Minutes of the 258th Meeting
- Tuesday, February 8th 2005
The Khmer Rouge Ideology, as drilled into people's ears under Democratic Kampuchea
A talk by Henri Locard
Present: Allan Adasiak, John Aloia, Hans Bänziger, Jackson Braddy, Manus Brinkman, John Cadet, Guy Cardinal, Alain Couderc, Bernard D. Davis, Bill Dovhey, Katrina Gardner, Deborah Greenaway, Annelie Hendriks, Peter Hoare, Susan Hodgins, Reinhard Hohler, June Hulley, Trasvin Jittidecharak, Wayne Judd, Ken Kampe, Gianni Lia, Jere Locke, Linda Markowski, Ben Munro, Jean-Claude Neveu, Thomas Ohlson, Michael & Margaret O'Shea, Atchareeya Saisin, Mathew Smith, David Steane, Bryan Wallis. An audience of 32
Henri Locard writes: Born in Lyon in 1939, I first came to Cambodia as a student in the summer 1964. After the Agrégation d'Anglais in 1965, I had the luck to be appointed at the Lycée Descartes for two years. Teaching a foreign language in a secondary school left me plenty of time to start learning a little of the language and tour the entire territory with my Citroen 2CV. I would go to Siemreap once or twice every month and this was where I discovered true Khmer rural life away from the semi-colonial atmosphere of Phnom Penh and its lionization of Sihanouk I disliked.
From 1967 to 2000, I spent my academic career (except 1969-70 at the Queen's College, Oxford) in the English Department and Institut d'Etudes Politiques at the Université Lumière Lyon 2 where I mainly taught British civilization. In the summer of 1989, I returned to Cambodia. I was so overwhelmed by the misery and the filth of the country and Phnom Penh in particular that I started to investigate the whys of that tragedy. In August, I ran a seminar on human rights with the first cohort of Khmer students doing French at the University of Phnom Penh, and visited what had been in the past the Faculty of Law.
In France I noted down and re-arranged Moeung Sonn's experiences in Khmer Rouge prisons in Prey Nup district near Kompong Som. I soon found a publisher and the book came out with Fayard in 1993 under the title of Prisonnier de l'Angkar. In 1996, I published a first edition of my collection of KR slogans with l' Harmattan, now Khieu Samphan's publisher, I am sorry to say.
I returned to Cambodia in the summer of 1991 when I started investigating the provincial Khmer Rouge prison system. I obtained a sabbatical in 1993-94 when I taught in the History Department of the University of Phnom Penh. I was invited as visiting fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore in spring 1994 and to The Australian Defense Force Academy, Politics Department, in the summer 1995, attached to the University of New South Wales. I finished writing my book of slogans and wrote a report for UNESCO on Higher Education in Cambodia. I regularly came to Cambodia in 1996, 97, 98 99 and took a PhD on Democratic Kampuchea in January 2000, with Jean-Luc-Domenach, Stéphane Courtois and Alain Forest. I retired in October 2000 and have been residing 8 to 9 months a year in Cambodia since. I have been involved first in Sorn Samnang's so-called Royal Academy, that poses as a kind of Graduate College in 2000 and 2001. >From 2002 to 2004, I switched to the Buddhist Institute where a pilot two-year MA in Cultural studies was created under the auspices of the now Royal University of Phnom Penh. The aim was to train researchers in literature and social sciences for the revamped "Commission Us & Coutumes". I am now working in a history project with the young researchers financed by the Henrich Böell Foundation.
- What is the purpose of this collection and how did I proceed?
First of all, I must apologize for both the book titles: both are inaccurate. It is not a compendium of the main thoughts of an 'enlightened' Communist leader - Pol Pot - over the decades, as the original Mao's Little Red Book was. Similarly, the sub-title, 'The sayings of Angkar', is also somewhat deceptive for I have not made a kind of lexicon or glossary of the jargon of Angkar or of the main idioms used by the revolutionary leadership. That would be what we call in French "la langue de bois", or the "newspeak" used by the Upper Brothers. Indeed, I believe it is a research that would be worth pursuing for anyone interested to dissect how Pol Pot and his followers wrangled the Khmer language. For those desirous to probe the semiotics of the language used by Communists, that would be a good subject in linguistic research. This is not what I set out to do. [I have asked Suong Sikoeun to try and make that collection: he is in an excellent position to do this for he was in charge of the media department at the Foreign Ministry under his mentor Ieng Sary in Democratic Kampuchea (DK) days. So he was himself a sort of machinery churning out that kind of revolutionary rhetoric. Beside, he told me he and his team wrote a number of official speeches that always had to go through Pol Pot's approval before being broadcast on DK radio.] So both the title and the sub-title are inadequate; they are just a selling ploy, as all books about DK must have either 'Pol Pot' or 'Khmer Rouge' in their titles. And it is even better add a couple of skulls; Peter Short's new book has all that. No, my interest has been both political and societal. I wanted this collection to be first a collection of Pol-Potisms, not as expressed in the few Party literature or the writings of the great man himself, nor even as his rhetoric used in the numerous and lengthy study sessions he conducted over almost 40 years. No the bare skeleton of ideology as it was transmitted at the commune level in their so-called sahakor or collective units (and not 'co-operatives, as those are usually wrongly translated).
By doing so, I have been looking at Khmer Rouge society, not from the vantage point of the leadership in the capital, that is from the point of view of the originators of the criminal policies of Democratic Kampuchea (DK), but from the grassroots in the collectives, at the level of the victims - like the numerous published life stories. This book is the result not of hours of absorbing Party revelations in libraries and archives, but of field research throughout most of the country. This enabled me to collect not only the crude thoughts of local apparatchiks, but, through the interpretations of those ambiguous sayings given by the victims, what those abstract and utopian thoughts meant in the reality of every day life. They become an introduction to the revolutionary society in the provinces where the population was enslaved. The counter-slogans show, also at the grassroots, how first there was widespread opposition to these absurd and criminal policies and also how, through derision, the Khmers could also defend themselves in their heart of hearts in order to survive as reasonable individuals too.
- How did I proceed? This book is the result of first my writing down of the testimony of Moeung Sonn, Prisonnier de l'Angkar, Fayard, Paris 1993, who spent eighteen months (six months and later a whole year) under DK in the regime's prisons. He gave me a couple of those sayings that I noted in the book. Some are very well known, like "Angkar has the many eyes of the pineapple", "One hectare, three tons". Or the less well known: "Physical beauty is an obstacle to the will to struggle", or "On the worksite until death".
At the same time, I wanted to check if Moeung Sonn's horrendous descriptions of the KR jails in Prey Nup districts, near Kompong Som (Sihanoukville), were the norm or the exception. In the summer of 1991, I started to tour the countryside and asked the people in the countryside if they had heard of local prisons under DK. Invariably I got the answer: 'mien'. There was not a single district (and there are some 150) where I was told there weren't. And everywhere the descriptions were similar. This was a dismal and depressing investigation. As a relief and for fun, I started taking down in little notebooks more slogans collected from west to east, from north to south. One of my clever colleagues at the University of Lumière Lyon 2 where I lectured used to collect some of the howlers, "perles" in French, from students' papers and stick them up in the staff room. I found them immensely amusing so vast was both the students' ignorance, silliness but also imagination. I found the same thing with the Khmer Rouge slogans. It was just a game.
