodian students and others, both online and at several of the Project’s public events. The archival image reveals the Project’s focus as being exclusively on built forms, and not on the complex and collaborative processes that created them. It also suggests that the celebration of Molyvann
(but not his workers) as it played out under Sihanouk’s rule continues in the twenty first century.
15 See http://www.vannmolyvannproject.org/ under “Summer School 2015” [Accessed June 2015] 277
Figure 6. 1
In addition to the collaborative nature of design and construction being often overlooked, there are projects that are usually attributed to Vann
Molyvann that are in fact of disputed authorship. Lu Ban Hap, who was second only to Molyvann in his prolific and highly visible public works during the Sangkum era, has asserted with certainty that he was the architect of the master plan for the Bassac Riverfront Complex. 16 A large district comprising social housing, a state theatre, conservatory and other works amidst sprawling gardens on reclaimed land, completed in the mid-1960s, the
Bassac Riverfront is generally attributed to Molyvann. Neither Molyvann nor
Ban Hap retain original plans, which were lost in the tumult of their
16 Interview with Lu Ban Hap, Paris, June 2015. With thanks to Vuth Lyno. All translations are my own. Unless otherwise noted, all subsequent references to Lu Ban Hap are from this interview. 278 relocations during the civil war after 1970. Other prominent sites usually attributed to Molyvann, which Ban Hap has claimed as his own work, include the filling of a former pond to create the Wat Botum park, and the filling of the canal and landscaping of Monivong Boulevard. Ban Hap acknowledges the Preah Suramarit National Theatre (completed 1968, destroyed 2008) in
Phnom Penh’s Bassac Riverfront Complex, as being Molyvann’s design, but claims that its genesis was in Ban Hap’s own university studies, and that the two architects began preliminary work on the project when they were both in
Paris during the 1950s. Moreover, at least one building commonly attributed to Ban Hap, Sihanouk’s house in the Chamkarmon compound, is no longer recognized by the architect as his own work.
Disputed authorship is an especially vexed problem in the Cambodian context, given the loss and dispersal of many archival sources. The oral testimony of Lu Ban Hap, Vann Molyvann and others—mostly collected decades after the events in question, and shaped by the shifting of memory— cannot be independently verified. Moreover, a cultural deference to senior and learned figures makes challenging their claims taboo; personal (and indeed familial) relationships further complicate this. And of course, the most complex and most fundamental challenge of all is the mercurial and shape- shifting nature of memory, especially memory as it travels across decades and continents, times and places punctuated by the tragedy of war and the upheaval of involuntary relocation. 279 These challenges, in combination with a singular focus on Vann
Molyvann in recent years, has obscured the complexities of understanding modern spaces, and the uncertainties around the leadership of some projects.
Despite Ban Hap’s prominence in Sangkum architecture and urban planning, my meeting with him in 2015 was the first time he had been interviewed in
Khmer since relocating to France in the 1970s, and one of only a small number of research interviews he ever conducted in any language.17
Alongside the problem of disputed authorship is a related challenge, of duplication: many government buildings are of near-identical design, but were designed by multiple different figures. Collaboration, especially on official projects, often closely resembled imitation. School buildings, constructed in painted concrete, with two or three storeys of classrooms arranged in a straight line off a sheltered corridor, are a typical example. The basic form is not significantly different from the design of school buildings constructed under the late colonial period, except that the French-style pitched roofs with protruding eaves supported by decorative wooden beams have been replaced by flat concrete roofs, sometimes with small parapets, and the ventilation and shading has been increased. These unadorned, rectangular
17 Researchers working with Ross and Collins on Building Cambodia interviewed Lu Ban Hap in 2001. Thanks to Moritz Henning, who has interviewed Ban Hap for German-language articles, for assisting with contacting Mr and Mrs Lu. Thanks also to Vuth Lyno and Pen Sereypagna. 280 buildings—in one sense, perhaps the epitome of modern practical efficiency— can be found across the country. The vast majority are nearly identical.
The school building in central Phnom Penh that was transformed into the S-21 prison (also known as Tuol Sleng) under Khmer Rouge rule, perhaps the best-known example of this design form, required remarkably little modification to be transformed from school into prison. 18 Lu Ban Hap proudly claims that this building was his design.19 The painter, Chan Lay
Heng (ច័ន3 ៃឡេហង 1934-2011), who was trained at the Cambodian School of
Fine Arts from 1954 to 1961, worked with Ban Hap in the Bureau of Public
Construction of the City Hall. He was involved in the design and construction of a primary school for girls, now called Chaktomuk School (Figure 6.2).20 The structure is virtually indistinguishable from Ban Hap’s school building that was transformed into the S-21 Khmer Rouge prison.
18 For a discussion of repressive power and spatial organization of institutions including schools and prisons, see Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (London: Penguin, 1991). 19 This historically significant building is not mentioned in Ross and Collins, Building Cambodia, although numerous other secondary schools are covered. According to Chandler, the secondary school was originally named Ponhea Yat, after an historically significant king. After the overthrow of Sihanouk’s Sangkum in 1970, it was renamed Tuol Svay Prey, after its surrounding neighbourhood. The adjoining primary school was named Tuol Sleng; after 1980 this latter name came to be used for the entire complex. David Chandler, Voices From S-21: Terror and History in Pol Pot’s Secret Prison (Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 1999), 4. 20 Chan Vitharin (ច័ន3 វ9:;រ9ន3), ច័ន3 ៃឡេហង៖ ជីវ9ត និង ABៃដ Chan Lay Heng: Life and Works, English and Khmer, trans. Khun Sathal and Chan Vitharong (ឃុន AFល់ និង ច័ន3 វ9:;រGុង) (Phnom Penh: Chan’s Arts Edition, 2013), 16. 281
Figure 6. 2
The similarity in these schools, as in numerous other government buildings constructed during the Sangkum, strongly suggests that the design process was closely collaborative (in this case between Lay Heng and Ban
Hap, his supervisor), or that multiple individuals chose to author separate buildings in an almost identical style, that is, that design was imitative. In either case, an interpretive focus on singular authors is evidently insufficient for an understanding of modern spaces.
Most private houses built during the Sangkum era are buildings of which the origins, designers, and plans are lost to history. These constitute the anonymous modern, in ways that I will elaborate further below. In addition to offering detailed descriptions of the stylistic features and uses of these modern houses, I posit a more general theoretical contention regarding the importance of the anonymous in an understanding of modernity, in
282 contradistinction to the tendency to celebrate individuated authorial achievements, and thus contribute to the canonization of heroic figures in cultural histories.
Of course, the designers and plans of private houses anywhere are often forgotten and lost over time. Yet the near-total absence of town planning records from the Sangkum era is particular to Cambodia’s post-war context.
Moreover, most Cambodians have very few—if any—documents or personal mementoes from the pre-1975 period, and almost no one in Phnom Penh was able to return to their pre-1975 home in the post-1979 repopulation of the city. 21 This is a unique circumstance, which poignantly underscores the importance of considering the anonymous in understanding modern spaces.
Phnom Penh is a city that not only lends itself to but also indeed demands an attentiveness to anonymous cultural formations, especially from the immediately pre-war modern period. But my interest in those many houses that were designed by figures whose names are now unknown is not only an interest born of necessity, but also out of a conviction that the experience of modernity, here as elsewhere, was shaped not only by canonical “genius” figures but also by spaces and forms that were, in many ways, already and always anonymous.
21 Personal conversations with numerous Cambodians confirm historians’ accounts. See Evan Gottesman, After the Khmer Rouge: Inside the Politics of Nation Building (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2003). See also Margaret Slocomb, The People's Republic of Kampuchea 1979-1989. The Revolution After Pol Pot (Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 2003). 283 In the Cambodian case, large-scale projects (be they of certain authorship by Vann Molyvann, or of disputed, duplicated, or collaborative authorship) as well as anonymously designed small-scale houses are equally worthy and rewarding of close attention, and indeed are mutually revealing of one another. Significantly, a formal vocabulary is shared across larger and smaller buildings and spaces, as will be revealed through visual and spatial analysis; moreover commonalities in uses and experiences of both larger and smaller spaces is revealed through ethnographic, archival and other forms of analysis.
But before coming to discuss these anonymous modern houses in detail, I turn to a discussion of the relationship between (architectural) modernism and (political) neutralism in the Sangkum, through consideration of Vann Molyvann’s most ambitious and successful project, the National
Stadium in Phnom Penh. My analysis of the Stadium (and a few other large- scale public projects from the period) is based in a formal study of the experience and uses of space—at the time of construction, through to the twenty first century—rather than on the architect’s biography or vision per se.
284 Neutralism and modernism
“[Upon returning to Cambodia in 1956,] I noticed that there was an unprecedented creative dynamism in my country after a long period of decline. Everybody was aware that it was necessary to rediscover our origins, the motivation behind our country’s existence and that like any country with an ancient tradition, it should reassert its own personality.” —Vann Molyvann, 1964.22
Let us begin by returning to the financing of the National Stadium’s construction with a special surtax on ice, iced dessert and alcohol: items that are, like the Stadium itself, examples of “necessary extravagance.” Given the bountiful investments in construction and built space offered as “aid” by the
US, Soviet and Chinese governments in the years preceding the Stadium’s
1963 construction, it can be safely assumed that Prince Sihanouk could easily have sought their sponsorship for the ambitious Stadium project. Indeed, in the same year as the Stadium’s construction, the United States presented an enormous exhibition of agricultural and industrial machinery, which attracted over 200,000 visitors.23 In 1960, the renowned author Han Suyin characterized the situation as follows:
“Being neutral, Cambodia gets help from everyone. The airport was French aid, the road was American; an enormous, dazzling white hospital was Russian, something else was Czech; three factories were
22 Vann Molyvann, in La Dépêche du Cambodge, 1964. Quoted in Ross and Collins, Building Cambodia, 129. Emphasis added. Molyvann was returning from study in France. 23 USA NARA. RG 306/131/39/11/1 Box 3. Declassification Authority NND74610. 285 given by China, the Japanese were taking out rusty water pipes and replacing the lot with Made-in-Japan plumbing; and so it went on.”24
Given this context, it is especially striking that the Stadium was funded by a domestic tax, rather than through international “aid.”
That Sihanouk chose not to seek sponsorship from any foreign governments for the Stadium’s construction points to the Stadium’s status as not only an outcome but also a symbol of Cambodia’s policy of neutrality. To perform this neutralist rhetorical function—and thus also to avoid being subject to a politicized naming battle by an external power, as was the Khmer
American Friendship Boulevard, later renamed the Russian Boulevard, and many other construction projects at the time—the Stadium needed to be independently funded, and thus a special tax was necessary. The government’s choice of goods to tax is particularly poetic.
Ice, ice cream, and alcohol—the only items chosen for the special tax that funded the National Stadium’s construction—are consumables that may appear to be luxuries, and yet that are also widely considered by Cambodians to be necessities in the tropical climate. And so too construction of the
Stadium may be seen to have been at once an ambitious extravagance— especially in a moment of national budget deficit 25 —and an essential
24 Han Suyin, “The Laughing Cambodians,” Eastern Horizon 1, No. 1 (July 1960): 24. Emphasis in original. 25 “1963 SEAP Games May Be Financial Problem.” USA NARA. RG 59/250/4/18/3 Box 2558. Declassification Authority NND949601. 286 component in Sihanouk’s project of nation-building. More than any other single structure built during the Sangkum period, the Stadium performed rhetorically to articulate Cambodian modern nationhood, demonstrating the ways in which Cambodian modernity would shape space, and in turn the ways in which modern space would shape and be shaped by modern
Cambodians. And here, more clearly than in any other single project, we can discern the centrality of a neutralist posture to the Sangkum’s cultural and political identity.
One especially clear way in which Phnom Penh’s National Stadium, and several other large-scale state-sponsored projects, embodied Cambodian neutralism was in their omnivorous adoption of expert assistance from both the “Free World” and the Soviet bloc. Ross and Collins note that French and
Soviet engineers worked with Cambodians on the National Stadium.26 Kosuke
Matsubara’s archival research reveals that French-trained Japanese architects
Gyoji Banshoya and Nobuo Goto also worked on the Stadium, and indeed that this experience inspired Nobuo to embark on a larger research project on
Khmer wooden housing.27
26 Ross and Collins, Building Cambodia, 212ff. 27 Alongside work on the project, the Gyoji and Nobuo researched stilted housing forms. They later presented a proposal for low-cost housing, called “Habitat Experimental” in the French journal L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui. See Kosuke Matsubara, “Japanese Collaborators in the Golden Age of Modern Khmer City and Architecture in Cambodia,” The 15th Science Council of Asia Board Meeting and International Symposium, Siem Reap, Cambodia, May 2015. 287 A second, equally clear way in which the Sangkum’s neutralist policy was articulated in the National Stadium was in the diverse uses to which the space was put. Although the 1963 Southeast Asian Games which initially prompted its construction were cancelled and the 1963 World Games of the
New Emerging Forces (GANEFO) were relocated to Jakarta,28 the Stadium hosted speeches and rallies from leaders and prominent figures from across the spectrum of politics, from Charles de Gaulle in 1966 to Pol Pot a decade later. Just as the Royal Ballet’s performances proved remarkably flexible in their ability to shift political allegiances, as discussed in Chapter 5, so too the dramatic spaces of the Stadium were equally amenable to political figures from across the spectrum.
The Sangkum leaders repeatedly asserted the important role of women in the nation’s achievements. In Sihanouk’s short films celebrating the
Sangkum’s achievements, numerous modernist buildings are used as backdrops. In a 24 minute colour film titled Women During Sangkum Reastr
Niyum (1960s), an all-female team plays basketball in the grounds surrounding the National Stadium (Figure 6.3) and a fleet of women sail along the Tonle Sap and Mekong rivers, close to the Chaktomuk Conference
Hall (designed by Vann Molyvann, opened 1961)(Figure 6.4).29 In functioning
28 Ross and Collins, Building Cambodia, 212. 29 Norodom Sihanouk, Le femme cambodgienne à l’heure du Sangkum [Women during Sangkum Reastr Niyum], Khemara Pictures, 1960s. Bophana Center, Archive Reference NSI_VI_001568. 288 as symbols of the Sangkum’s technologically advanced modernization program and political neutralism, the buildings are also positioned as symbolic articulations of the central place of women in this national project.
Figure 6. 3
Figure 6. 4
289 Less obviously, but just as importantly, the Stadium and indeed all manner of modern spaces in Cambodia articulated and enacted the policy of neutralism through the simple but fundamental fact of their vernacularization. “The vocabulary adopted by city planners and architects for the new buildings of the independent capital,” Molyvann later explained,
“was that of the modern movement adapted to the Khmer context.”30 Local adaptation of International Style modernism, adjusting its forms and features to suit climatic, cultural and other needs, is a phenomenon found throughout the world, and especially notably in postcolonial contexts.31 Yet the latent but forceful political motivations for and implications of this adapting and adjusting of foreign architectural vocabularies are generally not made explicit.
Molyvann also specifically links the innovative design forms he and his peers adopted to the political function of the buildings. “The necessity of rapidly designing and constructing buildings to house the institutions of the newly independent State,” he later wrote,
“led to major public works which encouraged architectural experimentation. The emphasis was on developing a new national identity and affirming Cambodia’s role on the international stage.”32
30 Vann Molyvann, Modern Khmer Cities (Phnom Penh: Reyum, 2004), 157. 31 Related practices are found also in colonial architecture. See: Jiat-Hwee Chang, A Genealogy of Tropical Architecture: Colonial Networks, Nature and Technoscience (London and New York: Routledge, 2016). 32 Molyvann, Modern Khmer Cities, 157. 290 The aesthetic of modern spaces in Cambodia is thus explicitly linked to a political desire to “affirm” the newly independent nation’s “national identity” and “role,” one defined during the first decade of the Sangkum by neutralism.
This is most clearly discerned in large, state-sponsored projects such as the Stadium, built under Sihanouk’s direction. Such modern spaces explicitly and self-consciously assert the State’s policies. They were, in Molyvann’s words, “emblematic buildings of the young State,” displaying a
“characteristic style.”33 Yet in my below discussion of private houses built in the Sangkum era, I will point to the perhaps surprising degree to which these smaller-scale buildings, built by and for citizens rather than the State, may be understood as a testament to the degree to which neutralism and nationalism were negotiated by Cambodia’s population, and not only by its leaders.
Bricks, concrete, and many modernisms
Having discussed the importance of the anonymous, and the relationship between the architecturally modern and the politically neutralist, we will now consider other modernisms at play in the construction of Cambodian modern spaces. Of course, Cambodian modern architecture emerged in implicit dialogue not only with Soviet and European and North American
33 Molyvann, Modern Khmer Cities, 157. 291 modernisms, but with many other forms too. This is revealed through several related approaches.
Firstly, let us consider the availability of various modern architectures to Cambodian publics. In addition to the first-hand exposure of the people who were educated in France—including Vann Molyvann, Lu Ban Hap, and others—broader Cambodian publics were introduced to a range of modernization projects from across Asia and the US in the Free World magazine, published internationally as part of the United States Information
Service’s propaganda efforts and produced under the title េHកេសរJ Lōk Serei in Khmer from 1951 to 1959. In monthly, fully illustrated editions, Lōk Serei regularly featured newly constructed universities, stadiums, and other large- scale structures.34
Secondly, a study of built form as well as archival analysis suggests numerous intra-regional dialogues. Formally, in some public buildings, especially those designed by Mam Sophana, there are stylistic similarities with South Vietnamese modern buildings; I will return to this again shortly.
Archivally, there is evidence that Singapore’s modernization was an inspiration for Phnom Penh’s; it is thus likely that the influence was mutual.
Singapore’s prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew, in an official address at the state dinner given in his honour during a 1967 visit to Cambodia, enthused that
34 A complete archive of the Khmer-language edition of Free World was consulted at the USA NARA. RG 306/230/46/43/6 Box 231-232. 292 “the new Phnom Penh [has] the architectural style, in steel and concrete, of what Angkor had in sandstone and laterite” and made special mention of an
“exhibition building … founded on newly reclaimed land.”35 The reclaiming of land, as well as mass construction in steel and concrete, would come to be defining features of Singapore but were at the time of this visit only in their infancy.36 Yet Sihanouk’s earlier visit to Singapore in 1962 also coincided with the city-state’s initial stages of development of the high-rise apartment housing for which it would later be renowned.37 Photographic records of the visit show Sihanouk being shown plans for large-scale urban housing (Figure
6.5).38 This follows closely from his 1961 announcement that “our capital must deal with the problem of the urban population … We must begin the construction of low-cost apartment buildings.”39
35 Lee Kuan Yew, “Speech by the Prime Minister, Mr Lee Kuan Yew, at the State Dinner in his Honour Given by the Head of State of Cambodia, Samdech Norodom Sihanouk, in Phnom Penh on December 7th, 1967.” National Archives of Singapore, lky/1967/lky1207b. 36 Reclaiming of land in Singapore began in 1965. See Joshua Comaroff, “Built on Sand: Singapore and the New State of Risk,” Harvard Design Magazine 39, “Wet Matter” (2014). http://www.harvarddesignmagazine.org/issues/39/built-on-sand- singapore-and-the-new-state-of-risk [Accessed April 2016] 37 The Housing Development Board (HDB), now synonymous with Singapore’s high- density, high-rise apartments, was established in 1959. Yue-man Yeung, National Development Policy and Urban Transformation in Singapore (Chicago: University of Chicago Department of Geography, 1973), 34-35. 38 Image 20120000379 – 0025, Negative A4083/14/32, Ministry of Information and the Arts, 19/12/1962. National Archives of Singapore. http://www.nas.gov.sg/ archivesonline/photographs/record-details/29cf20be-43a6-11e4-859c-0050568939ad [Accessed June 2016] 39 Quoted in Ross and Collins, Building Cambodia, 16.
293
Figure 6. 5
It is important to stress that the records from Sihanouk’s 1962 visit to
Singapore, and Lee Kuan Yew’s 1967 visit to Cambodia, suggest that intra- regional dialogues were mutual; there is no evidence to suggest that Phnom
Penh served as a model for Singapore, or any other regional cities.40 That
Phnom Penh was significantly more “developed” than neighbouring capital cities at the time is a myth widely believed by younger Cambodians, which is clearly derived from the notion of the pre-1975 decades as a “golden age.” It is a myth also upheld in several scholarly sources, most commonly through citation of a quote attributed to Lee Kuan Yew, supposedly uttered during his
1967 visit to Phnom Penh.41 According to legend, while “cruising along the
40 It was, however, regarded as a glamorous and stylish capital by others in the region. Anecdotal evidence, from conversations with Thais and Singaporeans who were teenagers during the Sangkum years, on their impressions of Phnom Penh’s reputation at that time. 41 Alvin Cheng-Hin Lim, for example, cites the supposed quote as an instance of “historical irony,” and uses it as a departure point for a narrative which contrasts 294 capital’s elegant boulevards,” Lee said to Sihanouk, “I hope, one day, my city will look like this.”42 The quote has been repeated in numerous settings, yet no original source is ever provided. There is no mention of it in the extensive records of Lee’s visit held in the National Archives of Singapore. What is recorded there, to the contrary, is evidence that Lee “rested in Phnom Penh” and rather than “cruising” anywhere, instead relied on his “more energetic children” to visit the city’s sights—including several specifically named modern buildings—which they then “described to [him].”43 Given this, it is highly likely that Lee never said that he hoped his city would look like
Phnom Penh, since he saw very little of Phnom Penh at all.
Besides these intra-regional points of reference, a third exemplar of the dialogues with multiple modernisms that informed Cambodian built forms lies in the fact that many of the foreign architects and engineers who assisted with the Stadium and other large-scale projects had very cosmopolitan backgrounds. Vladimir Bodiansky, a Ukrainian-born, French-trained engineer, was involved in numerous large-scale projects and indeed Lu Ban
Hap claims that his design for the Bassac Municipal Apartments—now known as the White Building (Figure 6.6)—was derived from one of
Singapore’s ascent into “developed country status” with Cambodia’s contemporaneous descent into “third worlding.” Alvin Cheng-Hin Lim, Cambodia and the Politics of Aesthetics (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2013), 24. 42 Robert Turnbull, “View From Phnom Penh,” The Architectural Review 215 (2004): 38-39. 43 Lee, “Speech.” 295 Bodiansky’s designs for a building in Algeria (Figure 6.7). Bodiansky also worked on projects in France, Belgian Congo, Morocco, and elsewhere.44 Gyoji and Nobuo, the Japanese architects who worked on the Stadium and conducted research on Khmer wooden houses, also worked on projects in many international locations, including Algiers, Damascus, Beirut and
Aleppo, as well as in Japan.45
Figure 6. 6
44 Tom Avermaete and Maristella Casciato, Casablanca Chandigarh: A Report on Modernization (Montreal and Zurich: Canadian Centre for Architecture and Park Books, 2014), 151-2. 45 Kosuke Matsubara, “Japanese Collaborators.” 296
Figure 6. 7
In each of these places, the collaborators and architectural forms that
Bodiansky, Gyoji, Nobuo and their colleagues would have encountered were unmistakably cosmopolitan. In his interdisciplinary study of modern spaces in France from the 1830s to 1930s, Paul Rabinow argues that research into and reproductions of building styles in the colonies were vital in the formation of
French versions of architectural modernism: “the World Expositions in Paris, particularly those of 1889 and 1900, exercised great influence on the development of new methods of architectural construction and on the imagination of young architects, designers, and future urbanists.”46 Algeria—
46 Paul Rabinow, French Modern: Norms and Forms of the Social Environment (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1995 [1989]), 219. It is worth noting that at several colonial expositions, “reproductions” of Angkor Wat were presented to widespread acclaim (as well as a little anti-colonial outrage). See Penny Edwards, 297 a location that recurs in the professional biographies of Bodiansky, Gyoji and
Nobuo, and to which Ban Hap and Molyvann would have been exposed while in France—proves an especially rich site of connection. Rabinow traces the professional biography of Hubert Lyautey (1854-1934), who while head of the French colonial protectorate in Morocco from 1912 to 1925 indulged a deep and (in Rabinow’s terms) “predictably Orientalist” fascination with
Arabic culture.47 While in Algiers, and indeed wherever he went, Lyautey
“decorated his home…in an exotic style, in this instance, à l’arabe.”48 Here, parallels to George Groslier’s penchant for Cambodian-style exotica might easily be drawn.49 From his exotically cosmopolitan home in Algiers, Lyautey lamented the legacy of unimaginative French urban planning in the city: “Ah the prefabs! the prefabs! the single-minded spirit of the French civil servant.”50
These “dreary towns” of “soulless provincial monotony” inspired Lyautey’s zeal for new forms of construction—a zeal which he brought from Indochina, where he had been stationed two decades prior. There, he deplored Saigonese colonial buildings that too closely replicated the forms (and therefore, the
Cambodge: The Cultivation of a Nation 1860-1945 (Hawai’i and Chiang Mai: University of Hawai’i Press and Silkworm Books, 2008), especially 19-39 and 144-165. 47 Rabinow, French Modern, 106-111. 48 Rabinow, French Modern, 113. 49 Kent Davis’ biography includes images of Groslier in Paris in 1908, wearing a kimono and surrounded by East Asian as well as Cambodian imagery; by 1913, after his return to his birthplace in Cambodia, Groslier’s office is almost exclusively decorated with Cambodian objets d’art. See Kent Davis, “Le Khmérophile: The Art and Life of George Groslier” in George Groslier, Cambodian Dancers Ancient & Modern, ed. Kent Davis, trans. Pedro Rodríguez (Florida: DatAsia, 2011),163-280. 50 Quoted (in English translation) in Rabinow, French Modern, 112. 298 failings) of those in France: “aside from verandas, these were the same buildings [in Saigon] he had just left in France,” Rabinow explains.51 Lyautey instead celebrated the new and more “tropical” designs he encountered in the
British colony of Singapore.
The design and planning predilections and itinerant professional trajectory of Lyautey, as sketched above, closely foreshadow those of the architects and engineers (both Cambodian and foreign) of the Sangkum era.
Among the multiple forms of modernity that come to play in the shaping of
Cambodian modern spaces, an avowedly transnational and cosmopolitan experience and education is shared by most of the key figures.
A fourth form of modernity of particular relevance to Sangkum era architecture and urban design is Japanese architectural modernism. Japanese architects’ use of modular design features that are based in “pre-modern”
Japanese construction techniques rather than in Corbusier’s scientific rationalism, were also identified by Molyvann as an important inspiration:
“Japan taught me about architecture,” he has said. Ross and Collins astutely observe the important principle that “Japanese architecture was organized and rational—the size of building was determined by the tatami.” 52 This modular approach, building on evenly sized rectilinear blocks, can be observed in many of Molyvann’s designs, and especially in those, like the
51 Rabinow, French Modern, 125. 52 Ross and Collins, Building Cambodia, 205. 299 Stadium, build in unfinished concrete (or béton brut) in which square forms made by the construction workers can clearly be discerned. That Molyvann should cite Japan as such an important influence is particularly noteworthy given that French modernism also voraciously adopted Japanese forms,53 and given also that the style of drawing and painting from life that came to be known as “modern painting” was first taught at the School of Cambodian
Arts by Suzuki Shigenari, a Japanese painter trained in France, as was discussed in Chapter 3.
With this dizzying array of concurrent and cosmopolitan modernisms, and especially with this emphasis on the modular spatial designs developed in Japan, let us shift our attention away from discursive historiography and toward a close visual and spatial analysis of built forms from the Sangkum era. First, we will consider the National Stadium and some other large-scale public projects; then we will discuss smaller private homes.
“A big place, but with many smaller places”: the National Stadium
Designed by Vann Molyvann and inaugurated in 1964, the National Sports
Complex (as it is officially known; it is colloquially referred to using the
53 For an introduction to French “Japonisme” as it was enacted within Japanese modern cultures, see Roy Starrs, Modernism and Japanese Culture (Hampshire and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 140-151. 300 Khmer loan-word from the French stade) is one of Phnom Penh’s largest structures. Its original design, in which the building itself was surrounded by expanses of grass and water (Figures 6.8 and 6.9), was rivalled in size in the capital only by the Royal Palace and the Royal University of Phnom Penh, and trumped only by the Pochentong International Airport and air base. Even in its presently diminished land area—the surrounding areas now occupied by privately owned high-rises, malls, and other structures built in the last decade—the Stadium is one of the busiest public spaces in Cambodia.
Figure 6. 8
301
Figure 6. 9
And yet, despite its physical size and popularity, as well as its symbolic weight as the gathering place of the newly independent nation—and designed as a technologically updated version of Angkor Wat, no less, as we shall see—I contend that the Stadium falls short of conveying a totalizing monumentality. In what follows, I will offer some remarks regarding the
Stadium’s formal characteristics and symbolic meanings, as well as the phenomenological experience of occupying its spaces, and the ways in which these spaces are used by leaders and publics. I argue that the structure provides numerous zones for flexible use, connected but separate and distinct; it operates not as one mega-space but rather an assemblage of internally demarcated spaces, which serve to effectively divide a particularly
302 “big place” into surprisingly “many smaller places.”54 These features of the
Stadium mitigate its scale, and thus avoid the possibility of a dominating monumentality. Moreover these features enact further continuities and similarities with “pre-modern” domestic architecture, even in such a grand structure. The prominent use of (and visual references to) columns also formally recalls the stilts used in wooden houses, underscoring the connection to existing forms of vernacular construction, as we shall see in the next section.
Vann Molyvann himself considers the Stadium, along with the
Chaktomuk Conference Hall and the National Theatre, as among his “best works.”55 The frequency with which the Stadium was used for all manner of functions, as well as its regular appearance in Cambodian newspapers and magazines during the Sangkum period, testify to the Stadium’s popularity and stature during that era. So too do the memories of older Cambodians, many of whom recall with fondness and pride their first visits to the Stadium in the decade in which it was built.
Yet the retrospective canonization of the Stadium as not only
Molyann’s greatest architectural achievement, but indeed as a crowning
54 This comment is from a Cambodian student in her late teens, who (like tens of thousands of her peers, as well as others of all ages) enjoys relaxing at the National Stadium around sunset. I spoke with her in February 2014. Anecdotal evidence, including conversations both with friends and with strangers, informs my understanding of how Cambodians use and experience the Stadium and other spaces. 55 Ross and Collins, Building Cambodia, 207. 303 accomplishment of the Sangkum era, speaks not only of the building as it was originally designed and constructed but also of (both modern and contemporary) views of modernization as a process defined by speed and progress, aided by technology and efficiency. For example, in both a sole- authored journal article and in the monograph co-authored with Ross, Collins makes special mention of the “astonishing” speed of the Stadium’s construction, which was completed in eighteen months.56 Ross and Collins repeatedly note the “spectacular” and “remarkable” speed of the project, which they claim is especially “astounding” in “a small country like
Cambodia,” and further suggest that while the “logistics behind such a complex design are demanding in any circumstances….in Cambodia, it was a feat to achieve the construction of this mammoth work, which is on a scale of the Angkor monuments themselves.”57 The combination of the size of the project, the smallness and “limited technology” of Cambodia, and the rapidity of the Stadium’s construction are cited as “an Angkorian challenge.”58 While arguably a fair characterization, viewed historiographically such hyperbolic praise and emphasis on “speed” and “scale” are also testament to the seductive power of progressivist views of modernization. Cambodian architects and students of architecture born in the generation after 1979
56 Darryl Collins, “Vann Molyvann: Situating the Work of Cambodia’s Most Influential Architect,” Perspecta 45, “Agency” edition (2012): 82. 57 Ross and Collins, Building Cambodia, 207. 58 Ross and Collins, Building Cambodia, 208. 304 frequently perpetuate this mythology; it is central also to the information shared by guides leading the Khmer Architecture Tours, popular among
Cambodian students as well as visiting researchers and tourists. 59 The
Stadium is loved and celebrated in the twenty first century for the spaces it provides, and as a symbol of the imagined “golden age” of the Sangkum.60
Molyvann himself participates in the rhetorical coupling of the
Stadium with Angkor. In a retrospective account of the structure, he writes that its “series of water surfaces recalled the characteristic moats of Khmer settlement.”61 While true, this statement overlooks the equally obvious fact that the water surfaces also recall the ponds which can be found next to many rural Cambodian homes, and in most farms. That the Stadium’s use of water visually recalls domestic spaces such as these is significant as it functions in tandem with the numerous formal references to stilted wooden houses, which we will turn to soon.
