In a Room with a View: ในห้องที่มีหน้าต่าง

pic. 1 — Sa Sa Art Projects’ backyard garden where the team eats, socializes and hangs out with artists and friends. They also work there sometimes. It’s this nature of this green, flexible, and nurturing space that is central to the essence of where Lyno lives and wants to live.

Vuth Lyno — We are experiencing a new episode of community spread, and this time is a new COVID variant in Phnom Penh and some provinces. The government just introduced targeted lockdowns and regulated a new law to enforce restrictions on gatherings and cultural events and penalties on those who do not comply with quarantine and wearing masks and social distancing in required settings. Big gatherings are currently banned, whereas cultural life is limited. At Sa Sa Art Projects, we have introduced a rotating schedule for in-office work among our team members and migrated some physical programs to virtual sessions, including a recent exhibition opening of our graduate exhibition and our English for Artists class.

pic. 2 — Online opening of Anonymous Heirloom exhibition by Koeurm Kolab

pic. 3 — English for Artists class migrated to Zoom

Lyno — Amidst this situation, we have explored how to effectively work with artists, partners, and students and interact with our audience. For our residency program, we have shifted from engaging with regional and international artists (whose travel is no longer feasible and safe) to work with young Cambodian artists who need time, space, and a support platform to explore the development of their practices. We migrated our classes to virtual meetings while also revised our class structure and activities. For the exhibition program, we asked the artists to explore ways to present works without their physical presence while maintaining their connection, energy, and intimacy in the show and with the audience.

Currently, with Orawan’s show, she won’t be able to be there to install and introduce the work to the audience personally and physically. I was glad that Orawan was very flexible and had quickly adapted to this condition. We have been communicating via online calls. Her artworks just arrived from Berlin last week. Orawan’s work is essentially intimate at heart, and that’s the core of what we want to achieve in the exhibition design and how the audience experiences the work. We are also thinking about how she can engage virtually during the exhibition period. I’m more interested in beyond just a video call or virtual talk but instead exploring an integrated physical-virtual interaction that enriches the work and experience.

pic. 4 — Unboxing Orawan’s works shipped from Germany

Lyno — The art ecology in Cambodia is not strong. Young or recently graduated artists have limited platforms to further their practice. There are a few initiatives here to engage with this group including awards and exhibition opportunities, and that’s almost it. We started to see a trend of people going into Architecture studies but also practice both in architecture and art, for employability reasons. At Sa Sa, we focus on building a stronger community of young artists. Our art classes attract young people from various disciplines and backgrounds from science to humanity, and that’s what makes it interesting. We opened Pisaot residency to a select number of outstanding graduates from our classes who could benefit from an intensive period with dedicated resources to develop their practice through research and mentorship.

Lyno — Fortunately, we just secured a leasing extension for three more years of the current space, expanding to upstairs. So we won’t be moving but have a bigger exhibition space on the ground floor for Orawan’s show. Now the whole space is more like a house (compared to before as a flat). Actually, it’s part of a huge modern Khmer house built at least in the 1970s. Originally an open space, the ground floor has been turned into our exhibition space and main floor. Upstairs remains mostly the same structurally as it was. Our exhibition space always had the atmosphere of a home gallery. With the space expansion, we will renovate and upgrade the exhibition floor to be cleaner and more professional.

pic. 5 — Sa Sa Art Projects newly expanded space

pic. 6 — Sa Sa Art Projects’ exhibition and office space

Lyno — Being self-sufficient financially has always been our goal, as funding from grants and foundations is shrinking globally. Our principal funding partner Rei Foundation is concluding their 3-years support at the end of March this year. We had planned the online fundraising auction before the pandemic. We were worried that we might not harness much support due to people experiencing financial difficulties during the pandemic. Nevertheless, we were very thrilled and moved by the pouring support from our artistic communities and supporters locally, regionally and internationally who believe in what we do and what we contribute to the development of contemporary art in Cambodia. This is really encouraging and reaffirming. It is time to work even harder to foster a growing and stronger local supportive community and ecology. We are looking at multiple streams of income generation for immediate and long-term support.