I wrote the Khmer, an approximate translation, not to forget what was the context and what the KR really had in mind when they proclaimed those sayings. But I did not usually report the name of the person who gave me the saying. I had lots from people who were adolescents under DK. This is the best time for memorizing. For most were very ambiguous, or simply from old country sayings and had been given a quite different twist by the revolutionaries. In the end I had so many and they formed such a collection of absurdities, inanities and in the end inhumanity, I decided they could arrange them into a corpus not only of ideology as droned into the ears of the populace under the Khmer Rouge, but as a perfect example of XXth Century totalitarian thought. They represented the reverse of almost every democratic or even moral principal I had learnt.
In actual fact, as I explained on pp.6-10, Angkar has at least two meanings: first, it is the collective name of the revolutionary leadership, for the KR had even collectivized their names! More specifically, it is the individual name of Saloth Sar who was so secretive that he chose to cloak himself but completely dominated, like other communist leaders (Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Kim Il-sung), the political scene of their respective revolutions. But also, by an abuse of language the leadership denounced [100-1] but could not ban, it represented any local cadre that wished to impress or even terrorize the local population under their authority. The dictums here collected are above all the maxims and instructions given at the collectives level for the benefice of the populace the local cadres were supposed to win over or indoctrinate.
After finishing this collection - although I am sure there must be others that I have not preserved. But they probably bear the same messages, as in fact KR ideology was so simplistic and repetitive it could be summarized in one paragraph or a few basic slogans - indeed those I have underlined in the book. After completing this collection from the provinces, I looked at the KR archival material preserved in the Documentation Centre of Cambodia (DC-Cam) in Phnom Penh. Looking in particular through notebooks from kamaphibal (KR cadres) filled during Party indoctrination sessions, I found the same ideas of course, but not expressed in the terse, concise and easily memorable form of slogans.
Secondly, I realized they were outside the object of my collection:establishing a corpus of the KR ideology as transmitted to the non-Party members, that is the vast majority of the population in the various collectives and munthy (so-called offices and departments) in the countryside. Still, I cheated somewhat as I should not have included the definition of democracy according to Pol Pot [259-262], as this does not represent at all what ordinary people heard in the collectives. Instead, they heard pronouncements like slogan 334 ("The collectivity decides, the individual is responsible"). As so many of those sayings, the second part of the slogans contradicts the first.
Well, this is my justification for looking beyond the collectives, as the latter slogan is better understood in the context of how the Ultimate Leader (Pol Pot) proceeded during meetings of the Standing Committee. This enabled him to call "democracy" what was the century old tyranny of a single individual, This time he did not receive the unction of the gods, as ancient monarchs of divine rights, but better from the Asiatic Mecca of Revolutionary communism - Beijing. But what I should have said in the notes is that I drew this information from a typed biography of Khieu Samphan written by the arch Khmer Rouge intellectual In Sopheap [now one of the numerous advisors of the Great - Samdech - Hun Sen] and entitled "KS, agrandi et réel". This hagiography [haegi'ogrefi] paid for by Cambodge Soir, was never published.
- Who concocted those slogans? I do not know for sure. In my introduction, I surmise that they were concocted by the Party centre, that is mainly Pol Pot himself and his close associate Khieu Samphan who was obviously and in spite of all his denials the principal ideologue of the regime. Philip Short, in his remarkable and recent Pol Pot, the History of a Nightmare, [Murray, 2004] gives us a most revealing long quote from KS's re-education lessons to returnees, reported from an interview of Long Visalo, a returnee from Budapest:
"How do we make communist revolution? [he asked us]. The first thing you have to do is to destroy private property. But private property exists on both the material and the mental plane S To destroy material property, the appropriate method was the evacuation of the towns Sbut spiritual property is more dangerous, it comprises everything that you think is 'yours', everything that you think exists in relation to yourself - your parents, your family, your wife.
Everything of which you say, 'It's mine' is spiritual property. Thinking in terms of 'me' and 'my' is forbidden. If you say 'my wife', that's wrong. You should say 'our family'. S The Cambodian nation is our big family S That is why you have been separated: the men with men, the women with women, the children with children. All of you are under the protection of Angkar. Each of us, man, woman and child, is an element of the nation S We are the child of Angkar, the man of Angkar, the woman of Angkar.
The knowledge you have in your head, your ideas, are mental private property too. To become a true revolutionary, you must wash your mind clean. [S] To put yourself on par with the ordinary people of Cambodia, the peasants, is to wash your mind. If we can destroy all material and mental property, people will be equal. The moment you allow private property, one person will have a little more, another a little less and then they are no longer equal, and it isn't communism. But if you have nothing - zero for him, zero for you - that is true equality. (316-317)
This perfectly summarizes the ideology of the KR and makes it truly totalitarian. It is also a reduction ad absurdum of the arguments in favor of perfect communism - a dream, a utopia and at best an aspiration.
Short claims [324-5] that it was Nuon Chea "who masterminded the changes when language was stripped bare of incorrect allusions and devised neologisms often based on scholarly Pali terms to convey political concepts for which no equivalent existed in Khmer".
As a proof of his assertion, he writes that, "most former KR cadres I have spoken to believe the new vocabulary was the work of Nuon Chea" [584]. This of course does not quite mean the slogans, although the slogans contain many neologisms that made them rather arcane to uneducated listeners. For instance, Angkar was totally unable to translate the fundamental Marxian notion of "proletariat" for the very good reason that practically such people did not exist in pre-industrial Cambodia. So the leadership concocted two translations or substitutes: the first one from every day language by putting side by side the two common words of 'worker-peasant' (kamkâ-kasékâ) for ordinary use.
We note in the 'duo' that 'worker' comes first. Workers had always a priority for the revolutionaries and I would argue that that KR revolution, far from being an agrarian revolution, was an attempt to turn the free-wheeling Khmer farmer into a laborer or better and industrial worker who was becoming merely a cog inside the big machine of production set in motion by Angkar, and fabricating a scholarly new word or neologism from the Pali-Sanscrit 'vannka athun', literally meaning a class (or caste) without property. We find this in the much-repeated watchword: "trou chèh vannak athun!" "Embrace the proletarian condition!" [23]. Was the author Nuon Chea? Once the main slogans were concocted by the worthies of the Party leadership and droned during lengthy re-education sessions for cadres in Phnom Penh or the marquis in the periods of civil war (1968-75 and 1979-1998). Those in turn must have concocted an infinite number of variations with metaphors adjusted to local needs. The same message could be carried out using different words. I have tended to note them all, making the collection very repetitive. But Pol-Potism was repetitive.
