AsiaLIFE

Phnom Penh is changing fast, too fast some would say. In a series of events this month, Phnom Penh’s artists and architects ask where the city has come from and where it is heading. Nathan Green talks to the people behind this month’s activities.

Not every generation gets the chance to rebuild their city, but Cambodia’s tumultuous recent history and the economic resurgence of the last decade have combined to give the people of Phnom Penh the opportunity to reshape and modernise the country’s capital. As the city grows, both outwards and upwards, concerns are rising that the needs of the city’s inhabitants, and of the city itself, are being ignored by developers. As lakes are drained, residents evicted and skylines altered, both the city’s architectural heritage and its prospects for becoming the living, breathing, healthy modern capital every country needs, are at risk. “The last couple of years have been insane,” says Dana Langlois, owner of JavaArt, Café and Gallery, pointing to the raft of new developments under construction in seemingly random spots around the city. “I don’t want to stop the city from developing and I am really happy to see it, but I just think it could be done with more thought.”

United Artistic Front

 

The desire to kick-start that thinking is behind a month of exhibitions, lectures and publications to be held in September. The organisers hope to encourage people in Phnom Penh to have a say in how their city takes shape. Dana proposed the idea to her colleagues in the Cambodian art and culture community after attending a talk by a visiting city planner from India about how a local art community there had influenced the government on city development and urban planning. The French Cultural Centre and Meta House are also holding architecture-themed events during the month. “The idea is to have an exhibition purely about architecture in Cambodia and to speak about the different problems facing architecture in the country,” says Lydia Parusol, art manager at Meta House. “By unifying the centres with one theme, one exhibition, in many spaces, we can really provide a story.”

 

Panca Evenblij, a Dutch artist and long-time resident of Phnom Penh, will provide the centrepiece for JavaArt’s activities with a participatory exhibition called ‘I Love Phnom Penh’. Panca will plant the seeds but leave it to the local community to give the artwork shape, creating a blueprint for how the residents want their city to look. “I like to collect ideas from different people, so everyone is invited to contribute what they feel about the city,” she says. “I just want to start with something small and develop something, much like you have a city and it starts somewhere and it grows.” Panca says her three-year sojourn as an artist in Cambodia has taught her that people love participating in artistic projects. “They are part of the artwork,” she says. “You don’t have this distance between the people and the artwork.”

Mapping the City’s Architectural Icons

 

Java will also hold an exhibition of works by two young Cambodian artists, Khvay Samang and Kong Vollak. Their collaborative drawings both document the city’s architectural heritage and express their ideas for the buildings of the future. They are based on drawings the two worked on for a guide map illustrating the location of Phnom Penh’s art spaces and architectural icons. The SpotMap, which has been produced by JavaArts, the ChildSafe Network and ANZ Royal Bank, will be launched at the exhibition. “Art can change everything,” Vollak says. “The artist is the doctor of feeling because he can create ideas. When these are shown to the audience, the audience can absorb the ideas of the artist.” While Java will largely be interactive and try to help script the future, Meta House’s contribution will portray a country in transition. “Architecture is one symbol of how society and the country is changing,” Lydia Parusol, the curator for the ‘In Transition’ exhibition, says. “Where we go, we don’t know? The city can go in any direction and it is important they get it right.”

Perils of Thoughtless Development

 

The exhibition at Meta House will juxtapose drawings of old traditional Battambang buildings, by students from Phare Ponleu Selpak, with pennants contributed by architecture historian Helen Grant Ross. These depict pure Phnom Penh architecture, public spaces and sporting areas from the 1950s and 60s. It will also portray a disturbing vision of the possible future of Phnom Penh development as captured through the lens of Magnum photographer and long-time Cambodia resident John Vink. His ‘Absence of Architecture’ series documents the early stages of a new suburban residential area on the outskirts of the city. It warns of the dangers of developers pushing ahead without thinking carefully about what they are building, who for, and how it looks and feels.

 

“It is so extreme, it is so unreasonable,” he says of the new subdivision. “Who would want to live there? The problem I have is that there is nothing behind it. It’s not to make something beautiful, it’s not to make something useful, it’s just to make money. These are empty dreams, there is no projection to the future.” According to John, this absence of architecture is too prevalent in this new period of urban development. For him, this lies in stark contrast to when the city, and the country, was modernised under the guidance of Vann Molyvann, the leader and most prolific of a group of architects behind the so-called New Khmer Architecture movement in the 1950s and 60s.

Learning From the Past

 

This group was given licence by then-King Norodom Sihanouk to modernise Cambodia through construction, urban development and major infrastructure projects. The grandiose plan was to transform Phnom Penh into a vibrant capital city to rival the best of Asia. Vann Molyvann alone was responsible for more than 100 major public works, including the Independence Monument at the intersection of Sihanouk and Norodom boulevards, the National Sports Centre (or Olympic Stadium) built in 1964 and modelled on Angkor Wat, and the One Hundred Houses development. Commissioned by the National Bank of Cambodia for its staff in 1965, the development was inspired by Le Corbusier’s theories of communal living but adapted to both the cultural needs of its inhabitants and the demands of the physical environment.

 

“This guy is such a genius,” John says. “His buildings are relevant, they are well-built, they are well thought out. There is something behind it, a humanistic background. He is thinking about the people he is building for and he is incredibly gifted. The buildings are beautiful they are harmonious and they work well. That is what architecture is about. I hope, I wish, I knock on wood that there are Khmer architects who know about their architectural history.” But rather than being embraced, Vann Molyvann’s legacy has been undermined in recent years. Many of his most famous landmarks have been left in disrepair, demolished or defaced in botched restoration projects. It is perhaps fitting that the continued neglect of Molyvann’s monument to Cambodia’s performance arts, the Preah Suramarit National Theatre, was the trigger-point for the start of a re-unification effort among Khmer artists that eventually led to this month’s activities.

 

The theatre itself was gutted by fire in 1994 and had remained in disrepair despite, or perhaps because of, a squatter community of Phnom Penh artists that had taken up residence in the area. After years of lobbying to repair the theatre, the government sold it and the land around it. The theatre was destroyed early this year and the art community was forcibly evicted, their homes re-developed into a commercial district. According to Dana Langlois, this event encouraged the city’s artists to look even more closely at what was happening to the city around them.

A Realistic Perspective

 

Although other communities in Phnom Penh are experiencing the same fate, there is little chance that the efforts of the art community will filter through to the general population, according to Ly Daravuth. “Contemporary art is still very marginalised in terms of the whole society, the bigger picture,” says the founder of Reyum Institute. “It doesn’t mean the work of Java is not important, but we have to recognise it is very marginalised within the city. The artists that are here are important and good, but they are still very few and they hardly touch the core of society.”

 

Daravuth is being a realist rather than a pessimist. The publishing arm of his institute is also playing its part in architecture month, publishing a French version of the 2003 Vann Molyvann book Modern Khmer Cities, in association with the French Cultural Centre (CCF). The book brings to life the work of Vann Molyvann. The man himself will also be here during September at the invitation of the CCF to talk both about the history of architecture in Cambodia and to present his vision for the future. Daravuth warns that the world is very different from when Molyvann was given free reign, and almost unlimited money, to make his architectural vision come to life. Instead of a patron like King Norodom Sihanouk, developers and architects today must build international projects for international developers.

Reaching out to the future generation
All agree that if the month is to be judged a success, the exhibitions and lectures must reach out to the young Cambodian artists and architects that will be responsible for shaping the Phnom Penh of the future. The key, according to John Vink, is to challenge them to break the shackles of a culture that has lost its ability to confront mainstream views. “Art can exist only through confrontation,” John says. “You get good artists only because they were confronted with something that disturbed them and they wanted to go beyond that. It’s the same with architecture. If you don’t confront people with something they wont move ahead, they will just perpetuate, and perpetuation is degeneration.”

 

Lydia from Meta House agrees, seeing the month principally as a platform for younger architects to meet with their elders and really start to think of the city they are helping to build. “Is there some hope that this exhibition will influence developers, city planners and so forth?” she asks. “For sure. That something like this architecture month can happen shows that people are already coming together and thinking about things. They are interested to learn. There is demand to explore new things, new ways of thinking, planning and building. The people have the energy and they are doing it. That’s perfect.”

 

Alain Arnaudet, director of the French Cultural Centre, will judge the month a success if it helps people become aware of the important architectural heritage that surrounds them and reminds them of where they come from as they move into the future. “Of course they have Angkor and the temples but they also have a new heritage and they have to take care of it,” he says. “They have colonial houses, which are fantastic, and the buildings of the 50s and 60s are amazing as well. You can go and develop, and preserve your heritage as well.”

 

It remains to be seen whether September’s activities are the first act in a process to preserve Cambodia’s modern architectural heritage behind glass, or whether it will kick-start a dialogue between the city’s residents and those bringing money into the city to build its future. That will depend on the Khmer community, says Dana. “We need leaders, but they have to come from the Khmer community. This is just a little fire to get things moving but it needs to come from the local people to really have an impact.”