Lyno — As mentioned, we have shifted to engage with younger Cambodian artists who could benefit from our residency program instead of regional and international artists. I’m a bit skeptical about online residency as the artist cannot immerse with the new context/place. It is also hard to engage and connect. There the question: what’s the difference between an online residency and independent research? I think this online residency format only works well if the artist is interested in theoretical research or their own locale, and that doesn’t require physical immersion. I know some residency programs are exploring other ways to do this, for example, by having a local partner in the local context to assist and converse with. This model so far has received mixed responses from artists. At the end, I think it’s important to hear the needs and priorities of the artists who want to continue developing their practice. Residency is not always the only answer.

pic. 1-5 — Image courtesy of Sa Sa Art Projects
pic. 6 — Image courtesy of Prum Ero

pic. 7 — Lucky view Elaine got from quarantine

Elaine W. Ho — The border between Hong Kong and China is always such an absurd and complex issue! It is real, but highly uneven and variable depending upon whether we are talking about the movement of people (and which ones), goods, or finance. Display Distribute’s work began as a research inquiry centred upon certain straggling outliers of these movements, and the LIGHT LOGISTICS project can be viewed as one experiment to test the possibilities for such ‘outliers’ to create other relations on the margins—underneath and from within the larger infrastructures to which we are all subject. I entered China in late December, choosing specifically to fly to Fujian Province instead of crossing the border at Shenzhen, because it was quite crowded at that time (because of the fourth wave of the pandemic in Hong Kong at that time, most schools were not in session and many mainlanders who live in Hong Kong were returning home early for the Lunar New Year holiday), also because I was couriering a great number of publications with me, some of which are sensitive material that would be problematic if checked by border patrol (see further details of this route, dispatch HQL-382). So after arriving in Fuzhou, I was immediately sent into quarantine for 14 days in a hotel in Fuzhou, thereafter shuttled into another seven days in quarantine at a relative’s house. Nearly one month and about five or six COVID tests later, I travelled back down to Guangdong Province to visit friends in the Chaoshan region (near the coast across from southern Taiwan). Since then I’ve been mostly in Guangzhou, because my original plans to travel to Beijing for the holiday were thwarted by a sudden outbreak there, which led to a tightening of restrictions and a bit of fear on my part about travelling another long distance. Actually, because one of my relatives works for customs in Fuzhou, I had learned classified information that there had been someone on my flight from Hong Kong who had tested positive, and this person had been seated only a few rows in front of me! So while I am extremely grateful that I’ve been able to travel a bit, it certainly is a whole other paradigm than how we may have experienced freedom of movement in the past. Because I am not a mainland citizen, many things are also slightly more complicated for me here, and I spend additional energy of my own principle to try to stay off of the China surveillance grid as much as I can. There is a nationwide QR code check-in system here to monitor individuals’ health status and movements, so the additional game I’ve been playing while here is to carve out mini loopholes and diversions to avoid having to fully check into the system (of course I know it’s highly impossible to go completely dark, but there is a futile stubbornness in me that tries my best). Since some of my other work plans have changed recently, I did finally decide this month to come to Beijing after restrictions were loosened a bit, and I am quite proud to say I have made it all the way to Beijing now without even having a working mobile phone (the easiest way to avoid having to scan your details everywhere you go)!

pic. 8 — HQL-382 is LIGHT LOGISTICS’ courier route. The stops include Hong Kong, Beijing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Fuzhou and Jieyang. In the picture is
dispatches in relay in Guangzhou at the LIGHT LOGISTICS relay station across the street from a ‘real courier station’.

pic. 9 — Image taken through the peephole of people getting their meals during lunchtime at a quarantine hotel (image from the route HQL-382)

Elaine — We can’t speak for Tai Kwun, of course, but as far as I understand, the smaller scale and re-titling of BOOKED as a pop-up was exactly an administrative distinction to work around certain restrictions in the time of pandemic. Because events such as ‘fairs’ and other large-scale gatherings are prohibited, moving the event from the gallery spaces into the smaller retail venues of the Tai Kwun compound were a way that it could be legally possible at all. Unfortunately, I was not able to attend the event a few weeks ago (February 25-28, 2021) because I have been away from Hong Kong, but other Display Distribute co-conspirators Irene and paperbridgeee reported quite a lively event despite the changes. If I compare the kinds of restrictions that we face in Hong Kong compared to China, both are progressively tightening, but Hong Kong cultural activities by far still much more relaxed than China. For example, a current project of mine with another collective has just today been censored by institutional authorities in Guangzhou, and this is quite common here. Back in Hong Kong, the Display Distribute table at BOOKED:2021 featured quite a few sensitive publications which most certainly would not have been possible to show in China. Regarding the book that I have recently inquired for help with from you and comrades in Thailand, it’s also still more a conflux of China security issues and Hong Kong economics (rather than Hong Kong censorship). We would be able to print in Hong Kong, but simply cannot afford it. So the original intention was to print in Mainland, but because of some of the content, we were turned down by several factories, and I felt there was no choice but to begin looking outwards. Of course while I hope it doesn’t give you too much trouble, I do hope that these forms of mutual aid are a sign that the BKKABF CO-OP and our own visions of networked collaboration can occur. Most certainly, if there is anything that we can do to similarly aid others in this constellation, we are on board the pirate ship.