What they conveyed to the passive listeners was so simplistic, the twist they gave to traditional saws was often so much against common sense that Party apparatchiks could not convince their charges by rational arguments. They had to have recourse mechanical rote learning together with revolutionary songs. The music both dulled their critical capabilities and lulled them with smug optimism - the uneducated youths at least. They had comparatively an easy way for the educational and notional level of their listeners was quite low. Also they gradually eliminated those who saw too easily through the contradictions and inanities of most of those dictums.
I deliberately chose as the first slogan in this collection a counter-slogan, as one of the aims of this collection is to show that the Khmers were not just passive sufferers of the tragedy, but, in their own ways, developed various forms of 'Résistance'. I found it very perceptive [p. 5]: "The Angkar originates from the society of apes". I experienced that feeling when, after climbing on top Phnom Sampouv, west of Battambang, I was described how victims were bled to death while their vital fluid was collected into a gutter. No one could tell me for what purpose. I was being described the human sacrifices of ancient times and DK had made Cambodia leap back to the dawn of humanity.
Also, as an epigraph to this collection, I chose the rallying call of the new recruits joining the revolutionary movement after the fall of Sihanouk in 1970: "Long live Samdech Euv! You're not going? I've gone already!" While chronologically such sayings came first as they belong to the time of the struggle for power, but, more importantly, without the full support of the figure representing both the traditional monarchy and the victorious struggle for independence, the revolutionaries would never have been able to recruit so many adolescents and youths. This is where Peter Short's recent book is most useful, as it fully documents under the Sangkum Reastr Niyum period (1955-1970) and then the Republic, Sihanouk's first indirect (by banning any form of opposition to his rule) and later direct contribution the seizing of power by the revolutionaries, when he gave his full support to the violent guerrilla. Tactfully, of course, Short never says this in so many words.
Official slogans are mere self-indulgent proclamations of triumph and optimism, trying to paper over the disastrous consequences of the policies of Angkar. Those were the dithyrambs Sihanouk heard on the radio from the golden prison inside the Royal Palace. He claimed that, "never a government or political party has sung its own praise with such fanfare in the world, in a way that is both insolent and fallacious". We can just give two examples: "Long live the correct and extremely clear-sighted Communist Party of Kampuchea" [46]. It has been all along the opposite except in its astute and ruthless quest for absolute power. Or " The Angkar has not only liberated you all, comrades, Sbut liberated our libertyS" Nothing could be more untrue as any form of liberty had been wiped out during the regime.
In their self-praise and complete lack of self-criticism, the Khmer Rouge revolution was autistic, which means totally self-centered and unable to listen to any advice coming form outside. The leaders knew best and did not need to copy any model. In actual fact they took most of the theories/revolutionary recipes from Stalin revised by Mao while claiming they followed a purely nationalist path. They were inward looking and just as the Khmers had built the most grandiose shrine on earth (Angkor Wat), they were about to build the most advanced revolutionary society that would serve as a beacon to the poorer nations of the earth. This is shown by Pol Pot's translation of the refrain of the Internationale (p. 36) and the very message contained in the title: proletarian solidarity throughout the world will defeat capitalism. Instead of the notion of international solidarity of mankind (le genre humain), Pol Pot had most significantly substituted the utopian vision of the dreamer (if not the psychotic) of the sangkum anakut, the society of the future. He was thus projecting the revolutionary society he was planning to create out of the human sphere, far from reality.
Were the KR diehard Maoists as they are usually labeled or did they misinterpret their model? They proved that the Maoist recipes for the organization of society led to disasters. History had showed that twice with the disastrous consequences of the Great Leap Forward and of the so-called Cultural Revolution. The Chinese supervisors and experts of the Kampuchean experiment did not need one more proof of their nefariousness (danger). But, as Philip Short has shown, geopolitics and Chinese political ambitions in Southeast Asia took over from ideology from 1978, after the "de-ideologisation" of the regime in Beijing.
Cambodia became one again a pawn in great power struggle for influence. The KR were playing the Maoist card while Maoism had already been discredited by History. But the Chinese are much to blame, for unlike the Russians who de-Stalinized their country, the Chinese have never officially admitted they had turned away from the great lessons of Mao and his picture still hangs high in Tiananmen Square. I tried to summarize this complex issue in the introduction to the second chapter "Maoist-inspired slogans". By and large this was a difficult task as, once again, the KR ideology and their pronouncements are full of contradictions. At one stage, I assumed that since the short-lived DK regime was contemporary to the last throes, not only of the of Mao himself (or "supreme guide" in KR parlance), but of his most radical policies, I thought the Gang of Four and their supporters used DK as a life size laboratory to prove that their beliefs in total revolution were correct.
If the Great Leap Forward and the then waning Cultural Revolution had been two disasters for China, it looked as if, in the power struggle in Beijing around Mao's death, the diehard revolutionaries might have used Kampuchea to demonstrate that, by following all the Great Helmsman's policies to their logical conclusion, all revisionist theories would lead to the end of revolution. Pol Pot did meet members of the Gang of Four during his protracted stays in red China. He was also said to have had special relationships with Kang Sheng who was both in charge of Mao's secret service and the relationship with brotherly Maoist Parties. For instance his 1965 first visit, on the dawn of the Cultural Revolution "was a watershed" (159). Radical theorists like Chen Boda and Zhang Chunqiao - one of the future so-called "Gang of Four" - "were particularly supportive" (160). In mid-April 1976, the same Zhang Chunqiao paid a secret visit to Phnom (357). I know from Suong Sikoeun that such visits were even secret from the bureaucrats of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs who were not supposed to know anything about the coming of Maoist party worthies. Those were purely Party-to-Party businesses.
His discussions with Pol Pot were 'reflected in a speech Pol Pot made at the beginning of June". "There is a continuous, non-stop struggle between revolution and counter-revolution. We must keep the standpoint that there will be enemies 10 years, 20 years, 30 years into the futureSIf we constantly take absolute measures, they will be scattered and smashed to bits" (Tung Padevoat, June 1976). Similarly, in the autumn of 1976, while Pol Pot was supposed to have resigned temporarily from his Premiership as a ploy to nonplus his potential enemies, he traveled secretly once again to Beijing in November, shortly after Mao's death which had been the occasion in Phnom Penh for state mourning and paeans of praise for the KR's "supreme guide". Pol Pot was congratulated by Hua Guofeng for having "stripped the enemy's defenses from Phnom Penh in April 1975 like peeling a banana" (363). After discussing military and political cooperation, the delegation was taken to a winter tour of revolutionary sites in China.
Yet most analysts, and Peter Short in particular, claim the ideological relationships were more ambiguous. While all the main tenets of Maoism were developed by the Khmer Rouge, as illustrated by their slogans, on those visits, the various KR leaders, Pol Pot, Ieng Sary, Khieru Samphan and Son Sen, were warned not to make the same mistakes. But the Khmer revolutionaries took no notice. They needed no prodding, their radicalism was theirs. It is claimed that the KR leadership became diehard Maoists in spite of the warnings from China itself.