The construction of over-sized public arenas in large cities has often been considered as a quintessentially modern act—both of politics and of urban design. Anthropologist Michael Herzfeld articulates a common belief
59 See http://www.ka-tours.org/ [Accessed April 2015] 60 This is an observation drawing on dozens of conversations with Cambodian friends and colleagues from 2012 to 2015. It is also regularly articulated in journalistic and documentary sources. See for example the interview with architect Yam Sokly in the short documentary film, Concrete Visions. New Khmer Architecture (selected scenes, work in progress), directed by Nico Mesterharm, concept by Helen Grant Ross and Nico Mesterharm, Krossover Media Germany and Meta Art Cambodia, 2007. Sokly speaks of a “សម័យLស samay meas,” or golden age. 61 Molyvann, Modern Khmer Cities, 160. 305 when he writes that “Large cities…seem to demand imposing public spaces that express in the form of grand vistas the capital’s surveillance of the entire land.” 62 Yet despite the inherent performance of authority that perhaps inevitably arises upon the gathering of a mass crowd and their leader,
Molyvann’s National Stadium resists classification as a space of domination in any straightforward sense. Inside the Stadium, one never feels subsumed into the great mass of the entire structure, but instead becomes aware of the numerous small zones, each distinct in appearance but also in atmosphere, which combine together to comprise its internally varied totality.
Let me offer some examples of the spatial experience of being inside the Stadium’s various zones, in order to illustrate this sense of it being “a big place, but with many smaller places.” The clearest instance of this is in the indoor stadium. Square in form and covered by a dramatic cruciform suspended concrete roof (Figure 6.10), this is one of the finest of many examples of Molyvann’s use of cross-ventilation to provide natural cooling.
Under each of the approximately 8000 seats is a small opening, which air from outside (as well as some light) can pass through (Figure 6.11). Of course, this functions to cool down the entire space. But whenever there is an even slight breeze (as there very often is at this elevation), each individual spectator can feel it against her or his legs. Watching a sports match or performance, as
62 Michael Herzfeld, “Spatial Cleansing: Monumental Vacuity and the Idea of the West,” Journal of Material Culture 11 (2006): 137. 306 spectators we may often tend to forget ourselves, to come to feel as if dissolved into a mass. Yet the individuated vents in the indoor stadium disrupt this viewing experience; we become bodily aware of our specific position. In short, our experience of the vast space of the indoor stadium is transformed into the experience of a much smaller space: that of our own seat.
Figure 6. 10
Figure 6. 11
307 The main seating in the outdoor stadium has no such individuation; indeed, in its uninterrupted and repeated horizontal lines, running in an almost complete circle, this area functions rather to emphasize the mass nature of the viewing crowd (Figure 6.12). Yet from any position in this main outdoor seating area, one has a clear view of the covered grandstand with its royal and “VIP” seating areas, and also of the large concourse area that runs the entire circumference of the stadium. So while the individual spectator is not architecturally reminded of her or his individual position in the crowd, it is nevertheless spatially emphasized that this seating area—as expansive as it is—is not the entire Stadium, but is just one part of its numerous and distinct components.
Figure 6. 12
There are many more examples of spaces in the Stadium that spatially divide the vastness of the whole complex into smaller components, thus
308 making the experience one of being in a comparatively small space, rather than in an overbearing monument. The swimming pool seating, while physically adjoining the main outdoor stadium, faces away from it and is instead oriented to the city’s centre, thus forming a surprisingly intimate area that can seat up to 8000 people. And, perhaps most prominent of all in the twenty first century context is the open concourse that runs the length of the outdoor stadium, interrupted only by the dramatic cantilevered concrete shades (Figure 6.13). Every evening as the sun sets, thousands of people of all ages gather here, some to exercise in groups led by aerobics instructors and accompanied by recorded music, and others to eat nom kruok and other snacks. As Bill Greaves has argued, the astonishingly varied uses of this space—all self-organized by citizens, without official sponsorship or direction—are testament to the flexibility of Molyvann’s architecture, its openness to multiple uses, and its non-prescriptive character.63 This character works together with the internal division of spaces that I have outlined.
63 Bill Greaves presentation at MលេវH លំហ សំេលង៖ OPរប៊ូលឌិញស េTភVំេពញ] / Time, Space, Voice: Phnom Penh’s White Building, a bilingual symposium convened by Erin Gleeson, Roger Nelson, Pen Sereypagna and Vuth Lyno, presented by SA SA BASSAC and hosted by the Bophana Center, Phnom Penh, 9-10 January 2015. 309
Figure 6. 13
Internal division of very large structures into smaller sub-sections is common in many of the bigger public projects of the Sangkum. The two largest housing developments of the period, co-located in the Bassac
Riverfront Complex and now known as the Grey Building (originally
Olympic Village Apartments, designed by Vann Molyvann and completed c.1963, now renovated beyond recognition) and the White Building (originally
Bassac Municipal Apartments, completed 1963, still extant, Figure 6.6), both featured designs that break up their immense length—several hundred metres each—into smaller sections.
In the White Building, the 468 initially planned apartments were spread over six separate buildings, each linked by an identical open-air staircase which provides light, ventilation, and an informal gathering place for residents. Pen Sereypagna’s detailed study of the White Building’s architectural plans proposes that each of the six individual sub-structures is of
310 a more intimate scale than the Building as a whole, noting that in scale each block is more approximate to a small rural village, where residents would typically know all of their neighbours.64
In the Grey Building, 164 apartments were stacked in undulating
“stepped” formation, which Vann Molyvann claims was inspired by New
York’s skyline, and which appears from some angles or at a distance like numerous buildings close together, rather than one structure. To gain a glimpse of how the building was experienced by its occupants, we may look to an archival photograph from 1968 (Figure 6.14), in which Louise-Marie
Men Makoth née Jarrier (wife of artist Men Makoth, who we discussed in
Chapter 3), a resident at the time, poses in front of the Grey Building with her two young daughters. The photograph is shot from mid-distance, presumably in order to show the figures at full length, in the context of the landscaped garden and the multi-storey building behind them. Significantly, however, a hand-drawn line of blue ink across the building indicates where the Men
Makoth family’s apartment was located. This family memento suggests that these residents’ experience of the “modern space” of the Grey Building was not of the immensity of the overall structure, but rather of the more intimately proportioned section that housed their own apartment.65
64 Pen Sereypagna presentation at Time, Space, Voice: Phnom Penh’s White Building symposium, 2015. 65 The photograph is from the personal archive of Sanda Men Makoth. Interview, Paris, June 2015. With thanks to Adeena Mey. 311
Figure 6. 14
To return to the Stadium, the experience of the internal spaces being smaller and more varied than the structure’s outside appearance suggests is analogous to that of being inside Angkor Wat. Like the Stadium, the temple’s towers are visible from afar, and its size and symmetrical grandeur are reflected in and amplified by the moat that surrounds it. But inside the temple, the immensity of the structure gives way to an experience of the
312 intensity of the detail. Galleries, vestibules, libraries, gardens and many other kinds of spaces, all of them distinctly ornamented, divide the “big place” that is Angkor Wat into “many (smaller) places,” just as I’ve argued occurs in
Vann Molyvann’s National Stadium.
More recent artistic responses to the Stadium reinforce that the structure continues to be perceived and experienced not as a monolithic and monumental whole, but rather as a series of smaller spaces. In a 2012 series of seven photographs by Khvay Samnang (ៃខY សំ0ង born 1982) titled Preah
Ream Thlaeng Sor, two Cambodian boxers and practitioners of the martial art known as bokator pose in different locations around Phnom Penh. The title is a reference to the Khmer Ramayana, known as the Reamker, and this as well as the postures adopted by the boxers and the compositions of the images is intended by the artist to recall the bas reliefs found in the temples at Angkor.66
Two of the images are set in the Stadium. In one, the boxers pose as if doing archery; they appear oblivious to the expanse of the outdoor stadium seating, visible behind them, and instead seem to occupy only the space of the stepped walkway on which they are positioned (Figure 6.15). In another, the figures are posed in the external stepped entry. Cranes dominate the skyline, the horizon in the background a mess of construction. With such rapid
66 Conversations with Khvay Samnang, Phnom Penh, 2012. 313 transformations to the surrounding city, the National Stadium feels smaller and smaller in comparison to the surrounding towers (Figure 6.16).
Figure 6. 15
Figure 6. 10
The comparison with Angkor Wat’s interior spaces that both Khvay
Samnang and I have made is inspired by Vann Molyvann’s own many discussions of the temples. The architect has written and spoken at length on 314 the ways in which the Stadium “derived its rigorous composition from
Angkorian temple ensembles,”67 as did many of his other buildings and urban plans. Drawings, diagrams and notes collected by and held in the archive of
The Vann Molyvann Project, like those published in interviews with Molyvann and in his Modern Khmer Cities, show the precise detail of the architect’s study of and avowed debts to Angkor, and especially to its hydraulic systems.68 Not only the technology of the temples but also their aesthetics are explicitly referenced: for example, the moat surrounding the indoor stadium has both functional value (providing drainage to prevent flooding, providing cooling, providing space to gather and relax) as well as symbolic power (the enlarged square forms at each of its four corners are exactly modelled on those in
Angkor, their distinctive and instantly recognizable shape serving no other purpose).
Allusions to stilted housing in the Stadium and other public buildings
Along with the “water surfaces” discussed above, the key aspect of the
Stadium’s design that links it to “pre-modern” forms of housing is its numerous allusions to the form of stilts. The visual emphasis on and
67 Molyvann, Modern Khmer Cities, 157. 68 Thanks to Pen Sereypagna for generously providing access to the Vann Molyvann Project’s archive. See also Molyvann, Modern Khmer Cities, especially 157-160. 315 references to the supporting columns can be found throughout each of the
Stadium’s numerous components. Some of these references to housing stilts are indeed actual supporting columns, visually highlighted as features of the design; others are staircases and other elements designed in such a way that they resemble stilts—particularly in a context where stilts are among the most familiar elements of construction design to be found. Again, this visual reference comprises a formal vocabulary that is not only common in numerous large-scale projects, but indeed also shared across smaller-scale private residences, as we will see later in this chapter.
In the Stadium, the clearest instance of emphasis on the form of stilts is in the structure of the indoor arena. From the interior (Figure 6.11), the vertical panels of the wall, spaced at regular intervals to permit light and air to pass through, although not actually structurally supporting the roof (which is held aloft by the four large, square columns in each corner), visually appear like stilts: as do the repeated vertical parallel lines in modern houses, which we will discuss soon. Viewed from outside (Figures 6.3, 6.8 and 6.9), these panels in the indoor stadium are less visible than the actual supporting columns, also at regular intervals, just like the stilts in wooden houses, but at an oblique angle that cantilevers over the stairs that provide entry into the space. These stairs, too, look like columns from a certain distance. Both the stairs and the angled columns appear to be vertical, from some positions, while from other vantage points—and especially at close range—their angling 316 and cantilevering appears especially gravity-defying and dramatic. These elements are reassuringly familiar in their references to housing stilts and disquietingly daring in their use of new technologies to achieve previously unimaginable cantilevers. This is a tension we will see recurring in anonymous private homes in the widespread use of “V-shaped” columns
(Figure 6.17).
Figure 6. 17
Also at once familiar and startling are the single columns which hold aloft the concrete shade “umbrellas” on the top concourse, between the outdoor stadium and the swimming section (Figure 6.13). These resemble informal types of temporary shelter and shade, yet their construction in concrete and their extraordinary cantilever—the exaggerated effect of which
317 is heightened by their flatness and lowness to the ground—is breathtaking in its engineering prowess.
A similarly dramatic use of columns—used not only for structural support but also as symbols of continuity with “pre-modern” stilted housing and of technologically advanced engineering—can be found in several other public projects of the Sangkum period, some designed by Molyvann and some by other Cambodian architects. Mam Sophana’s Technical Training
Institute, inaugurated in 1969, features a façade of oversized and tapered columns (Figure 6.18) that recall the Palace of Reunification in Saigon, designed by Vietnamese architect Ngo Viet Thu and inaugurated in 1966.69
And, perhaps most dramatically of all, in Molyvann’s final project of the pre- war period, the Teacher Training College (inaugurated in 1971, subsequent to the architect’s departure from Cambodia after the Lon Nol coup), columns are again used to striking effect. The classroom blocks are held aloft on daringly angled stilts (Figure 6.19), with the references to vernacular housing further heightened by their separation into discrete units of a domestic scale. The
College’s similarly small library (Figure 6.20) is clad in top-heavy tapered columns, a kind of vertically inverted exoskeleton. Its diminutive scale, like
69 Built in concrete and glass and resembling “International Style” modernism, yet designed with references to the shape of auspicious Chinese characters, Thu’s building is another example of the coevalities of old and new forms in modern architecture. 318 that of the classroom blocks, clearly recalls housing; so too does the playful references to stilts, in both vertical and daringly angled forms.
Figure 6. 18
Figure 6. 19
319
Figure 6. 20
In the National Stadium, stairs are made to resemble stilts not only in the external entrances to the indoor stadium, but also in the main stairs that ascend from the street level to the concourse above the outdoor stadium
(Figures 6.3, 6.8 and 6.9). Appearing at regularly spaced intervals and contrasting starkly with the grass-covered earth between them, these stairs appear both in aerial elevations (as the architect would have imagined and planned the structure) and from a distanced street-level view to be like supporting columns. The effect is repeated in the fine vertical lines produced by the smaller stairs that provide access from the elevated concourse into the main seating area in the outdoor stadium (Figures 6.8 and 6.12). Such forms reference “pre-modern” Cambodian construction, but also declare affiliation with “International Style” modernist architecture’s synthesizing of form and function. As Ross and Collins eloquently suggest (drawing on conversations
320 with Molyvann), “Vann Molyvann uses structure as a form of sculpture.
Nothing is hidden. All is revealed.”70 The same can be said of stilted housing, in which simple round columns are the defining formal feature of a house’s most publicly visible area, its underneath.
The Stadium’s repeated references to stilts and columns are echoed, finally, in the four towering floodlights that soar above the outdoor stadium and in the four finely tapered spires, resembling those on pagodas, that crown the roof of the indoor stadium and grandstand (Figures 6.8 and 6.9). Their reassuringly classical verticality is offset by the daringly oblique angle of the media communications compartment (Figure 6.21). In its use of both familiar and surprising columns and column-like forms, as in its internal division of larger spaces into smaller zones, the National Stadium makes repeated and poetic references to “pre-modern” architectural forms of stilted housing.
Figure 6. 21
70 Ross and Collins, Building Cambodia, 209. In conversations held during 2014 and 2015, Molyvann still refers to architecture as “sculpture.” 321 Echoes of stilted housing in the grand public projects of the Sangkum serves many rhetorical functions, of course. The links between vernacularization and neutralism have already been discussed; the notion that a formal familiarity might mitigate against the “suddenness” and
“newness” of modern buildings will be addressed in more detail below. But underlying any and all of the ideological and symbolic meanings invested in modern architecture is the question of gender relations. Sihanouk’s use of the
Stadium, the Chaktomuk Conference Hall, and other Sangkum buildings as background images for scenes of women excelling at sports has already been mentioned. Despite their size and strangeness, in their emphasis on the column form in both structure and decoration, these buildings are legible as continuous with “pre-modern” houses, in which Cambodian women are traditionally imagined to play a central role, as heads of the household. In recalling stilted houses, modern buildings can be understood as announcing their accessibility not only to the men who commissioned, designed and built them, but also to the women who were increasingly called on to assume leading roles in public life, just as they did in the domestic sphere—at least, according to official Sangkum policy and narratives, which are of course only partial and heavily rhetorical pictures.
Having observed the way in which large public structures made reference to forms derived from anonymous and “pre-modern” housing, let us turn our attention to modernist private homes. Often unheeded in 322 architectural history and other scholarship on modernity, these smaller homes were nevertheless instrumental in transforming the appearance and experience of modern space, shaping the streets and daily lives of most city residents. In the typology that follows, important repeated visual forms will be seen to be shared with the Stadium and other large-scale projects that we have already discussed.
Modernist private houses: a typology
Found throughout Cambodia, but especially prevalent in Phnom Penh, private houses of the post-independence period exemplify the vernacularization of internationally circulating modern architectural styles and construction techniques with familiar and colloquial visual vocabularies.
These smaller-scale and privately initiated structures have been less studied than larger state-sponsored projects. 71 Yet they were just as significant in transforming the lived experience of much urban space during the Sangkum era, and continue to exert strong influence over city environments in
Cambodia today. Informed in part by Hosagrahar’s study of pre- and post- independence Delhi, I too “include both the un-self-conscious response to the
71 Ross and Collins’ Building Cambodia includes over forty main entries on large-scale public buildings, but only six entries on private houses, of which four were homes belonging to the royal family, within the State Chamkarmon compound, and one is Vann Molyvann’s house. 323 modern milieu and projects of advancement, as well as the self-conscious engagement with, and expression of, an identifiable ideology that espouses a scientific doctrine in architecture and a specific aesthetic.” 72 Unlike
Hosagrahar, however, I do not consider this a “study of modernity as the tumultuous cultural condition brought about by the rupture with history.”73
Rather, I propose that a study of the modern—often anonymous—space of these houses illuminates the coevalities and continuities of the Cambodian modern.
I contend that modernist private houses in Cambodia can be productively considered typologically, as falling into three broad categories.
All three types are most often planned around an approximately square shape, as are most Cambodian wooden houses of the “pre-modern” style (but notably not dwellings of the “Chinese shophouse” form, which typically sit on an elongated rectangular plan). My proposal of a typology as a mode of analysis is derived from my interest in historiography and discourse: that is, in the way that “Cambodian arts” and culture are talked about in the
Cambodian context. My adoption of a typology is informed by the
72 Jyoti Hosagrahar, Indigenous Modernities: Negotiating Architecture and Urbanism (London and New York: Routledge, 2005), 5. 73 Hosagrahar, Indigenous Modernities, 5. Emphasis added. 324 Cambodian pedagogical method, which identifies five main types of roof used in Cambodian wooden houses.74
Such a typology seeks to describe and understand the characteristics that define and differentiate between similar forms; importantly, it is not a system based in a fantasy of the historical progression of styles, but rather a typology of parallel and often overlapping modes. Even those Khmer typologies that do seek to describe the historical shift between styles tend to be much less progressivist than most of their European and North American counterparts. The most prominent Khmer system of classification is the typology of ancient temple styles, known as រចZបថ rajanabat. This is taught in detail to all students at the Royal University of Fine Arts. The classificatory impulse at the heart of the Khmer រចZបថ rajanabat typology was surely formed through contact with French connoisseurial and colonial scholarship on Angkor and “Cambodian arts.” Yet its later pedagogical deployment seems to have largely unshackled the typological from the teleological.
Whereas many colonial accounts of “Cambodian arts” stressed an imagined decline from the “peak” of Angkor, the Khmer រចZបថ rajanabat typology
74 Educational materials used at the Royal University of Fine Arts’ architecture department, held in the personal archive of Pen Sereypagna. See also Srei U (\សី អ៊ូ), “MរA;បZគ_ឹះA;ន” [“House Building”], originally published in កមbcជសូរ9d [Kambujasuriya] (November 1954), reprinted in Cultures of Independence, ed. Ly Daravuth and Ingrid Muan, (Phnom Penh: Reyum, 2001), 33-46. 325 seems to have adopted all of the formalism of the French connoisseurial approach, without the attendant progressivism.
A summarized version is also taught in the final year of many secondary schools, in Neak Srei Troeung Ngea’s widely read textbook, អរ9យធ
ម៍ែខhរ [Areyathoah Khmer] The Khmer Civilization. Summarizing the architectural characteristics of thirteen styles, from Phnom Da (first to sixth century CE) to
Bayon (late-twelfth century to early thirteenth century CE), Ngea does at times discuss “progressions,” most notably in affirming that “In the Angkor
Wat style, Khmer architecture had progressed to its peak.”75 Yet her typology also features numerous mentions of continuities and plateaus between the different styles, which often overlapped. “In the Kulen style,” for example, she explains that “almost all temples are built as in the previous eras.”76
Ngea’s articulation of the classical temple styles is a typology of progress that importantly still allows for a certain back-and-forth; the Cambodian pedagogical typology of (“pre-modern”) wooden houses is one that does not suggest progressivist development at all. And likewise, the typology of modern houses that I am proposing here is one that seeks to describe
75 Neak Srei Troeung Ngea née Laay Hunki (អVក\សី \តឹង i [Zមេដើម kយ ហុនគី]), អរ9យធម៌ែខhរ Areyathorm Khmer [The Khmer Civilization] (Phnom Penh: Editions Angkor, 2007 [1974]), 73. 76 Ngea, Khmer Civilization, 72. 326 differences between styles but not propose a narrative of “development” from one to the next.
I suggest that a careful formal analysis of Sangkum era houses reveals stylistic and technological continuities with “pre-modern” Cambodian wooden houses. As such, this formal analysis informs my larger argument regarding the coevality of old and new forms within the Cambodian modern, just as the notion that a formal vocabulary in these small structures is shared also in larger projects informs my interest in the anonymous modern.
Moreover, typological analysis from the perspective of the contemporary reveals that different kinds of modern house have tended to endure the turbulent decades since their construction in differing ways, relative to their type. Observing the modern houses that survive in the twenty first century, and paying particular attention to the ways in which their built forms and uses have been transformed, together can complement reference to archival photographs and other sources.
The first type, which I call the “structurally modern house,” consists of houses displaying the most radical structural innovations, usually in addition to distinctively modern decorative features (Figure 6.22). The second type, which I call the “decoratively modern house,” consists of houses that feature distinctly modern decorative features, including Angkor-inspired bas-reliefs on otherwise featureless concrete interior and exterior walls, parallel lines of grooved concrete, and distinctively angled or rounded concrete shades over 327 windows and terraces (Figure 6.23). The third type of house may or may not feature decorative features such as bas-reliefs or distinctive concrete shades, but is defined by its structurally innovative use of a flat roof (Figure 6.24).
This type of building, which I call the “flat roofed house,” was sometimes built for individual dwellings, and sometimes comprised several apartments.
Figure 6. 22
Figure 6. 23
328
Figure 6. 24
While most houses built in the post-independence period fall into these three broad types, there are also many that are exceptions to this typology, that display uncommon features or combinations of features that do not fit any one of the types proposed above; that are, in short, in a category all of their own. Some of these are simply idiosyncratic. Others may be considered a kind of “baroque” modernism, a pastiche of numerous structural and decorative innovations, combining elements of the three types described above (Figure 6.25, in which the hexagonal windows are miniaturized facsimiles of those used in Molyvann’s Teacher Training College, Figure 6.19).
329
Figure 6. 25
In all of the modern houses, broadly similar interior spaces and use of furnishings can be observed. Most houses contain a larger number of rooms than “pre-modern” housing. Films of the period show dining rooms being used for dining, bedrooms being occupied by only one couple, and other conventions more closely associated with European and North American ways of living and occupying space than with pre-existing Cambodian ways; it is difficult to know, however, to what extent the lives of ordinary
Cambodians conformed to this semi-official imagery as projected in the cinema. There is some evidence that people preferred not to live in quite such a foreign fashion: Lu Ban Hap recalls being commissioned on more than one occasion to “improve” a modern house designed by Vann Molyvann or another contemporary, by shifting the bathroom away from the main inner
330 areas to the rear of the house, where it is located in “pre-modern” houses.77
Ban Hap also recalls that interior and exterior metal work, such as grilles for windows and doors, was made by hand but generally in a large workshop that Ban Hap himself oversaw. Furniture, initially imported from France, came to be manufactured locally in similar styles. Interior photographs of the architect’s own home show a preference for sleek lines that match the exterior of the home (Figure 6.26) 78 , yet imagery in many of Sihanouk’s films,
79 including រស់េmយសបnoយ La joie de vivre [The Joy of Living](1968 ) shows a combination of this imported “moderne” and more lavish and ornately decorated furniture. In short, it appears that a range of approaches to interior décor were enjoyed by the Cambodian elite during the Sangkum, but that there was no significant connection between the type of modern house and the nature of its furnishings.
77 In conversation with the author in 2014 and 2015, Pen Sereypagna contends that the placement of the kitchen and bathroom at the rear of each apartment in the White Building constitutes an adaptation of an imported mode of housing—multi-storey apartments—to an internal spatial arrangement familiar from Cambodian wooden housing. 78 Personal archives of Lu Ban Hap and Mrs Armelle Lu, consulted in Paris, June 2015. 79 Produced by Khemara Pictures. Bophana Center, Archive Reference NSI_VI_001566. 331
Figure 6. 26
Having outlined the typology, I will now discuss each of the three main types of houses in some detail, using examples from Phnom Penh.
Through this closer analysis, I aim firstly to demonstrate various continuities between these modern concrete houses and the forms of “pre-modern” wooden Cambodian houses. Secondly, I will examine how each of these types of modern home have tended to survive and be transformed in the twenty
332 first century, using the varying changes to their form as a tool to discuss other continuities from the modern to the contemporary.
The detail of the typology that follows is dense, but this close attention is necessary for a comprehensive description that draws out the shared formal vocabulary found both in these modern houses and in much larger public projects such as the Stadium.
The “structurally modern house”
The two most significant elements in the design of the “structurally modern” type of house in Cambodia are the use of dramatically steep and unconventional rooflines featuring sheer vertical drops, and the incorporation of negative space into the appearance and layout of the building. Both of these features are assertively new, and have the effect of making this kind of modern house stand out strikingly on any streetscape, in comparison to neighbouring houses. This is evident both in archival imagery and in the twenty first century city. Yet even in their assertive newness, I contend that these features also resonate with forms found in “pre-modern” Cambodian wooden houses. Even this, the most radically modern type of modern house, displays continuities with existing modes of housing.
The steep pitch of the rooflines of this kind of house, and their resulting height and volume, are unmistakable. These are simple but bold 333 innovations that display all the confidence and extravagance of the Sangkum period. The roofs of structurally modern houses tend to contrast sharply with the more gentle slope of most roofs found in Cambodian streets, both as they appeared at the time of their construction, and in the twenty first century.
And yet, despite their contrastive and innovative nature, these roofs are not without antecedents in “pre-modern” Cambodian construction.
While most wooden houses have more gradually inclining roofs, steep pitches are not unknown. The type of roof known in the typology of
Cambodian pedagogical materials as the ផ3ះកZqំង phteah kantang, a pyramidal form, and the variant on it found mostly in Kampong Cham province which consists of three peaked roofs, is the most striking example. Consisting of three symmetrical peaks with flat vertical fronts, this “pre-modern” wooden house roofing style approaches the height and unusual sharpness of roofs on the “structurally modern” concrete houses. Whether or not these steeply pitched roof designs from wooden houses were a conscious source for the design of the roofs of the structurally modern house is an unanswerable question, given that the designers of these houses are mostly unknown, or anonymous. Yet recognizing their visual similarity nevertheless reveals that, for all of its newness, the structurally modern house type also demonstrates continuities and coevalities with existing forms. Appearing for the first time
334 in the streets of newly independent Cambodia, these houses must have appeared at once excitingly new and yet with some recognizable features.
Another “pre-modern” source of inspiration—or at least of visual comparison— is the towering and tapered form of the pagoda roof. Originally reserved for structures of religious significance, during the colonial period these soaring points began to appear on other official buildings, most notably the National Museum and the School of Cambodian Arts (inaugurated 1917 and 1918, respectively). For an especially tall and peaked roof—one reminiscent of, albeit clearly distinct from, the pagoda roof—to appear on private homes during the Sangkum era may be understood as a continuation and extension of this process of expanded meanings and possibilities for such elevated forms.
What would have been unknown before the mid-twentieth century was the sheer vertical drop featured in the structurally modern house roofs.
Without eaves to shelter the vertical surfaces or their joins with lower sections of roofing and with exterior structural walls, these most prominent design features would have been impossible without modern construction technologies. They rely on precise waterproofing of joins and materials.
Typically painted in clean white or near-white, one can only imagine the impression that these designs must have made when they first appeared.
ទំេនើប Tomnerb (modern, literally “recent”) indeed.
335 Yet while this dramatically sheer, elevated and pristine roofing is an emphatically new form, making flamboyant use of new technologies, it is not without connections to existing forms. I have discussed above how the steep elevations recall both the phteah kantang style of roof found on wooden houses, and, less directly, the roofs of pagodas. Moreover, many small huts, such as those used for rural roadside vending platforms and for urban guards’ stations, make use of a kind of roof that also displays similarly dynamic combinations of angles (Figure 6.27). Thought of by many
Cambodians I have spoken with—especially those sង chieng (craftspeople) whose job it is to construct them—as being among the most “simple” roof forms, in fact this is a deceptively complex design in its juxtaposition of inclines and vertical surfaces.
Figure 6. 27
336 Familiarity with this form is likely to have meant that the sudden appearance of the structurally modern house type in Cambodia’s streets, while a sign of forward-looking progress and a demonstration of new technologies, would also have been legible as a backward- and sideways- looking continuation of existing construction forms. In the distinctively modern designs of these houses can be discerned a complex interweaving of old and new forms, pre-existing and innovative technologies. Such is the coevality of the Cambodian modern.
The “decoratively modern house”
Like the structurally modern house, the “decoratively modern house” type is usually based on a layout that is square or close to square in shape. As such, its overall footprint is essentially the same as that of “pre-modern” wooden houses. Generally consisting of a few rooms, plus a balcony area, usually at double-storey height, the proportions of this type of house are also approximate to those of wooden houses.
Indeed, of the three main kinds of modern houses in my typology, the decoratively modern is the most formally similar to pre-existing forms of wooden houses. In its shape, size and structure, substantial continuities with existing “pre-modern” forms can be clearly discerned. And yet, in the use of
337 concrete and other innovative materials there is also a significant coevality of new and old here, too.
The distinctively modern features of this kind of house are the use of decorative elements. These can be divided into three broad categories.
The first and most common category of decoration on these modern houses is repeated, parallel lines. Generally made with cast or grooved sections of concrete, usually no more than a few inches wide, these parallel lines most often trace structural edges: around windows, doors, rooflines, balconies, or corners. Notably lacking the ornateness of Khmer kbach, the plainness of these decorative lines in contrast to the kinds of ornamentation familiar in the Cambodian context makes them appear almost utilitarian. But they are not: they are structurally unnecessary, added solely for visual effect.
And yet their placement along edges of windows, doors, rooflines, balconies and corners adds to the confusion: these distinctively modern decorative features visually emphasize the key structural features of the modern house, which are in turn less distinctively modern, drawing as they do on pre- existing architectural forms. Repeated, parallel lines can also be found on larger projects, such as the National Stadium, especially in the indoor arena, as discussed above. In larger settings, this shared visual vocabulary explicitly references domestic forms.
The second, and almost as common category of decoration on these
(and indeed on all “types” of) modern houses is bas-reliefs of Angkorian 338 forms (Figure 6.28). Such ornaments are also found in some larger-scale projects, such as in the golden crest above the royal seating at the Stadium, and the simplified naga bridge at the Teacher’s Training College. In housing, the four faces of the Bayon and a dancing apsara are the most common.
Figure 6. 28
Generally placed in prominent positions such as on the walls of a balcony or the vertical surfaces along a house’s roofline, these bas-reliefs are a deceptively contradictory complex of coeval sources and techniques. The imagery is, of course, unmistakably ancient. The placement on an otherwise unadorned and uniformly flat surface of concrete is distinctively modern, as is the use of concrete to make these miniaturized edifices. Yet the moulding technique used to create these bas-reliefs is a kind of “hand-made mass- production,” of the sort that Ingrid Muan identifies as defining of Cambodian material cultural production under the late colonial period, in the wake of 339 patronizing colonial restrictions on the use of new technologies in the reproduction of “classical” Cambodian arts.80 The makers of these decorations are anonymous, and indeed in many cases the ornaments may have been added after a house’s construction, or at least without the designer’s permission; Lu Ban Hap claims never to have endorsed the inclusion of bas- reliefs, but he reluctantly offered advice as to where they should be placed on a wall. The very use of bas-reliefs to decorate housing walls was unknown in
“pre-modern” wooden houses, where the use of coloured paint on flat surfaces, and also of carved kbach along eaves or rooflines, were the most common forms of ornamentation.