pic. 10 — Display Distribute booth at BOOKED: 2021 Art Book Pop-Ups!. Bags on the wall are a project of Display Distribute in collaboration with NZTT Sewing Co-op. These bags were sewn with RFID blocking pockets, a technology that help preventing data scanning from devices with RFID technology.

pic. 11 — Display Distribute booth at BOOKED: 2021 Art Book Pop-Ups!.

Elaine — I was mostly in isolation in my home studio, like many everywhere, haha! The turn towards online activity amplifies shimmery facades that everyone else is more active and doing so much, but it is a distorted mirror to the struggling realities that most of us have had to deal with since the pandemic. To be honest, I was quite low most of the year, and several of Display Distribute’s projects were put on hold or severely stunted. But also like most everyone else, we simply have had to wait, to slow down, and/or to rework plans, and we have been lucky despite all of the obstacles to have been able to develop fruitful online collaborations and dialogues with co-conspirators like Nihaal or Distribution Assembly East.

pic. 12-13 — Screenshots from Open Access’ article Reliable Display Copy Distribute; a conversation between Display Distribute from Hong Kong and Reliable Copy from India

Elaine — Ah, yes, I did remember seeing among the images from BOOKED this year a small zine that described and illustrated the current movement in Thailand in English! This desire or need to communicate our struggles to others, to find networks of solidarity and support, has been historically ubiquitous. That is what the scriptures and every print form thereafter have always been—for motivations better and/or worse. The acts of publishing from below, for example by marginalised individuals, underground groups and those struggling against tyranny, are the ones that Display Distribute is most interested in, and the ones that we can only gradually watch disappear from Hong Kong as it follows the lead of the Mainland. The Queer Reads Library initiative, for example, began after a selection of LGBT-related books were pulled from open access at Hong Kong schools and libraries. Censorship in the cultural and education sectors has also definitely occurred increasingly over the years, but as mentioned already before, the freedom of access ‘from below’ in Hong Kong I still believe to be more an economic question over a political one. Restriction of publishing acts of dissent in Hong Kong are—for the time being—still far from the level of control in the Mainland, where government-managed surveillance of the internet allows access to all files that pass through printing factory offices. If caught printing subversive literature, authorities can then proceed to shut the entire factory down, so even if sympathetic to a cause, many printers will not want to take such risks. With regards to the 2019 anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill protests, the amount of renegade publishing of posters, pamphlets and other propaganda material both digital and in print was astounding, but how that related to difficulties in production were more often related to the polarised nature of Hong Kong society, including the political affiliations of print shops and ‘yellow’, pro-movement material not being able to be printed with a ‘blue’, pro-establishment printer. For anyone who is interested to read more, we can recommend TONG Kin-Long’s article DIY print activism in Digital Age: Zines in Hong Kong’s Social Movements that was published last year in the first issue of ZINES journal.

pic. 14 — Display Distribute’s interest for Semi-autonomous zine include a printed guerrilla intervention that happened in Hong Kong in 2019. This zine in particular inviting passersby to play hopscotch on the faces of pro-Beijing politicians. In this case, the zine itself does not move, but invites its readers to jump and move upon it to ‘read’ its contents.

pic. 15 — Semi-autonomous zine in a form of political poetry placards by a graffiti writer, Jannie Kwan on the exit B1, between Prince Edward MTR station and Mongkok Police Station in 2019. Jannie Kwon developed her style of folding her work as origami or mini-packets and distributes it by hand-to-hand method. The poems and manifests she writes are her views on the fragile and oppressive relations between Hong Kong and China. 

pic. 16 — Photos taken from Prince Edward station in Mongkok, where violent incidents led to the prolonged closing of this station exit and numerous memorial interventions for citizens who were attacked and/or mysteriously disappeared on 31 August 2019.