For instance, when Pol Pot was received by Mao near his private swimming pool on 21st June 1975, Mao had accepted by then that the Great Leap Forward of the late 1950s had been a disaster, causing a famine that resulted in 20 to 30 million dead. But did he really warn Pol Pot on that day as Short seems to infer? (301) If so, why should Pol Pot have launched his "Super Great Leap Forward" campaign? Why should Angkar have decided that rice yields should be suddenly be multiplied by three? Why should not Mao also have warned the victorious revolutionaries that making a clean sweep of the past during the Cultural Revolution had brought nothing but misery and chaos? Pol Pot was to continue relentlessly to fight against 'revisionism' throughout his short-lived regime.
Relying solely on one's own self had been an essential plank of Maoism along with the 'Juche" of the North Koreans, while both revolutions had been considerably helped by the Soviet Union. In the same way, at the end of this stay in June 1975, Pol Pot was offered: -
- Complete equipment for three artillery regiments, two anti-aircraft regiments
- Equipment for a tank regiment, including 72 light tanks and 32 amphibious tanks
- 30 fighter aircrafts, 15 bombers
- 12 high-speed torpedo boats, 10 escort ships, 4 anti-submarine vessels, etc. S
All that with corresponding military trainers, and with 10,000 tons of military equipment, including 1,300 military vehicles. As to the financial aid it exceeded one billion US dollars, the equivalent today of 3.4 billion dollars. (301-302) The rail links between the Thai border at Poipet on the one hand, and to the sea port of Kompong Som on the other were to be restored. Sihanouk was therefore in a position to travel to Sisophon in his restored special coach as early as February 1976. During Sihanouk's last meeting with Deng Xiaoping in December 1975, he had explained to the ex-monarch that China had sent by boat and by air all the necessary materials and the work force necessary for this renovation. According to radio PPenh, Sihanouk wrote [58, Prisonnier], the KR realized that work with their bare hands, according to the principles of aèkriech m'cha ka, relying solely on one's own strength.
At the same time many of the Maoist dogmas had been followed to the letter: belief in the superiority of revolutionary consciousness over and men over machines; "pre-eminence of ideology over learning (being 'red' rather than 'expert'"); the strategy of using the countryside to surround the city and the need to eliminate the differences between them; the concern to bridge the gulf between mental and manual labour; the temporary closure of schools and universities during the Cultural Revolution. For the latter, the KR were planning to re-open schools for children as textbooks had already been prepared and a teachers' training college was about to open before the Vietnamese invasion. (300-301)
Still, when Pol Pot flew secretly once more to Beijing in September 1978 to ask for Chinese help and troops, Deng Xiaoping, while fiercely condemning Vietnam, "suggested the Khmer Rouge were partly responsible for bringing these troubles on themselves by their excessive radicalism and their failure to unite the country behind them". "He also made it clear that, while China would give the Cambodians all the military help it could, S China would not send troops" (389). In other words, the Chinese had done all they could do to fan the revolutionary flames in Cambodia since the 1960s and the Cultural Revolution in particular. Now, policies had changed in Beijing and the moderates were having the upper hand again, and would not follow the 'adventurist' policies of their Khmer protégés.
If China did attack the North Vietnamese border in February with 85,000 troops that withdrew one month later, suffering 20,000 dead and wounded (407), they did provide the billion dollars worth of military aid over the course of the following decade (421). By then, considerations of strategy and geopolitics took over ideological or revolutionary priorities. The Vietnamese, and behind them the USSR, had to be contained at all costs and Cambodia became again a pawn in great powers struggle for influence. But, in the name of most of Mao's famous pronouncements, the Khmer Rouge had done all they could to bring untold miseries unto their compatriots.
The KR leadership camouflaged itself because it was weak, because it used lies and deception as a matter of policy, because it was afraid of its own people. Those who spread terror were too terrified to show their real faces. Angkar was the regime at all levels, from Pol Pot and the Standing Committee to the lowest village militiaman (chhlop). It was omnipotent and baleful, impersonal and remote, the incarnation of revolutionary purity, demanding and receiving quasi-religious reverence from all with whom it dealt. Pol's old mentor, Keng Vannsak, called it:
"An immense apparatus of repression and terror as an amalgam of Party, Government and State, not in the usual sense of these institutions but with particular stress on its mysterious, terrible and pitiless character. It was, in a way, political-metaphysical power, anonymous, omnipresent, omniscient, occult, sowing death and terror in its name." (296) This proved a clever ploy to protect the authorities from the wrath of the population. It made the people utterly nonplused, confused, bewildered and therefore unable to rebel, but it failed to create an allegiance among the vast majority of the population. One cannot worship an abstract and faceless Organization. The main tactic of the Party and its original contribution to the revolutionary form of government, communist-wise, - secrecy - proved a disaster once in office.
Further (338), Philip Short speculates about the modern Angkar and Cambodia's glorious past history:
This was the Angkorean model of statecraft dressed in communist garb. There was no intermediate layers of power, no pyramid of responsibilities, as in a modern state. The feudal system which Cambodia had inherited had comprised Sihanouk and a handful of mandarins who held office at his pleasure - and his subjects. The King was now replaced by Angkar, personified by Pol Pot - and Sihanouk's subjects by the 'masses'.
Quite clever and telling parallels, but Short overlooks the notion of totalitarianism which has made the Pol Pot regime leap into the modernity of the XXth century, but by the back door, through the gates of Hell. Along with the evacuation of all cities, the abolition of money and markets, together with communal eating, the KR contribution to the art of governing states was their invention of a faceless leadership. I do not say government, or Council of Ministers or even administration for those institutions never really existed under DK. The Standing Committee of the Party ruled everything, and inside this restricted and ever changing coterie, Pol Pot was making all decisions, usually with Nuon Chea's approval. But ordinary people had never heard of those two names. Behind Angkar, which was not only the 'Upper Brothers' in Phnom Penh and the local leadership in the collectives and offices, but even a single individual giving an order, only two names were known by some: Ieng Sary (alias Vann) and Khieu Samphan (alias Hem) were know respectively as Minister of Foreign Affairs and Head of State, after Sihanouk's resignation in early 1976.
The reason for this was that secrecy has been a long tradition in the Communist movement in Cambodia because of first the repression of the colonial power and then of the Sangkum government. The word Angkar was first used in the mid-1950s to ensure greater secrecy and hide the communist nature of the movement amid various appellations over the decades. From his coup d'etat in 1955 to his fall in 1970, Sihanouk had established a one-Party State that admitted of no dissent. De facto, he had re-established the absolutism of the Monarch that the French hade taken 90 years to destroy. After unexpectedly winning power on 17th April 1975, the KR were unable to change and kept their identities concealed as they had always done. This had allowed them to survive and they were determined to continue, convinced as they were that if the leadership disappeared, this would be the end of the Revolution. The slogans referring to Angkar were legion and show clearly how the entity that in theory should have been an embodiment of love and a substitute for family and personal emotions soon became associated with dread and even terror. The concept is also associated in the minds of the Cambodians with the necessity of obeying blindly and immediately to orders proffered by a local leader. For the people, it is synonymous of secrecy, deceit and all kinds of particularly wily manipulations. The most striking of those threats is the famous "Angkar has the many eyes of the pineapple" that is the Khmer equivalent of "Big Brother is watching you". In actual fact, the name of Pol Pot only became known to the people after the Vietnamese invasion in early 1979. Before he was only Angkar, or, for the cognoscenti, 'Brother Number One' or 'Big Brother'. This was no copy of Orwell's 1984 as none of the leaders had read the book, but that clearly showed that, behind the Maoism, the KR leaders were orthodox Stalinists, and Pol Pot was indeed a Khmer Stalin.