The third category of decoration for modern houses—which, like the bas-reliefs, is commonly found on all “types” of houses from this period—are the dramatically shaped concrete shades which protrude over windows, roofs, or balconies (and frequently all three, Figure 6.29). Usually comprised either of repeated diagonal forms in a kind of triangular pattern, or else of repeated semicircles in a wavy formation, these concrete shades are the most striking visual link between modern houses and larger-scale buildings, mostly public works, constructed during this period. They are flatly formed concrete, usually painted in white or grey, and without any of the intricate adornment familiar in decorative features. They are functional, providing
80 Muan, “Citing Angkor,” Chapter 2. 340 shelter from both rain and sun. And yet the elegantly rhymed angles and curves of these shades is a visual extravagance.
Figure 6. 29
Just as the repeated parallel lines in concrete are ornamental features carefully placed so as to visually underscore structural forms—both in private houses and in large-scale public projects—the concrete shades on modern houses are functional devices that have been transformed into decorative highlights. Nowhere in the writings of Vann Molyvann or in the Khmer coverage of architecture in the Sangkum era or since have I located any mention of decoration in modern structures as undesirable per se, unlike in the
341 discourses of modern architecture in other locations. And yet the remarkably consistent and exceedingly elegant manner in which the ornamental and the necessary are combined demonstrates an active interest in considering ways of negotiating between the lavishly decorative traditions of Cambodian construction and the clean lines and functionalism of International Style modernism, and its numerous transregional variants.
Figure 6. 30
This navigation between the sparsely structural and the familiarly ornamental, while most clearly seen in the decoratively modern house, is also evident in each of the other types of house from this period. It can also be seen in some of the grand public projects, too: the gold-coloured bas-reliefs that crown the otherwise muscularly barren concrete structure of Molyvann’s
National Stadium is a fine example of this (Figure 6.30). Moreover, as discussed above, it appears that both sleek lines and more ornate decorations 342 were common in the interior furnishings of all types of modern houses during the Sangkum.
The “flat roofed modern house”
“Isn’t it wholly illogical for a large part of the city’s surface to be left unused and reserved for face-to-face encounters between slate roofs and the stars?” —Le Corbusier81
Although—contrary to popular mythology, oft-repeated in both English and
Khmer-language journalism—Vann Molyvann did not actually study with Le
Corbusier (and they never met in person), Molyvann regards Corbusier as his
“great teacher,” explaining that Corbusier’s “educational model—les 5 Points d’une architecture nouvelle—deeply influenced my work, as I came to see the potential for such an architecture in the tropical climate of Cambodia.”82 Lu
Ban Hap also cites Corbusier as his greatest inspiration, and views him uncritically as a “genius.” Certainly, the French architect was widely known and often discussed in architectural and engineering circles in Cambodia during the Sangkum period.83
81 Le Corbusier, Toward an Architecture, trans. John Goodman (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2007), 127. 82 Vann Molyvann, “The Agency Interview: The Litany of Power, The Legacy of Modernism,” excerpts of interviews conducted by Bill Greaves (2010) and Dutin Roasa (2010), Perspecta 45: Agency (2012): 89-98. 83 There is no evidence to suggest that Molyvann, Ban Hap, or their colleagues were aware of Le Corbusier’s covert fascism. For an introduction to the relationship 343 Yet flat roofing—one of Corbusier’s most significant innovations in not only the design of buildings but also in the reimagining of urban life—was adopted and used in wholly different ways in Cambodia than it had been in
European contexts. The flat roof was not only wholly unknown in Cambodia before the Sangkum era, but can also be understood as especially far removed from pre-existing modes of construction, in which complex and often elaborately soaring roofs have already been shown to be fundamental. And yet, this most conspicuously new of all forms used in modern houses was embraced by Cambodians in a way that is emblematic of continuities in the use of space, and coevalities of new forms of building with pre-existing ways of inhabiting outdoor areas.
Many “flat roofed modern houses” feature the distinctive angled or arched concrete shades at the front, street-facing façade, forming a canopy over the edge of the roof. (Figure 6.31) Occasionally, an open trellis covers a larger area (Figure 6.32). While not devoid of function, these shades are not large or solid enough to provide significant cover from heat or rain. They do, however, form a structural frame or aesthetic anchor for many of the later roofing additions. In some unusual cases, an entire floating roof over the flat roof has been subsequently added, in concrete carefully constructed to match
between Corbusier and radical fascist movements, see Mark Antliff, Avant-Garde Fascism: The Mobilization of Myth, Art, and Culture in France, 1909–1939 (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2007).
344 the original angled or arched shade (Figure 6.33). This creation of a second concrete roof, while rare in houses, is familiar in larger-scale architectural projects of the period, such as the Military Police Academy, designed in the
1960s by Vann Molyvann and located on what was then named the Khmer
American Friendship Boulevard, now the Russian Boulevard (Figure 6.34).
Figure 6. 31
Figure 6. 32
345
Figure 6. 33
Figure 6. 34
The most striking feature of the Cambodian flat roof is its social function: the way that the uniquely modern spaces it creates are used in ways that are continuous with the use of “pre-modern” spaces. In flat roofed modern houses, the space created above dwellings is used in broadly the same ways as the space beneath stilted wooden houses. Goods are stored in various ways; groups of people gather informally; semi-temporary and semi- permanent structures are added as needed. This is flexible, casual modern space. Of course, specifically modern activities can take place on rooftops too: a family photograph from 1989 shows a young girl practicing karate on a flat 346 rooftop, in preparation to protect herself while studying in the Soviet Union, according to a caption (Figure 6.35).84 Yet even in this some continuities with existing uses of “pre-modern” spaces can be found; after all, in rural areas, children are encouraged to do physical play and exercise underneath houses rather than indoors.
Figure 6. 35
In his study of the ways in which Cambodian wooden houses are inhabited, Jacques Népote describes not only the practical functions of these
84 Unnamed author. Photograph dated 1989, with caption in English, presented as part of Found Cambodia, an evolving online archive of personal and family photographs from the years after 1979. See http://foundcambodia.com/p/?a=1986- 1990#rooftop-karate [Accessed May 2015] 347 houses’ various structural components, but also their symbolic role. The central pole beneath wooden houses, for example, is called the សសរ\ទtង sasar trung, or “column of the chest.”85 In my conversations with villagers in several provinces, the symbolic and practical functions of these and other elements in wooden houses are explained through elaboration of their poetic names.
“This is the first supporting column that we build; so it’s like the ancestor,” a
Prey Veng farmer and sometime-school teacher aged in his 40s told me. As is so often the case in Cambodian religious and spiritual practices, there is a unity between everyday functions and actions, and symbolic powers. Indeed,
Srei U’s study of the construction of wooden houses, published in 1954, explains that the order in which various parts of a house are built has spiritual significance for its builders and inhabitants, as do various ceremonies and rituals performed before, during and after this process.86
That the spaces above “flat roofed modern houses” are used in much the same ways as the spaces beneath wooden houses takes on an extra significance in light of these observations regarding the conjoined practicality and spirituality of wooden houses. Beneath wooden houses, for example, hammocks are generally tied to the sasar trung (“column of the chest”). Above flat roofed houses, by contrast, hammocks are either supported by
85 Jacques Népote, “Understanding the Cambodian Dwelling: Space and Gender in Traditional Homes,” in Wooden Architecture of Cambodia: A Disappearing Heritage, ed. François Tainturier (Phnom Penh: Center for Khmer Studies, 2006), 108. 86 Srei U, “House Building”, 33-46. 348 freestanding metal frames, or tied to the box-like structure that houses the stairway, or tied to some later addition to the space. In flat roofed modern houses, there is no sasar trung (“column of the chest”), after all. This does not mean that such houses are devoid of physical objects with symbolic power. It is not uncommon for a ផ3ះអVក: phteah neak ta, or spirit house, to be placed on the roof of such houses, even when there is space for it on the ground floor by the entrance, a more typical place for it. This and other ways in which the structural—and thus spiritual—differences between the spaces above “flat roofed modern houses” and the spaces beneath stilted wooden houses are negotiated demonstrates the flexibility by which continuities with “pre- modern” forms are maintained in the use of modern spaces.
Of course, there are some important differences between the way that spaces above modern houses and below wooden houses are used. Rooftops are effectively unusable during the middle of the day and during rain, unlike the areas below wooden houses, which remain cooler and dry. Moreover, rooftops are generally accessible only through the inside of the house, meaning that social gatherings above flat roofed modern houses are generally for members of the household and invited guests only. By contrast, the area under stilted wooden houses is a hub of informal social activity, a gathering place for neighbours. Meetings taking place beneath stilted houses, both planned and impromptu, have a markedly more everyday and casual feel
349 than typically more formal engagements េលើផ3ះ leou phteah, upstairs inside the house.87 The only instance in which such unplanned social mixing between members of different households (often comprising individuals and families of different ages and classes) takes place in flat roofed modern houses is in those buildings that contain numerous, separate apartments, spread over several floors. In these structures, the rooftop functions as a gathering space in which neighbours meet and socialize in much the same way as members of different wooden houses in a rural village join together in the space beneath stilted houses.
The adaptability with which the upper levels of flat roofed modern houses have been appropriated as spaces to be used in broadly similar ways to the spaces beneath Cambodian wooden houses is remarkable. Some of the differences noted above are mitigated by the nature of urban life. Customs of formality may be adjusted in cities, for many reasons, including perhaps due to the influence of increased cultural mixing of “ethnically” Cambodian with
“ethnically” Chinese and Vietnamese. We will see a literary illustration of this in Chapter 7, when we discuss the descriptions of houses in modern Khmer novels. And whereas in the rhythms of daily life in rural areas, gatherings may often take place during the middle of the day, in cities these are times
87 I have personally observed this social dynamic on countless occasions in rural and city homes, among close friends as well as strangers. These customs of behaviour are also discussed in Népote, “Cambodian Dwelling,” 108-123. 350 when many members of households are typically away from home for work.
Being limited to cooler hours of morning and evening is thus not such a great inconvenience or such a noticeable contrast.
In any case, one of the most common improvised alterations found above “flat roofed modern houses” is the addition of extra roofing, usually constructed from inexpensive and easily erected sheet metal. In stilted wooden houses, it is not uncommon for one side to be partially covered in with the hanging of a tarpaulin, or less frequently, with the addition of sheet metal. And so again an equivalence can be found in the way that these modern and “pre-modern” spaces are used, suggestive of a continuity in the occupation of space.
In the twenty first century Cambodian city environment, the forms taken by these alterations and additions to the rooflines of flat roofed modern houses are extraordinary in their diversity. Some roofs feature modest boxy sheds, usually attached to the original concrete boxes that encase the stairways leading up onto these roofs (Figure 6.36). Others feature elegantly arched or peaked floating roofs, typically made from striped or coloured sheet metal, their form carefully matched with the angles or semi-circular shapes of the original concrete shades covering windows and often appearing in a row along the front of the rooftop (Figure 6.37). On still other roofs, oversized and elaborately structured steel framed steel roofing covers the entire building,
351 dominating the visual appearance of the structures and transforming the possibilities for their use (Figure 6.38).
Figure 6. 36
Figure 6. 37
352
Figure 6. 38
Modern houses in the contemporary city
The rich variety of additions to flat roofed modern houses found in
Cambodian towns and cities in the twenty first century is matched by the diversity of alterations and adjustments to the original designs of modern houses of all designs. A study of differences between the contemporary treatment of each of the various “types” of modern house is further revealing of the nature of each form, as well as of the continuing coevality of built environments in Cambodia.
The “decoratively modern house” type, which displays the least deviation from the pre-existing forms of wooden house, is most commonly renovated to include a shopfront, which occupies space that would originally have been a private yard (and thus contributing to Vann Molyvann’s vision of
353 Phnom Penh as a “garden city”88). Many of these types of house, set back from the road, have single-level storefronts added to face onto the street, typically consisting of one open space with a tin roof. As such, these standalone villas are transformed to function more like the “Chinese shophouses,” or attached row-houses, that are the most common form of dwelling in the contemporary city. The decorative elements are often still extant, although generally partially obscured by the shop in front of them.
Some “decoratively modern houses” remain almost completely intact, but with their function transformed from a residence into a luxury restaurant.
One typical example, the សuឹកេ:Bត Sleuk Tnort Restaurant on Street 294 in
Phnom Penh, has enclosed in glass (and air-conditioning) part of the garden area on the street, which was originally sheltered under a cantilever of the upstairs balcony (Figure 6.39). Once a residence for the city’s middle and upper classes, this building is now a restaurant for the same demographic; its function has changed, but its primary inhabitants have not.
88 Molyvann, Modern Khmer Cities, 157. 354
Figure 6. 39
Numerous “structurally modern houses” have also had their function transformed, from dwellings into businesses. The ways in which the original built forms are treated by these contemporary renovations is distinctly different from that of the decoratively modern or flat roofed modern houses.
Observing some examples of how structurally modern houses have been transformed in the contemporary city thus aids in our understanding of the characteristics of this “type.”
I have suggested that the structurally modern is the most radically modern type of modern house. I demonstrated this point through an analysis of features that marked a significant contrast to and departure from pre- existing forms of housing, through a particular focus on roofing. I noted that despite these distinctive and new features, certain continuities could still be discerned, as could coevalities between old and new forms. 355 These coevalities are further expanded in the contemporary context.
“Structurally modern houses” remain unmistakably recognizable as such, even after undergoing substantial alteration. For example, on the corner of
Street 310 and Street 63 in Phnom Penh is a branch of the US-based fast-food restaurant KFC (Figure 6.40). Opened in 2014, the restaurant occupies a former structurally modern house. The garden has been flattened to provide parking space, and a large glass box bearing the KFC logo has been added to the corner-facing façade, with a low glass-fronted box adjoining this that provides the main ordering and eating space. Yet the distinctively steeply pitched roof, complete with sheer vertical sections and dramatic use of negative space, remain prominently visible behind and above these new additions. “Decoratively modern” concrete window shades are also visible, their repeated arched forms now visually rhymed by galvanized metal exhaust chimneys clearing fumes away from the deep-fryers in the kitchen.
Figure 6. 40
356
Figure 6. 41
Another example of a “structurally modern house” that retains its distinctive roofline despite extensive renovations and repurposing is the
Angkor Spa, also located on Street 310 in Phnom Penh (Figure 6.41). Viewed from the street, the diagonal rise maintains its clean, uncluttered appearance yet the vertical section of roofing has been adorned with intricately detailed kbach ornamentation, made from cast concrete. The first-floor balcony area has been enclosed in glass, thus creating more internal floor space providing cool, air-conditioned rooms. A former ground-floor garden area has also been enclosed, thus removing the cantilevered appearance, and much of the garden area has been reallocated to parking space.
The ability of “structurally modern houses” to remain clearly recognizable as such, despite significant alterations and changes in function, is testament to what I have already termed the more radical nature of their modernity. Whereas the distinctive features of decoratively modern houses 357 may be easily removed in renovations, or else obscured behind more recently constructed shopfronts or other additions, the sharp angles and dramatic void spaces in the these houses are less easily erased. Observing the physical
“behaviour” of modern houses in the contemporary city, and in particular noting the singular ways in which structurally modern houses maintain their visual identity after renovations, far more so than the other types, is revealing not only of the contemporary city but also of the original designs of these modern buildings.
Conclusion: On the importance of ice cream in understanding modern spaces
This chapter began with the suggestion that the National Stadium be viewed as a kind of “necessary extravagance” in articulating the Sangkum’s neutralist policy: an essential luxury, just like the ice, ice cream and alcohol that were taxed in order to fund its construction. In the discussion that followed, many architectural features have been described which might also be thought of in terms of necessary extravagance, not only in the Stadium but in the private houses that transformed the appearance and experience of Cambodia during the modern era.
Discussions of the neutral and non-aligned financing of the Stadium’s construction take on particular resonances from the perspective of the twenty
358 first century in two ways. Firstly, in 2015 Prime Minister Hun Sen confirmed rumours that the Chinese government would be financing construction of a new stadium,89 the design of which has been widely criticized for references perceived to be Chinese rather than Cambodian. The visible presence of
Chinese “aid” in Cambodia’s build environments continues to increase, with the recent completion of the Chinese-funded bridge alongside the Japanese
Friendship Bridge in Phnom Penh just one of numerous examples. A second key reason why archivally as well as stylistically informed discussion of the
Stadium’s financing is of importance is the tendency for selective memory and amnesia on the part of some figures. During my research, I have on occasion been told that senior government officials, including in the Ministry of Culture, choose to deny that the Chaktomuk Conference Hall was funded by US “aid.” 90 Indeed, Vann Molyvann’s own account of Sangkum era construction makes no mention of foreign involvement or funding.91
To conclude, we return to 1963, the year of the National Stadium’s construction, which in its “speed” and “scale” we will recall has been hailed as a “spectacular” example of modern progress. While all this hurried building was taking place, the United States organized an enormous trade
89 See: Cheang Sokha, “PM Denies Revealing Price Tag for Stadium,” Phnom Penh Post, 20 May 2015. http://www.phnompenhpost.com/sport/pm-denies-revealing- price-tag-stadium [Accessed May 2016] 90 Evidence of the funding of Chaktomuk is provided in Ingrid Muan, “Playing with Powers: the Politics of Art in Newly Independent Cambodia,” Udaya, Journal of Khmer Studies 6 (2005): 51-54. 91 Molyvann, Modern Khmer Cities, 157-161. 359 fair, officially named the United States Agro-Industrial Exhibition. According to a 1962 official telegram, the fair was planned as an “effective counter [to the] Czech industrial fair staged last February and Yugoslav trade fair scheduled this November:”92 a typical example of the persistent US policy of playing “catch-up” to their communist rivals. Its main displays were of US machinery intended to improve efficiency in farming and manufacturing. It was part of a widespread international trend for trade fairs, fuelled by the US.
Three years after the Phnom Penh event, more than a million people visited the US Pavilion in the First Asian International Trade Fair in nearby
Bangkok.93
Held in the hot and dry month of May on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, the 1963 United States Agro-Industrial Exhibition attracted more than 200,000 visitors in just two weeks, far exceeding US expectations. In an official report, this enormous attendance was attributed in large part to snacks that were offered at heavily subsidized low prices, intended as a promotional demonstration of the machinery used to produce them. These snacks included ice cream, doughnuts, popcorn, roasted peanuts, and soft drinks.94
At the macro level of Cold War diplomacy, the intention here of course was to promote US industry and thus US politics. But at the individual
92 USA NARA. RG 59/250/4/18/3 Box 2559. 93 USA NARA. RG 306/250/64/03/06 Box 32. “Special Report: First Asian International Trade Fair, Bangkok,” 23 December 1966. The report mentions “an appreciative target audience of students and intellectuals” as well as “the general public.” 94 USA NARA. RG 306/131/39/11/1 Box 3. 360 level—in the lived experience of those Cambodian women, men and children who attended the 1963 trade fair in such great numbers—the effect may have been quite different. Queuing not to see the latest farming or manufacturing equipment but instead to get their fill of cheap ice cream, most visitors to the
“modern space” of the United States Agro-Industrial Exhibition likely experienced it not as a single vast event but rather as a social gathering of an altogether smaller scale; a festivity rendered familiar by its similarity to any other fair, at which food is of central importance.
Returning home from the fair, we might imagine those Cambodians travelling through the transforming city, past dramatically angled modern houses and other buildings, perhaps even near the bustling construction site that would become the National Stadium. Their bellies full of American ice cream, these anonymous women, men and children were travelling through the modern spaces of Sangkum era Cambodia. These modern spaces contained many surprising, daring and new features, visually accessible to all, even though also linked in Sihanouk’s films (as we saw in Chapter 5) to an exclusive elite. Yet these modern spaces also displayed many qualities that were recognizable, familiar, continuous with pre-existing forms. This coevality of new and old shaped Cambodia’s architecture and built environments.
In the next chapter, the lived experience of “modern spaces” and especially of modern homes will be considered in its literary representation. 361 Khmer novels repeatedly use descriptions of houses to evoke the texture of modern urban life, and to convey lessons about the character of their fictional inhabitants. Trans-media intersections, including between architectural construction and novelistic narrative, are especially revealing of the lived experience of the Cambodian modern.
362 Chapter 7
Narrating the Modern: “A New Sun Rises Over the Old Land”
“What is it that we call literature?” asks Professor Khuon Sokhamphu in a
1963 curriculum in Khmer. Literature is “words that are the voice of our inner emotions.” It is “a kind of knowledge that shares discussions through letters, using an artfulness (េ"យសិល'(វ*ធី) to make it sound lovely and interesting for the reader.” With this in mind, the curriculum continues, “in order to make our study of literature useful, we must study literature in connection to civilization. That is, whatever we study about literature, we will study about people.”1 Sokhamphu’s curriculum has long since fallen into obscurity,2 but
1 Khuon Sokhamphu (ឃួន សុខម3), លំ5ំសិក'7អក'9រ;<ស=ែខ?រ [Course for study of Khmer Literature] (Phnom Penh: National Pedagogical Institute, 1963), 1-6. In Khmer. National Archives of Cambodia (NAC), Phnom Penh, Box B-186. 2 To my knowledge, this document has not been cited in any previous studies of Khmer modern literature in Khmer, English, or French. Khuon Sokhampu, unlike Neak Srei Troeung Ngea (who we discussed in Chapter 1), did circulate as well as 363 this chapter will heed his suggestions for the study of modern Khmer literature in relation to culture and society.
This chapter considers Khmer novels published between 1955 and
1975, with some mention of earlier texts from the 1930s and 40s. 3 As in previous chapters, our focus will be on how modernity and contemporaneity are enacted in these works. A key purpose here is to demonstrate how central concerns seen in visual arts, performing arts, and modern spaces, also recur in literary form. That tropes from painting, dance, cinema, and architecture recur also in literature offers further evidence of the dynamic and hitherto under-examined trans-media intersections that characterize the modern in
Cambodia. It also further demonstrates the benefits of paying close attention to these intersections, including—but not solely—as a methodological redress to a shortage of other sources.
publish in scholarly contexts outside of Cambodia, and not only in Khmer. For example, he published in the Journal of the Siam Society in 1975, an article which is still cited in scholarly works in linguistics. For more on Sokamphu, see: Khing Hoc Dy (ឃីង ហុកឌី), ed., គDមងEតGបទJមរសិក'7 ឪទLិសជូនបណPិតសQRរ'S ឃីន សុខ ;<;TR រ'SបណPិត ឃួន សុខម3 បណPិតសQRរ'S ឡVង់ េសៀម Komrong Aatthabat Khamara Seksa Autthis Chun Bandit Sapheachar Khin Sok, Khuon Sokhampu, Ning Long Seam [Selected Documents in Khmer Studies, in Honour of Professors Khin Sok, Khuon Sokhampu, and Long Seam] (Phnom Penh: Editions Angkor, 2013), esp. 19-21. 3 The word “novel” is used to describe literary works of fiction published as a single volume. Almost all Khmer fictional publications from this period are short: generally around 150 pages, and sometimes less. In English or French, most would be considered “novellas.” This term does not exist in Khmer, and the term “novel” (េរឿង DបេZមេZក roeang bralom lok) refers to fictional works of any length. 364 While previous chapters have attended to art forms that are primarily visual in nature, novels are of course textual. Yet the trans-media intersections which characterize modern “Cambodian arts” include a dynamic interplay between the visual and the verbal, as demonstrated in Chapter 4’s discussion of Nhek Dim’s paintings and Sinn Sisamouth’s songs. In what follows, novels from the Sangkum period will be read as revealing of Sangkum culture more broadly: specifically, they will be read in light of the modern, urban spaces described in Chapter 6, as well as the political spectacles described in Chapter
5. The imagining of modernity in this context is performed in both visual and textual forms, and in the interplay between them.
In addition to considering the enactment of the modern in Khmer literature, by attending to the significantly non-linear temporality and back and forth narrative structures in these novels, questions of contemporaneity will also arise. At various points in the previous chapters, we have observed instances in which even self-consciously modern arts are also, in a way, contemporary—in the sense of holding plural temporalities within the space of the artwork, and/or of being centrally concerned with exploring the special relationship of the work of art to the present moment in which it was made.
Understood in this way, contemporaneity is especially prevalent in modern
Khmer novels.
After an overview of the historiography of modern Khmer literature, and some remarks on the reading public before 1975, this chapter 365 concentrates on close readings of a few carefully chosen novels, rather than a broad survey. As noted in Chapter 1, I am not primarily interested in judging the aesthetic value of works under consideration. Almost all modern Khmer novels are short, most under 150 pages, and none have been critically acclaimed as displaying literary merit comparable to novels in other languages or from other locations. Yet the capacity of these novels to illuminate larger issues relating to their cultural, historical and political contexts makes them nevertheless rewarding of close analysis, especially in relation to the other modern “Cambodian arts” already discussed in previous chapters.
Perhaps the only Cambodian author to enjoy widespread critical acclaim is Soth Polin (សុទ[ ប៉ូលីន born 1943), whose first Khmer novel was published in 1965 (A Meaningless Life, which we will return to below), and who is best known for the Francophone novel L’Anarchiste, published in 1980.4
His concurrent interest in Buddhism and in European philosophers such as
Nietzsche made his work very influential during the Sangkum period. Also important was the sexually risqué nature of his fiction, and the politically
4 Soth Polin (សុទ[ ប៉ូលីន), ជីវ*តឥតន័យ Chiwit Ot Ney [A Meaningless Life] (Phnom Penh: Nokor Thom, 1973 [1965]). Soth Polin, L’Anarchiste (Paris: La Table Ronde, 1980). 366 controversial Nokor Thom newspaper he ran until 1974.5 However, because
Polin’s literary style is anomalous rather than representative of modern
Khmer novels, he will not be a focus of this chapter. Yet the novel which will be considered in most detail here, Where is my Daughter?,6 is authored by Kim
Saet, a novelist who Soth Polin seems to admire, specifically naming him in an interview and characterizing the loss of Kim Saet (presumably at the hands of the Khmer Rouge) as “indescribable.”7
Regardless of their aesthetic value, or their status as locally canonical or not, and irrespective also of the original authorial intentions, novels originally published before 1975 are now widely read as artefacts of and emblems for the imagined “golden age” of Cambodia. Yet as close readings will show, many novels centre on quite sharp and explicit criticisms of life in the Sangkum era, in particular of social and economic inequality. Many novels are stories of the meeting of two differing worlds: the urban and the rural, the rich and the poor, the male and female, the proletarian and the peasant, the old and the new.
5 Sharon May, “Beyond Words: An Interview with Soth Polin,” in In the Shadow of Angkor: Contemporary Writing from Cambodia, ed. Frank Stewart and Sharon May (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2004), 9-20. 6 Kim Saet (គឹម ែសក), ឯaកូនDសីខbVំ ? Ae Na Koun Srei Khnhom? [Where is my Daughter?] (Phnom Penh: Srei Bunchan, 2004 [1962]). 7 Quoted in May, “Interview,” 16. 367 On the historiography of Khmer modern literature
I am able to offer close readings of modern Khmer novels because of important scholarly work that has already been done in sketching the progress of Khmer modern literature.8 The most extensive surveys are in
French and Khmer, by Khing Hoc Dy, including his 600-page volume published in 2007. It presents a series of short biographical sketches of authors, followed by a list of their published works, and a short excerpt from one novel for which they are most known. Such a format clearly privileges breadth of study, and a focus on authors more than texts. A similar format is taken in Hoc Dy’s earlier studies, including one in French.9
Drawing on Hoc Dy’s earlier research, but offering greater depth of analysis, the sole sustained study in English is the 1998 unpublished doctoral thesis of Klairung Amratisha. 10 The thesis presents a broad historical overview of Cambodian novels from the form’s emergence in the late 1930s, including tracing shifts in style, policy, and infrastructure over that period.
Amratisha’s thesis is an invaluable reference for this chapter.
8 For a survey of Khmer criticism of Khmer literature more generally, see George Chigas, “The Emergence of Twentieth Century Literary Institutions: the Case of Kambujasuriya,” in The Canon in Southeast Asian Literatures: Literatures of Burma, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam, ed. David Smyth (Richmond, UK: Curzon, 2000), 135-146, esp. 144. 9 Khing Hoc Dy, Écrivains et Expressions Littéraires du Cambodge au XXème Siècle (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1993). 10 Klairung Amratisha, “The Cambodian Novel: A Study of its Emergence and Development,” PhD Thesis, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 1998. 368 Other studies, while briefer, offer useful complementary perspectives.
Khing Hoc Dy, writing with Jacques Népote, offers a very broad historically comparative survey, considering Cambodian literature from antiquity to the
Sangkum era.11 Hak Vandara’s book on Khmer literature during the Khmer
Republic, 1970-75, claims to be the first account focused on the literature of this period. 12 Vandara follows a similar format to Hoc Dy, introducing authors individually then offering a summary of the storyline of a selected work. More analytic is Hoc Dy’s anthology of texts on author and scholar
13 Keng Vannsak (េកង cdន់;ក់ 1925-2008). Vannsak is best known as the inventor of the Khmer typewriter (Figure 7.1), first produced commercially in
1955, and by 1963 still only manufactured by the American company
Remington, and the West German company Adler.14 He is also well known as the “first mentor in Paris” to Saloth Sar, and editor of the Paris magazine in which the man who would later take the name Pol Pot published his first
11 Jacques Népote and Khing Hoc Dy, “Literature and Society in Modern Cambodia,” in Essays on Literature and Society in Southeast Asia: Political and Sociological Perspectives, ed. Tham Seong Chee (Singapore: Singapore University Press, 1981), 56-81. 12 Hak Vandara (eក់ cdន់"f), អក'9រសិល'(៍ែខ?រ hiំ ១៩៧០~៧៥ Aksarsel Khmer Chhnam 1970-75 [Khmer Literature from 1975-75] (Phnom Penh: Angkor Thom Book Center, 2013), 1-7. 13 Khing Hoc Dy (ឃីង ហុកឌី), ed., សមូហកម?អក'9រ;<ស=ែខ?រ ឪទLិសជូន;<ស=Rរ'S េកងcdន់ ;ក់ Samuhakamm Aksarsastra Khmer Autthis Chun Sastrachar Keng Vannsak [Khmer Literary Collection, Dedicated to Professor Keng Vannsak] (Phnom Penh: Editions Angkor, 2006. 14 Derek Tonkin, Modern Cambodian Writing, special issue of Culture et Civilisation Khmères, no. 5 (Phnom Penh: Université Buddhique Preah Sihanouk Raj, 1962), 45. National Archives of Cambodia (NAC), Phnom Penh, Box B-332. 369 pseudonymous article. 15 A less insidious connection is revealed in a photograph in Hoc Dy’s anthology, of Keng Vannsak in 2005 at his Paris home. He stands in front of a portrait of his wife, in which the signature of its painter Nhek Dim is visible (Figure 7.2). This is another illustration of the close trans-media relationships in modern “Cambodian arts.”
Figure 7. 1
Figure 7. 2
15 Ben Kiernan, Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2007), 543. See also David Chandler, The Tragedy of Cambodian History: Politics, War, and Revolution Since 1945 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991), 53-55. 370 Of all previous studies of modern Khmer novels, one of the most precise is also among the most concise. Im Proum identifies five attributes that make the “modern novel” (DបេZមេZក សម័យទំេនើប bralom lok samay tomnerb) distinctly different from previous eras (ែផqកពី សម័យមុន phlek pi samay mun). These include that modern novels are written in prose, that they don’t have “supernatural” elements (stនអចvរ*យៈ kmean achhariyeak), that they no longer take their ideas from the literature or culture of India, that they are not so connected to Buddhist stories, and finally that they imitate and draw inspiration from (យកលំ5ំxម yok lumnoam tam) the literature and culture of
France. Significantly, Proum also argues that “difficulties in people’s lives in their society” is a predominant theme in modern novels.16
Proum’s comments can be productively compared to similar analyses of the modern novel in English. Writing of how Anglophone novels contribute to what he terms “the making of modern identity,” Charles Taylor observes that modern novels dwell on ordinary life in ways that depart from earlier literary forms.17 His comments on narrative form are of particular relevance. In modern novels:
16 Im Proum, “Modern Novel,” in Franklin E. Huffman and Im Proum, Cambodian Literary Reader and Glossary (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1977), 19. In Khmer. 17 Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1989), 286-287. 371 “the very form of narration, relating the—sometimes minute— particulars of life, puts all events and lives on the same stylistic footing… The new modern novel stands out against all previous literature in its portrayal of the particular. It departs from traditional plots and archetypal stories and breaks with the classical preference for the general and the universal.”18
Crucially, Taylor continues, the modern novel “narrates the lives of particular people in their detail.” 19 Such a notion of individual specificity can be productively read in light of Benedict Anderson’s observation that what links otherwise seemingly unrelated characters in modern novels is, first and foremost, “that they are embedded in ‘societies,’” by which he means geographically bounded societies, chiefly cities. 20 Clear parallels between
Taylor’s account of modern novels in English and Proum’s account of such novels in Khmer suggest that, while attention must of course be paid to linguistic and cultural specificities in the Cambodian case, literary perspectives from other contexts may also be illuminating.
