CROSS-BORDER COLLABORATIONS HEAT UP
NEWS/PHNOM PENH
By Erin Gleeson

Cambodia and Vietnam share a long history of territorial friction. However, in recent years contemporary art has provided opportunities for collaboration between the two countries. Vietnamese artists’ first visits to Cambodia were motivated by friendship, says Ly Daravuth, artist and director of Reyum, Phnom Penh’s leading art and cultural center. Ly met Vietnamese artist Tran Luong (see p.74) in the late 1990s at exhibitions and conferences in the Mekong River region. Tran’s first residency at Reyum introduced his video work to a small group of Cambodian artists. He returned in 2002 on an Asian Cultural council grant to expose regional performance art to Burmese and Thai artists.

Since then, Cambodia hosted its first contemporary art festival, the Visual Arts Open, in December 2005 (see AAP 47), while in Vietnam the Saigon Open City, a two-year cultural project consisting of exhibitions and special events, commenced in late 2006 with government approval.

In 2006, two groups from Vietnam participated in collaborations in Cambodia. In January, Phnom Penh-Tokyo based independent curator Chirstine Cibert invited Saigon artists Rich Streitmatter-Tran, Bui Cong Khanh and Bui The Trung Nam to participate in exhibitions and events with Cambodian artists Leang Seckon and Sopheap Pich. Phnom Penh’s Java Café and Gallery and Popil Photo Gallery hosted the exhibitions, and art-making activities took place at the Building, a slum housing an artists’ community threatened with eviction. Java also hosted Streitmatter-Tran and Bui Cong’s provocative body performance and a public discussion moderated by Cibert addressing free expression in each country.

In July 2006, during Tran Luong’s third collaboration with Reyum, part of a Rockefeller Foundation project, Tran and nine other Hanoi-based artists caravanned the Cambodian countryside to Phnom Penh, working closely with Reyum Art School’s newly formed Workshop- a creative lab facilitated by Ly Daravuth and comprised of the school’s first 16 graduates. Guided by the Vietnamese, Workshop artists familiarized themselves with performance and installation work. Le Vu’s instant noodles covered the school’s tree trunks, Nguyen Thuy Tran’s public tooth-brushing ceremony at Phnom Penh’s bustling riverside attempted to “prepare our mouths to speak about our pasts.”

These collaborations provide stimuli for Cambodia’s nascent contemporary art movement. With economic cooperation between the two countries increasing- a recent bi-lateral trade agreement will create 20 border crossings in 2007- further artistic exchange is inevitable and anticipated.