One might object that the great leader did come out into the open in his speech of 27th September 1977, a little over one year before the fall of his regime, when he revealed the Angkar was the CPK and himself, Pol Pot its Secretariat. But most Cambodians did not listen to the revelation of the radio, and most ignored everything about who was behind Angkar until after the fall of the regime. This is what all the Khmers I have interviewed told me. Even in 1979, the Cambodians were once again misled when the Vietnamese told them it was the tandem Pol Pot - Ieng Sary that had been leading the country, while number two had always been Nuon Chea. Hanoi knew this, but they were always hoping to win him over to their side, as he had been their very devoted trainee for decades.
Short called those appropriately 'Stalin's microbes". Here the true nature of the regime is shown: its ruthlessness in arresting, torturing and butchering hundreds of thousands of real or potential opponents. Behind Pol Pot's benign smiles lie all the horrors of the revolutionary regime. The guerrilla movement could never come to terms with peace time after its victory and continued to wage war against its own compatriots as it had done from 1968 to 1975. That was the main reason for the evacuation of the capital and all the provincial towns. It was to break up and disperse the so-called nests of enemies and spies that were lurking in the towns.
After being first all disarmed, the leaders of the 'old regimes - Sihanoukist and Republican - civilian and military personnel were summarily executed in the first weeks of the regime. In the meantime, 40% of the population became deportees in their own country. The KR were in fact unable to control the cities as they admitted, the multitudinous social groups of the cities did not fit into their oversimplified conception of a society divided between bourgeois and proletariat, exploiters and exploited. The classification of the slogans I have suggested helps us to penetrate further and further into the paranoia of Pol Pot and his group. The 'enemies' are all those who cannot immediately "embrace the proletarian condition"[slogan 34]. The repression was centripetal, that is targeting at first clearly identifiable groups in a communist revolutionary context, then gradually aiming at groups closer and closer to the regime's centre, until it became indeed suicidal.
In the end it exterminated its closest associates for no objective reason whatsoever, like the faithful and long-term militants of Angkar such as Koy Thuon and Hu Nim. Pol Pot even turned against ex Khmer-Issaraks (combatants from the First Indo-Chinese War) like Sao Phim or Vorn Vet, that were arrested in the last weeks of the regime, thus giving a truly suicidal twist to the regime. When the Vietnamese troops massively invaded the country at the end of 1978, Pol Pot had already wiped out his own troops in his massive purges of the East region. But this is not a specificity of the KR regime: all Communist regimes have killed their most ardent supporters. The KR just went a little faster than the others. Another way of classifying 'enemies' would be to identify them first as 'the enemies of the past', like the old privileged classes or the Buddhist monks, 'the enemies of the present', those who cannot adjust to the very Spartan living conditions, 'the enemies of the future', that is those who are not enthusiastic and might eventually rebel. The most perverse category are the so-called 'hidden enemies', those who appear to have embraced the Revolution, those who hide inside the ranks of the Party and even, as Laurence Picq (Beyond the horizon, or Au-delà du Ciel) has shown, that might lurk inside the conscience of every citizen who has the slightest doubt about the new society. This is where we enter the realm of the paranormal or paranoia of the leadership. The blade of the executioner could slash anyone: terror ruled supreme. All moderates within the Party became traitors. Kamaphibals were purged throughout the country until most collectives had three sets of leaders, each time being replaced by more ignorant and more cruel cadres.
Is the word 'genocide', which has been always associated with the Khmer Rouge extermination, appropriate to describe the criminal actions of the Khmer Rouge. I have always believed that it was inappropriate. The only ethnic group that is clearly the butt of Party rhetoric in slogans was the Vietnamese. But if a 'genocide' took place, it was during the Republic, under Lon Nol, when the Vietnamese community was reduced to half its size when hundreds or up to thousands were murdered and some 300,000 were expelled from the country.
The remaining Vietnamese were again asked to leave the country in the first six months of the revolutionary regime. The figure of 20,000 is usually quoted of those who have disobeyed the order, being too integrated into the Cambodian society. Then, the Vietnamese became a mental or political category in the well-known slogan, "Vietnamese head, Cambodian body". Again, those represented Khmers, in the Party in particular, who might have been in favor of a more orthodox and less lethal and radical form of communist society. The concept of genocide was invented by Hanoi to justify its invasion and its ten-year occupation of Cambodia. 'Crimes against humanity' as defined by the July 1998 Rome Agreement for the establishment of the International Criminal Court perfectly details all the crimes committed by the KR in the course of all the years they were in office or fighting their guerrilla warfare. As UN experts have recently claimed in the case of Darfur in the Sudan, war crimes and crimes against humanity are no lesser crimes than 'genocide', which now has become a political and academic misused and overused commodity. S-21, now know as Tuol Sleng "was not an aberration. Instead it was the pinnacle S of the slave state which Pol Pot had created" (365). The pinnacle, not because it was the apex of the "slave state" as Short writes, but because it is only the centre of a whole network of similar prisons that enmeshed the entire territory. Short never mentions this. This is where the 'enemies of the People' were processed once they had been arrested. Those, as I explain [pp 155-162] are an elastic and expandable category, "representing only one or two percent of the people", as Pol Pot said in September 1977. This was about the percentage of the population held in the chains of the district prisons. They did not survive long their torture and starvation.
The turnover was a matter of weeks. That explains why hundred of innocent citizens were thus exterminated. That chapter is attempting to explain how the paranoid mind of the leadership and convictions they were surrounded by plotters from all the secret services worldwide. It is claimed that under the pressure of the Chinese in particular, and while the threat of a Vietnamese invasion was looming larger and larger, the regime tried to win over new friends and rally a population it had antagonized.
If there is no doubt that the situation changed quite radically, in the last few months of the regime, for the returnees in their re-education camps and Boeung Trabek in particular, contrary to Philip Short's assertions, I do not believe the orders of Angkar to relax the discipline had much echo in the collectives. The 'enemy' continued to the end to be a moving and moveable target. For instance, to the very end of the regime, prisoners were taken to the prisons interrogated under torture and executed. The hunt for the internal enemies continued to the very end. Before running away, KR prison wardens slaughtered the remaining chained prisoners rather than liberate them, as they did at S-21.
Angkar created the only example of a perfect slave society in the modern world. Slave labour has been a long tradition in Cambodia, and most historians claimed some form of 'slaves' have moved the huge blocks from Phnom Kulen to the sites of Angkorean temples. In the XIXth King Norodom was so angry at the colonizer's abolishment slavery in his kingdom (or some form of equivalent statute as historians disagree about their exact status and working conditions) that he sent, Yukanthor, his eldest son and designed successor to Paris to protest to the central government of the metropolis.