 

pic. 17-19 — Another “semi-autonomous zine” discovered by Display Distribute and produced by dianaband in the form of a Wi-fi server device is called Wi-Fi Zine Throwies. It functioned as a messenger machine through naming one line Wi-Fi username. Once connected to the server, a user is brought to a single webpage that hosts the contents of its maker.

pic. 20 — Fong Fo, a monthly zine produced by a collective in Guangzhou & Shunde, in-house printed by cheap inkjet printers and sold for only 1 RMB per copy in the Mainland, or for 1 unit of whichever currency of the country they are sold. The general direction of the zine is a lo-fi version of a variety culture magazine, including short stories, poetry, illustrations and poorly printed photography.

pic. 7-9, 15-16 — Image courtesy of Elaine W. Ho
pic. 10 — Image courtesy of Irene Hui
pic. 11 — Image courtesy of paperbridgeee
pic. 12-13 — Screenshot from Open Access, BKKABF CO-OP
pic. 14 — Image courtesy of Ahkok Wong
pic. 17-19 — Image courtesy of dianaband
pic. 20 — Image courtesy of Display Distribute

pic. 21 — Myanmar political situation on the street in Yangon as seen through the window by citizen media

Thu Myat — Protests continue everywhere. It declined in Rangoon and remained in rural areas. The decline in Rangoon is not the result of mass surrender by the protester, but by the overuse of force and in search for new ways. This is not to say that shootings are a raid on homes, but act as an operation. For example, in places like Hlaing Thar Yar, Yangon, Marshall Law was declared and arrested people, who are leading or participating in the protest, without any question. It was stationed in a place such as a town hall, and it was kept as a battlefield and shot everything on the streets. During these couple of days, no one was allowed to leave their homes. In the rest of the townships, regular protests were held in the early hours of the morning. In the evening, they threaten by gunfire on the main road of the surrounding area that some of the houses that kept the protester during the protest. As they do so, citizens have put some barriers to prevent terrorists from entering and they were destroyed by bulldozers. Not only did some of the townships were rebuilt daily, but they also bulldozed the parked cars in the neighborhood until they were unreasonably damaged. Beating and destroying shop doors; shouting and threatening to kill people along the way. These are some of the reasons for declination.

In order to do so, government hospitals and schools in each township are firmly stationed. Believe it or not, these are the current situations in Yangon. At night, a large number of people came to the house of CDMers and arrested them, and charged them with defamation, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. International pressure to ceasefire has led to arrests at night, beatings to death, and the release of dead bodies in the morning. 

What we are doing is not going to answer here for our security reasons. To be sure, a military coup is totally unacceptable.

 
pic. 22-23 — Myanmar political situation on the street in Yangon as seen through the window by citizen media

Thu Myat — I don’t think we can say it consistently. For the past ten years, they have been writing quite freely. On the one hand, I think it has an indirect effect on the political landscape. It was around 2008 when many young people in our country became interested in graffiti. It started in 2010 with a quasi-civilian government. That government released many of them in order to gain international acceptance. Then came a truly civilian government. As the political impact on young people diminishes, they tend to focus more on their emotions. But they did not give up on any revelation. This is my thought what happened in Myitkyina was mainly due to the generation gap. It is just a misconception of some of the elders in charge. There was a lot of protest in the country. Certainly not in connection with the government’s overthrow of Covid-19. 

As for the religious structure, it will be directly related to Asian culture. 

I want to use it as an artist’s reality rather than a change. I myself wrote political issues early on. Then I leaned towards contemporary art. These sudden, out-of-control changes have also created confusion in the drawing. Coup d’etat policy, thoughts, and ideas are far behind the people.

Thu Myat — Visual artists like‚ Graffiti Artists are doing their best to get clear messages to people. Social media is being put to good use by the general public, who understand the need to end the military dictatorship. It would be more accurate to use the Internet in a variety of ways. There are services that the Terrorist Council cannot shut down even though the Internet is blocked but it is compatible with certain systems. People in these areas also respond in ways such as giving free WiFi. Many are working on how to keep the news going, as they are considering shutting down the Internet. There is less and less live streaming from the ground using Facebook. But before the Internet was shut down, politicians, Data collectors I think it’s a success to get journalists and opinion experts on what to do. Writing in public now is very dangerous. Not only he can be arrested but also his life is in danger.

pic. 24-25 — Artworks in protesting against Coup d’état made by Thu Myat

Thu Myat — We all have a brotherly relationship outside. We all work together. They also work to get people on the streets to give a clear message. To this day, they continue to write pictures, raise funds, and provide where needed. All “graffiti artists” across the country are united in their opposition.

 
pic. 26-27 — Artworks by graffiti artists in protesting against the military coup in the downtown area of Yangon.

pic. 28 — Protesters gathered up in the downtown area of Yangon

pic. 29 — Street art made by protesters in Myay Ni Gone, Sanchaung Township, Yangon

pic. 21-23 — Image courtesy of Min Thant Zin
pic. 24-29 — Image courtesy of Thu Myat