Like Amratisha, Hoc Dy, and other scholars, however, Proum’s analysis does not include close readings of any novels. Overall, existing accounts of Khmer modern literature in English, Khmer and French have tended to the historical rather than the literary, and have privileged breadth of scope over depth of textual analysis. No scholarship, to my knowledge,
18 Taylor, Sources of the Self, 287. 19 Taylor, Sources of the Self, 287. 20 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, revised edition (London and New York: Verso, 2006 [1983]), 25. 372 offers detailed, close readings of specific novels.21 This stands in stark contrast to the intensive interpretive attention paid to literary forms that are boran
(ancient, traditional, classical), such as temple epigraphy and religious texts.
On the readers of modern Khmer novels
That the first modern Khmer novel was not published until the late 1930s places modern Khmer literature among the last to appear in the region. It is widely held that Cambodian culture is not especially literary in nature. All accounts suggest that the readership of Khmer novels was small compared to reading publics in neighbouring countries, or compared to the large audiences for other modern “Cambodian arts.”
Prior to the 1930s, the vast majority of the Cambodian population was illiterate, or semi-literate at best. Compulsory education was established only in 1911, and monastery education began to be modernized only in the 1920s; while education for girls was available from 1907 in some areas, this constituted a small minority.22 The situation is revealed in fictional form in
Kim Saet’s The Water Flows Tirelessly, in which the female characters during the colonial period are illiterate and must repeatedly depend on neighbours
21 Only Tum Teav, a precursor to the modern novel thought to have first emerged in oral form around the mid-nineteenth century, has been the subject of a sustained literary analysis. George Chigas, Tum Teav: A Translation and Analysis of a Cambodian Literary Classic (Phnom Penh: Documentation Center of Cambodia, 2005). 22 Amratisha, “Cambodian Novel,” 53-60. 373 to read and write letters which are pivotal to the plot’s progression. Formal education and literacy were, by many accounts, in important ways less valued in Cambodia than in neighbouring countries: before, during, and after colonization.
US diplomats reporting on the literary situation in Sangkum era
Cambodia paint a negative picture of the reading public. A 1957 despatch complained that:
“The caliber of the Library staffs is so poor that last year when the Asia Foundation offered to finance a training program for one or more librarians in the Royal National Library, the Cambodian Government regretted that it had no one even basically qualified to be assigned to such training.”23
Similarly a 1961 report lamented that less than one in four elementary and secondary school teachers surveyed in Phnom Penh stated that they had read
“any books at all” in the past year, other than textbooks.24
However, other documents relating to the US’s meagre efforts in translating American fiction to Khmer note that the publisher the USIS chose to print and distribute these texts “has retail outlets in every province.”25 This suggests a much more widespread reading public than the US commentary
23 Despatch 11, US Embassy, Phnom Penh to Department of State, Washington, 3 July 1957. USA NARA. RG 306/250/67/08/04 Box 2. 24 “Communications Habits of Cambodian Teachers and Their Interest in Aspects of Life in Foreign Countries,” October 1961. USA NARA. RG 306/250/67/08/04 Box 2. 25 Memo from John S. Getchell, Acting Country Public Affairs Officer at USIS Phnom Penh, to USIA Washington, 5 September 1960. USA NARA. RG 306/490/42/13/7 Box 2. 374 observes. Fictional representations support the notion that Cambodia’s reading public, while comparatively small, did exist prior to the Sangkum. In the flashback sequence of Kim Saet’s Where is my Daughter?, set in Kampong
Chhnang province in 1946, one female character reads books about housework and cookery in order to “increase her general culture” (បេងyើនវប'(
ធម៌ទូេ{របស់5ង). Perhaps this is a case of anachronistic revisionism, but the provision of a specific book title (កូនេ;សុភមង}លក~VងDគ;រ The Key to
Happiness in the Family)26 suggests that Saet’s fictional account has at least some basis in fact.
That women constituted a significant section of the reading public during the Sangkum era is suggested also in the preface to Bun Chanttha’s
Betraying her Husband for Money!, which is specifically addressed to young female readers. The author describes an abundance of literature enjoyed by women: “novels are presently overflowing, like mushrooms in the first rains of the year.”27
It cannot be accurately ascertained exactly how many people read modern Khmer novels like those which will be discussed below, or who those
26 Saet, Where is my Daughter?, 60. 27 “េរឿងក'(ត់ប=ីេដើម'(ីDÅក ! ក៏DបសូDតេឡើងកaÉលDបេZមេZក55 ែដលកំពុងែតហូរេហៀរដូច ផ'9ិត DតÑវទឹកេភqÖងេដើមhiំ ។” Bun Chanttha (ប៊ុន ចនLà), ក'(ត់ប=ីេដើម'(ី DÅក់ ! Kbot Bdei Daembei Brak! [Betraying her Husband for Money!] (Phnom Penh: Mrs Bun Phan, 2004 [1967]), i. 375 readers were. Most of the earliest novelists were educated at Phnom Penh’s
Lycée Sisowath and were fluent in French.28 How advanced their interest in literature was is unknown: Chandler records that by 1939 “barely half a dozen” had graduated from the school, and “perhaps half a dozen
Cambodians had been trained in tertiary institutions abroad.”29 Amratisha notes that the first local newspaper to appear in Cambodia was in
Vietnamese, published from 1929 as a supplement to a French newspaper.30
How these facts affected the early readership for modern Khmer novels cannot be definitively ascertained, but can be surmised.
Yet it would be wrong to characterize novels as merely the hobby of a small elite. As Amratisha observes, “among the earliest novelists, none were from high class families or had been educated abroad.”31 Thus, as Amratisha convincingly concludes, “while the French schools in the capital produced a new generation of Cambodian writers, the Franco-Cambodian and renovated monastery schools throughout the country successfully laid the foundations for the emergence of a reading public.” 32 Older Cambodians remember
28 Amratisha, “Cambodian Novel,” 61. The situation in Laos was similar. According to Peter Koret, the first modern novel composed in Lao was published in 1944, with an introduction by the author in French, and with the cover advertising that it was “written in easy-to-understand Lao language.” Peter Koret, “Contemporary Lao Literature,” in Outhine Bounyavong, Mother’s Beloved: Stories from Laos, ed. Bounheng Inversin and Daniel Duffy (Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 1999), 13. 29 David Chandler, A History of Cambodia, 4th Edition (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2008), 200. 30 Amratisha, “Cambodian Novel,” 67. 31 Amratisha, “Cambodian Novel,” 61. 32 Amratisha, “Cambodian Novel,” 62. 376 renting novels from local markets in Phnom Penh. The fee, while low, was calculated by the day. This created an economic incentive for urban
Cambodians to devour novels quickly, facilitated by the fact that novels were all very short. The appearance of serialized fiction in numerous Khmer newspapers in the Sangkum and Lon Nol periods further contributed to an increased prominence of novels in the daily life of a broader cross-section of the population.
The readership of Khmer novels may have been small when compared to readerships in neighbouring countries, but it was of course larger than when the form did not yet exist. The approximately concurrent appearance of the first Khmer novels, films, representational paintings, modern concrete buildings, and other modern arts makes each of these forms rewarding of study, as I have argued. Moreover, although Khmer novels were not as popular as other modern art forms, in their dynamic interplay with these other forms, they had a cultural impact worthy of consideration.
On Where is my Daughter? by Kim Saet, 1962
Despite being admired by Soth Polin, as noted above, Kim Saet (គឹម ែសត) is a mysterious figure. His Where is my Daughter? is not, to my knowledge, discussed in any secondary sources, and nothing about the author is known other than that he was, according to the memory of some older Cambodians, 377 widely read during the Sangkum period, and also that he was, according to one archival source, an author not only of novels but of modern ayai (a form of call-and-response theatre). 33 He is far from canonical, but his work reflexively engages with conventions of Khmer fiction, and comments on the urban experience, in fascinating ways.
A generic convention seen in many modern Khmer novels is to open with a detailed description of the protagonist’s house. This originates as early as 1943, with Nhok Them’s now-canonical novel The Rose of Pailin, one of the first modern Khmer novels published.34 It opens with a poetic description of the protagonist’s home, a “Cambodian house of the boran style, that still remains in the current era.” 35 Close readings of selected passages from numerous novels reveals that houses function as symbols of the character and class of their inhabitants. Passages describing characters’ houses in detail are not limited to opening pages, either; exhaustive accounts of architectural and other features of various characters’ houses recur in many novels of this period, and are often repeated several times within a single novel. Studying the kinds of architecture that are described in modern Khmer novels, and the
33 “List of Khmer Authors,” 1973. NAC Box B-214. 34 According to Amratisha, this is the third novel to have been published in serial form in the journal Kambujasuriyā, in 1943. It “became one of the most famous Cambodian novels,” a status it continues to enjoy today. Amratisha, “Cambodian Novel,” 80. 35 “ផLះែខ?រែបបបុfណែដលេäេសសសល់មកសម័យឥឡãវេនះ ។” Nhok Them (ញ៉Vក ែថម), កុZប ៃប៉លិន Kolab Pailin [The Rose of Pailin] (Phnom Penh: Ministry of Education, Youth, and Sports, 2003 [1943]), 2. 378 terms in which the descriptions are conveyed, enriches our sense of the daily experience of urban modernity, while also complementing our understanding of “modern spaces” as discussed in Chapter 6.
Where is my Daughter? opens with a description of the protagonist’s house. After providing the exact date in which we are to imagine the action taking place—15 January 1962, in the evening—the opening paragraph introduces us to the protagonist, Samrith, by situating him in his spatial as well as class position in modern Phnom Penh. The author informs us that
Samrith is a professor of economics, that he drives a Mercedes, that he lives in the city centre, near the Chamkarmon State Residence (designed by Vann
Molyvann and used as the setting for many of Sihanouk’s films, including
Apsaras, discussed in Chapter 5), and finally, that the style of his house is at once faithful to the “Khmer heritage” and in sync with the “most modern kind of international style.” All of these details can be seen to be equally revealing of the character Samrith and of his world. I quote this opening paragraph in full in order to convey the tone:
“Mr Samrith, a professor of economics, drove his Mercedes car quickly out of the Chamkarmon area, turning north into Monivong Boulevard. He had just finished teaching at the University of Law, and was hurrying home, because tonight his wife was not in the house: she had left for Kampong Chhnang very early this morning. Samrith’s house is to the west of the Wat Koh pagoda, at number 345. It is a beautiful home, with the grand, classic [បូfណ boran] style of the Cambodian
379 heritage, combined very well with the most modern kind of international style that is popular all over the world today.”36
Kim Saet’s language here is relatively informal and colloquial: this is naturalistic fiction. For example, while slightly more elegant and official terms for “professor,” “car” and “wife” are used in this passage, the grammar throughout is simple, and devoid of French-derived morphemic conjunctions
37 េä nau and ៃន nei, which are used only in literature and never in speech. The precision of details—naming Samrith’s workplace, the streets he travels, and even the number of his house—recalls Charles Taylor’s comments about the modern novel’s “portrayal of the particular,” observing that the genre
“narrates the lives of particular people in their detail.”38 In at once introducing us to the protagonist (Samrith) and to the city (Phnom Penh) where the action will primarily take place, this opening paragraph suggests that the man is shaped by his urban life. It also prefigures some of the narrative tension that
36 “េZកសំរèទ[, បណPិតវ*ទ'ê;<ស=;ដ[កិចëបររថយន=ែមសឺែដស េ"យេល'(ìនîdងេលឿនេចញពី តំបន់ ចំïរមន, បត់xមបេaÉយមeវ*ថីDពះÅទមុនីវង'9 តDមង់េ{តិសJងេជើង ។ េZកេទើបែត េចញពី បេDងៀនសិស'9េäមeវ*ទ'êល័យច'ñប់ េហើយេZកDបóប់Dបóល់េ{ផLះ េDòះយប់េនះ ភរ*îេZក មិនេäផLះេទ, េZកDសីôនធុរៈេ{កំពង់hiំងxំងពីDពលឹមមកេមqះ ។ ផLះេZកសGិត េäJងលិចវត=េïះ, េលង ៣៤៥ ។ គឺúDគឹ;ùនមួយîdងលûôនរេបៀបរច5បរមបូfណúេករü† មរតកែខ?រ េ"យប°ëãលú កុសលៃDកែលងúមួយនឹងរេបៀបរច5ដ៏ទំេនើបបំផុត xមïរនិយមអន=រ úតិក~VងពិភពេZកបចëVប'(ន~ េនះ។” Saet, Daughter, 1. 37 See Judith Jacob, “Some Features of Modern Khmer Literary Style,” in Cambodian Linguistics, Literature and History, ed. David A. Smyth (London: School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 1993), 264-265. 38 Taylor, Sources of the Self, 287. 380 will shape the story, through the mention of Samrith’s wife having left for
Kampong Chhnang.
It is significant that it performs these various narrative functions through a descriptive focus on the house, and that this house is specifically named as boran and Cambodian, as well as also being “most modern” and
“international.” This too is a novel in which two worlds—the urban and the rural, the internationally cosmopolitan modern and the Cambodian boran— meet. Let us précis its plot in order to understand the overall narrative within which our more detailed readings are taking place.
Where is my Daughter? is the story of two men (Samrith and Viseth) and two women (Navi and Romchong), its dramatic tension centring on a case of mistaken identity, and a search for a long-lost daughter who is finally revealed to have been hidden in plain sight. Samrith, the professor of economics whom we have just met, is married to Navi, and the father of
Chindakiri, a son who studies in Paris. Navi also happens to be the name of the former wife of Suos Viseth, a man who comes to meet Samrith in search of his long-lost daughter Romchong. Like Samrith, Viseth is a teacher: originally in his rural hometown of Prey Khmer, in Kampong Chhnang province, and now as a professor of Khmer language and literature in a private university in
Phnom Penh.39 Through an extended flashback to Prey Khmer village in 1946, we learn that during a violent attack carried out by French colonial soldiers,
39 Saet, Daughter, 7, 84. 381 Viseth’s wife Navi had been brutally raped.40 Viseth went to seek revenge, and Navi was later misinformed that he had died. She then ran away with their daughter Romchong, and Viseth has been looking for them ever since.
After moving to the city, Viseth eventually becomes convinced that
Romchong is living with Samrith. The two professors form a close friendship while trying to solve the mystery of Viseth’s missing daughter, and Samrith’s wife Navi’s odd behaviour. Meanwhile, Viseth’s brother Kosal, who has been living and working in Hong Kong since they all left from the village in Prey
Khmer, comes to stay with him in his Phnom Penh apartment. Kosal begins a courtship with a young woman named Sopheap, who had turned up by chance in Viseth’s apartment one night after being involved in a disturbance in the nightclub across the street. Viseth disapproves of his brother Kosal’s affair with Sopheap, a woman the professor openly regards as a “bad fruit, good only on the outside, but with an indescribably horrible character.”41
Eventually, however, we learn that Samrith’s wife Navi is indeed the same
Navi that Viseth had been married to, and that Sopheap is the girl who had originally been named Romchong, and thus their daughter—and Kosal’s niece. With this dramatic discovery, made at the moment of Samrith and
Navi’s son’s return from his studies in Paris, the novel ends. It is implied that they all lived happily ever after.
40 Saet, Daughter, 28-34. 41 “cú ‘5រ†ែផqZ¢’ លûែតសំបកេD£ចរ*îEDកក់ រកេលខ"ក់stន។” Saet, Daughter, 104. 382 The novel centres on the meeting of different worlds. Given its plot structure, we might expect the conflict to be between Samrith and Viseth, since Viseth suspects that Samrith is married to his wife and parenting his child. Moreover, Samrith is an urbane and wealthy figure, with his Mercedes and his yarded house, while Viseth is a recent arrival from the countryside, who lives in a rented apartment accessible only by walking along a narrow alleyway. Yet the two men are remarkably similar in character. Samrith is described as a cosmopolitan character, “an esteemed intellectual, a moral man with fine ideals and opinions,” whose son Chindakiri studies in Paris, and who is unfailingly polite when asking his servant to fetch chilled fresh orange juice and “canapés” (transcribed as a loan word to Khmer) to serve to his houseguest. 42 But Viseth, too, is intellectually serious and hardworking, habitually staying up to prepare his lessons until 11pm.43 He too displays several cosmopolitan behaviours. While he lives in a rented apartment and eats simple meals prepared for him by a neighbour, his furnishings include
“canapé chairs” and a record player; moreover Viseth and Samrith meet for a late dinner at 10pm in the Hawaii Restaurant (a place that older Cambodians remember actually existing at the time, attached to the Hawaii Cinema),
42 Saet, Daughter, 6-12. 43 Saet, Daughter, 87. 383 enjoying English beefsteak and Hennessy cognac, both of which are also transcribed directly to Khmer.44
Indeed, if the description given earlier of Samrith’s house reveals that his “modern” character is, just like the style of his house, also “combined very well with” a “classical Cambodian heritage,” then a study of the description of Viseth’s house is equally revealing—not only of Viseth’s character, but also of attitudes to a dramatically changing Phnom Penh at the time. Let us consider what the passage reveals about the character’s qualities, and the city’s modern spaces.
“Viseth rented his house, which was an apartment upstairs of number 41A, on the left side of Kampuchea Krom Boulevard when travelling towards the Psar Thom Thmei market. To enter the house, he must walk along a small path (a laneway), and then climb a staircase that is entered from the rear. Viseth only began renting this house around four years ago; that is, after he came to live alone as an orphan, and started work as a professor of Khmer literature in the ‘Great Nation of Cambodia’ university. In Viseth’s neighbourhood, there are not very many ethnic Khmer, and most people are Vietnamese and Chinese, but these foreigners speak Khmer very well, and even know how to speak about Cambodian culture, too.”45
44 “ប៊§ស'9តិកអង់េគqស ផឹកD;េហេនើសុី ។” Saet, Daughter, 134. 45 “ផLះរបស់វ*សិដ[គឺúផLះឈ~¶ល ១ ែលßងេäJងេលើេ®េលខ ៤១ ក Jងេឆßងមeវ*ថីកម™VúេDïម េបើេយើងេធßើដំេណើរេ{ïន់ផ'7រធំថ?ី ។ េដើម'(ីចូលេ{ផLះDតÑវេដើរxមផqãវតូច (ផqãវេឌឿង-ែហម) រួចេឡើងជ េណ´ើរ ចូលពីJងេDïយមកវ*ញ ។ ផLះេនះ, វ*សិទ[េទើបែតមកជួលេäDបែហល ៤ hiំប៉ុេa¨ះ គឺ េDïយែដលេគDតÑវ រស់េäកំDòកôiក់ឯង និងេDïយែដលេគÅនេ{ú;<ស=Rរ'Sអក'9រ;<ស= ែខ?រេäវ*ទ'êល័យ ‘មeរដ[ កម™Vú’ ។ េäម=VំផLះវ*សិទ[េនះ មិនសូវôនជនúតិែខ?រេទ េDចើនែតយួននិង ចិន ប៉ុែន=ជនបរេទស≠ំងេនះេចះ និîយែខ?រេDÆDជះaស់ េចះ≠ំងòក'Sវប'(ធម៌ែខ?រេទៀតផង ។” Saet, Daughter, 84. 384 As with Samrith’s house, the specific and precise naming of Viseth’s address allows the reader to imagine that this is a “real” house, in the “real” city of
Phnom Penh. Indeed, while Viseth’s house is very different from Samrith’s, they are located just a few hundred metres from each other: Viseth’s
Kampuchea Krom Boulevard directly intersects with Samrith’s Monivong
Boulevard, only one block from the Psar Thom Thmei market (Figure 7.3).
Figure 7. 3
Samrith and Viseth’s geographical proximity has several important implications. Firstly, that their houses are so different and yet so close together demonstrates that Phnom Penh’s urban fabric during the Sangkum era encompassed significant architectural and spatial diversity, with modernist villas with gardens on wide boulevards, and higher-density shop- house apartments along narrow laneways, co-existing in the same neighbourhood. This heterogeneous nature of the city’s central
385 neighbourhoods is at odds with the colonial fantasy of an ethnically zoned capital, in which, as Vann Molyvann describes, “the Protectorate city was divided into three different districts aligned from north to south and identified with the ethnic groups which inhabited each district.” 46 It also suggests a more nuanced, balanced, and realist view of the Sangkum era city than that conveyed in the idealizing vistas of Sihanouk’s films, or in the urban planning of wholly new neighbourhoods such as the Bassac Riverfront
Complex.
Marshall Berman argues that “the drive to create a homogenous environment, a totally modernized space, in which the look and feel of the old world have disappeared without a trace” can be understood as an
“impersonal drive that seems to be endemic to modernization.”47 We have already discussed numerous ways in which a coevality of old and new defines the Cambodian modern, and that “the look and feel of the old world” never “disappear” but rather are remade, reimagined, redeployed to take on new and distinctly modern meanings. But this small and single example in
46 Vann Molyvann, Modern Khmer Cities (Phnom Penh: Reyum, 2004), 154-156. Edwards elaborates that “legislation and urban planning encouraged the segregation of the diverse ‘races’ of the colonies—Khmers, Chinese, Vietnamese, Indians, and Chams—into culturally specific, economically stratified, and racially segregated milieux within which each of these groups could thrive uncontaminated by the degenerative cultural influences of other groups. These milieux, or ‘quarters,’ were the built equivalents of cartography’s blind patchwork.” Penny Edwards, Cambodge: The Cultivation of a Nation, 1860-1945 (Chiang Mai: Silkworm, 2007), 55-56. See also 55-63. 47 Marshall Berman, All That is Solid Melts into Air, revised edition (London: Penguin, 1988 [1982]), 68. 386 Where is my Daughter? also reveals much larger and multiple cases in which
“the drive to create a homogenous environment” is one that is not universally shared, and never universally successful. To be sure, Georges Eugène
Haussmann managed to raze whole neighbourhoods of Paris to create, at least in the short term, “a totally modernized space,” and various new cities— such as Oscar Niemeyer’s Brasília, the place where architect Lu Ban Hap had wanted to go to work before instead being summoned home by Sihanouk— managed, at least in the short term, to achieve a similar uniformity.48 This was never the case for Cambodia’s modern spaces. The internal architectural and urban diversity contained even within one small city block, as revealed in the contrastive descriptions of Samrith’s and Viseth’s houses, provides an evocative demonstration of this multiplicitous mode of modernity.
A second implication of Samrith and Viseth’s proximity to each other has to do with the nature of modern urban life, and its novelistic representation. We know that Viseth has lived in his apartment for four years already, yet he had never crossed paths with Samrith until he arrives at his gate unannounced and uninvited in the novel’s opening scene. That strangers can have such unrelated yet intersecting lives in the modern city has been
48 On Haussmann in Paris, see: Berman, All That is Solid, 150-155. Lu Ban Hap recounted his desire to work in Brasília to me in an interview at his home in Paris in June 2015. With thanks to Moritz Henning and Vuth Lyno. On Brasília, see: Thomas Dekker, “Brasília: City Versus Landscape,” in The Modern City Revisited, ed. Thomas Dekker (London and New York: Spon, 2000), 167- 193. 387 characterized as a recurring preoccupation in the modern novel in many languages. Anderson pithily describes this narrative conceit as “a complex gloss on the word ‘meanwhile,’” reliant on a new conceptualization of
“simultaneity.” He observes that its efficacy lies equally in the fact that characters in modern novels are “embedded” in “sociological entities of such firm and stable reality that their members … can even be described as passing each other on the street, without ever becoming acquainted,” and also in these characters being “embedded in the minds of the omniscient readers” of the novel.49
A third effect of Samrith and Viseth both living in central Phnom Penh, very near to Sihanouk’s modern palace at Chamkarmon, and to the Psar
Thom Thmei market, is to project an imagined picture of life there, in an area which in many ways embodies the Sangkum’s projected image of urban sophistication. For readers of this novel outside of this privileged zone, in the poorer neighbourhoods of Phnom Penh (such as Steung Meanchey, a place which appears in this and several other of Kim Saet’s novels as being the home of fortune tellers, sex workers, and the disenfranchised poor50) and elsewhere throughout the still overwhelmingly rural population, Samrith and
Viseth can function as indicative symbols of what life in the centre of the capital was like. Thus, as representatives of the epicentre of the modern city, it
49 Anderson, Imagined Communities, 24-26. 50 See, for example, Kim Saet (គឹម ែសត), ទឹកហូរមិនេចះហត់ Toek Hour Min Cheh Hot [The Water Flows Tirelessly] (Phnom Penh: Srei Bunchon, 2003 [c. 1960]). 388 is telling that Samrith and Viseth are both professors, who both live in new kinds of houses, and who both enjoy exotic furnishings and foods; yet it is also crucial that their lives are marred by scandal and secrecy, and that they both frequently encounter poverty and hardship in the lives of their fellow city-dwellers. Like A New Sun Rises Over the Old Land, which we turn to below, Kim Saet’s novel is often sharply critical of economic inequality and moral deviance in Sangkum era society, even while also romanticizing the glamorous lifestyles of the privileged urban intelligentsia and elite.
Having considered the effect of Samrith’s and Viseth’s houses being located close by to each other, let us return to the specificities of Viseth’s dwelling: “to enter the house, he must walk along a small path (a laneway), and then climb a staircase that is entered from the rear.”51 The concentration of descriptive data suggests that it is important in conveying connotative meaning, and also that it was something of a novelty at the time. Indeed, large-scale apartment living emerged only in Cambodia’s post-independence era; Vann Molyvann would later describe the construction of apartments in the Bassac Riverfront Complex as an “experiment proposing a new type of urban housing for Cambodia.” 52 Narrow alleyways leading to elevated apartments had been familiar in neighbouring Vietnam for longer, since at
51 Saet, Daughter, 84. 52 Vann Molyvann, Modern Khmer Cities, 160. While some shop-houses would very likely have accommodated multiple households before this, the essential point is that apartment living was an unfamiliar novelty at the time of Kim Saet’s writing Where is my Daughter? in around 1962. 389 least the early colonial period.53 Even the terminology used to describe such urban spaces is borrowed from Vietnamese. The passage quoted above somewhat redundantly explains that “we must walk along a small path (a laneway).” “Small path” is my literal translation of ផqãវតូច phlov tuch. Yet the parenthesized word for “laneway,” ផqãវេឌឿង-ែហម phlov doeang hem, is a Khmer loan-word taken from Vietnamese (đường hẻm). We should remember also that after this seemingly exotic mode of entering Viseth’s apartment has been described, the passage characterizes his neighbours: “In Viseth’s neighbourhood, there are not very many ethnic Khmer, and most people are
Vietnamese and Chinese, but these foreigners speak Khmer very well.” Thus, the linking of the unfamiliar architectural and urban features of Viseth’s apartment with the predominance of immigrant Vietnamese and Chinese neighbours suggests that the spatial diversity in the Sangkum era city was matched by an “ethnic” diversity which the colonial zoning had failed to eradicate.
For we know that Viseth’s close and friendly relationship with his neighbours was key to his affection for his home. The author tells us that although the hardworking Viseth was bothered nightly by the noise coming from the “Night Nest” (សំបុកfDតី sombok reatrei) nightclub across the street—
53 Caroline Herbelin, “Architecture et urbanisme en situation coloniale, le cas du Vietnam” [Architecture and Urbanism in a Colonial Situation: the Case of Vietnam], PhD dissertation, Université Paris Sorbonne, 2010, 32-35. 390 bothered to the point of considering moving house—he decided against leaving because “his neighbours here loved and appreciated him very much, and he didn’t want to leave them.”54 One of his neighbours regularly prepares and serves him delicious food, as was customary for unmarried men who could afford it. His neighbours also pass messages, deliver notes, and in other ways participate in Viseth’s daily life.
Viseth’s close relationship with his neighbours is unusual in novels of the period, in which descriptions of houses are often structured around a contrastive difference rather than a neighbourly commonality. In The Water
Flows Tirelessly, also by Kim Saet, repeated laments on the dilapidated state of the protagonists’ hut are used to convey their poverty and to invoke the reader’s pity for their plight. In the opening chapter, we are told that the hut is “dilapidated and struggling to remain standing.”55 Also in the opening chapter, Uncle Dom, an impoverished cyclo driver who is one of the hut’s inhabitants and one of the novel’s most sympathetic characters, expresses his dream for his future in explicit contrast to the situation of the wealthy:
“Uncle Dom hoped that he could turn his little hut into a thatched house that was big enough, while the owner of his cyclo had built a new seven storey house, built on the sweat of the poor.”56
54 Saet, Daughter, 87-88. 55 “DទុឌេD≠ម ខំDតដរ ។” Saet, Water, 2. 56 Saet, Water, 5. 391 References to Dom and his family’s hut throughout the novel almost always include the sympathetic adjective “pitiful” (កំសត់ komsot). By contrast, descriptions of wealthier characters consistently provide specific details of their homes. Most striking is the description of the house of Mrs Yum, a money lender whose inflexibility and greed results in Dom’s adopted nephew being sent to prison. When Dom’s daughter visits Mrs Yum’s house to ask for an extension on the loan—an extension which is callously rejected—the wealth of the dwelling functions as a symbol of the money lender’s decadence. “This residence,” the description begins,
“which is built on the south side, adjoining Wat Steung Meanchey temple, is a big and tall building, made from concrete. All around the building is a fence. Inside the fence there is a flower garden, with jasmines, and white and red magnolias, and many other blooms. Inside the house, both the upper and lower levels are beautifully decorated in sumptuous luxury.”57
The impact here is clearly derived from this residence’s contrast with the
“dilapidated” hut that “struggles to remain standing.” As in Where is my
Daughter?, the precision of details given here, including the address, maximizes the sense of realism. The density of description conveys the contrast between the money lender’s wealth and the “pitiful hut” of the impoverished protagonists.
57 Saet, Water, 58-59. 392 Let us return to Viseth in Where is my Daughter? Although his friendliness with his neighbours made him decide against relocating, Viseth’s antipathy for the “Night Nest” nightclub is described in forceful terms, and offers a telling insight into the novel’s larger discussions around morality and proper conduct in the “modern era” (សម័យថ?ី samay thmei, literally “new era”).
The “Night Nest” is described as a rowdy place, frequented by drunken men and “bar girls, including Cambodians, Vietnamese, and Cantonese-Chinese.”
Sometimes police intervene in disturbances, and noise from its patrons had been disturbing Viseth ever since the establishment had opened a year earlier.
“Viseth was very angry with this nightclub,” we are told.58 It is telling that it is because of a disturbance at the “Night Nest” that Sopheap first arrives to
Viseth’s apartment, and thus enters the novel’s plot.
Viseth’s arguments with Sopheap, and with his younger brother Kosal, about morality and proper conduct in the “modern era” constitute the main battleground between differing worldviews in the novel, since Viseth and
Samrith, both professors, share a very similar outlook. Viseth’s neighbour,
Mrs Tan Chu, describes Sopheap as “very attractive, and attired in the style of a modern girl.”59 In their first conversation, Sopheap tells Viseth that he was the teacher she “hated more than all the others,” because once they entered the classroom, he:
58 Saet, Daughter, 87. 59 “côនរូបfងDសស់បស់aស់ េហើយតុបែតងខq¶នxមរេបៀប5រ†ទំេនើប ។” Saet, Daughter, 86. 393 “thought only of educating the youth, and wanted only for the youth to be disciplined and moral and kind; he didn’t at all want to allow the youth to be joyful in the new, modern way of the world.”60
This passage seems to mock the hard-headed youthful and modern perspective that Sopheap represents, since after all, one cannot reasonably reproach a teacher for thinking of “educating” and wanting students to be
“disciplined and moral and kind.” The exchange continues, with the author allowing Viseth to articulate his opposition to the desire “to be joyful in the new, modern way of the world,” and Sopheap to explain what motivates her passion.