Literally going hand in hand were the two paramount tasks of a good revolutionary: 'work and denounce or catch the enemy'. That is illustrated by some of the best known slogans: "One hand for production, one hand for striking the enemy", or metaphorically: "One hands grasps, one hand a rifle". [169-170] In fact this could summarize all that the DK regime was about - working like slaves the year round and forever reporting on and tracking down 'the enemy'. Encouragements on the part of the leadership to work harder and faster are legion. Manual labour had a fundamental re-educative role.
By and large returnee Khmer-Vietminh from Hanoi during the revolutionary struggle or those who came back to their motherland to serve the revolution after 17th April 1975, were first put to the test by having to perform hard and sometimes even degrading labour (like cleaning toilets or preparing compost from faeces. This is what Sloth Sar himself had to endure when, after his return from France in 1953, he joined the Vietminh maquis in eastern Cambodia. He never forgot the humiliation he was inflicted. Dramatically undernourished from 1976 and the collectivization of meals, while foraging for food was banned, the Khmers were literally worked to death. I heard several examples of that. This is why my last slogan [sl. 433, p.306] I counted as uttered from the mouth of Angkar: slap nou løu ka:rotha:n, "On the worksite until death", as meaning 'work until you die, no matter as you are an enemy of the people'.
It could be also a warning or a complaint on the part of the people: 'what a regime, they work us to death!' Besides, as food rations were cut by half in KR so-called hospitals, the sick preferred to trudge to worksites rather than being starved to death. The vocabulary of work is the same as the one used in battle and I have a whole sub-chapter on this: 'The warrior labourer' [p. 227-233] and no less than 17 slogans in which war and work are metaphorically equated. Philip Short noted the same thing: "the economy was just another battlefield to be conquered by brute force". It is the same as in war. There we raised the principle of attacking S whenever the enemy was weak. The same goes for the economy.
We attack whenever the opportunities are the greatest S We must prepare offensives for the whole country. (Pol Pot, Tung Padevaat, June 1976) Short perceptively speaks of: the "militarization of thought and language. People 'struggled' to catch fish or collect fertilizer; they 'waged continuous offensives' to grow 'strategic crops' [mainly yam and maize in newly cleared fields unsuitable for wet rice]; they 'attacked on the front lines' (at dam and canal sites) and 'at the rear' (in the village rice-fields); they formed sections, companies, battalions, mobile brigades and regiments; they showed 'fighting solidarity' to win 'victory over nature'.
Such so-called 'victories' were derided by the people: "You are always quarrelling with nature instead of being concerned about food" [331]. " If we use rain water for the rice-fields, we eat rice; if we use dikes and canals, we eat bâbâ; if we live in the collectives, we eat shit!" [316]. Philip Short also addresses taboo questions around the cultural habits of the Khmers touching work. The Khmers do not have a reputation - like the Laotians and contrary to the Vietnamese - for being a very hard-working nation. He notes that "the problem was to make the Khmers work" (294), but prudently notes the opinion of other people and the Khmers themselves on the subject. The Khmer farmer has tended to produce little for his surplus has tended to be taken by the rapacious tax collector in colonial days, by the Chinese moneylender or the local mandarin of old. Khieu Samphan noted in his thesis (95) that "on average the Khmer peasant worked only six months of the year, and sometimes much less".
The kind of remarks that Short made in his book led to controversy in the bi-monthly Phnom Penh Post with Craig Etcheson that those kinds of cultural generalizations were improper. Short defended himself by saying that, first, one should not dismiss such generalizations altogether, two, that he is merely repeating what the Khmers have been saying about their own selves. I do believe that Short here is right again and part of the reasons why the Angkar has turned Cambodia into a slave and forced labour camp is that a fair proportion of Khmers are traditionally not hyper-active.
The slogans in the last chapter aim to show what the collectivization meant in every day life. People had to completely adhere to the model imposed by Angkar, and 'proleratarianise' their identity meekly obeying all the diktats of the Party. All the survivors will tell that they kept a low profile and did as they were told. They worked hard and would never stick their neck out if they could help it. They had just become an atom in a larger mass, a drop in the ocean. One had to re-forge oneself into a proletariat if one did not come from a poor peasant family.
According to Philip Short, and I think he is right in this, by an effort in 'consciousness' which is the usual translation for the Buddhist vinhian, 'consciousness' or 'soul' (vijnana in Sanskrit), "the animating force of all human endeavour, all one had to do was to acquire a proletarian consciousness' (149). Class, which to Marxists everywhere else, including the Chinese, was determined by a person's economic activity, was for Cambodian Communists a mental attribute.S Theravada Buddhism is intensely introspective. The goal is not to improve society or redeem one's fellow men; it is self-cultivation, in the nihilistic sense of the demolition of the individual" (Short 150). The techniques used for this was both physical and mental: physical with the redeeming value of manual labour; mental with the numerous and endless re-education sessions. For ordinary citizens, it was the regular nightly meetings of mutual criticism and self-criticism. For Party members, the same, but besides those they had long weekly sessions in Phnom Penh or close to Angkar's secret bases during the guerrilla warfare.
Pol Pot, everyone said, was a past master in conducting those. "Concentrate your mind (samathi, or Buddhist meditation) to increase your understanding of the discipline of Angkar and the theories of Marx-Lenin S [sl. 73]. The watchword for this was "Everyone must know how to do self-criticism and conduct criticism of one another" [sl. 71]. "The aim of those 'introspection meetings' as they were called, was to make the participants look into their own souls and strip away everything that was personal and private until their individuality was leached out, their innermost thoughts exposed before their peers and existence outside the group made meaningless. Mutual surveillance and denunciation were a key part of the process, which required a climate of perpetual vigilance and suspicion. Like monks at confession, opening their hearts to God, the young Khmers Rouges 'gave themselves to the Party', becoming one with the revolution which, in theory at least, replaced all other relations."(234, after a long quote from Le Portail, p. 84-86). What Short does not tell us in this very fine analysis is that this was the same in all Communist Parties throughout the world - including the French Communist Party.
Another saw of the regime was that everyone had to rely solely on his own strength, again echoing Buddhist teaching that says the enlightenment will come from within one oneself. Then, they could survive if, as Buddhism was teaching, every individual had abolished all desire and accepted to dissolve in an anonymous and invisible Being - the Angkar. François Bizot in Le Portail had perceived the same connection, to the great anger of Duch.
Angkar was absolute and impersonal, as Buddhism was. It demanded the same unconditional determination, refusing to take into account the human aspect of things, as though it were dealing solely with matters of the spirit. (234-35). "The Party theoreticians had substituted Angkar for the Dhamma, the primordial Being who [in Buddhism] personifies the notion of "Instruction". In place of the monks' ten vows of abstinence (sila) , the KR had 'Twelve commandments' (also called sila) (234). "The returnees from Europe and America stayed at the former Khmer-Soviet Institute, which had been renamed K15" (315) and had been transformed into a re-education camp. Ong Thong Hoeung wrote of his friends in J'ai cru aux Khmers Rouges: "They looked as though they had come from a Buddhist hell or out of a concentration camp". He was struck by their expression: "a strange, enigmatic, disconcerting smile, expressing sadness but also something else, which I could not fathom".
