After the International Women's Day 2012
Good traditions – but looking towards the future – should be developed. The following is such an attempt, following on publications during the past years. On 11 March 2007, I had written about the origins of the International Women's Day, related to the first all women’s strikes in the garment industry, in Lowell in Massachusetts/USA. What I consider worthwhile here is to think about the fact that the first strike of women textile workers, as described above, took place in Lowell/USA,
- Read more
- 8955 reads
Picking up the pieces
Full Circle is an unusual artwork: a durational performance piece which will challenge and transfix both artist and audience. For six consecutive days, Amy Lee Sanford will sit amid a circle of 40 Kompong Chhang clay pots. Slowly and deliberately, she will break one pot by dropping it on the floor. She will then gather the pieces and meticulously glue the pot back together, binding the fragments with string and returning the remade pot to the circle. Over six days, all 40 pots will be broken and remade in this way.
- Read more
- 10497 reads
Punk Is not dead
In early 1974, a newly opened dive bar in downtown Manhattan became the epicentre of a movement that would ultimately sweep the globe. The address 315 Bowery, then the site of CBGBs, would soon become known as The Birthplace of Punk – the ground zero of a worldwide counter-cultural phenomenon. This was where the Ramones famously played their first gig; where Patti Smith made her name; and where Television, Blondie, and Talking Heads took off.
- Read more
- 12246 reads
Stereoptik
The fusion of live action with animation dates backs to the turn of the 20th century, when US newspaper cartoonist Winsor McCay created pioneering short Gertie the Dinosaur. During vaudeville performances, McCay would stand on stage, dressed in a tuxedo and wielding a whip, and instruct the animated brontosaur – projected onto a screen behind him – to perform various circus tricks. In a clip from 1914, McCay can be seen tossing a real apple to Gertie, who promptly ‘catches’ a cartoon version of it on-screen (the real apple never left McCay’s palm).
- Read more
- 8328 reads
Peace through superior poetry
Ryan Tong and Kosal Khiev are on a mission. Part of new arts collective Studio Revolt, these Asian-American activists – one a youth worker, the other a former refugee and convict recently deported from the US to his native Cambodia – are using poetry to teach orphans the delicate art of self-expression. Ninety kids aged seven to 16, who survive by scavenging from Phnom Penh’s dump sites, are embarking on a voyage of self-discovery through spoken word at local NGO A New Day Cambodia.
- Read more
- 10724 reads
Ska Face
They’ve played for Prince William and Kate Middleton at the royal wedding; in a bathtub in Reading; crammed into a Fiat 500 in Rome, and on board a rather large yacht in Monaco. Not bad, considering Will and the People – heading to Phnom Penh this month to promote their debut album – are barely out of the box.
- Read more
- 8725 reads
Jerry Joseph: Natural Born Thriller
Hard rock has long been known for its diabolical associations, from Jimmy Page’s devout following of ‘The Great Beast’ Aleister Crowley to Keith Richard’s obsession with the occult. But only one man can lay claim to being the inspiration for ultra-violent serial killer Mickey Knox in Natural Born Killers, Oliver Stone’s frenzied study of the relationship between the mass media and mass murderers.
- Read more
- 8426 reads
A very dangerous holiday in Cambodia
In December 1978, under the spectre of an imminent Vietnamese military invasion, the ultra-secretive Khmer Rouge leadership did something fantastically out of character - it cracked the curtains ever so slightly and let three foreigners inside. Only two would leave alive.
- Read more
- 11470 reads
Introducing Jaguar Skills: ninja master of the mix
Bastardising music is nothing new. From the jazz tradition of reinterpreting standards to the DIY ethic of punk, the art of assembling new songs from purloined elements of existing tracks has been around since music was first recorded. But a certain breed of DJ is jacking up the creative bar – and then some.
- Read more
- 14918 reads
Dancing with Dictators: a very problematic publisher
“Jinxed” is how the Australian media described Dancing with Dictators, a documentary film about Southeast Asia’s most controversial newspaper man, when it was canned at the 11th hour during last year’s Sydney film festival.
When Phnom Penh Post and Myanmar Times publisher Ross Dunkley agreed to allow filmmakers to follow in his footsteps for an exposé on how the foreign media fares under one of the world’s most repressive regimes, few outside his immediate circle could have imagined what was to come.
- Read more
- 9906 reads