kampot

kampot
Originally uploaded by ubikwity.

I took this pic of the old Bokor Mountain Club when I was in Kampot last February. I will be heading down next week to take a look at the new paint job and make plans for its reopening. My flickr account has more pics of the building and views from it and some of the town.

when there is water the fish eats the ant...

when there is no water the ant eats the fish. So goes an old Khmer proverb illustrating the struggles of the rural poor here. A photography exhibit opened recently, a part of a city wide promotion of Khmer contemporary art. One of the photographers, Mok, chose to tell his story using this parable and some beautifully constructed images of ants and fish. I invited my Khmer tutor, Sophea, to the show and she was curious about the seemingly abstract images. Before I had even read the artists description of the parable he was illustrating, I explained to Sophea that it was about the balance of nature, that sometimes the fish gets the ant and sometimes the ant gets the fish. She asked me how I knew this and I said I didn’t know but that contemporary art is meant to be interpreted. I suggested she ask the photographer what he was trying to impart, as he was standing next to us. She did, and they had a long conversation (in Khmer) while going over each of the twelve or so photos. As they did this I read the brochure and the parable. She later told me that he was using the parable to describe his life during the Khmer Rouge era. She was very moved and thanked me for taking her. She admitted that at first she didn’t see any point in the abstract images of ants and fish.

dance

phnom penh
Originally uploaded by ubikwity.

I went to see the performance of the dancers and musicians from the Bassac commune squatter village. 90 kids and 15 master musicians (including a Ray Charles look-a-like) performed at the Sovanna Phum theatre on a drizzly wednesday night. I sat with my Swede friend Anders as he recorded the music and I snapped off a few photos. The kids are all from a squalid shantytown near the Bassac river and the Russian embassy. The government is evicting them and the village is slated for razing. An NGO has been teaching these kids traditional Khmer performing arts for the last couple of years and this was the first time many of their parents saw them perform.