Short added further: The ultimate aim was to destroy personality,S to destroy the individual. S with increasing refinement, through self-examination and public confession, until a new man emerged who embodied loyalty to Angkar, alacrity and non-reflection. Laurence Picq compared this to membership of the Moonies or a sect. S Cut off from the outside world, people no longer saw themselves as individuals, but as cogs in an occult machine whose workings, by definition, they could not fully understand.
The destruction of 'material and spiritual property' was Buddhist detachment in revolutionary clothes; the demolition of the personality was the achievement of non-being. 'The only true freedom' a document proclaimed, 'lies in following what Angkar says, what it writes and what it does' Like the Buddha, Angkar was always right; questioning its wisdom was always a mistake. (318-9) Claire Ly, in Revenue de l'Enfer: Quatre ans dans les camps Khmers Rouges (2004), claims that in Battambang city, a Khmer Rouge leader told all teachers at the Technical University of Battambang on 24 April 1975 "Comrades, I beg you to leave everything like Preah Vesandor has left his kingdom." Preah Visandor, in Buddhist mythology was supposed to have been the last previous re-incarnation of Buddha who had abandoned a prosperous kingdom, had given as alms his wife Metri and his two children to live as a hermit. This made her realize that her Buddhist education was totally inadequate to withstand the KR regime.
Pol Pot used the Buddhist tradition of enlightenment that is the fusion with the ultimate Truth connected with the nature of the Buddha. Pol Pot used a similar approach, substituting Revolution for Enlightenment and Angkar for the Buddha. "We cannot do the Revolution on our own since the Party, the Revolution and the people are always welded. We are all like droplets that can merge together to create a mighty ocean" (p. 260). This was precisely what Claire Ly refused to be S "Je me sens comme une goutte d'eau particulière qui ne ressemble à aucune autre goutte d'eau, une goutte d'eau qui ose pretendre qu'elle est unique et différente de la nature même de l'océan !" "I feel like a very particular drop that resembles no other drop, a drop that dares to claim that it is unique and event different from the very nature of the ocean!"(166) The Buddhist renunciation of the self had to be practiced in daily life with the disappearance of the 'I'. Instead, people had to say 'we'.
A child called his parents 'uncle and aunt'; every relation became collective. This process was to continue until the 'student', whatever his class origin or his place in production, had achieved 'proletarian consciousness through illumination' (in Vietnamese Archives). Theravada Buddhism taught that nirvana, the realm of selflessness, could be attained only when 'the thirst for existence', made up of worldly and emotional attachments, had been totally extinguished. (328). Pol Pot himself in his preaching appeared to be 'serene like a monk' In Sopheap: For a monk, there are different levels. At the first level, you feel joy. And it's good.
Then there's a second level. You no longer feel anything for yourself, but you feel the joy of others. And finally, there is a third level. You are completely neutral. Nothing moves you. This is the highest level. Pol Pot situated himself in that tradition of serenity. (340) This is what I would call the definition of a totalitarian society and the blunt or brute recipes for this are given in this collection of slogans.
After collecting and classifying all these slogans, can we say there exists a KR philosophy that could be termed Pol-Potism? Yes. Philip Short calls it "the Angkorean model of statecraft dressed in communist clothes.S The King was now replaced by Angkar, personified by Pol Pot". When I come to think of it, I am not sure the reference to Angkor is really necessary. The KR always referred themselves to Stalin or Mao as models of inspiration. The four heroes before whose portraits they had the some 60 delegates to their Third Party Congress in the jungle of Kompong Thom province in 1971 were Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin.
They thought of themselves as orthodox communists who had fully absorbed Lenin's theory of the enlightened avant-garde that was to be not only the mouthpiece but the very embodiment of the proletariat. That Soviet thus became the dictatorial organization we know. The Angkar is a Soviet, a purely Leninist concept. Like Lenin, Pol Pot and his group waged a revolution within a country with little if any democratic tradition and where autarchy prevailed. The original approach to the KR method of government was first the secrecy (no other communist regime hid the identity of its leaders) and its utter ruthlessness (no other communist regime cared so little about both the reality of the economy, and the reality of the human sufferings caused by criminal policies). Were those policies coherent? No, quite incoherent.
They wanted people to work twice harder than before, but gave them no reward. They wanted citizens to be inventive, but also blindly obedient; they wanted the population to boom, but starved thousands to death. They had put a smoking factory in the centre of the coat of arms (patterns) that represented the symbols of revolutionary Kampuchea, thus showing they wanted the country to leap rapidly into industry, and they sent everyone into the countryside and abolished the cities, treating the people as an army of industrial workers. They wanted every citizen to love and worship Angkar like a new deity and they made it a symbol of terror and murder. The leadership was totally unable to criticize itself - Pol Pot in particular - and yet they had declared techniques of mutual criticism and self-criticism as one of their main methods of brain manipulation and re-education to become a true Revolutionary.
This, of course, was to cause their swift downfall. They feared the Vietnamese communist elder brothers most, yet they did all they could to provoke the sweeping invasion of their country. They were the most anti-Vietnamese regime the country ever had; still they caused the country to become a Vietnamese modern form of colony for over ten years. Yet the coherence of that ideology is that it gave absolute power to those that were manipulating it. But a power based on violence, therefore infinitely precarious. What these slogans show is that the KR leadership knew, as David Chandler pointed out in his preface, how to use the rhetoric of traditional sayings and give them a revolutionary twist.
Similarly they (and Pol Pot more than anyone else) aped the manners of the traditional gurus or Buddhist monks to lull their audience to accept their most preposterous suggestions. While abolishing all religions, the KR not only followed the teaching methodology of the monks of learning by rote, they took advantage of the fatalism induced by the notion of karma and strove to make individuals dissolve into the greater will of Angkar, the embodiment of Revolution, which assumed the status of a kind of supernatural truth.
Democratic Kampuchea appears to be the nearest approximation in real life to the theoretical model of the totalitarian State. Every aspect of people's lives was to be under the control of the State. Private conversations were being spied on; daily re-education sessions were meant to control people's inner thoughts. This collection of slogans, gathered from the entire territory, shows that the horrors of S-21 and the district prisons was preceded by the terror conveyed through the sayings of Angkar. Just as we should never have been witnesses to the horror of S-21, many of these slogans were not meant for outside ears; they were purely for home consumption.
They could only have appealed to the ignorant and the uneducated. I take these sayings as being simply the antithesis of a democratic society to which we all aspire. If we put them upside down, we know what path to follow: freedom, individual initiative and inventiveness, transparency of all government transactions, openness to the world, trans-cultural collaboration instead of chauvinism, peaceful persuasion rather than brute force, etc. S My comments and explanations can certainly always be improved. But I hope at least the corpus of 433 sayings of Angkar, the bare words of KR slogans will stand the time as examples of what a group of power-hungry men can concoct to exercise total control over their fellow human beings. In fact many of them are crude and even silly: they are the verbal equivalent of brute force.