Hearing Sopheap’s complaint, Viseth becomes impatient and explains why his focus on education, morality and discipline is opposed to modern fun. He explains:
“I want the youth to display the national character, and be honourable. Joyfulness of the modern kind is without national character, without morality, and without any sense of honesty at all.”61
It is striking how comprehensively Viseth has rhetorically linked universal moral virtues with “national character,” 62 given that when Where is my
60 “គិតែតពីេរឿងអប់រØយុវជន ចង់ឲ'Sែតយុវជនôនវ*ន័យ ôនសីលធម៌ក~Vងខq¶ន មិនចង់ឲ'Sយុវជន សប'ñយ រ†កfយ xមរេបៀបទំេនើបថ?ីរបស់សកលេZកេ;ះ ។” Saet, Daughter, 90. 61 “ខbVំចង់ឲ'Sយុវជនôនចរèកúតិ េហើយៃថqថ~ãរ, ïរសប'ñយរ†កfយ xមែបបសម័យថ?ីúអំេពើDÅស Rក ចរèកúតិ េហើយstនសីលធម៌ stនលក±ណៈ;≤តសûំ≠ល់ែតេ;ះ ។” Saet, Daughter, 91. 394 Daughter? was first published, the nation was less than a decade old. When viewed from the perspective of the Sangkum’s socio-political climate, such rhetoric is essentially inarguable. It renders Sopheap’s response especially ineffectual: she simply protests, “but I like it. I like to be up to date with the modern era, I like to be friendly with young bachelors who know how to dance…”63 In this first exchange between Viseth’s morality and Sopheap’s love for modernity, she is unable to offer any substantive defence of the new, but only to affirm her own personal preference.
Yet in other exchanges between Viseth and Sopheap, as well as Kosal, there is more sympathy for the desire “to be joyful in the new, modern way of the world,” and more opportunity for the teacher’s interlocutors to expand on what is “modern” and “of the world” about this desire for joy. Sopheap explains that the men in the nightclub “see that I am beautiful” and thus
“surround me and love me, like ants surround a piece of sugar”; while Viseth is unconvinced by this, the vivid metaphor arguably allows more sympathetic readers to understand Sopheap’s position. She sees that the men have money,
62 We may also bear in mind older meanings of the word used for “nation” and “national,” úតិ chiet (also commonly romanized as jiet or jati), which is of Pali origin and which also denotes a “race,” “kind,” “category,” or “culture.” Anne Ruth Hansen, How to Behave: Buddhism and Modernity in Colonial Cambodia, 1860-1930 (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2007), 94-95. 63 “ប៉ុែន= ខbVំចូលចិត= ។ ខbVំចូលចិត=េដើរឲ'S≠ន់សម័យថ?ី ខbVំចូលចិត=Qពúមួយកេô≥ះៗែដលេចះfំ ែរក…” Saet, Daughter, 91. 395 and “want[s] friendship with them, too,” but she “only use[s] them for her own happiness.”64 Sopheap affirms:
“but I’m not stupid or confused. I need to dance for fun, in the modern, sivilay, internationalist manner, but I won’t allow myself to be tricked by anyone.”65
Upon hearing this, Viseth is forced to admit to himself that even though he disapproves of Sopheap’s character, “she has a very sharp and clever intellect.”66 He comes to see such intelligence as treacherous, later warning his younger brother Kosal away from Sopheap by telling him to “be careful, be careful with modern women, they will lead you into the filthy mud.”67
Kosal does not heed Viseth’s warning, pursuing a friendship and courtship with Sopheap despite his elder brother’s wishes; his cosmopolitan attitude provides a clear counterpoint to Viseth’s perspective. We learn that after fleeing from their village in Prey Khmer, Kosal had worked on ships travelling from Phnom Penh to Saigon (referred to using the old Khmer name of Prey Nokor), and later to Hong Kong and Singapore. For the last few years,
64 Saet, Daughter, 91-92. 65 “ែតខbVំមិនឆy¶តវេងßងេទ, ខbVំDតÑវïរfំែរកសប'ñយ xមែបបបទសុីវ*ល័យ;កលនិយម ែតខbVំមិន បេaÉយ ឲ'Sខq¶នខbVំ ឲ'SRញ់េÅកអ~កaមួយេឡើយ ។” Saet, Daughter, 92. The term sivilay, adapted from the English “civilized,” is less commonly used in Khmer, but is a popular loan-word in Thai and Lao used to denote something modern and sophisticated, also more recently carrying connotations of cleanliness and order. See Thongchai Winichakul, “The Quest for ‘Siwilai’: A Geographical Discourse of Civilizational Thinking in the Late Nineteenth-Century and Early Twentieth-Century Siam,” Journal of Asian Studies 59 (2000): 528–49. 66 Saet, Daughter, 92. 67 “Dបយ័ត~, Dបយ័ត~5រ†សម័យថ?ីcដឹកឯងេ{ក~Vងភក់Dúំ ។” Saet, Daughter, 104. 396 he has done business in Hong Kong, saving money to enter into a partnership with a friend, opening a profitable automobile repair shop.68 Hearing of this later, Sopheap assures Kosal that “nowadays, our capital city has developed very quickly, and is just as much fun as Hong Kong.”69 This suggests that a worldly outlook is also available to the untravelled Sopheap. Kosal defends her, in an argument with Viseth, by claiming that “Sopheap is not a bad woman, she is a sivilay girl who is up to date with international trends…”70
This reveals at once that Kosal regards being modern (or sivilay) to be a virtue rather than a vice, and that he also sees an inherent value in being “up to date with international trends.” This latter point bears some further consideration.
The attitude of characters in the novel to what here are called
“international trends” is ambivalent and shifting. The novel’s opening passage, with its description of Samrith’s “beautiful home,” favourably emphasizes the capacity of the modern and international to be “combined very well” with older and specifically Cambodian forms. Yet in Viseth’s retort to Kosal’s defence of Sopheap, quoted above, we see an opposing view. He snidely asks, “is that what Hong Kong taught you?” Before continuing to denounce “modern girls” like Sopheap, in increasingly shrill and farcical terms:
68 Saet, Daughter, 101. 69 Saet, Daughter, 105. 70 “សុQពមិនែមនúDសីEDកក់េទ គឺú5រ†សុីវ*ល័យôiក់េដើរ≠ន់សម័យនិយមអន=រúតិ …” Saet, Daughter, 131. 397 “Anything that is removed from the national character, it’s all the modern international trends! Any girl who is immodest, who goes through more husbands than anyone else and who dances better than anyone else, they all are honoured as being ‘modern girls of the international trend.’ And when they go too far as ‘modern girls of the international trend,’ they become strippers, or actors in pornographic films, like people in the Stone Age, who didn’t yet know how to wear clothes.”71
Viseth’s objection to “modern girls” is at last articulated in explicit terms: he regards the “modern” and “international” as synonymous with female sexual promiscuity and deviance; moreover he views “immodesty” as being a stepping-stone to sex work. The likening of sex work to “people in the Stone
Age” posits modernity as not progress but regression, and recalls colonial disparagement of modern Cambodians as depraved and debased, fallen from the heights of their Angkorian ancestors.72
But even in this moment, Viseth’s disdain for “modernity” is ambivalent and uneven in interesting ways. After his outburst, the clock
(often discussed as a quintessential symbol of modernity) chimes, and Viseth
71 “អßីែដលDÅសRកលក±ណៈúតិ សុទ[ែតសម័យនិយមអន=រúតិ≠ំងអស់ ! 5រ†aែដលមិននឹង ធឹង េDបើប=ីចុះúងេគ េដើរfំែរកេDចើនúងេគ សុទ[ែតÅនកិត=ិយសà ‘5រ†សម័យនិយមអន=រúតិ’ េហើយដល់c សម័យនិយមអន=រúតិJ≥ំងេពកេ{ cេ{úfំD;តឬេដើរតួ ‘Qពយន=កូនDជÑក’ ដូចú មនុស'9ក~Vងសម័យ យុគសិZបរមបូfណ ែដលមិន≠ក់េចះេសqÖកòក់េJEវអ៊§ចឹង !” Saet, Daughter, 131. 72 This colonial attitude also appears in much Khmer discourse. See, for example, Chheng Phon’s 1983 text, reproduced in translation as Appendix 2: “in the past six hundred years, the summits of wisdom and creative genius that vividly made our lives free and happy have declined and broken, being ruined a little at a time, a little less hopeful every day, until nothing at all was left, reaching zero in the genocidal regime.” 398 sees that it is almost time for dinner. Not wishing to continue his criticism of
Kosal for now, lest it ruin his enjoyment of his meal, Viseth decides to change the subject. Significantly, he chooses to ask his brother about his work, and about “what interests him in modern Phnom Penh.” 73 Recalling Viseth’s enjoyment of Samrith’s “Cambodian heritage” yet “most modern” house, and his attachment to his own modern style of apartment living, we can see a pattern here. These details, and Viseth’s choice of “modern Phnom Penh” as an uncontroversial and inoffensive topic of conversation with Kosal, reveal that the teacher’s disdain of “modern girls” does not extend to a dislike for the modern city—a city in which private homes are, as we have seen in the novel’s narrative and in our discussions in Chapter 6, central to the experience of modern space.
Disrupted narratives: On intertextuality and direct address in modern Khmer novels
Viseth’s approval of the modern extends beyond a liking for “modern Phnom
Penh,” to include an enthusiasm for modern Khmer literature. We have already seen that he likes to stay up late preparing his lessons. His enthusiasm is also conveyed in the density and expanse of detail devoted to describing his lectures: seven pages are devoted to accounts of these lessons.74
73 “េគ;កសួរបûãនអំពីEជីវកម?របស់c េហើយïរRប់Eរម?ណ៍របស់c ចំេòះភ~ំេពញទំេនើប … ។” Saet, Daughter, 131-132. 74 Saet, Daughter, 107-109, 119-121. 399 Moreover, study of Khmer literature is rhetorically linked to Cambodian nationalism, since Viseth and his students stand to respect the national flag at the conclusion of each class.75
Viseth’s—and Kim Saet’s—affection for modern Khmer literature is also conveyed in the numerous intertextual allusions in the novel. In a passage which poetically exalts the beauty of Viseth’s former wife Navi, the author makes three explicit intertextual references which imply an expectation that readers are familiar with other novels. Saet begins with a familiar Khmer metaphor, comparing a woman’s beauty to a flower. “Just as the flower with the sweetest nectar delights the bee, so too Navi delights a man in the same way.” This naturalizes love of and attraction to Navi. As if it is also somehow natural and familiar, the author then proceeds directly to a list of three iconic female characters from Khmer literature:
“Teav, Khunneari, Kakey: they were all famed in Cambodia in times gone by, and kept people’s mouths busy with praising them. And Navi’s appearance is no less than theirs…”76
Teav is the titular protagonist from Tum Teav, a tragic love story thought to have first appeared in oral form around the mid-nineteenth century, and perhaps earlier.77 The story remained widely taught and known during the
Sangkum (and is still popular in the twenty first century), and is often
75 Saet, Daughter, 122. 76 Saet, Daughter, 47. 77 Chigas, Tum Teav, 1-21. 400 considered a precursor to the modern Khmer novel, which (as we have seen) emerged in the late 1930s.78 Khunneari is the name of the protagonist in Nhok
Them’s The Rose of Pailin, mentioned briefly above: it is one of the earliest
Khmer novels, and one of the best known. Kakey is a character from a folk tale of the same name, attributed to King Ang Duong (r, 1841-1844, 1845-
1860). Significantly, all three of these texts are included in Viseth’s lessons, which as we have seen, are described in great detail. This suggests a slippage between the character of Viseth and the author, while also compounding the complexity of the intertextual allusion.
Intertextuality such as this not only implies a well-read readership with an interest in modern Khmer literature; it also functions to disrupt the narrative flow of the novel. In pointing to specific other published texts, intertextual references direct the reader’s attention outside of the imaginary space of the novel at hand. There is a recurrent back and forth of the reader’s focus, for example, from the narrative of Viseth, Samrith and their fellow characters in Where is my Daughter? to other narratives of other characters in other novels, and then back to Viseth and Samrith again.
78 Amratisha proposes that the appearance of Tum Teav in the early colonial period “indicated an interesting change in classical literature and its authors, as the court began to draw on the non-elite oral tradition. Conversely, the refining of oral tales reflected the decline of traditional power; the suffering of common people at the hands of unjust rulers as portrayed in [Tum Teav] were criticisms of the old society. Never before had literature addressed social problems and expressed defiance against the powerful elite until the monarchy lost their real power to the French.” Amratisha, “Cambodian Novel,” 44. 401 The frequent inclusion of letters and other documents, verbatim, within modern Khmer novels has a similar function of disrupting the narrative through a sharp shift in voice and a turn away from the imagined space of the story. The most extreme case is the work of Soth Polin, in which this takes the form of a self-conscious formal experimentation, at times flamboyantly foregrounding literary wordplay with no concern for naturalism, even though much of the rest of the narrative in his novels is broadly naturalistic. Polin’s A Meaningless Life includes dream sequences, untranslated passages of French text, and epigraphs with only the most tangential relationship to the plot.79
Yet the inclusion of (and allusion to) extratextual documents in many novels can also add an air of veracity and authenticity to the story.80 This is seen most clearly in The Bestial Village [Phum Terechan] by Dik Keam and
Doeuk Om (first published in 1971, written in 1964-65).81 The story of the assassination of colonial Résident Bardez in 1925, the novel is based on historical events, and includes frequent mention of the specific sources of the information being offered, including footnotes citing archival documents and
79 Polin, Meaningless Life. 80 Epistolary novels are widely regarded as crucial in the emergence of the modern novel in English, and in particular the shift from allegorical to personal characterizations. Samuel Richardson’s Pamela, or, Virtue Rewarded (1740) is among the earliest and best-known examples. Epistolary forms allow an emphasis on characters’ interior lives. See: Ian Watt, Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding (London: Chatto & Windus, 1957). 81 Dik Keam (ឌីក sម) and Doeuk Om (េឌៀក អំ). ភូមិតិរR∂ន Phum Terechan [The Bestial Village] (Phnom Penh: Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports, 2009 [1971]). 402 conversations with elders in the village where the assassination took place.82
These make the historical basis of the story “believable,” which was perhaps politically important, given that the novel contains strong anti-royalist sentiments, and was not published until after the 1970 coup which overthrew
Sihanouk and heralded, in Chandler’s account, “a wave of nationalist literature.”83
Yet the provision of such documentary evidence in the novel is also rather jarring within the fictionalized story of romantic love between a villager named Ton and her husband Sovan. There is also a marked stylistic discrepancy between semi-historical descriptions of the villagers’ assassination of their French overlord, and more sentimental, fictionalized passages lingering on the couple’s domestic life with their young child.
Verbatim inclusion of official documents only heightens the sensation of suddenness of the shifts in tone. This disrupts the reader’s immersion in the narrative, and is especially notable given that the authors’ unusually lengthy introduction to The Bestial Village [Phum Terechan] concludes with the following exhortation:
82 Chandler explains that Dik Keam was a librarian at the Buddhist Institute in Phnom Penh in the early 1970s, who had assisted him and other scholars in their research. Chandler’s essay on the historical event of Bardez’s assassination includes reference to Phum Terechan [The Bestial Village], and to some of the same archival documents that are cited in the novel. The essay was originally published in 1982. David Chandler, “The Assassination of Résident Bardez (1925): A Premonition of Revolt in Colonial Cambodia,” Siksācakr: Journal of Cambodia Research 12-13 (2010- 2011): 72-88. 83 Chandler, “Assassination,” 72. 403
“To help to relax the atmosphere and please the esteemed reader, we invite the esteemed reader to read The Bestial Village [Phum Terechan] and its descriptions of the events of 18 April as follows in the style of a novel.”84
Thus the novel can be seen to employ not only intertextuality in disrupting the narrative, but also a direct and vocative authorial address to the reader.
Direct address to readers is a common trope in modern Khmer novels, serving to disrupt immersion in the narrative by asserting the presence of the author. Indeed, Sophat—which Amratisha claims to be the “first” modern
Khmer novel 85 —repeatedly disrupts our absorption into the flow of the dramatic story of rags-to-riches-to-rags love and tragedy through frequent and pronounced instances of direct address to the “dear reader,” and exclamatory authorial commentary.86
Direct address also at times functions to indicate who the intended reader is, as in Betraying her Husband for Money! by Bun Chanttha. The novel opens with the author casually greeting her readers in a manner which specifically identifies them as female: “hello, all of my beloved girl friends!”87
84 “េដើម'(ីជួយបន[ãរបរ*îïស េZកអ~កEនេEយÅនសប'ñយរ†កfយ េយើងខbVំសូមអេ°∑ើញេZក អ~ក 5ង Eនេរឿង “ភូមិតិរR∂ន” ឬ Dពឹត=ិïរណ៍ ១៨ េម; xមែបបDបេZមេZកដូចតេ{។” Keam and Om, Bestial Village, vii. 85 Amratisha, “Cambodian Novel,” 84. 86 Rim Kin (រ†ម គីន), េរឿង សូπត Roeang Sophat (Phnom Penh: Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport, 2014 [1965]). The novel was originally written in 1938, and first published in 1941. 87 “សួស=ី ! មិត=5រ†úទីេស~e របស់5ងខbVំ≠ំង∫យ !” Chanttha, Betraying, i. 404 She later expands this to include male readers, but is careful to be clear that young women are also firmly in the author’s mind: “Gentlemen and girls, you will all surely shed a tear […] and suffer terrible sadness reading this tragic novel.”88 This manner of vocative address not only explains that women are a primary intended readership, but also performatively invokes a sense of community among these readers, one that is shared also by the author, who tells us also that she “never thought that I would become a novelist.”89
These and other examples of direct address show us that modern
Khmer novels were not only escapist entertainment—កំ;ន= komsan—but were also often profoundly reflexive and self-conscious texts, which employed specific literary strategies to mitigate against the reader’s immersion in the time-space of the story, by disrupting the flow of narrative.
That the novels are short also limits the possibility of immersion in the plot.
The disrupted narrative format is significant in that it creates a sense of non-linear time within the space of the novel, and in the experience of reading the novel. That is, the story does not only progress according to the plot’s own fictional teleology, but also shifts from the imaginary time-space in which the story takes place to the “real” time-space in which the reader is reading.
Literary experiments in non-naturalistic, intertextual, and disruptive formal
88 “អស់េZក អ~ក5ងច'ñស់úសDមក់ទឹកែភ~ក, ôនទុក±Dពយ, េJ≥ចផ'7ក~Vងចិត= […] ïលេបើÅន Eន DបេZមេZកដ៏ែសនកំសត់ េòេពញេ{េ"យជីវ*តឈឺRប់េរឿង ក'(ត់ប=ីេដើម'(ីDÅក !” Chanttha, Betraying, i-ii. 89 Chanttha, Betraying, i. 405 structures such as this are often considered to be quintessential of the modern novel in many languages. Certainly, reflexivity and authorial self- consciousness are considered hallmarks of literary modernism. As such, they are worthy of attention in revealing the way in which novelists during the
Sangkum era articulated their modern subjectivity in relation to the changing modern society around them.
Yet while the literary form itself is perhaps quintessentially modern, with its rise in popularity coinciding with industrial, economic and philosophical transformations in Europe and elsewhere,90 the experience of reading such novels also involves an engagement with contemporaneity—to use a more recent term.91 There are two key aspects to this. The first has to do with the naturalistic elements of modern novels. The reader of a modern
Khmer novel near the time of its publication during the Sangkum period, would be able to recognize the fictional characters as being “contemporaries.”
The precision of factually correct detail about locations in the city magnifies this sense of sharing the time-space of the present with the characters in the novel. The second aspect has to do with the reflexive literary devices which disrupt that naturalism. In making the reader hyper-aware of her or himself and of the experience of reading, the reader’s relation to her or his own time-
90 See Watt, Rise of the Novel. 91 While they do not use the term “contemporaneity,” my thinking here is indebted to Alexander Nagel and Christopher S. Wood, “Plural Temporality of the Work of Art,” in Anachronic Renaissance (New York: Zone Books, 2010), 7-20. 406 space, as distinct from the time-space of the novel, is another kind of contemporaneity. As I have argued, when we approach contemporaneity as a conceptual tool rather than a chronological marker or an aesthetic category, certain works can be both “modern” and “contemporary.” Novels in Khmer of the Sangkum era demonstrate this especially effectively.
The interlacing of multiple temporalities within the modern Khmer novel is also achieved through a back and forth, non-linear mode of storytelling. This is a feature in many literary works from the period. I have already mentioned how several novels feature flashbacks and other shifts in time, including the flashback from Phnom Penh in 1962 to Prey Khmer in
1946, in Kim Saet’s Where is my Daughter?
I will now turn to the looping plot structure of Suon Sorin’s A New Sun
Rises Over the Old Land92 in a final consideration of this notion of non-linear narrative structure. As in our reading of Kim Saet’s novel, we will concentrate on how the modern is enacted in Sorin’s work. We will pay particular attention to what the back and forth narrative structure and overlaying of multiple temporalities can reveal about the coevalities of the modern in
Cambodia: of old and new, urban and rural, proletarian and peasant.
92 Suon Sorin (សួន សុរ*នL), DពះEទិត'Sថ?ីរះេលើែផនដីRស់ Preah Aatit Thmei Reah Loeu Phendei Chas [A New Sun Rises Over the Old Land] (Phnom Penh: Wiriyeak, 1961). 407 On A New Sun Rises Over the Old Land, by Suon Sorin, 1961
Born in 1930 in the Sangker district of Battambang province, and employed as a secretary in the provincial office, Suon Sorin joined the Association of
Khmer Writer (សôគមអ~កនិពន[ែខ?រ samakum neaknipun khmer) in June 1961, just in time to enter the inaugural Indradevi Literature Award, for 1960-61. He then won first prize for A New Sun Rises Over the Old Land.93 The novel sold
30,000 copies, which Amratisha affirms was “the highest publication figure in the history of the Cambodian novel.”94 Nothing more about the author is known.
A New Sun Rises Over the Old Land may be considered canonical in the
Cambodian context; it enjoyed at the time of initial publication and continues to enjoy a large readership. At the time of its initial publication, this was largely a result of the novel’s winning of a major literary prize. In the contemporary context, its continuing popularity is aided by its publication by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports, its resulting affordability and accessibility, and its status as prescribed reading in some schools and universities. Several Khmer stories published in the twenty first century
93 Hoc Dy, អក'9រសិល'(៍ែខ?រ [Khmer Literature], 285. This is the only known biographical data available on Suon Sorin. Hoc Dy lists his year of death as 1975, although no further information is provided. 94 Amratisha, “Cambodian Novel,” 220. 408 intertextually address Sorin’s novel.95 Moreover, the novel is addressed in relative detail in some secondary sources.
Sorin’s novel explicitly celebrates Sihanouk’s Sangkum while sharply criticizing society and politics of the time. Here we will focus on the back and forth narrative structure which shapes its account on the meeting of two worlds—symbolized by the rapidly modernizing capital city of Phnom Penh and the agrarian province of Battambang.
We begin with a passage from the antepenultimate chapter, which is titled “The New Peasant” (កសិករថ?ី kasikar thmei).
“Now, a new sun has risen over the old land, it has risen over the French colonialism, it has risen over the deceitful politicians; a new sun has brought equality and peace and showered it over the old land.”96
Here Sorin casts the sun as “new,” and as external to and elevated above the land, which is “old.” Colonialism and political deceit are also implicitly cast as old—at least, older than the sun—but perhaps not as old as the land in
95 See, for example, Phou Chakriya (ភូ ចរ*î), “ៃថªមិនរះ” Thngai Min Reah [“The Sun Never Rises”], in Dគប់îdងេដើម'(ីអ~កa៖ កDមង;iៃដអក'9រសិល'(៍ែខ?រ ែបបទំេនើប Who’s It For: Collection of Modern Cambodian Short Fiction, ed. Teri Shaffer Yamada and Soeun Klo (Phnom Penh: Nou Hach Literary Association, 2014), 66-80. In Khmer and English (with translation by NH Translation Group). Her story is also the tale of a cyclo driver. See also Som Sophearin (សំ សុQរ*នL), េពលៃថªរះ Pel Thngai Reah (When the Sun Rises) (Phnom Penh: Angkor Thom, 2008). Sophearin’s novel centres on the lives of peasants. 96 “ឥឡãវេនះ DពះEទិត'Sថ?ីÅនរះេäេលើែផនដីRស់េហើយ គឺរះេäេលើែផនដីៃនEaនិគមÅfំង េហើយ និង ែផនដីៃនអ~កនេîÅយេÅកDÅស់ DពះEទិត'Sថ?ីÅនយកនូវេស?ើៃនសន=ិQពមកÅច ជះេäេលើ ែផនដីRស់!” Sorin, New Sun Rises, 132. 409 which they can be found: this is left unclear. And equality and peace are, in this passage, of indeterminate age and origin; they have been “brought” by the “new sun” but were, perhaps, already extant. The passage implies an understanding of time and history that is plural and non-linear, and encompasses a coevality of new and old. Temporalities are overlaid even in this one sentence, in a way that functions as a synecdoche of the back and forth narrative structure and storytelling devices displayed in Sorin’s book overall.
Appearing near the end of the novel, this passage is freighted with significance, despite conveying nothing substantial in terms of plot. The source of the book’s title, A New Sun Rises Over the Old Land, the poetic sentence is distinguished by its repetitive rhythm, with the Khmer “រះេäេលើ” reah nau loeu (risen over) especially resonant. The assonant echoing of the aspirant vowel in រះ reah (to rise) with that in DពះEទិត'S preah aatit (the sun) implies an inevitability that the sun—not only the “real” sun but also this metaphorical sun, representing in part the Sangkum—will continue to rise in this way. That is, an inevitability that the “new” will return again and again, coupled with the “old.”
The sentence also names—for the first time in the text, after 132 pages—those historical forces and ideological imperatives that underlie the narrative in various ways. Set entirely in the 1950s, the novel makes almost no
410 explicit reference to the colonial past. It also makes almost no explicit reference to the Sangkum regime, with the exception of a few short scenes with Sam riding on a passenger train, travelling to one of Sihanouk’s national public congresses. While Sorin employs a looping temporality that shifts between a present narration of remembered (past) action, the novel may also be seen to be essentially a novel of its present. The author presents a nuanced view of Cambodia in the first years of independence, taking in both extreme poverty and wealth, hopelessness and optimism. Notably, however, it does so without any significant reflection on the previous colonial (or any other) era.
While the protagonist undergoes considerable hardship in the course of the novel, the period covered is perhaps a few years at most, and the passage of time is notably indistinct. If a preoccupation with the present, as distinct from the historical past or the projected future, is understood to be one characteristic of contemporaneity, then New Sun Rises Over the Old Land is a markedly “contemporary” novel in this respect.
The titular passage overlays multiple temporalities in pointing to the simultaneous importance of the “new” and the “old” in constituting the
Cambodian modern. But other aspects of the novel’s plot are also important in disrupting the linear progression of the plot. Central among these is the extended flashback device. In effect, the entirety of the novel’s action takes place in a remembered past, which the protagonist muses upon from his vantage point on board the train. We have seen that a recurrent trope in many 411 modern Khmer novels is to open with a description of the protagonist’s house. What, then, to make of the introductory chapter of A New Sun Rises
Over the Old Land, which is set on a train?
The opening passage is almost cinematic, in its gradual narrowing in of focus from the general scene to the specific individual. The narrative begins by observing as “the train carried its passengers out from the Battambang station, and sped towards Phnom Penh, shaking and rumbling loudly.” It continues by informing us that “most of the passengers were travelling together to the capital in order to join the Ninth National Congress. They were so happy, indescribably delighted. Some chatted, others laughed gaily.”
It then moves out of the imagined space of the train carriage for a moment, in order to clarify that “the first meeting of the Ninth National Congress will take place tomorrow…” And then links this extraneous fact to the scene in the train, with the affirmation that “the passengers all remember this, and they hope that tomorrow will come quickly.” It is only then that we begin to zoom in from this general scene in the train. In an implied direct address to the reader, the text continues:
“If we study these happy passengers very carefully, we will see a man who is big and tall, his skin the colour of a mung bean, his hair curly and his face round, with sunken eyes under thick, bushy eyebrows that suggest that this man is very precise in his work, but has an active imagination. This man is Suon Sam.”97
97 Sorin, New Sun Rises, 1. 412 At this point, we may recall Benedict Anderson’s observation that characters in modern novels are linked by the notion “that they are embedded in
‘societies,’” by which he means geographically bounded societies, chiefly cities.98 This is certainly the case for the array of characters from diverse social classes that we—and Suon Sam—encounter in Phnom Penh. Thus, it is particularly striking that the novel should open not in a city or a fixed
“society” but rather in literal transit between two cities, representing two
“societies” which are revealed to be quite radically different: one an urban space populated by “workers” and one a rural environment populated by
“peasants.”
The modern technology of the train brings these two seemingly incommensurate environments—the urban and the rural, the proletarian and the agrarian—into direct contact; they are, after all, just a day’s comfortable train travel away from each other. The novel’s opening passage thus reveals its central interest in notions of transformation in modern, Sangkum era
Cambodia: the (rhetorical and actual) shifts from an agrarian economy to a proletarian urban life, and all that this involved.
But just as significantly, the opening passage also demonstrates the novel’s interest in a back and forth narrative structure. It is from his vantage point on the train that Sam recalls his former life as the driver of a cyclo
98 Anderson, Imagined Communities, 25. 413 (pedalled rickshaw, as discussed in Chapter 2) in Phnom Penh. 99 While smoking a cigarette, he looks out the window at the countryside, seeing “rice fields, forests and mountains that are filled with a spirit of honesty, like the spirit of the Khmer ancestors from the era of Angkor.”100 Sam muses on the
“immense suffering” that was “his life in the past.” He “compares it with his life in the present” and “sees that his life in these two eras is as different as the sky and the land, because in his former life, Sam almost could not go on, but now, Sam has begun to achieve great success and happiness.”101 In order to signal what the focus of the novel will be, the author at this point directly addresses the “dear readers,” exhorting us to “please continue to turn the
99 Representative of social inequality and economic vulnerability, rickshaw workers are found in novels from across the broader region. Best known in English translation is Lao She, Rickshaw Boy, trans. Howard Goldblatt (London: Harper Collins, 2010 [1936-37]). The similarities in Lao She’s description of his protagonist, Xiangzi, are striking, especially the visceral emphasis on the sweat and physical hardship of pulling the rickshaw. It is unlikely, however, that Suon Sorin (or Kim Saet) had access to this novel. 100 “cលែDសនិងៃDពភ~ំែដលេòេពញ េ{េ"យទឹកចិត=ដ៏េ;tះDតង់ ដូចទឹកចិត=របស់បុពßបុរសែខ?រ សម័យ អង}រ” Sorin, New Sun Rises, 2. It is significant that this rhetorically loaded countryside is in Battambang. Sorin’s novel is one of very many published during the Sangkum era and before which are set in Battambang, or feature characters from the province. With similar effect to the many songs by popular musicians like Sinn Sisamouth that celebrate Battambang’s charms, this geographic focus can be understood in part as a nationalist response to the recent return of this and several other provinces to Cambodia, after a time under Siamese control. 101 Sorin, New Sun Rises, 4-5. 414 pages of this book. You will surely learn many tales of extreme suffering from
Sam’s past, as follows…”102
Of course, while the focus is on the “suffering from Sam’s past,” the possibility of temporal comparison is raised for we readers just as it is for
Sam. Moreover, this direct address to readers—which also serves as the fulcrum point, after which the action shifts to the remembered past— interrupts us from our immersion in Sam’s dream-like reverie on the train. At any future point in our reading of the novel, should we find ourselves suddenly reflexively self-aware of the experience of reading, we may recall this first moment of disruption.
Thus, there are not two but three time-spaces interwoven in the reading of this text: the remembered past in which the action takes place, the
“present” from which the action is remembered, with Sam sitting on the train, and the reader’s own “real” present at the moment of reading. These three temporalities are explicitly acknowledged in this opening chapter, and its setting on a moving train poetically suggests that each of these temporalities is also unstable, shifting, in flux. Just as the geographical distance between agrarian Battambang province and somewhat proletarian Phnom Penh is collapsed by the technology of the train, so too the imagined distance between
102 “សូមមិDតអ~កEន≠ំង∫យេមxTπΩត់នូវទំព័តៃនេសៀវេæេនះ តេ{មុខេទៀត មិDតមុខúនឹង Åន Dúបនូវេរឿងfdវៃនជីវ*តែសនទុក±Dពយពីអតីតរបស់សមដូចតេ{េនះ . . .” Sorin, New Sun Rises, 5. 415 the fictional and “real” temporalities in the story are collapsed by the technology of the modern novel. Like all the other modern arts we have seen, the modern novel is thus able to engage at once with the social and political concerns of the day, and also to reflexively register its own formal newness.
Its success in functioning simultaneously on these multiple registers is owed, in part, to the interweaving of plural temporalities in the space of the work: a hallmark of contemporaneity, and one of the clearest instances in
“Cambodian arts” of locating the contemporary within the modern.
Conclusion: Literature as nation-building rhetoric
The novels we have discussed have all been critical of Sangkum era society.
Yet significantly, literature was a field in which Sihanouk took a strong and active interest, seeing its potential as a tool for nation-building and communicating political rhetoric.
The Indradevi Literary Award, of which Sorin’s A New Sun Rises Over the Old Land was the inaugural winner, is a prime example of Sihanouk’s direct intervention in modern literature. The Award was established by the
Association of Khmer Writers, an organization which Amratisha explains was supported by Sihanouk “politically, socially and financially,” and of which he was “honorary president.” Many “senior members” of the Association held
416 good positions in the Sangkum government.103 In a speech at the ceremony for the Award, Sihanouk asserted that writers had a duty not only to literature, but also to nation-building. He insisted that writers had a responsibility to support Sangkum policy, yet that novels should not write directly about politics.104 Seemingly as a result of the prince’s prominent role in sponsoring the Association of Khmer Writers and the publication of novels, Sihanouk is popularly imagined in twenty first century Cambodia as “the father of national literature.”105
Literary prizes were commonly used as tools for political intervention in literary affairs during the years following independence in many Southeast
Asian nations. In Burma, for example, the newly installed military government in 1964 established several “National Literary Prizes.” One commentator has claimed that “increasingly, political rather than literary criteria have come to determine the choice of prize-winners.”106 In a linking of specific partisan political allegiance with vague nationalist sentiment, closely recalling Sihanouk’s statements cited above, Burmese works were required to
103 Amratisha, “Cambodian Novel,” 173. 104 Amratisha, “Cambodian Novel,” 174. 105 See, for example: Author unnamed, “Preface” [2003], in Li Thiemteng (លី øមេតង), រØដួលភ~ំគូែលន Romduel Phnom Kulen [The Fall of Mount Kulen] (Phnom Penh: Angkor Thom, 2003 [1963]), iii. In Khmer. 106 Anna Allott, “Introduction” in Ma Ma Lay, Not Out of Hate: A Novel of Burma, trans. Margaret Aung-Thwin, ed. William H. Frederick (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Center for International Studies, 1991), xiii. 417 support the ruling party, while also “foster[ing] Burmese culture and the
Burmese way of life.”107
All of the modern “Cambodian arts” we have seen in this and preceding chapters have been to significant degrees instrumentalized in the service of political rhetoric—by individual artists, by Sihanouk, and at times by both. In the next chapter, we will see that this trend continues in the years after 1975, during the period of war and its aftermath.
107 Anna Allott, “Continuity and Change in the Burmese Literary Canon,” in The Canon in Southeast Asian Literatures: Literatures of Burma, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam, ed. David Smyth (Richmond, UK: Curzon, 2000), 29-30. 418 Chapter 8
War and its Aftermath, 1975-1999: Art “Without the Slightest Vestige of the Modern”?
“Dear poets, all authors in the world: as an artist of Kampuchea, I wish to inform you that I have no words to say. It can never be said. There is a limit to the words of humans, there is a border that contains that which we can say. We cannot speak at all, we cannot describe a suffering that has no boundary, that is limitless. ” — Chheng Phon, 19831
These words are taken from a previously untranslated text, reproduced in
Appendix 2. It describes the horror of life under Pol Pot from 1975 to 1979, and especially for artists, who were, it testifies, specifically targeted for murder. The text also represents the immediacy and vitality of the rebuilding of the arts after 1979, and the inextricable conjoining of this rebuilding effort with a renewed instrumentalization of art as a tool for communicating
1 Chheng Phon (េជង ផុន), “មតិតំ+ងសិល./ករ” [Views of a Representative of Artists], in ឧ3កិដធ6កម7របស់បន:តទីអនុត>រ?ពនិយមចិនេប៉Dំង និង បរE:រ ប៉ុល ពទ - េអៀង GរH - េខៀវ សំផន កKLងអំឡLងNOំ ១៩៧៥ - ១៩៧៩ [The Crimes of the Beijing-ist Clique and the Pol Pot – Ieng Sary – Khieu Samphan Stooges from 1975 to 1979] (Phnom Penh: National Advisory Alliance for Solidarity, Construction and Defence of the Motherland, 1983), 50-57. NAC Box B-637. The text is reproduced in translation as Appendix 2 of this thesis. Except as otherwise noted, all references to Chheng Phon hereinafter are to this text. 419 political rhetoric. This chapter will refer to the late Chheng Phon’s 1983 text, but it cannot hope to match the poetic and visceral intensity of his words.
What follows should be read in the shadow of Appendix 2, and my attempts to present coherent arguments here should be read against the powerful and necessary inchoateness of Phon’s words.
Although the war and its aftermath made a simple continuity in the arts impossible, there was also not a simple discontinuity. The Khmer Rouge despised and attempted to destroy both modern and boran (ancient, classical, traditional) arts, and they did not place a high value on art as a revolutionary tool; but nevertheless, under the regime, there was still art. The subsequent
People’s Republic of Kampuchea government collapsed art into rhetoric (or
“propaganda”), yet in instrumentalizing culture they also enthusiastically supported its intensive reconstruction, a dual process which has continued to varying degrees under subsequent regimes. Theorists of contemporary art in other contexts often posit a near-total break between the “modern” and the
“contemporary.” Terry Smith, we will recall, asserts that “things really are different than they were before.” 2 Even with the rupture caused by the extreme violence of Democratic Kampuchea, even in Cambodia there is not an absolute break between the modern and the contemporary, or between the arts before 1975 and those after 1979, or 1999.
2 Terry Smith, Thinking Contemporary Curating (New York: Independent Curators International, 2012), 179. 420 That this chapter is bounded by the years 1975 and 1999 is a polemical gesture. The former date, of course, refers to political history: the fall of
Phnom Penh to the Khmer Rouge. By contrast, 1999 refers to art history: the appearance of “Cambodian arts” in the 1st Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale in that year, and the attendant opening of the Reyum Institute, an art space in
Phnom Penh. This titular reference to both “political” and “art” events thus signals the necessity of both discourses, and their interconnection. John Clark has persuasively demonstrated that in some (Asian) cultures, the broader project of artistic modernity is conceived of in close connection to political events, whereas in others, the relationship is more distant.3 The rapidity and intensity of political upheaval in modern Cambodia, and especially the suffering under war and its aftermath—which Chheng Phon calls inexpressible and “limitless”—means that historical events are of unavoidable importance in constructing an art history of modern and contemporary
“Cambodian arts.” Yet comparatively minor art events, such as a visit by some Japanese curators (Fukuoka) and the opening of a shopfront gallery
(Reyum), have also played decisive roles in prompting cultural shifts and shaping artists’ practices.
3 John Clark, Asian Modernities: Chinese and Thai Art Compared, 1980 to 1999 (Sydney: Power Publications, 2010), esp. 217-221. This is a crude characterization of Clark’s complex argument, but in its broadest terms, considering the shifting implications of political periodization on art periodization is productive. 421 Whereas the preceding chapters have been organized around one or another form of artistic production—painting, performance, architecture, literature—the central idiom here is instead that of the “rhetorical.” In discussions of the instrumentalizing of art by Sihanouk (and to a lesser degree under Lon Nol) in previous chapters, I have deployed Simon Creak’s observations about Lao “rhetoric” (which he convincingly posits as a better term than “propaganda”), including that “there is no clear distinction between the medium and the content; khosana can refer to both.” 4 As stated in
Chapter 1, the Khmer term for “rhetoric” is akin to the Lao term. I have argued that to explore the ways in which art is intertwined with ideology is not to see art as being subservient to those political figures who commission it or deploy it for their own purposes. Exploring the position of art during the
Khmer Rouge regime is to explore how modern art can survive particular forms of rhetoric, including rhetoric that is anti-art, and that may appear to be anti-modern.
Given the predominance of the Khmer Rouge atrocities in (external and internal) imaginings of Cambodia ever since the regime’s defeat, the reader may have expected this thesis to begin with this chapter. The centrality of the Democratic Kampuchea years to the ways in which Cambodia has been
4 Simon Creak, “Cold War Rhetoric and the Body: Physical Cultures in Early Socialist Laos,” in Cultures at War: The Cold War and Cultural Expression in Southeast Asia, ed. Tony Day and Maya H.T. Liem (Ithaca, New York: Cornell Southeast Asia Program, 2010), 107-108. 422 seen and has seen itself is, perhaps, not only a result of its unspeakable human devastation, or its socio-political impact, including on international law and intervention. It may also be an effect of the concurrence of what has been termed Pol Pot’s “year zero” with cultural and intellectual shifts in much of the Anglophone world as well as Europe, which may be summarized as a retreat of the radical Left, and a turn to the “postmodern.”
Yet this chapter takes its place within the loose chronology of the thesis, and does not include the detailed analyses of artworks that have characterized the previous chapters. There are three reasons for this.
The first is an attempt to reject the centrality of the genocide in views of Cambodia, both within and external to the country; to insist on the worth of looking beyond its barbarism. This attempt, of course, is doomed to failure.
Related to this always already failed desire, the period of war and its aftermath may be considered a kind of structuring absence in discussions throughout this thesis. It is in many ways impossible to look at Cambodia without seeing the “dark, black clouds” of the Khmer Rouge.
The third reason for this chapter’s shift away from the detailed analysis of specific artworks that has dominated previous chapters is perhaps the most important. It is to maintain focus on the “modern” moment of 1955 to 1975, and the “contemporary” moment of 1999 to 2015, and on temporal comparisons within and between these. Put another way, a more detailed consideration of the arts during the period of war and its aftermath, in the 423 years 1975 to 1999, is beyond the scope of this thesis’ discussion of modernity and contemporaneity in “Cambodian arts.”
That is not to say that the arts of 1975 to 1999 (or even the arts of 1975 to 1979) were, as is widely claimed and as Vann Molyvann has eloquently articulated, “without the slightest vestige of the modern.”5 As outlined in
Chapter 2, I regard “barbarism” as characteristic of the modern.6 And I do not see even the most extreme cases of this barbarism—of which Pol Pot’s regime is surely one—as an “aberration,” but rather as “another face of the same modern society.”7 Recurrent meta-narratives of the modern often take obscene mass violence and destruction either as antithetical to modernity, or as its apotheosis. A more nuanced view is more productive.
“Dark, black clouds”
The period of war and its aftermath structures any discussion of “Cambodian arts” in the years thereafter. We have already seen that the two decades between independence and Democratic Kampuchea—and especially
Sihanouk’s Sangkum Reastr Niyum regime of 1955 to 1970—are popularly
5 Quoted in Matt Steinglass, “The City He Built,” The New York Times Magazine, 15 May 2005, n.p. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/15/magazine/the-city-he-built.html [Accessed September 2016] 6 Alain Badiou, The Century, trans. Alberto Toscana (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2007), 4. 7 Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995), 7. 424 remembered and imagined as a “golden age” for arts and culture. The popularity of Sihanouk and his regime appears to be significantly greater in the twenty first century than it was when it was taking place. The subsequent experience of devastation helps to explain this nostalgia.
There is a related temptation to judge events before 1975 with the benefit (and burden) of hindsight. In the triumphal conclusion to Suon Sorin’s
1961 novel, A New Sun Rises Over the Old Land, the author quotes Sihanouk’s speech at the 9th National Congress (Figure 5.17). Using imagery which relates closely to that in the novel’s title, Sihanouk warns:
“on the future horizon of our country, there are dark, black clouds; they make us worry that we will not have enough peace to build our nation and continue to grow, progress and move forward.”8
Writing and reading from a post-war perspective, perhaps we cannot help but censoriously judge Sihanouk and his contemporaries for failing to heed this premonition.
Moreover, to study pre-1975 arts from the perspective of the post-war is to be struck by the annihilation of artists and other cultural figures. This is
8 “េTេជើងេមឃៃនអXគត3បេទសេយើងZនពពកេ[\ងងឹត ែដលប+_លេ`យេយើងaរម7ណ៍ ែ3កង អស់សន>ិ?ព3គប់3dន់ េដើម./ីកGងeតិេយើងេ`យaនចំេរHនលូតgស់នឹងេគតេhមុខ េទៀត ។” Suon Sorin (សួន សុរEនk), 3ពះ`ទិត.mថ7ីរះេលើែផនដីoស់ Preah Aatit Thmei Reah Loeu Phendei Chas [A New Sun Rises Over the Old Land] (Phnom Penh: Wiriyeak, 1961). 142. 425 seen both historiographically and at the level of affect. In 2001, Ingrid Muan poignantly observed:
“To simply read the names of the students who had entered the School of Cambodian Arts (and later the University) during the 1950s and 1960s and then compare these lists to the living today is to provoke a haunting liturgy to the dead.”9
To hear the music of Sinn Sisamouth, Ros Sereysothea, or any of the other popular singers of the pre-1975 years—their songs still adored by young and old in twenty first century Cambodia, and still heard almost anywhere—is to hear the voices of those who were killed by the Khmer Rouge, often precisely because of their artistry.
It is widely held that between 80 and 90 per cent of all Cambodian artists perished under Democratic Kampuchea. The shocking claim is attributed to Chheng Phon, who was a researcher and choreographer during the Sangkum period, and who after 1979 travelled the country to gather surviving artists, later becoming Minister of Propaganda and Culture.10 The earliest known written reference to the claim is in Chheng Phon’s rarely cited
1983 text (Appendix 2). By 1988, the figure of 80 to 90 per cent of artists
9 Ingrid Muan, “Citing Angkor: The ‘Cambodian Arts’ in the Age of Restoration 1918-2000,” PhD Dissertation, Columbia University, New York, 2001, 392-397. 10 See: Chheng Phon, “Flowers in the Forest: A Talk with Chheng Phon, Minister of Information and Culture,” Cultural Survival Quarterly 14, No. 3 (Fall 1990), n.p. https://www.culturalsurvival.org/publications/cultural-survival-quarterly/cambodia/ flowers-forest-talk-chheng-phon-minister-informati [Accessed September 2016] 426 having died had appeared in a scholarly setting in English.11 The veracity of the statistic is impossible to verify, but is now so widely cited by artists and others within Cambodia as to have taken on a force and truth of its own. It is a figure that is as impossible to conceive of as it is to escape; a “dark, black cloud” that hovers over all that follows.
On arts during Democratic Kampuchea (1975-79): Arts as revolutionary rhetoric
It is often claimed that there was no art during Democratic Kampuchea.
Certainly, the Khmer Rouge did target artists, like other intellectuals and symbols of pre-revolutionary culture, for harassment, torture and murder.
They also abolished all of the main artistic and cultural pastimes of the preceding decades, including cinemas, libraries, and art galleries. Pol Pot’s was an horrifically anti-intellectual ideology, with minimal value placed on education.
Yet the arts were employed by the Khmer Rouge in service of revolutionary rhetoric, just as they had been during Lon Nol’s Khmer
Republic, Sihanouk’s Sangkum, and the French Protectorate—however, to a significantly lesser extent in Democratic Kampuchea, when compared to previous regimes, as art was seen to detract from the supposedly more
11 Sam Sam-Ang, “The Pin Peat Ensemble: Its History, Music, and Context,” PhD Dissertation, Wesleyan University, Connecticut, 1988, 282-283. 427 important task of political consciousness. As Michael Vickery asserts, Pol
Pot’s “policy was not the systematic destruction of all intellectual paraphernalia.”12 Yet to date, no study has comprehensively addressed the use of arts as revolutionary rhetoric during Democratic Kampuchea, or the attitude of the regime to the arts.13 To do so comprehensively is beyond the scope here, but I will point to four categories of already assembled (and translated) sources which could be utilized for such a study. These sources reveal that the arts formed an important—but not central—component of the
Khmer Rouge’s revolutionary vision. This is significant, in that it suggests that while the arts were somewhat (although never completely) devalued in comparison to the preceding regimes, the ways in which art was valued were broadly consistent with those already seen in the years 1955 to 1975.
The first category of sources is written documents from the Khmer
Rouge leadership. The regime’s constitution addresses “culture” briefly but prominently, as the third of 21 articles.14 Speeches and texts on policy are also especially revealing. Eight have been translated, with English introductions,
12 Michael Vickery, Cambodia: 1975-1982 (North Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1984), 173. 13 Many widely-cited monographs on the period do not discuss arts and culture. See, for example: Ben Kiernan, The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power, and Genocide in Cambodia Under the Khmer Rouge, 1975-79 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1996). See also: Karl D. Jackson, ed., Cambodia 1975-1978: Rendezvous with Death (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989). 14 “Constitution of Democratic Kampuchea,” in François Ponchaud, Cambodia Year Zero, trans. Nancy Amphoux (Rinehart and New York: Hold and Winston, 1978), 199-206. 428 in a single volume by Chandler, Kiernan, and Boua.15 Of these documents, five make mention of the arts and culture, and four of these do so in a prescriptive or didactic manner.16
The nature of these references to the arts and culture make clear that the arts certainly had a part in the regime’s program, but never one of central importance. For example, a “Four-Year Plan” written in July-August 1976 includes two paragraphs on “revolutionary culture, literature, and art,” 17 which Chandler describes as “somewhat breathless.” 18 Two tasks are identified: to “continue the struggle to abolish, uproot, and disperse the cultural, literary, and artistic remnants” of pre-revolutionary arts and culture, and to “continue to strengthen and expand the building of revolutionary culture, literature and art.”
This is significant, as it demonstrates that the regime was not only opposed to pre-revolutionary arts, as is often claimed, but was at the same time engaged in a program, at least rhetorically, for “continuously and
15 David P. Chandler, Ben Kiernan, and Chanthou Boua, Pol Pot Plans the Future: Confidential Leadership Documents from Democratic Kampuchea, 1976-1977 (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Southeast Asia Studies, 1988). 16 By contrast, there is no substantial discussion of the arts and culture in the documents translated and compiled in Timothy Michael Carney, ed., Communist Party Power in Kampuchea (Cambodia): Documents and Discussion (Ithaca: Data Paper 106, Southeast Asia Program, Department of Asian Studies, Cornell University, 1977). 17 “The Party’s Four-Year Plan to Build Socialism in All Fields, 1977-1980,” Party Center, July-August 1976, trans. Chanthou Boua, in Chandler, Kiernan, Boua, Pol Pot Plans, 113. 18 David P. Chandler, “Introduction” to “The Party’s Four-Year Plan to Build Socialism in All Fields, 1977-1980,” in Chandler, Kiernan, Boua, Pol Pot Plans, 41. 429 progressively strengthening and expanding” revolutionary culture, literature and art “to meet the requests of worker-peasant masses for the nurturing of culture, political awareness, and consciousness.”19 That is, the regime valued the creation of revolutionary arts as necessary, not solely the destruction of pre-revolutionary culture. Yet, as Chandler notes, “the only cultural activity mentioned in the text is revolutionary songs, especially those ‘that describe good models in the period of socialist revolution.’”20 This suggests that the value of the arts as a tool for political rhetoric was seen as limited. Moreover, while the text includes a section of “instruction” for several cultural activities, including “general listening sessions using loud speakers,” as well as a directive for “many groups to produce many films to show to the people in general” and publication of “pictorial magazines” and other kinds of newspapers, we know from later accounts that films and publications were in fact extremely scarce in Democratic Kampuchea, produced elsewhere and unavailable to the mass of the population. Indeed, this “instruction” section specifically limits the scope for “art,” stating it should be “step-by-step (a little is enough) in order not to disturb the productive forces raising production.”21
This notion of limiting emphasis on the arts and culture recurs in other documents. For example, in a “Preliminary Explanation” delivered orally by
Pol Pot on 21 August 1976, the following passage reinforces the notion that
19 “Four-Year Plan,” 113. 20 Chandler, “Introduction” to “Four-Year Plan,” 41. 21 “Four-Year Plan,” 114. 430 the regime regarded culture not only as an instrument useful for the communication of revolutionary rhetoric, but also as a potential barrier to other (more important) aspects of the revolution:
“People who pilot our helicopters can’t read a great deal… Formerly to be a pilot required a high school education—twelve to fourteen years. Nowadays, it’s clear that political consciousness is the decisive factor. It shows us our line is correct. If we chose ‘culture,’ it would lead to a life and death disaster for the Party.”22
Here, “culture” is linked to education more broadly, and portrayed as an unnecessary indulgence, associated with a time “former” to the revolution, and of little value when compared to “political consciousness.” Yet in the same document, Pol Pot does concede the benefit of education in other fields, including “experimental technology … such as technology involving rubber,” which requires “young people who know how to read and write, and who know some numbers.” 23 Moreover, as in the previously cited “Four-Year
Plan,” here Pol Pot is careful to specify that his vision for art and culture in
Democratic Kampuchea is not only destroying pre-revolutionary forms, but also creating a new revolutionary culture:
“Our culture, literature, and art are revolutionary, struggling to disperse imperialist, feudal, and capitalist culture, as well as all the
22 “Preliminary Explanation Before Reading the Plan, by the Party Secretary,” Party Center, 21 August 1976, trans. David P. Chandler, 160. Emphasis added. 23 “Preliminary Explanation,” 160. 431 reactionaries. In addition, we are building our own culture, literature, and art.”24
Viewed in light of the comments about “culture” leading to a “life and death disaster,” it is clear that these words are far from an affirmation of the centrality of art to Pol Pot’s vision. Yet this document, like other written policy documents from the Khmer Rouge leadership, nevertheless does reveal that the arts and culture were not anathema to or completely absent from official policy of the regime. While never central to the revolutionary agenda, the arts and culture were clearly a part of the Khmer Rouge’s program.
A second category of sources revealing the use of culture as a vehicle for revolutionary rhetoric under Democratic Kampuchea, and the attitude of the regime to the arts, is that of written documents produced not by the
Khmer Rouge leadership, but rather by rank-and-file soldiers and cadres.
Many such documents are collected (although not generally in translation) at the Documentation Center of Cambodia, also known as DC-Cam, in Phnom
Penh. One of the few scholars to have drawn on this category of sources in studying the arts during Democratic Kampuchea is Toni Shapiro-Phim, who quotes from a 1970s Khmer Rouge notebook “containing what appear to be notes from political education sessions.” Under the heading “Contemporary
Principles of Cultural Politics,” the notebook states that “every kind of art production among the masses is intended to wipe out the enemy’s art(s) and
24 “Preliminary Explanation,” 159. Emphasis added. 432 to build new art(s) [and to] serve the people’s war.” 25 This echoes the sentiment conveyed in the two Khmer Rouge leadership documents quoted above. It further reinforces that the official attitude to the arts under
Democratic Kampuchea not only advocated the destruction of pre- revolutionary culture, but also called for the creation of new, revolutionary arts.
A third category of sources on Democratic Kampuchea’s visual culture is photography. The thousands of infamous mugshots taken at the S-21
Khmer Rouge prison, depicting both cadres and prisoners before their assassination, have been subjected to numerous scholarly discussions.26 But other photographs from Democratic Kampuchea have been comparatively under-studied. These include those officially ordered by the regime, those taken by the few outsiders granted access, and those taken in the immediate aftermath of the regime’s overthrow. 27 Images such as Elizabeth Becker’s
25 Quoted (in translation) in Toni Shapiro-Phim, “Dance, Music, and the Nature of Terror in Democratic Kampuchea,” in Annihilating Difference: The Anthropology of Genocide, ed. Alexander Laban Hinton (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 2002), 181. 26 See, for example: Lindsey French, “Exhibiting Terror,” in Truth Claims: Representation and Human Rights, ed. Mark Bradley and Patrice Petro (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2002), 131-55. See also: Thierry de Duve, “Art in the Face of Radical Evil,” October 125 (Summer 2008): 3-23. 27 For a survey and examples of each of these categories of image, see David Hawk, “The Photographic Record,” in Jackson, Cambodia 1975-1978, 209-214. For a study of officially produced photographs, drawing on the DC-Cam archive, see James Tyner, Sokvisal Kimsroy, and Savina Sirik, “Landscape Photography, Geographic Education, and Nation-Building in Democratic Kampuchea, 1975–1979,” Geographical Review 105, No. 4 (October 2015): 566–580. 433 haunting photograph of the usually bustling Psar Thom Thmei market deserted and overgrown with palm trees (Figure 8.1) are deeply affective.28
Figure 8. 1
A fourth category of sources on the arts under Democratic Kampuchea is the testimonies of survivors, either collected orally or in written memoirs. It is on these first-hand accounts that previous studies of the arts in this period have chiefly drawn. Most have focused on revolutionary songs. 29 Theara
Thun’s essay on Khmer Rouge children’s songs helpfully synthesizes numerous published memoirs, most in English, as well as newly conducted
28 The Psar Thom Thmei market, located in central Phnom Penh, was one of the locations mentioned in Chapter 7’s discussion of pre-1975 novels. 29 In addition to Shapiro-Phim’s essay, cited above, see also, for example, John Marston, “Khmer Rouge Songs,” Crossroads: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 16, No. 1 (2002): 100-127. See also six revolutionary songs, translated and annotated, in Ben Kiernan and Chanthou Boua, Peasants and Politics in Kampuchea, 1942-1981 (London and New York: Zed Press and M.E. Sharpe, 1982), 326-329. 434 interviews with two former Khmer Rouge singers. They describe in their own words memories not only of performing revolutionary songs, but also of the process of studying melodies, lyrics, and instruments, as well as rehearsals, and other aspects of performance.30
Survivors’ testimonies can also bring to light artworks from
Democratic Kampuchea that no longer survive, or were never completed.
Vann Nath, who famously survived in the S-21 prison due to his skill in painting portraits of Pol Pot reproduced from photographs provided to him, later recalled his design for a “revolutionary monument”:
“The monument was like those in China and Korea and featured Pol Pot at the front of a line of people with his right hand stretched skywards and his left arm grasping a copy of the revolutionary works, the red book.”31
The monument was never built, and the model of its design has not survived.
Thus, its story is accessible only through the memory of Vann Nath. Yet the description of the design is revealing. Chandler comments:
“The idea that Pol Pot should be depicted carrying a book of ‘revolutionary works’ is ironic, since his speeches are almost devoid of references to written sources and were themselves never collected into a volume. The aim of the statue seems to have been to demonstrate the
30 Theara Thun, “Khmer Rouge Children’s Songs,” Asian Review 21 (2008): 1-24. 31 Vann Nath, interviewed by David Ashley in 1995, quoted in David Chandler, Voices from S-21: Terror and History in Pol Pot’s Secret Prison (Chiang Mai: Silkworm, 2000), 40. 435 resemblances between Pot Pot and his revolutionary forebears, Mao Zedong and Kim Il Sung.”32
Such observations, like many others about life in Democratic Kampuchea and the regime’s policies, are largely reliant on the first-person accounts of its survivors.33
Survivors’ testimonies also offer a unique insight into the appeal of art in Democratic Kampuchea, its power to seduce, even—or perhaps, in a perverse way, especially—in such horrific circumstances. The words of dancer and choreographer Sophiline Cheam-Shapiro, quoted in Theara’s essay, are revealing of this important aspect, often overlooked. Speaking of her experience of singing Khmer Rouge songs as a nine year old, Sophiline said:
“Lyrics that promised us the riches of heaven were written by the engineers of our own public cell. I really hear the songs of the Khmer Rouge. I wonder why that is. I know all too well the horror their melodies recall, but I also know that these songs played as important a part in my life as any. The Khmer Rouge sang about the wonderful countryside, about the value of hard labor and the worthlessness of passion. All was for Angkar and the glorious revolution. They were pretty songs, with beautiful melodies and poetic lyrics. Their intention
32 Chandler, Voices from S-21, 173, n.78. 33 Another unbuilt monument, planned at the first plenary session of the People’s Assembly of Kampuchea after 1975 and announced in official media communications, was to be in honour of Sihanouk. Peter Schier and Manola Schier- Oum, in collaboration with Waldtraut Jarke, Prince Sihanouk on Cambodia: Interviews and Talks with Prince Norodom Sihanouk, 2nd ed. (Hamburg: Institute for Asian Affairs, 1985), 23-24. That at least two major monuments were planned, but not built, is indicative of the regime’s half-hearted belief in the usefulness of art as a rhetorical tool. 436 was to make us work hard and forget about the snakes that lurked in the rice field, the dangerous currents of river rapids, and the emptiness in our bellies … Singing a song was something that gave me some kind of spiritual energy to keep going.”34
This poignant account reveals that the arts were of crucial importance for some individuals during Democratic Kampuchea, even if they were never central to the revolutionary program of the regime. For Sophiline, the arts provided some succour; for others, art was a source of terror. Vann Nath describes feeling “very nervous” while painting Pol Pot’s portrait in the S-21 prison, as the guards watched.35 In Sophiline’s account, it is significant that she speaks not only of the “intention” of the Khmer Rouge songs, but also of their affective function: singing “gave me some kind of spiritual energy to keep going.” Revolutionary arts, like all other aspects of the official program of Democratic Kampuchea, were barbarous. But to deny that arts were used by the regime, to refuse to examine the nature of revolutionary culture, is akin to insisting, in Alain Badiou’s terms, that “barbarism does not think,” and thus, “is to abet a process of surreptitious absolution.”36
To insist on the value of studying the official arts of Democratic
Kampuchea is not, of course, to defend the regime—rather, it is to defend the importance of art. Even such an anti-intellectual movement as the Khmer
34 From a 2002 interview, quoted in Theara, “Children’s Songs,” 12-13. 35 Vann Nath, A Cambodian Prison Portrait: One Year in the Khmer Rouge’s S-21, trans. Moeun Chhean Nariddh (Bangkok: White Lotus, 1998), 58. 36 Badiou, Century, 4. 437 Rouge still saw the arts and culture as a form of rhetoric capable of capturing people’s hearts, and communicating complex messages. As Shapiro-Phim argues, “in Democratic Kampuchea, dances and songs became instruments of battle.” 37 To claim that there was no art in Democratic Kampuchea is to overlook the power of the arts as a vehicle for rhetoric, even vile and violent rhetoric. Moreover, it is to miss the opportunity that arts offer for insights into the nature of the revolutionary society, and of the regime’s ideology.
On arts during Democratic Kampuchea (1975-79): Pre-revolutionary arts kept alive
To claim that there was no art during Pol Pot’s regime is also to deny the valiant and brave efforts of many artists and others who risked their lives to keep pre-revolutionary arts and culture alive. Secretly practicing dance techniques, performing rituals, reciting prayers and poems, and hiding books, records, and other objects, their actions have not only been essential to the post-1979 rebuilding of the arts, but also serve as perhaps the most powerful and poetic testament to the value and importance of the arts before 1975.
Perhaps the best known examples of such acts of bravery were carried out by dancers and those involved with the performing arts. Em Theay, a dancer in the royal ballet before 1975, famously kept a book of royal songs
37 Shapiro-Phim, “Dance, Music, and the Nature of Terror,” 181. 438 hidden in the wall of her hut throughout the regime. Each night, she prayed to this precious relic: “Please help deliver us from this place. And bring us back to where we can dance and sing again.”38 Four decades later, recalling the book still brings tears to her eyes.39
“Those who survived the [Khmer Rouge] years,” Toni Shapiro wrote in
1994, “talk of the strength and hope that communication with the spirits of the dance, or with deities, gave them during that time, and of how they resisted the painfulness of their plight with memories, dreams, and forbidden gestures.”40 Secret performance of these “forbidden gestures” was both an act of “resistance,” as Shapiro argues, and also a form of communication with the spirit world. Shapiro quotes one dancer’s recollection of a night of clandestine dance during the regime:
“In the shaft of light from the moon, I started to dance. Slowly I moved as I sang softly to myself. I was so afraid that someone would hear or see.... I danced buong suong (dance of supplication and offering) to let the tevoda and krou know I was thinking of them, and to pray for their help in reuniting us.”41
The preservation of pre-revolutionary arts, especially for dancers and performing artists, was clearly not solely a political or cultural act, but also a matter of spiritual wellbeing and survival.
38 Quoted in Toni Shapiro, “Dance and the Spirit of Cambodia,” PhD Dissertation, Cornell University, New York, 1994, 139. 39 Interview, Phnom Penh, June 2014. 40 Shapiro, “Dance and the Spirit,” 138. 41 Shapiro, “Dance and the Spirit,” 141. 439 Dancers were not the only people who secretly preserved pre- revolutionary arts in Democratic Kampuchea. Sometimes, this happened even by accident: painter Heng Moniphal, a child at the time, recalls drawing pictures to entertain himself during the regime. “At that time, they hated people who knew how to draw,” he recalls, “but I didn’t know they thought that way.”42 More often, preservation was an act of careful and selfless risk.
Many collectors of pop music buried or hid their records to keep them safe from the Khmer Rouge.43
Burying objects beneath the soil is an action not only resonant with metaphorical suggestion, but also recurrent in accounts of this period. Muan recounts the story of master mask-maker An Sok, who after the fall of
Democratic Kampuchea, went to the house of his former teacher, Keth Roeun, who had died during the regime. Sok dug up the mask-making molds which
Roeun had hidden in his garden, and continued to use these molds decades later (Figure 8.2).44
42 Interview, Phnom Penh, August 2014. With thanks to Tith Veasna. In 2014, Heng Moniphal was Dean of Plastic Arts (Painting) at the Royal University of Fine Arts. 43 Conversations with Oum Rotanak Oudom, of the Cambodian Vintage Music Archive, Phnom Penh, 2016. He has gathered materials from several such collectors. 44 Muan, “Citing Angkor,” 398. 440
Figure 8. 2
More recently, several Cambodian contemporary artists have made works addressing objects that were literally buried in order to keep them safe from the Khmer Rouge. Kim Hak’s (គឹម pក់ born Battambang, 1981) Alive series (2014-ongoing) consists of photographs of objects from before 1975 that survived the regime, many of them having been buried or otherwise hidden
(Figure 8.3). Born two years after the fall of the Khmer Rouge regime, Hak knows Democratic Kampuchea only as it lives in the memories of his elders.
In the artist’s words, “war can kill victims, but it cannot kill memory of the survivors.”45 In a text written to accompany the image, Hak explains:
“These books are from a lady named Gnet Yorn who passed away at 93 years old in 2004. During the Khmer Rouge regime, books were banned. If a soldier or those spying on people caught someone reading, the person was declared educated and immediately executed. My
45 Kim Hak, “Alive,” artist’s statement, n.d. [2014], n.p. http://www.kimhak.com /stories/alive/ [Accessed September 2016] 441 family came close to being killed at one point. My father had kept his English and French books. When a spy found that out, my parents knew what would happen. So that very night, they fled with my sisters Kim Sreyroth and Kim Tharan and my brother Kim Chanthara. They hid in another village where they were able to hide their background. Gnet Yorn had taken a big risk by keeping three notebooks in which she had written the Dharma—the teachings of the Buddha. She often hid to read the text at night. She always believed that her and her family had been under God’s protection during that period.”46
Figure 8. 3
The preservation of pre-revolutionary arts and culture throughout the period of Democratic Kampuchea is an act of bravery to which later generations are indebted. To claim that there was no art under Pol Pot is to disregard these efforts.
46 The text accompanies the photograph when exhibited. Kindly provided by the artist, personal communications, 2016. 442 On arts during Democratic Kampuchea (1975-79): Arts in the diaspora
Art was also made during the period of Democratic Kampuchea outside of the country, by the artists and intellectuals who had already fled, or who were fortunate enough to have been studying or working abroad in 1975. The arts of the Cambodian diaspora in this period have never been comprehensively studied, 47 despite the recent surge of critical and curatorial interest in diasporic artists.
Eng Seng Thay (េអង េសង ៃថ born Kandal, 1951) who moved to
Dresden in East Germany in 1971, painted several striking portraits during
1975. One is a self-portrait of the artist with flowing hair, in the fashion of the time, looking to the middle-distance, almost apprehensively (Figure 8.4).
Another, Portrait Dr Kniest (Figure 8.5), shows a young German man holding a volume of Lenin’s works, bound in a red cover. It is tempting to regard this work as indicative of the misinformation about the nature of Pol Pot’s revolution which circulated outside of the country, including among its diaspora.48 Yet according to Seng Thay, he had no knowledge whatsoever of
47 One excellent collection of essays provides an exception, but despite its title, it chiefly addresses the arts after the fall of the Khmer Rouge. See May M. Ebihara, Judy Ledgerwood, Carol A. Mortland, eds., Cambodian Culture Since 1975: Homeland and Exile (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994). 48 “Revolutions have happened elsewhere, but seldom within such an absolute void of information …” Michael Vickery, “Looking Back at Cambodia, 1942-76,” in Kiernan and Chanthou, Peasants and Politics, 89. 443 events in Democratic Kampuchea at the time, and was very isolated, since there were only around 300 Cambodians living in East Germany.49
Figure 8. 4
49 Eng Seng Thay was studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Dresden until 1976. Along with around 300 Cambodians in East Germany at the time, according to him there were around 60,000 Vietnamese, most of them working in construction. Correspondence, 2015-2016, and interview, Takhmao, August 2016. With thanks to Khvay Samnang. 444
Figure 8. 5
By the end of Democratic Kampuchea, news of the atrocities had reached Eng Seng Thay. Another portrait, titled Peace and War (ca, 1979/80,
Figure 8.6), depicts the artist’s brother-in-law holding a small bronze apsara sculpture. While only schematically rendered, the apsara is the image’s focal point, appearing near its centre, and contrasting with the dark palette of the man’s features, clothing, and background. According to Seng Thay, this apsara was from the National Museum of Cambodia, and had been rescued by a relative from destruction during Democratic Kampuchea, eventually making its way to East Germany. “He holds it as a symbol that he loves Cambodian art,” Seng Thay explains. The artist regards this painting as his only work in
445 which “the German and Cambodian civilizations are combined together” successfully.50
Figure 8. 6
Like this small but beautiful sculpture of an apsara, “Cambodian arts” survived Democratic Kampuchea not only in the clandestine actions of individuals who risked their lives to preserve pre-revolutionary culture, and not only in the revolutionary arts that the regime employed in the service of rhetoric, but also in the diaspora. The numbers of Cambodians abroad
50 Interview, Takhmao, August 2016. It is likely that the details of the story of the apsara have been misremembered, but the story is revealing nonetheless. 446 swelled after the outbreak of civil war in 1970, and exploded after Democratic
Kampuchea. The achievements of Cambodians working in the arts abroad during and after the regime, like Eng Seng Thay, who is unknown in
Cambodia, or like architect Lu Ban Hap, who worked on the design of the
Orly airport in Paris, 51 have hitherto received little scholarly or popular attention. Yet such works and stories help illuminate how it was that
“Cambodian arts” survived the devastation wreaked by the Khmer Rouge regime.
On arts during the People’s Republic of Kampuchea (1979-89): Rebuilding and instrumentalizing the arts
If between 80 and 90 per cent of Cambodian artists died during Democratic
Kampuchea, those who survived were mobilized in an effort to rebuild the arts almost immediately after the 7 January 1979 toppling of the Khmer Rouge by the Vietnamese forces.
Artists were among the first social groups to be granted housing en masse in the capital. By July 1979, when Phnom Penh was still largely empty and repopulation of the city was strictly controlled by the Vietnamese authorities,52 two blocks of the Bassac Municipal Apartments—designed by
51 Interview, Paris, June 2015. 52 Evan Gottesman, Cambodia After the Khmer Rouge: Inside the Politics of Nation Building (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2003), 40, 76-77. 447 Lu Ban Hap as social housing in the early 1960s, and better known as the
White Building (Figure 6.6)—had been given to the new Ministry of
Propaganda [Rhetoric] and Culture (3កសួងេqសXDរ និង វប./ធម៌), and reserved as housing for artists. This was somewhat continuous with its pre-
1975 function as housing for civil servants, among whom were artists and teachers.53 Several dancers, mask-makers, musicians and others who arrived in 1979 remain resident in these apartments over 35 years later.54
The enthusiasm of the People’s Republic of Kampuchea regime for the arts can be linked to its political position. That artists were permitted to promptly return to the capital, and given dedicated housing in the city’s centre, is testament to the value placed on the arts by the new government.
From its inception, the regime had a fraught relationship with the population: many people respected their new rulers for liberating them from the Khmer
Rouge, but despised them for being Vietnamese, or for having Vietnamese backing. Drawing on over 500 interviews conducted over a period of four
53 This claim relies on anecdotal evidence: the memories of older Cambodians, conveyed in conversations. It should be noted that there is no archival evidence to support the claim (sometimes advanced by younger artists and activists, in a context of defending the White Building’s against governmental and other threats) that the White Building was initially intended specifically for artists. It seems more likely that the Building is remembered as having always been an artistic community to some degree, due to the significant number of artists who served as civil servants prior to 1975, and also perhaps due to the rapidity and intensity with which the Building was taken over by artists after 1979. 54 Anecdotal evidence, 2012-2016, supported by over 50 interviews conducted by Pen Sereypagna, with assistance from Kourn Lyna and Chhum Phanith, during 2015- 2016, as part of Sereypagna’s ongoing Genealogy of Bassac project. 448 months from July 1980, Ben Kiernan “found near universal relief that Pol
Pot’s regime had come to an end” while also noting that the presence of the
Vietnamese “mitigate[d] this confidence” and created “uncertainty.”55
The overall picture of the arts in the People’s Republic of Kampuchea is one of extraordinary revival, made possible both by the energy and commitment of surviving artists, and by support from the new government.
Yet it is important to also register exceptions to this general situation. Sam
Sam-Ang has lamented a “scarcity of literary documents” which he claims resulted not only from the Khmer Rouge’s “burning of libraries and other important centers of primary sources,” but also from “the [People’s Republic of Kampuchea] government [having] removed books, magazines, audio tapes and records, and movies that brought back memories of preceding regimes.”56
Other sources support the claim that papers from before 1975 were destroyed after 1979, but offer differing explanations for this act. Corfield, drawing on interviews conducted abroad in 1990, suggests newspapers were pulped in order to provide paper to the new government.57
55 Kiernan, “Kampuchea Stumbles to its Feet,” 364. 56 Sam Sam-Ang, “Khmer Traditional Music Today,” in Cambodian Culture Since 1975, 42. Vickery disputes this claim about libraries, providing evidence that many remained intact, or largely intact. He also demonstrates a prevalence of confusion, contradictory statements, and ill-founded rumour among early accounts of treatment of cultural objects and workers in the early People’s Republic of Kampuchea. Yet Vickery also records one case of “using pages from recently stolen books as wrapping paper” after 1979. Vickery, Cambodia: 1975-1982, 173 and 234-235. 57 Justin J. Corfield, Khmers Stand Up! A History of the Cambodian Government, 1970- 1975 (Melbourne: Centre of Southeast Asian Studies, Monash University, 1994), 48. 449 Despite these destructive acts, the People’s Republic of Kampuchea was also clearly committed to supporting surviving artists in the rebuilding of culture. The White Building was apparently chosen as housing for many of the surviving dancers and other artists because of its proximity to the
National Theatre, designed by Vann Molyvann in 1968 as part of the same
Bassac Riverfront cultural precinct. The activities that began taking place in that Theatre, so swiftly after the end of the Democratic Kampuchea atrocities, attest not only to new regime’s emphasis on the arts, but also to the energy and commitment of the surviving artists themselves. Kiernan observed that
“one of the most striking features of Kampuchea in 1980 was the reappearance and increasingly wide diffusion of traditional Khmer culture.”
He reported that at the National Theatre in July 1980, “performances are of a high artistic standard” and “cover quite a range,” including “classical royal
[sic] ballet” and various “folk dances” including of Cham Muslim groups and
“hill-tribe minority” cultures. Kiernan also observed numerous other sizeable and impressive cultural activities, and noted that “the cultural revival goes on beyond government-sponsored theatre groups and orchestras.”58 Supporting
Kiernan’s account of the intense artistic activity from the earliest years of the
People’s Republic of Kampuchea, government records state that in 1981 there were nine national and international exhibitions (details are not given), and
58 Ben Kiernan, “Kampuchea Stumbles to its Feet,” in Kiernan and Chanthou, Peasants and Politics, 365-368. 450 monthly musical and theatrical (េgsន lkhon) performances in every province across the nation.59
Plentiful other evidence supports this view that the arts and culture were rapidly reinvigorated during the early years of the People’s Republic of
Kampuchea. Before the end of 1979, surviving professors from the University of Fine Arts, under the leadership of Som Samai, searched the city for teaching and art-making materials, including in the former homes of professors who had died during Democratic Kampuchea. 60 Samai also immediately planted mulberry trees within the University grounds, in order to raise silk worms for weaving silk.61 This action speaks poignantly not only of the dedication to rebuilding the arts after 1979, but also to the long-term, patiently future-oriented view that was necessary for this rebuilding to succeed.
And the rebuilding of the arts was most certainly successful. By 1982, when the University of Fine Arts was accepting their third intake of students since reopening, they received over 1000 applications for only 100 places. In that year, they had five departments already, and twelve specializations
59 Department of Temple Conservation, Museums and Tourism, “សនKិaតទូtំង 3បេទស េលើកទី៣” [Third National Congress], 1981. Phnom Penh: Ministry of Propaganda and Culture, 1982. NAC, Box B-88. 60 Muan, “Citing Angkor,” 397-398. Muan drew on interviews conducted from 1997- 2000 with Som Samai and other survivors. All have since fallen ill or died. 61 Ingrid Muan, “Faculty of Plastic Arts, 1918-1998, 80 Years,” exhibition label text, 1998, n.p. In Ingrid Muan Papers, National Museum of Cambodia Library, Box 8, File 57. 451 within the Department of Plastic Arts, including “modern painting,”
“traditional painting,” and others. By 1983, professors began to receive a salary.62 This is in line with archival evidence showing a dramatic increase in government revenue for cultural activities from 1980 to 1983. Revenue for the arts increased from 26 thousand riel in 1981 to seven hundred and twenty thousand riel in 1983. The number of cinemas increased from one in 1980 to five in 1983; the number of screenings increased from 554 in 1980 to 1840 three years later.63
Publications from the Ministry of Propaganda and Culture during the early and mid-1980s prominently featured images of the arts to demonstrate wider social advances, showing the reliance of the regime on culture as a vehicle for rhetoric and a means of winning support. In a 1984 magazine, a claim that “society has stability once more” is illustrated with a photograph of a young woman studying statues in the National Museum (Figure 8.7). The same magazine shows an older dancer adjusting the costume and posture of two young dancers; the caption reads “both generations,” and it is positioned
62 Muan, “80 Years,” exhibition label text. This was likely due, in part, to the free board and meals provided to students at the time. Muan, “Citing Angkor,” 398. 63 People’s Revolutionary Committee for Planning in the Capital, “ស?ពDរណ៍េស ដ6កិចv វប./ធម៌ 1979-1983” [The State of Cultural Economics 1979-1983], Phnom Penh: Office of Statistics, 1983. NAC, Box B-641. These statistics cannot be independently verified, yet even if figures are inflated, the fact that officials in Phnom Penh wished to convey a sense of cultural expansion to backers in Hanoi demonstrates the value placed on the arts during this period by the new regime. 452 beneath an image of apsara bas-reliefs at Angkor Wat (Figure 8.8).64 Dozens of other photographs show weavers, carvers, and painters. This imaging of culture is equally as prominent as depictions of agriculture and industry.
Aerial shots of Phnom Penh juxtapose the spires of the Palace and colonial villas with the clean lines of flat-roofed modern houses (Figure 8.9).
Molyvann’s National Theatre is championed (Figure 8.10). The vision of modern spaces projected by the People’s Republic of Kampuchea is strikingly similar to Sihanouk’s in the era of the Sangkum Reastr Niyum. Occasional glimpses of Marx and Lenin in portraits, as in a photograph of a mass rally in front of the palace (Figure 8.11) or of a meeting room in the University of Fine
Arts (Figure 8.12), are sharp reminders of the change in regime and ideology.
64 Author/editor unnamed, ទឹកដីអងwរបចvLប./នK [The Land of Angkor Now] (Phnom Penh: Ministry of Propaganda and Culture, printed by Karl Marx Publishers, 1984). 173 pages total, 5000 copies printed in the first edition. NAC Box 373. 453
Figure 8. 7
Figure 8. 8
454
Figure 8. 9
Figure 8. 10
455
Figure 8. 11
Figure 8. 12
Indeed, the rebuilding of arts after 1979 was inextricably linked to the use of culture as a vehicle for political rhetoric. A 1982 government document enthused that “propaganda (rhetoric) and culture activities have served (បំេរH) 456 politics well,” while also warning that “the movement of mass culture (វប./ធម៌
មpជន) is underestimated.” An example is given:
“In some provinces, permission has been given to private artists’ groups to sell tickets, without properly inspecting the message of the acts. These comrades claim that art is only for entertainment. Actually, art is very influential in life. The morality of artists is a propaganda tool of the revolution that we must definitely not underestimate.”65
Clearly, the shift that has taken place from one regime to the next is in the emphasis placed on the arts as a tool of the revolution. Both regimes, like those of Lon Nol and Sihanouk before them, saw the potential for the arts to communicate political ideology, but after 1979 significantly greater resources and rhetorical force are invested in this function. The admonishment cited above reveals that the People’s Republic of Kampuchea government saw the arts as potentially dangerous, requiring careful and proper “inspecting.” This is, in many ways, a return to the official view of the arts before 1975.
What was new, however, was the extent to which “art” and “rhetoric”
(or “propaganda”) were viewed as essentially one. The 1982 government document offers a revealing definitional statement about art:
65 rd “សនKិaតទូtំង3បេទសេលើកទី៣ ១៩៨១” [3 General Meeting of the Whole Country, 1981] (Phnom Penh: Ministry of Propaganda and Culture, 1982), 2-3. NAC Box 798. The word used for “artist” is “មនុស.yសិល./ៈ” monuss selpak, literally “art person” or “art human,” a cruder and more communist-sounding term than the more usual terms, “អKកសិល./ៈ” neak selpak “សិល./ករ” selpakar. 457 “Art is a sentimental thing that has the duty of entering deeply into the heart, teaching and introducing the feelings to know love, to know hate, to correctly follow the views of the revolution, and thus to teach the new way of living. As for other cultural activities, like cinema, exhibitions, libraries … They have a duty to raise the level of knowledge (ប{|) of the population. In summary, activities of propaganda and culture are indivisible from politics.”66
The attitude is demonstrated in numerous political posters created at the
University of Fine Arts in the 1980s, in which artists including dancers, musicians, and painters are depicted alongside peasants, workers, and soldiers in the revolutionary union (Figures 8.13 and 8.14).67
Figure 8. 13
66 3rd General Meeting, 3. Emphasis added. 67 Further comparative study of communist paintings and posters from Vietnam and Laos in this period is necessary. Vietnamese works have been globally dispersed, in part due to the market for such images, and thus are hard to assess more broadly. In my 2017 observations of Laotian paintings made during the 1980s, held in both public collections in Vientiane and in older artists’ studios, I saw no images depicting artists. Several senior artists suggested this is because artists are already represented by the more general figure of the “worker” in such paintings and posters. 458
Figure 8. 14
Yet it is important not to overstate the extent to which the arts were transformed by the political ideology of the time. Em Theay recalls:
“The lyrics changed, but the gestures (ក.}ច់ kbach) stayed the same. The gestures never changed. Never.”68
Em Theay had danced for Sihanouk, then Lon Nol, then in secret under Pol
Pot’s rule, and then took on a prominent teaching role during the rebuilding period after 1979. In 2016, she receives a pension from the government for her services to the arts.
68 Interview, Phnom Penh, June 2014. 459 “Those Who Know a Little”
Em Theay is a master dancer, and a highly skilled and experienced teacher.
The role played in the rebuilding of the arts by artists like her who survived the atrocities of Democratic Kampuchea cannot be understated.
Yet alongside their generous and expert passing on of skills to new generations, another attitude to education emerged in the aftermath of war which remains significant over three decades after Pol Pot’s overthrow. It is encapsulated in the words of Hun Sen, who has been Prime Minister since
1985:
“Those who know a lot must teach those who know little. Those who know a little must teach those who know nothing at all.”69
The statement combines a pragmatism necessary in the aftermath of the
Khmer Rouge, with a utilitarianism typical of neoliberalism, and its delegation of formerly state responsibilities, such as education, onto individuals at every level of society. Like much in neoliberal ideology, this is an attitude which has come to be accepted by oppositional artists and others, just as much as by Hun Sen’s regime.
69 “អKកេចះេ3ចើន3ត~វបេ3ងៀនអKកេចះតិច អKកេចះតិច3ត~វបេ3ងៀនអKកែដលមិនេចះេGះ។” Quoted in Kev Vannak, Khan Savoeun, Sa Ponchhoeun, Nget Khuoy, Vat Oudomchinda, and Mi Someth (ែកវ វណៈ, Äន់ Gេវឿន, GÇ ប៊ុនេឈឿន, ែង៉ត ឃូយ, :Öត ឧត>មចិXÜ, មុី សុេមធ), 3បព័ន6 អប់រàេTកមâLe NOំ(១៩៦០-១៩៧០) [The Education System in Cambodia, 1960- 1970] (Phnom Penh: Ministry of Cults and Religion, 2009), 87. NAC Box B-765.
460 In the twenty first century, most artistic activity is not in any way sponsored or supported by the government, and indeed much of it happens in the face of the indifference of the ruling regime. This represents a significant shift from the previous decades, in which the arts were continuously (albeit not consistently) instrumentalized in the service of political rhetoric by each of the successive regimes.
In more recent years, artworks continue to be created, circulated and received as carrying quite explicit ideological meanings, yet these meanings are often oppositional in nature, or at least independent of the ruling government. Striking and typical examples are performances made by Tith
Kanitha (ទិត.m កនKិåç born 1987) in 2012 and Khvay Samnang (ៃខé សំ+ង born
1982) in 2011, both of which lament the filling of Phnom Penh’s Boeung Kak
Lake with sand and the concomitant eviction of thousands who resided on and near the Lake (Figures 8.15 and 8.16).70 In photographic documentation,
Samnang stands on the sand-filled former lake, alongside the remains of a house which has been buried several metres deep, with only its upper ventilations visible. Kanitha, whose home and studio had been located on the lake, buries herself in sand in a gallery, convulsing as if in a trance. These works are representative of a widespread trend for artists to address
70 See Roger Nelson, “Art and Sand in Cambodia: Please Enjoy My Sand!,” Artlink: Contemporary Art of Australia and the Asia Pacific 33, No. 4 (2013): 55-57.
461 politically sensitive and topical issues in their work. In advocating for better treatment of the natural and built environment, and of the diverse communities that occupy it, much of the art of the twenty first century in
Cambodia is (at least implicitly) at odds with Hun Sen’s government.
Figure 8. 15
Figure 8. 16
Yet in taking on an educational role as part of an activist stance, many artists are also living up to the prime minister’s insistence that “teaching” is a 462 responsibility that should be delegated to individuals with all levels of educational background—that in the new, neoliberal world, education like other formerly state functions is now delegated and privatized. One brief example is illustrative. When Cambodian artist and photographer Lim
Sokchanlina (លីម សុខoន់លី+ born 1987) and Cambodian-French photographer Monor Moul (born 1986) opened an analogue photography studio and darkroom in 2014, Sokchanlina repeatedly announced that his intention was to teach young Cambodians how to develop and print analogue photographs. This is a skill not taught in any institution in Cambodia. The only problem was that Sokchanlina himself would first need to learn it. Before
Monor brought the equipment from France, Sokchanlina had never seen it before.71
While in recent years artists independent of the government have been more active and more visible than those affiliated with the regime (both within the country, and in international settings such as exhibitions and publications), there have also been occasional instances of Hun Sen employing the arts for the communication of his power. The 115 songs
71 The studio and darkroom is named Atelier Argentique and is located in Teuk Thlaa, on the outskirts of Phnom Penh. Information is drawn from conversations with Monor Mouk and Lim Sokchanlina in Phnom Penh during 2014 and 2015. 463 attributed to him seem to have had little impact. 72 Yet the erection of sculptures which rhetorically link the prime minister to the sixteenth century king Sdech Kan—known for his military and strategic prowess, and ability to topple existing rulers—have been more consequential. These sculptures are among the most visible of the prime minister’s artistic commissions, and have been the most persuasively interpreted.73
Yet despite this and other important exceptions, there has clearly been a shift of balance in the arts. Whereas much artistic activity during the years
1975 to 1999 seems to have been in the service of the ruling government’s ideology—an instrumentalization of the arts in the service of politics that is continuous with the previous regimes—in the twenty first century, culture is one of the few areas of life in which the government appears to have relatively little interfering interest, and consequently very little influence.
Official censorship is largely unknown, except occasionally around issues of nudity. Whereas in neighbouring Vietnam and Laos, artists must apply for a license in order to mount an exhibition or make a public presentation, and in neighbouring Thailand, art exhibitions are frequently visited by representatives of the authorities, in Cambodia the only limits on what can be
72 The lyrics, in Khmer, are collected in a single volume, with an English introduction. Chhay Yiheang et al, Samdech Hun Sen: Political Thought, Arts Conservation, Social Development and 115 Songs (Phnom Penh, 2007). NAC, Box 698. 73 See Astrid Norén-Nilsson, “Performance as (Re)incarnation: the Sdech Kân Narrative,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 44, No, 1 (February 2013): 4-23. DOI:10.1017/S0022463412000598 464 said in a work of art are those devised or apprehended by artists themselves.
For example, the fact that Khvay Samnang’s first solo exhibition addressing the topic of Boeung Kak Lake was called Untitled (2011) and featured a poem in place of a catalogue essay was a result of the artist’s fear of reprisals.
However, when no police or other officials paid any attention whatsoever to the exhibition, Samnang gained confidence in making political statements in his artwork. He maintains a somewhat indirect manner of speaking about these oppositional messages, but now frames these as an aesthetic choice— differentiating his work from “journalism” or “activism”—rather than a result of the fear of reprisals he experienced earlier.
“It Can Never Be Said”
A recurrent trope in Cambodian accounts of Democratic Kampuchea, and especially of the arts in the period, is its literally unspeakable nature. This has often been discussed as an effect of trauma, in both the psychiatric and psychoanalytic senses. But the trope of inexpressibility has rarely been discussed in relation to the role of the artist in the process of rebuilding after war.
Chheng Phon’s 1983 text (Appendix 2) is perhaps the most eloquent expression of this inexpressibility, and of the centrality of art to the process of, in Phon’s words, “tak[ing] responsibility for the stupidity, for the crazed 465 confusion and bewilderment of those people who have survived.” Phon’s text is explicitly addressed to artists: to “all the nation’s artists and the artists of all other countries,” and to “dear poets, all authors in the world.” These artists are called on to bear “responsibility” but also to bear witness.74 Phon asserts that Cambodian artists accept their responsibility: “we truly intend never to allow the people of any nation on earth to endure such terrible suffering like the people of Kampuchea.” This is not only a moral imperative, but a political one, as revealed in this passage, near the text’s conclusion:
“All of us, artists of Kampuchea, strongly appeal to all poets, all authors, all architects, all musicians, and all painters in the world and in the Republic who love peace, who love truth and social justice in the world, to please help to support the life, peace, and freedom of the people of Kampuchea to finally enjoy justice. And please also strongly accuse the crimes that have never before been encountered in human history. Please strongly accuse all nations which are continuing to aid and take care of the Pol Pot, Ieng Sary, Khieu Samphan group, and other Khmer reactionaries as well, who have such a terrible intention to destroy the rebirth of Kampuchea. Please evict the Pol Pot group from the United Nations.”
The agenda of the People’s Republic of Kampuchea government, to replace the Khmer Rouge as the nation’s official representatives at the United
Nations, and thus to win diplomatic recognition, is here interwoven with the
74 On the fraught concept of “witness,” see: Giorgio Agamben, Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive, trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen (New York: Zone Books, 2002 [1999]), esp. 15-39. Agamben observes that writers such as Primo Levi have become artists solely in order to bear witness; Phon asserts that in order to fulfil their duty as artists, they must bear witness. 466 rebuilding of the arts. The passage is a poetic synecdoche of the interrelation of the revival and the instrumentalization of the arts after 1979.
Phon’s language is poetic, at times almost florid in translation. Yet words fail him. A relentless torrent of questions, directly addressed to the reader, take on an accusatory tone, their force amplified by at times explicit violence. Perhaps most strikingly, Phon writes of the inability to convey the answers to these questions, in the section quoted at the beginning of this chapter: “it can never be said ... We cannot speak at all.”
This haunting passage recalls the widely cited words of Theodor
Adorno, that “to write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.”75 Moreover, like
Adorno, Phon implicitly endorsed a critical perspective that is embedded in culture, rather than external to it: in Adorno’s terms, Phon can be read as having written “immanent” rather than “transcendent” criticism. Both authors were writing within just a few years of a violent war which they perceived as of great philosophical and artistic import, as well as human tragedy. Yet Phon would have had no access to Adorno’s text. Phon insists on the necessity of art in rebuilding society after war and mass killings, and the possibility for art to reclaim a sense of collective self, a sense of humanity, after an experience too unbearable to be rendered in language.
75 Theodor Adorno, “Cultural Criticism and Society,” in Prisms, trans. Samuel and Shierry Weber (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1983 [1967]), 34. It has been suggested that the oft-misquoted sentence conveys more ambiguous meanings in the original German. See Antony Rowland, “Re-reading ‘Impossibility’ and ‘Barbarism’: Adorno and Post-Holocaust Poetics,” Critical Survey 9, No. 1 (1997): 57-69. 467 Soth Polin, an author, publisher and intellectual prominent before 1975 and also active in the decades since (discussed in Chapter 7), echoes Phon’s sense of “a limit” to the possibilities of artistic expression after Democratic
Kampuchea. Yet for Polin, this “limit” is not only inexpressibility, but also the inescapability of the experience. In a 2003 interview, he lamented:
“There is something that we cannot get past. It just kills the imagination. It is the atrocity of the Khmer Rouge. Even if you are reaching in your imagination for a new destination, you cannot get past their cruelty. When you try to write something without mentioning the Khmer Rouge, you can’t. The next generation will forgive that, they will forget, but for us, we cannot forgive it.”76
Again, such an imbricated position, one may be understood as an example of what Adorno terms “immanent” criticism. In the examples of artworks from the twenty first century which have been interspersed throughout this and preceding chapters, Polin is often proved right—but not always. Some artists indeed “cannot get past” the Khmer Rouge, or perhaps choose not to, for a variety of reasons, including curatorial practice and exhibitionary patronage of works which “address” the Khmer Rouge atrocities.77 But for many in the
“next generation,” those born after 1979, other issues predominate.
76 Soth Polin had been taught French poetry by Saloth Sar (later Pol Pot), at a private school in Phnom Penh in 1957. Sharon May, “Beyond Words: An Interview with Soth Polin,” in In the Shadow of Angkor: Contemporary Writing from Cambodia, ed. Frank Stewart and Sharon May (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2004), 16-17. 77 See Ashley Thomson, “Forgetting to Remember, Again: On Curatorial Practice and ‘Cambodian Art’ in the Wake of Genocide,” diacritics 41, No. 2 (2013): 82-109. DOI: 468 In the continuing interest of twenty first century artists in the rebuilding of Cambodian arts and culture after 1979, as well as in their attitude toward the relationship between arts and politics, and their subjection to the neoliberal ideology promulgated by Hun Sen—that “those who know a little must teach those who know nothing at all”—we may find in these more recent contemporary practices deep roots in the arts of war and its aftermath.
10.1353/dia.2013.0009. This is also the subject of Karen Adair’s forthcoming doctoral thesis, at Monash University, due for completion in 2017. 469 Chapter 9
Conclusion
How can modernity and contemporaneity—understood as coextensive conceptual categories—illuminate our understanding of “Cambodian arts,” particularly in the decades after national independence? This question has been at the centre of the preceding chapters, in theoretical and historiographical discussions, and especially in the close readings and detailed analyses of specific artworks and their contexts.
But another question might be, how can “Cambodian arts” enrich our understanding of modernity and contemporaneity?
There are, of course, many answers to both questions. What they share is an integrated approach to art, in which the modern, the contemporary, the artistic and the historical are intertwined and coextensive. A layering of temporalities and meanings inheres in art and in its interpretation. Before introducing a final example of a series of artworks in which these irreducible complexities are made both explicit
470 and poetically resonant—examples with which I will conclude, albeit deliberately rather inconclusively—first I will briefly look back on the sweep of case studies that I have presented in the preceding chapters.
Works of visual art, architecture, performance including cinema, and Khmer literature have been considered in detail. My attendance to these many different forms of art has been driven largely by my interest in trans-media intersections, in turn informed by my sense that this intermediality has defined “Cambodian arts” since national independence. The approach has also in part been driven by the fact that surviving artworks and sources in many of these media are often relatively scarce; a focus on intersections between media is a methodology which goes some way toward redressing the challenge posed by the loss and dispersal of artworks and archives.
Alongside this consistent focus on trans-media intersections, discussions based around various different art forms in the decades after independence have also yielded specific insights into the nature of modernity and contemporaneity as they are enacted in “Cambodian arts.”
My investigation into the multiple origins of the modern in visual art—and the creation of the figure of the វ"ចិ%តករ vichetrakar or “modern Cambodian artist”—has emphasized the importance of cosmopolitan and cross-border interactions, and the gradual and cumulative nature of the emergence of modernity in art. This argument challenges a view of art history as defined by singular figures, or by single moments of “rupture.”
471 Further studies of modern paintings have focused on the depictions of landscapes and women, an analysis that emphasizes the enmeshing of art and ideology. Drawing on contextual political and other discourses has shown the ways in which the roles available to women, and the meanings invested in the landscape, have both radically shifted in the period after independence, and how these rhetorical and socio-cultural realignments have been reflected and enacted in “Cambodian arts.”
Contextual analysis focused on the linking of art and ideology has also been central to my understanding of performance, including dances employed in the service of cultural diplomacy, and films in which the power of Sihanouk and the power of cinema are bound tightly together. Studying performance, including cinema, has further revealed the predominance of memory, and of fragmentary traces, as sites of inquiry. Performance, I have also argued, has demonstrated a special ability to engage a breadth of audiences, across class and other divides.
The relationship between art and political rhetoric is also important in what I have termed the “modern spaces” of architecture and urban settings; yet here, a coevality of old and new forms also takes on a vital significance. My discussions of both large, centrally planned public works such as Vann Molyvann’s National Sports
Complex, as well as smaller, anonymously designed private homes, have emphasized the resonances in these new forms of construction with pre-existing vernacular housing, chiefly stilted houses. In this analysis, I have also proposed the notion of the
“anonymous modern” as key to shaping the spatial experience of the modern city.
472 Modern novels have been a fertile source of contemporaneous data on these
“modern spaces.” Close readings of novels by Kim Saet, Suon Sorin, and other Khmer authors have focused on the ways in which central concerns revealed in visual arts, performance, and architecture also recur in literary form. This points to the interplay between the visual and the verbal. The notion of simultaneity has been foregrounded as an especially significant trope in modern Khmer literature. Non-linear narratives, which loop back and forth through multiple temporalities, have been identified as strategies of contemporaneity at work within modern “Cambodian arts.”
My study of the arts during and after the period of Democratic Kampuchea has proposed several areas for further inquiry, which point to continuities in the arts even through this time of extreme violence. I have drawn on Chheng Phon, Soth Polin and other authors’ accounts of the often inexpressible nature of the experience of the
Khmer Rouge atrocities.
I have also indicated the ways in which the rise of neoliberal ideology in the regime’s aftermath has seen a de-emphasizing of the arts by the present political regime, and the concurrent rise of art practices which are independent and politically oppositional in nature. Even in these practices, mostly carried out by artists born after the fall of Democratic Kampuchea, neoliberal principles are still discerned, especially the delegation of formerly state responsibilities onto individuals and non-state organizations.
Yet other discussions of more recent art practices from the twenty first century, interspersed throughout the thesis, have also pointed to significant continuities. These 473 illuminate “Cambodian arts” from before 1975. Discussions of the changes and adaptations to the forms of modern houses in the contemporary city, as well as techniques and strategies adopted by 2013-14 students of painting at the Royal
University of Fine Arts, are key examples of trans-historical comparisons which have yielded new insights into both the decades before 1975, and the twenty first century.
This array of case studies also makes possible a productive comparison across different media. In each of the various art forms discussed, we can discern common attributes which, taken together, facilitate a view of distinct iterations of modernity and contemporaneity in “Cambodian arts”—distinct, but not entirely or primarily defined by their being “Cambodian,” or reducible to this fact. These shared qualities may be summarized as follows.
1. There is no linear progression in “Cambodian arts” since independence.
The ruptures caused by political events have meant that there has not been a simple continuity in the arts, but there has also not been a simple discontinuity, either. Yet the absence of linear progression is not only about the existence of continuity amidst rupture; it is also about registering that the arts do not conform to the teleological fantasies of progressivism. Sometimes things move forward, sometimes they slide horrifyingly backward.
2. While each successive regime has employed the arts in the service of political rhetoric, there has not been a straightforward top-down imposition of ideas and practices in “Cambodian arts” since independence. Rather, the driving force has been a creative, adaptive logic, discernible both in works of art produced under the 474 direction of the political leaders, and by those who are independent of or oppositional to the governing regime. The instrumentalizing of art does not render it subservient, or unrewarding of analysis.
4. Key developments in “Cambodian arts” since independence have taken shape through cross-border interactions and trans-media intersections. Interpretation must therefore also maintain a nimbleness in shifting modes, positions, and focus, and must be attuned to comparative methods, even when limited to examples from within a single nation.
Registering these four key points enables us to identify and explore the specific nature of modernity and contemporaneity in “Cambodian arts” of this period, without losing sight of the cosmopolitan interactions between the arts in Cambodia and the arts elsewhere, and also without conflating distinctness and specificity with a nationally defined essentialism.
Having summarized some of the key insights offered and arguments proposed in the case studies presented in previous chapters, I will now conclude not with further summary or synthesis, but rather by introducing a final series of artworks, produced between 2014 and 2016. Some were authored collaboratively, but all were made under the direction of architect, artist and researcher Pen Sereypagna (ែប៉ន េសរ0
ប12 born 1989). Taken together, I hope these artworks offer a generative and open- ended finale to the thesis, due to their dense layering of multiple temporalities, and their tight interweaving of epistemic and aesthetic approaches.
475 I am choosing to conclude by introducing these very recently produced works in order to point to the ongoing, continuous and unending nature of the coextensivity
I have identified within and between modernity and contemporaneity—a coextensivity, I want to suggest, that unfurls in directions both temporal and methodological. Temporally, we see that as recently as 2016, the “Cambodian arts” of the period from 1955-75, immediately following national independence—half a century prior—remain a key site of inspiration for new practices. Moreover, these works look to the past, partly in order to propose solutions for the future (of Phnom
Penh’s urban planning, among other concerns). Methodologically, we will observe that these works circulate with equal ease (and to equal acclaim) in local community meetings and in international biennales, and also that they are equally legible as
“contemporary art” and as architectural and urban research: they appear both in scholarly journals and in exhibitions. In these works, multiple temporalities are overlaid, but so too are multiple ways of working: multiple modes of researching and communicating, multiple scales of address and multiple publics being addressed. This is the omnidirectional and perpetually coextensive relationship between modernity and contemporaneity in “Cambodian arts.” It is a coextensivity that is not reducible to coevalities or to trans-media intersections, but which also encompasses both of these.
In 2014, Pen Sereypagna began work on The Genealogy of Bassac, an ongoing multi-disciplinary and collaborative project researching Phnom Penh’s Bassac neighbourhood, and focused on the White Building apartment complex (Figure 6.6 476 and Figure 9.1).1 Sereypagna’s project, and the White Building itself—designed by Lu
Ban Hap, built in 1963, and already discussed in Chapters 6 and 8—both serve as exemplary synecdoches for many of the issues which this thesis has addressed.
Figure 6. 6
Figure 9. 1
1 Except where otherwise noted, all references to Sereypagna and the Genealogy of Bassac project are from conversations held from 2014 to 2016. 477
Figure 9. 2
Bassac is the name of the area built on reclaimed land in central Phnom Penh during the 1960s, under Vann Molyvann’s direction and with Sihanouk’s backing. 2 It was originally conceived as a cultural precinct comprising several multi-storey public housing buildings, a state theatre, exhibition halls, landscaped gardens, a sports complex, and a performing arts conservatory (Figure 9.2). This extravagant financial and spatial investment in the arts demonstrates the emphasis placed on culture by
Sihanouk’s regime, while the co-location of various kinds of venues facilitated the kind of trans-media intersections that I argue have characterized “Cambodian arts” since independence. Moreover, the built form of the White Building—which referred both to cosmopolitan and “International Style” modernism, and to Cambodian vernacular stilted housing—as well as the shifting uses to which the Bassac area has been put in the decades since 1979, when it was assigned as housing for artists who had survived the Khmer Rouge atrocities, together attest to the overlaying of multiple
2 The Bassac Riverfront Complex was discussed in Chapter 6 on modern spaces. While the overall masterplan for the neighbourhood is usually attributed to Vann Molyvann, this attribution has been disputed by Lu Ban Hap. The buildings within the precinct are variously designed by Molyvann, Ban Hap, and other architects. It was the Bassac area which was specifically commented on by Lee Kuan Yew in a speech during his 1967 visit. 478 temporalities, and the coevality of old and new forms, within a single site. Moreover, as Patrick D. Flores has written of a comparable cultural precinct in Manila (built under Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos and named the Cultural Center of the
Philippines), the act of building on reclaimed land is loaded with both literal and metaphorical meaning. “Symbolically, reclaiming land from water and creating a tract of land where there was none before can be interpreted as an act of remaking nature, altering its ecology,” Flores suggests, while also noting that the act of reclamation
“concretises the political power” of its commissioners.3
Sereypagna’s Genealogy project explores how “the characteristics of urban ruptures through various historical eras” in Bassac;4 it researches and in diverse ways visualizes the built form and lived experience of the area, primarily over the course of the five decades since the land was reclaimed from the river. One collaboratively authored digital image shows the expansion of reclaimed land using six different historical maps dating back to 1921 (Figure 9.3). Other images overlay the original
1960s masterplan onto a 2014 Google satellite image (Figure 9.4). Such works emphasize transformations over time, yet they suggest a palimpsestic accumulation of (urban and other) forms, instead of a rupture or simple erasure. The admixture of
3 Patrick D. Flores, “‘Total Community Response’: Performing the Avant-garde as a Democratic Gesture in Manila,” Southeast of Now: Directions in Contemporary and Modern Art in Asia 1, No. 1 (March 2017): 13-38. 4 Pen Sereypagna, “About,” The Genealogy of Bassac: A Researched Study of Genealogy of White Building in Bassac Riverfront District, n.d. [2014]. Emphasis added. https://genealogyofbassac. wordpress.com/about/ [Accessed October 2016] See also: Pen Sereypagna, “White Building: Smart City,” Nakhara: Journal of Environmental Design and Planning 11 (2015): 101-110. 479 plural temporalities is especially emphasized in a series of images which overlay 2014 digital photographs of the White Building in its present dilapidated and over- crowded state, with digital renderings of the original architectural plans in elevation
(Figures 9.5 and 9.6). The importance of temporal and epistemic layering in this body of work is revealed most clearly in its presentation on multiple transparent sheets of plastic, displayed in a manner which facilitates looking through each of the sheets, with the image emerging not from a single sheet but rather from the accumulation of layered forms. This work was created for and first exhibited at the 10th Taipei Biennial in 2016 (Figure 9.7); the patronage of this contemporary art exhibition made possible ambitious technical formats which would otherwise have been beyond the financial and practical reach of Sereypagna and his Genealogy project collaborators.
Figure 9. 3
480
Figure 9. 4
Figure 9. 5
Figure 9. 6
481
Figure 9. 7
Striking in themselves, these images also gave rise to other works, in a typical example of the serial nature of much contemporary art (in Cambodia as elsewhere), and also of the appeal of open-ended participatory collaborations, for Sereypagna as for other artists. In one example, Sereypagna intends that images made by collaging photographs onto architectural drawings, as seen in Figure 9.5, will in future form the basis of an interactive Genealogy of Bassac website, in which users can click on an image of an apartment’s interior, and be redirected to a video interview with its inhabitants.
By the end of 2016, Sereypagna and his colleagues Chhum Phanith and Kourn Lyna had already recorded over 50 video interviews, most with residents looking back on their years or decades of living in the area. Much contemporary art practice involves a recollection of the lived experience of the history of the modern, as something that is both part of the contemporary order, and something that has already passed away, or is passing away.
482 Another example of serialized participatory collaborations arising from
Sereypagna’s digital collages is a work using several drawings made by children who live in the White Building neighbourhood. These were done at an open studio workshop-style event held during a three-month residency for the Genealogy project, from 2014 to 2015. The residency was held at Sa Sa Art Projects, an artist-run space located within the White Building which seeks to redress perceived shortcomings in
Cambodia’s official arts education, usually through informal “knowledge sharing” activities facilitated by artists’ residencies hosted at the space.5 While oppositional to the prevailing political situation, this assumption of responsibility for small-scale education by the independent art organization typifies the neoliberal delegation of formerly state responsibilities to individuals and non-governmental bodies. The children’s drawings produced in Sereypagna’s Genealogy of Bassac workshop event consist of visualizations of both their current living quarters in the White Building, and their dreams for possible futures for the structure (Figures 9.8, 9.9 and 9.10, at the end of this chapter). These colourful and freeform sketches are made directly onto a digitally rendered architectural elevation of the White Building’s 1960s design, reconstructed in 2014 by Sereypagna and his team, since the original plans were lost as a result of the architect’s relocation to France to escape escalating civil war in
Cambodia during the 1970s.
5 For more on Sa Sa Art Projects, from the perspective of the space’s co-founder and artistic director, see: Vuth Lyno, “Knowledge Sharing and Learning Together: Alternative Art Engagement from Stiev Selapak and Sa Sa Art Projects,” Udaya, Journal of Khmer Studies 12 (2014): 253-301. 483 The layered temporalities and heterogeneous perspectives found in these participatory drawings include: firstly, that of architect Lu Ban Hap in the 1960s; secondly, those of Lu Ban Hap’s many transnational collaborators in the 1960s, including the Japanese team who were so interested in “pre-modern” forms of
Cambodian stilted housing, and the Ukrainian-born, French-trained engineer who had designed a similar building in Algeria; thirdly, those of architectural researchers
Pen Sereypagna and his team of architecture students in 2014; fourthly, those of the children remembering their pasts and imagining their possible futures; and fifthly, those of the Sa Sa Art Projects residency coordinators facilitating the participatory community event. This list suggests that a participatory and serialized approach to contemporary artmaking, in which plural temporalities are central, is not the domain only of artists circulating in transnational exhibitionary and other discursive contexts, but rather is also available to publics of all ages, even in one of Phnom Penh’s most socio-economically underprivileged communities. Economic and artistic modernities from the past, the present and the future—the modernities that were implemented, those that were obstructed, and those that are still dreamt of—are here made into the raw materials of contemporary art.
In the final months of my work on this thesis (most of which was written at a desk in my home looking out on the White Building), plans were announced to demolish the White Building, and evict its thousands of inhabitants to make way for a high-rise tower of more than twenty storeys, to be built by a Japanese company with a budget of over 80 million US dollars. At the time of writing, the future remains 484 unclear, but the sense that the White Building’s days are numbered is now overwhelming. Resignation, rather than resistance, is the prevailing mood in the community, including among my neighbours and friends.
By contrast, in 2014 when government officials declared that the White
Building should be demolished, but provided no further details of their plan, the announcement was met with angry defiance. “If you take a hammer and hit the building, you will see sparks fly,” one resident identified as a “former actress” who has lived in the community since 1981 was quoted as saying.6 On the evening that news reports of the proposed demolition first appeared, young artists, filmmakers, activists and others who live and work in the White Building formed an impromptu gathering in a nearby eatery. Various strategies of opposition were proposed, and debates stretched into the night. Finally, a proposal was made which met with universal enthusiasm.
“We should make art to show them that the White Building has value,” a young woman suggested. “Yes, we should organize a dance on the rooftop,” another agreed.
“Art will make people pay attention,” someone else proposed.
These words echo those of Neak Srei [Ms] Troeung Ngea, with which this thesis began. “Art,” she wrote in 1974, “means any kind of work or skill that is made by
6 Leap Kanitha, 44, quoted in Hul Reaksmey, Chan Cheuk Yin, and Matt Blomberg, “Historic White Building to be Demolished,” The Cambodia Daily, 3 September 2014. https://www. cambodiadaily.com/archives/historic-white-building-to-be-demolished-67429/ [Accessed November 2016] 485 hand and that is artful, which is to say, which makes people feel desirous and interested, and want to look and want to listen.”7
Figure 9. 8
Figure 9. 9
7 Neak Srei Troeung Ngea née Laay Hunki (អ4ក%សី %តឹង 8 (9មេដើម =យ ហុនគី), អរ"យធម៌ែខEរ Areyathorm Khmer [The Khmer Civilization] (Phnom Penh: Editions Angkor, 2007 [1974]), 71. Emphasis in original. 486
Figure 9. 10
487 Appendix 1
“Ballet of the Khmero-American Friendship”, 1959
This Appendix includes three versions of a libretto performed for “His Excellency Mr Fred Andrew Seaton, Secretary of the Interior, and Member of the Cabinet, Official Representative of the President of the United States of America” on 22 July 1959. The libretto was printed in Khmer and English in an official commemorative program for the event, which is held in the National Archives of Cambodia, Box B-311.
1. Khmer version, as printed in the original program:
បទ សន%ឹកផ)រ+,ំ [Title]
សេ/0ធថ3ល់ធំ រ6ំ7ំ8ស9: (២ ដង) អនុស@AវរCយ៍ដ៏ៃថHIJ គួរកត់+Nក3OងជីវRត។
ែខVរWេមរCYំង ែដល6នមក8មិត[ រួបរួមគំនិត \ងេសចក[ីសុខ។
មិត[/នជំនួយ ជួយែខVរេលឿនេ_មុខ បេង`ើនផល+សុក +គប់មុខbន់សម័យ។
dរCេរ7ំផ)ងទង់8តិជ័យ មិត[eពវRេសសៃថH រសអចិៃgន[ ដ7បេអើយ។
488 2. My own literal translation of the above Khmer text:
The Rumble of Thunder [Title]
The opening of the big road Dancing the dance is a sign (2 times) A valuable souvenir We should record in our life.
Khmers and Americans That have become friends Joined their idea To build happiness.
Friends that have assistance Helped Khmers to quickly progress Increase national production Of every kind, up to date.
Girls move and dance holding up the successful nations’ flags Valuable and special friendship That lives permanently Eternally, euy.1
3. English version, as printed in the original program:
Ballet of the Khmero-American Friendship [Title]
Dance, dance, ballerinas Here opens the Road of Friendship All our lives our heards [sic] will remember.
All you Americans and Khmers United by destiny in a heartfelt friendship, Hand in hand, follow this road of peace.
Friends, how priceless was your help Thanks to you, now stronger and more prosperous, We have regained our place in the sun.
Dance, dance young girls, Entwine the colours of our two nations And may our fruitful friendship live for ever.
1 Thanks to Vuth Lyno for advice on some aspects of this translation.
489 Appendix 2
Chheng Phon, “Views of a Representative of Artists,” 1983
The following text is an edited translation of Chheng Phon (េជង ផុន), “មតិតំ+ង សិល./ករ” [Views of a Representative of Artists], in ឧ3កិដធ6កម7របស់បន:តទី អនុត>រ ?ពនិយមចិនេប៉Dំង និង បរE:រ ប៉ុល ពត - េអៀង GរH - េខៀវ សំផន កKLងអំឡLងNOំ ១៩៧៥ - ១៩៧៩ [The Crimes of the Beijing-ist Clique and the Pol Pot – Ieng Sary – Khieu Samphan Stooges from 1975 to 1979] (Phnom Penh: National Advisory Alliance for Solidarity, Construction and Defence of the Motherland, 1983), 50-57. National Archives of Cambodia Box B-637.
All the Cambodian artists who still survive, having escaped from the genocidal regime, are all artists whose blood and creative genius is a legacy remaining from the glorious era of Angkor. We are forever in silent awe of the creative genius and lofty achievements of our artist forebears, who are valued nationally and internationally, to the point of being a great treasure of humanity’s wisdom and skill. Their skills in art made our nation famous around the world, and made the great Khmer gardens become beautiful in so many ways, with flowers of every colour, every shape, and every fragrant perfume, spreading in all directions within Southeast Asia. The irrefutable evidence of this are the one thousand and eighty temples, as well as music in
490 many thousands of songs, dance with its many thousands of flawless kbach gestures, and many kinds of theatre, to serenade and caress.
But in the past six hundred years, the summits of wisdom and creative genius that vividly made our lives free and happy have declined and broken, being ruined a little at a time, a little less hopeful every day, until nothing at all was left, reaching zero in the genocidal regime. All artists, all poets suffered greatly, terribly despondent at the evil misfortune that had befallen the nation’s cultural foundations.
At this time, I wish to inform all the nation’s artists and the artists of all other countries to know very clearly about the great crimes of the genocidal regime.
We all know very clearly that at this hour, on this day, in this month, in this year we are all happy and delighted to produce works to serve humanity.
But as for me, the most excellent notions of patriotism, love of the people, love of the truth, love of freedom of expression of all kinds, these have become blind artists, mute artists, deaf artists, disabled artists, who can no longer make or do anything …
What do we think when we see people, even teachers, taken and killed? When we see eight beloved children slaughtered right in front of their mother? … How pained should we feel, when we see musicians, before they are killed, having their hands tied and being forced to sing for their killers,
491 until finally the killers take a brutally sharp knife, and stab the singer a little at a time, so cruelly?
We who are lovers of our heritage, who love all humanity, what should we think when they take an ancient temple, many centuries old, and destroy it, rendering it as dust and rubble, using it as a barn for cows? What feeling do all artists have when they see a religious statue, hundreds of years old, destroyed and thrown into a pond? The Pol Pot group smashed all the religious statues at Angkor Wat, and threw them into the pond as evidence.
What of the men and women of literature? Do you care? How do you feel when you see books and documents, the works of marvellous poets from long, long ago, burned right in front of these men and women of literature?
Can you bear to live in such darkness, such suffering, such terror, fearing for your life? Unable to trust anything, unable even to trust yourself? What of the progressive and modern ideas of the world; have not all the artists in the world loved freedom in their performances and in their search for truth, justice, and creativity; in all their activities? What do you think of the bitter suffering of our artists in Kampuchea?
This is the power of genocide, of reactionary ideology. Who will take responsibility for the weakness, the feebleness and emaciation of the four million people who have survived?
Who will take responsibility for the stupidity, for the crazed confusion and bewilderment of those people who have survived? Who will take 492 responsibility for the destitution and orphaning of hundreds of thousands of children of Kampuchea who have survived? Who will help the suffering of the tens of thousands of widows whose husbands have died, who are separated from their children, who have lost their minds, with no one and nothing to depend on? Who will help to take responsibility for the hundreds of kinds of sickness that we find in each of the Kampuchean people? Is there anyone who will help to listen, to be sympathetic to the starvation, lack of shelter, lack of clothing, lack of medicine, lack of everything, for hundreds of thousands of people that are living in suffering? Did any one among the four million Khmer who have survived the killing not suffer at the hands of the
Pol Pot group?
The whole world knows clearly that the people of Kampuchea are kind, honest, friendly and generous, with many true friends both near and far; that we are a people that loves freedom, loves truth and justice, loves happiness and despises killing, despises bloodshed, despises war. And so then, why has such hardship in this age fallen on the people of Kampuchea?
Dear poets, all authors in the world: as an artist of Kampuchea, I wish to inform you that I have no words to say. It can never be said. There is a limit to the words of humans, there is a border that contains that which we can say.
We cannot speak at all, we cannot describe a suffering that has no boundary, that is limitless.
493 This is the residue, the terrible and terrifying outcome; and these abominable traces will be truly impossible to forget, for people of all the nations in this world.
A heavy rock will weigh us down for many hundreds of years to come.
The storm of 7 January has blasted through the glass, so that the disaster and destruction can never again arise. And along with this, the good seeds on this earth, so full of life, have been watered with fresh rain. Fresh sunlight has made them strong seedlings, with the freedom to bloom and prosper, on a new field, with the bamboo shoots sprouting up all over the country.
The School of Art in every specialization has come back to life, for all fields.
Fine art and the popular arts have bloomed and flourished freely all over the country.
At this time, because of our own very strong efforts, and because of the immense help, support and assistance from our brother and sister countries and from various international organizations, from the day of liberation continuously until the present, the Kampuchean land has returned to wonderful life. Eighty per cent of national arts and culture, having been completely destroyed, have returned to life in all media. The new regime offers hope, and has tried very hard, wholeheartedly supporting the initiative to allow the ten per cent of artists who have survived the killing to have full rights, to have sufficient capacity, to awaken and actively join together on the 494 foundations of national culture, and cause the ideas of Angkor to begin to be reborn again, blooming freshly and beautifully in this beloved land of
Kampuchea. This has been the desperate desire of the artists of Kampuchea for more than six hundred years already. But these days, all of these things that we adore are under threat from our Khmer enemies, and from the perpetrators of genocide, the reactionaries, and all the international conspirators. They do not want peace, they do not want this return to life, and they do not want we artists to enjoy these rights and freedoms. They act with the intent to forget and destroy the independence, peace, freedom and happiness that we possess.
We accept, with full conscience, the responsibility for the fate of our people. And we truly intend never to allow the people of any nation on earth to endure such terrible suffering like the people of Kampuchea. All of us, artists of Kampuchea, strongly appeal to all poets, all authors, all architects, all musicians, and all painters in the world and in the Republic who love peace, who love truth and social justice in the world, to please help to support the life, peace, and freedom of the people of Kampuchea to finally enjoy justice. And please also strongly denounce the crimes that have never before been encountered in human history. Please strongly denounce all nations that are continuing to aid and take care of the Pol Pot, Ieng Sary, Khieu Samphan group, and other Khmer reactionaries as well, who have such a terrible
495 intention, to destroy the rebirth of Kampuchea. Please evict the Pol Pot group from the United Nations.
All of us, artists of Kampuchea, absolutely refuse to allow a genocide like this to reappear on the Kampuchean land, or in any other nation.
I smile, and I hope, and I warmly believe in the United Nations, which is an international organization that has the duty to accept responsibility for preserving long-lasting peace and human rights. It has clearly not held onto its prestigious reputation, but rather lost it completely due to the presence of these perpetrators of genocide.
Phnom Penh, 17 September 1983 Chheng Phon Representative of Artists from All Fields Throughout the Nation
496 Glossary
Angkor Angkor was the capital of the Khmer Empire, which flourished from the 9th to 15th centuries CE near present-day Siem Reap in northwest Cambodia. “Angkorian” is used to refer to cultural artefacts of the period, chiefly stone temples, sculptures, and epigraphy. Angkor Wat is the name of the best known of more than one thousand Angkorian temples. apsara (អប#$រ or អប#$&) A female or feminine heavenly dancer, originating in Buddhist and Hindu mythology. Widely considered an ideal of grace and beauty, bas-relief sculptures of apsaras adorn the temples of Angkor. Cambodian dance often emulates gestures and costumes seen in these sculpted apsaras.
Bayon The Bayon is one of the most celebrated of the Angkorian temples, located within the Angkor Thom complex. It is famed for its multiple towers bearing stone portraits of faces on four sides. boran (បុ&ណ or បូ&ណ) A term approximately equivalent to ancient, traditional, or classical, often used in this thesis in preference to the term “pre-modern.”
Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK) Better known as the Khmer Rouge: see below.
Democratic Kampuchea The official name for the nation under the Khmer Rouge regime, headed by Pol Pot, from 17 April 1975 to 7 January 1979. diaspora Can refer either individually or collectively to members of a population, usually national, “ethnic” or linguistic, who have been geographically dispersed either by choice or through historical circumstance. Cambodians living outside of Cambodia, many of whom relocated as refugees or were born to refugee parents, are often described as a diaspora, or as diasporic. 497 Indochina The name given to the former French colonial territory, encompassing present-day Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam.
Kampuchea The Khmer name for Cambodia, which has also been used in the Anglophone name for the nation under some regimes. kbach (ក#+ច់) Can refer either to codified gestures and poses used in Cambodian dance (robam រ.ំ) and theatre (lkhon េ12ន), or to codified system of ornamental designs, used in the decoration of surfaces of all kinds.
Khmer The name of the Cambodian language, in written or spoken form. Also often used in discourse as a demonym or adjective, synonymous with “Cambodian.”
Khmer Republic The official name for the nation under the regime, headed by Lon Nol, from 9 October 1970 until 17 April 1975. Its establishment followed a coup d’etat, led by Lon Nol with US backing, on 18 March 1970.
Khmer Rouge The name given, by Sihanouk, to the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK). The term is commonly used to refer to individuals or groups who were members of the CPK, soldiers in the CPK army, or officials under the Democratic Kampuchea regime. It is also used to refer to the 1975-79 Democratic Kampuchea regime. lkhon (េ12ន) A kind of narrative-based performing art, usually translated as “theatre.”
Lon Nol Born in 1913, Lon Nol was a political and military marshal, best known for leading the coup d’etat on 18 March 1970 which overthrew Sihanouk’s Sangkum Reastr Niyum regime, and established the Khmer Republic. Lon Nol died in 1985.
498 naga (4គ) A sacred serpent deity in Hindu and Buddhist mythology. The Cambodian naga typically has seven heads, and often appears in sculpture and architectural ornamentation. neoliberalism A political ideology associated with laissez-faire global capitalism, free trade, privatization of social services, and a delegation of formerly social or state responsibilities onto individuals and the private sphere.
People’s Republic of Kampuchea The official name for the nation under the Vietnamese-backed regime, headed by Heng Samrin, from 7 January 1979 to 1 May 1989 (when the nation was renamed State of Cambodia) or 26 September 1989 (when Vietnamese troops withdrew).
Pol Pot Born Saloth Sar (6ឡ8ត ស) in 1925, Pol Pot is best known as the leader of the Khmer Rouge, or Communist Party of Kampuchea, who after 17 April 1975 ruled the nation under the name of Democratic Kampuchea. In Khmer discourse, Pol Pot refers both to the individual and to the regime he led, as well as to the atrocities (often referred to as genocide) that took place under his leadership. Pol Pot died in 1997.
Protectorate Under colonial rule, Cambodia was officially a French Protectorate from 1863 to 1953, as part of the larger French colonial territory of Indochina.
Reamker (&មេករ<=) Also sometimes romanized as Ramakerti, the Reamker is the Khmer telling of the Ramayana, an epic tale of Sanskrit origin. riel The riel is the official currency of Cambodia. robam (រ.ំ) A kind of performing art, usually translated as “dance.”
Sangkum Reastr Niyum Usually translated as “People’s Socialist Community,” the Sangkum Reastr Niyum was a political organization established by Norodom Sihanouk on 22
499 March 1955, and dissolved on 18 March 1970, in a coup d’etat led by Lon Nol which overthrew Sihanouk. Officially a “movement” rather than a political party, the Sangkum (as it is commonly abbreviated) controlled the government of Cambodia throughout its existence, led by Sihanouk, who had abdicated from the throne in order to rule as Head of State. Sangkum also refers more generally to the period from 1955 to 1970. selpak (សិល#@ៈ) Also sometimes romanized as selapak, a broad term used to refer to “the arts” in general, including visual arts, performing arts, literary arts, and so on.
Siam Siam was the name used for territories which were renamed Thailand in 1932. “Siamese” is the demonym; Thai is the primary language that was spoken.
Norodom Sihanouk Born in 1922, Norodom Sihanouk was crowned as King in 1941, a position he held until his voluntary abdication in 1955, after which he served as Head of State in the Sangkum Reastr Niyum regime until 1970. He was recrowned in 1993, and remained King until 2004, when he abdicated in favour of his son Norodom Sihamoni. Sihanouk died in 2012, and Sihamoni remains King in 2016.
USIS The United States Information Service, a branch of the USIA, or United States Information Agency, active internationally during the Cold War, and especially active in Cambodia during the 1950s and 1960s. wat Also sometimes romanized as vat or vatt, wats are Buddhist temple complexes, which include pagodas visited by Cambodians for celebrations, festivals, and to worship, as well as living quarters for monks and others.
500
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Minerva Access is the Institutional Repository of The University of Melbourne
Author/s: Nelson, Roger
Title: Modernity and contemporaneity in "Cambodian Arts" after independence
Date: 2017
Persistent Link: http://hdl.handle.net/11343/165201
File Description: Modernity and Contemporaneity in "Cambodian Arts" After Independence
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