ដើម្បីអានជាភាសាខ្មែរ សូមចុចទីនេះ។
What is it about?
Throughout the twentieth century, Phnom Penh has experienced dramatic changes – expansion, modernization, war, de-urbanization, re-urbanization, and in recent years a rapid growth in terms of population and development projects. The city’s history reflects in many ways the political and social transformation of Cambodia itself since the country gained its independence. The workshop will explore this recent history through the urban lens, with a focus on the repurposing (or re-use) of buildings and transport, communication, and defense infrastructures in Phnom Penh from the mid-1950s to the mid-1990s. The overall goal of the workshop is twofold: to understand the ways in which war, regime change, and political transition materialize in the urban fabric, and to develop through the study of their traces a more granular or intimate approach to historical events. Built forms and infrastructure as ‘archive’ will afford a concrete and at the same time innovative framework of analysis. By investigating what was or wasn’t built, what was or wasn’t re-used by a broad range of actors (including governments, communities, NGOs, and individuals), and what has survived up to this day and in what forms, we will try to produce a bottom-up and socio-material ‘portrait’ of Phnom Penh and its residents over four decades.
What will we do?
The workshop aims to provide you with skills necessary for your professional career in terms of research, presentation, writing, and publishing. It will be based on hands-on activities. You will explore different ways of keeping and using archives, and forms of engagement with academic and non-academic audiences. You will create a project on the subject of Phnom Penh’s buildings and infrastructures. It can be a photo or series of photos (with or without text), a performance, a short video, a sound piece, a small installation, an object, a social media piece, or anything that comes to your mind and uses the resources we will explore together (buildings, photos, films, documents, newspapers, pictorials, etc.). Throughout this process, the panelists Khvay Samnang (artist), Vuth Lyno (artist), Stephanie Benzaquen-Gautier (historian), Fabienne Luco (social anthropologist) and Anne-Laure Porée (anthropologist) will guide you and train you in interdisciplinary research methodologies. On the last day of the workshop, there will be a public event at Bophana Audiovisual Center during which you will present your work to the general public. Additionally, the workshop activities will be disseminated through publications and social media platforms.
Main language used in the Workshop is Khmer.
Lead Instructor: Dr. Stephanie Benzaquen-Gautier, a research fellow at the International Institute of Asian Studies (IIAS) in Leiden and CKS Senior Research Fellow. Her research project, “Republican Visualities: Towards a New Archive of the Khmer Republic”, uses the theory of visual culture to reassess the republican period ‘on its own terms’, exploring a wide range of materials, including photos, newsreels, illustrated magazines, advertisements, movies, cartoons, and artworks. The objective is to produce a critical, multi-perspectival, interdisciplinary history of the Khmer Republic, and to map an expanded archive of that period, and the traces it has left in Cambodia.
Co-instructors: Vuth Lyno, Samnang Khvay, Anne-Laure Porée, and Fabienne Luco.
How will it work?
The workshop will take place over five days at several locations in Phnom Penh (Royal University of Fine Arts, archive institutions) . Briefly, the first morning (from 8am to 12pm), the panelists will present their work and discuss their methodologies. They will explain in detail how the workshop will be developed with your input and answer all the practical questions you may have. The following mornings will be dedicated to the visit of buildings (second day) and onsite work at archive institutions (third and fourth days). In the archive institutions, the staff will introduce the collections and help you research the materials. The afternoons (from 1.30 pm to 5.30pm) will be dedicated to the production of your own project. You will have the possibility to use a common room at RUFA.
The workshop will have an ‘open-door’ policy, with guests (artists, researchers, practitioners) coming for informal visits and talking with you about your work. The public event on the last day of the workshop will include two parts: 1) the presentation of your project; 2) a roundtable you will be invited to join along with guest speakers.
The publications will provide an additional teaching and learning platform. The International Institute of Asian Studies (IIAS) at the University of Leiden has proposed to dedicate to the workshop a section of its newsletter. The newsletter has a global readership of 55,000. You will organize yourselves the dossier (themes, structure, illustrations) for this section and you will write about your project. The panelists will assist with the framework (workshop concept, description of archives and workshop activities, discussion of methodologies). At a later stage, we will work on a second publication in a different format so that you can have an additional publishing experience and present your work to a larger audience.
Eligibility
- Able to prepare the preliminary readings to ensure a dynamic learning environment.
- Interest in creating a material project using one or several media.
- Able to work in teams.
- Knowledge of English as some parts of the workshop and some readings will be in English.
- Able to attend fully and engage actively in the workshop.
- Able to follow-up for publications (the process will take up to several months).
How to apply:
For those who are interested in attending this workshop, you are required to submit your CV (max. 2 pages) and a motivation letter (1 page max) explaining why you are interested and what you expect from the workshop.
To submit your application, please click here.