As most of the ideas were totally irrational, incoherent and contradictory, the technique of persuasion used by the KR leadership was not rational arguments, not facts and figures, but merely repetition. Repetition stood for rationality. Still, 18 months after sending the final proofs to the publisher, I am aware I would have plenty more details to add, on Pol Pot or on Buddhism and am prepared to admit I could have been mistaken or misinformed in many of those comments. This is why now I am expecting your critical comments and your queries SS After a most informative question and answer session, the meeting adjourned to the Alliance Cafeteria where members of the audience engaged Henri in more informal discussion over drinks and snacks.
Minutes of the 257th meeting - Tuesday 25th January 2005
"Redeveloping & Repositioning Chiang Mai as a Tourist Destination"
A Talk by Shane K. Beary
Present: Paul Barber-Riley, Mark & Dianne Barber-Riley, Baudil, Hans Berkmuller, Bodi Blokker, Jackson Braddy, Manus Brinkman, Alex Brodard, John Cadet, Bea Camp, Richard Crichton, Bill Dovhey, Jack Eisner, Lorenz Ferrari, Tom Heinz, Annelie Hendriks, June Hulley, Otome Klein Hutheesing, Annette Kunigagon, Mike Long, Micah Morton, Richard Nelson-Jones, Thomas Ohlson, Marquis Op de Laak, Mike & Margaret O'Shea, Chris Paine, Adrian Pieper, Aileen Roantree, Lilli Saxer, Armin Schoch, Peter Schupp, David Steane, Michael Wilson. An audience of 44.
RESUME
- SHANE K BEARY.
- Born in Dublin, Ireland in 1952.
- Started 'Track of the Tiger', an adventure tour operation in 1986, and built 'Mekok River Lodge' in 1988, both aimed at the soft adventure and the educational tourism market currently enjoying a boom.
- Currently expanding 'Track of the Tiger' 'special events management' arm throughout SE Asia having formed an alliance with a well-respected regional tour operator.
- Opened 'Just Khao Soy' in 2004, and with copyrights and trademarks now in place, is developing the franchise model to take it international in 2006. SHANE'S INTRODUCTION: "I personally don't believe that Chiang Mai should have been developed as a tourist destination. It should have been left as a charming, slow paced place to live, for both the Thai and the handful of foreigners, who for one reason or another call it home. However, given that the decision to do develop for tourism has long been taken, and is now irreversible, I feel compelled to do what I can to coerce the stakeholders into adopting a more sustainable approach to that development.
My proposal to redevelop and reposition Chiang Mai on the regional tourism map is therefore aimed at channeling the funds already earmarked for tourism development into projects that will boost tourism revenues - in a sustainable manner, minimise, if not reverse, the damage inflicted by the existing tourism development model, and significantly improve the overall return of investment.
They are, more importantly, designed to improve the tourism product in the short term whilst improving the quality of life for the city's inhabitants, as well as their prospects for the post-tourism era that surely must come."
SHANE'S PROPOSAL runs to 33 pages. The full proposal is available in PDF file format from Shane K Beary - [email protected] . This is a synopsis, compiled by your convenor, of the chapter headings with some of the more pertinent details.
Tourism Growth : From 1997 to 2002 the number of tourist visitors to Thailand increased by more than 40%, whilst in Chiang Mai this increase was only 13%. Suggested reason for the disparity between the percentages - there is either something wrong with the Chiang Mai tourism product, or with the way it has been managed.
Guest Wallet Share : 1997 to 2002, the average daily foreign tourist expenditure (accommodation, food, shopping, recreation) was 27% lower in Chiang Mai than in Bangkok, Phuket and Pattaya. Suggested reason - there is either something wrong with both the shopping and the tour product in Chiang Mai, or the way it is managed.
Average length of stay : The Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) say 4 days. Major inbound tour operators, however, say 2.1 days for tour groups and 2.4 days for independent travelers. Suggested reason - Chiang Mai is generally regarded as a stopover on around Thailand tours, not a destination.
Return Visitors : Average percentage figure for tourists returning to Thailand for a second visit is 52%, for Chiang Mai 15%. Suggested reasons for disparity - as given above.
Three pages describing a chronology of tourism from the 1880's with Norwegian Carl Bock making a trip from Bangkok to Chiang Mai and then on to Fang, Ban Thaton, Chiang Rai and Chiang Saen, to the 1980's and 90's with Meetings, Incentives, Conventions & Exhibitions (MICE) and 'soft adventure incentives' along the Kok river. At present we have Chiang Mai native Thaksin's intention to make the city a regional air hub, the advent of low cost airlines - appealing to S.E Asian residents and high earners in finance and IT capitals looking for weekend getaways, the current construction of eleven 4-5 star hotels, locally owned resort under construction around the city, and numerous enclaves of specialized furniture boutique shopping areas - this development driven not by tourists but by wealthy Thai buyers looking for original, limited edition items, although the more savvy up-market foreign tourist is starting to take notice.
What do tourists think of Chiang Mai's 'Major Attractions'? Wat Doi Suthep - Commercial, lacking the reverence and tranquility of a Buddhist temple. Access road difficult and dangerous. Pollution haze obscures promised panoramic view of the city.
Shopping:
- San Khampaeng, Borsang, Ban Tawai - Products designed and mass-produced for export market, no 'unique' items. Cheaper than Europe but not 'bargain' prices. Quality and finish don't match the asking price. Cost of shipping home often more than cost of product. What savings are made are not worth it, most items commonly available in Europe.
- Night Bazaar - Not the 'oriental shopping experience', more like a run down, 1960's architectural style western shopping centre. Goods are either trinkets, fake designer goods, or mass-market product line factory over runs - little appeal to the 'serious shopper'. Overcrowded stalls make walking access difficult, no places to rest, no international standard public toilets.
- Elephant Camps - Not in the 'jungle settings' portrayed in promotional literature. Most rides little more than a circuit through deforested areas around the camp - not the 'jungle safari' envisaged. Mahouts are scruffy men in torn western clothes who display little kindness to their animals. Sightseeing Tours - Apart from temples, attractions are limited, contrived, and not representative of cultural heritage of the north. Tour guides steer tourists towards 'shopping attractions' as opposed to 'tourist attractions.' Tours included little of traditional city life, or rural village life as depicted in promotional literature.
- Hill Tribe trekking - Very few of the tourists in this survey had ever tried trekking, or had any interest in doing so. Many had however enjoyed 'nature trail' or 'eco-trail' soft adventure trips in other countries. Chiang Mai City - The city, its temples and culture have lost their allure, overshadowed by modern development. The people are losing their northern charm and easygoing nature as they replace Buddhism with Bahtism. Chiang Mai people are, however, more friendly than those in Bangkok and the South. No adequate public transport system. Difficult to communicate with tuk tuk and songtaew drivers.
Chiang Mai almost entirely dependent on Bangkok based tour operators for its supply of tourists. Bangkok 'monopoly' creates 'middleman' problem. