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Project description

Anne Elizabeth Moore’s initiative Independent Youth-Driven Cultural Production in Cambodia (IYDCPC) describes the programming of an international institute based in Phnom Penh that encourages multidisciplinary creative responses to issues related to popular culture, with a particular focus on media, advertising, marketing, youth, gender, democracy, human rights, and globalization in Southeast Asia. Programming hinges around an international residency program with cultural producers from all over the world who come to the region to work with groups of youth on projects that allow them to creatively re-envision public space, global media, and their society. Projects are collaborative and emerge from Phnom Penh and thus address the needs of Cambodian youth, but also focus on the regional needs of youth and adults in the region.

Project aims, goals and objectives

The primary goal of IYDCPC is to establish a forum for creative cultural and critical thought for youth around global media in Southeast Asia. The objective is to foster a savvy community of media critics, instilled with an awareness of international dialogues around private control of public space, the impact of advertising on local communities, and influence over media in a democracy, and offer proven skills used in these debates and discussions internationally. An additional aim will be to foster international understanding of the local needs of developing nations in our international residents, instilling in the international community a deeper understanding of the impact of globalization.

Project methodology and implementation

The IYDCPC will act as an ad-hoc, independent research institute and site for international artists and researchers to offer youth-focused creative responses to globalized media, in Phnom Penh and through Southeast Asia. This institute will develop an international call for proposals and solicit programs from media critics, artists, cultural producers and other creative, and select via participatory group process one resident per year to invite to Cambodia to work with youth on their project. This institute will also have an online component, which will offer relevant texts, images and resources on international work done around issues of global media, possibly contain an ongoing editorial component made up of student work around these issues, and house information about the international residency program and the work that emerges from it.

Project audience and mode of audience solicitation

IYDCPC has a tiered audience structure that includes invited international residents, college students, and local participating youth (including the non-student population, including garment workers and karaoke bar employees). The work created, however, is intended for a global audience. Projects from our call for proposals will be chosen on the basis of their ability to use local, national, and international distribution channels to reach Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Southeast Asia, and international communities at large. The website will play a strong role in the creation and support of this audience, and will establish a unique niche as a portal for art and media from a part of the world often on the receiving end of globalized media, but rarely given the opportunity to offer responsive cultural output to a global audience.

Community impact

Community impact of IYDCPC will be assessed largely on the quality of the critical engagement Khmer youth create after a year of programming. The objective, to offer an awareness of international issues as well as a toolkit of response methods, will be perceptible both through the quality of the first annual project and the accessibility of the content on the web. Our aims will be reached when we have received Southeast Asian and international response to our work, and the quality and direction of this response will allow us to further hone our second year of programming. Due to recent interest in Southeast Asian art and media, and Cambodian youth art and media projects as well, this work will likely be supported by media interest, which will allow for a wide definition and expansion of the idea of community.

Development of field

This project is constructed around the solipsism of US media activism and public engagement techniques, which tend to ignore the global issues of media exports. It is intended not only to build upon and re-apply the strengths of those developed forms in a local if economically underdeveloped context, but also to point out blind spots in Western constructions of representation, media, and advertising. This programming is intended to strengthen, on an individual and discursive basis, the critical dialogue surrounding global media.

Project timeframe

This project goes into the planning stages in December 2010, and initial plans for its implementation will be finalized in January. 2011. Our aim will be to complete a call for proposals to send out in the early spring. Summer will be focused on completing the website, and we will select our first international resident via participatory group process, who will begin to implement their project in fall 2011. Upon completion, projects will take approximately one month to implement and distribute, and be available internationally by January 1, 2012.

Project output

The output of IYDCPC will depend largely on the proposed project of the international resident brought in to work with the students and local youth. However, projects will be chosen on the basis of their ability to address global media visible in Cambodia and containing themes or interest elements that resonate with students and throughout the region. This project will have a local public display and, ideally, have a distribution option throughout Southeast Asia so that our work locally can also have regional impact. International distribution will be primarily through our website, but also through media response and possible art exhibitions or media distribution stateside.

Confirmed collaborators

Confirmed collaborators include: Raymond Leos, the Department Chair of Media and Communications at Panassasstra University of Cambodia; Mao Kolap, archivist and Head Librarian at Panassasstra University of Cambodia; and Megan Clavier, a Cambodia-based expert in women’s issues. Together we will enlist the support and aid of the university at large and other education, student, and women’s organizations. The crew assembled this winter will disseminate the call for participants, which will then establish an outreach framework and final major collaborative element. From there, further collaborators, such as distributors and local affiliates, will be sought.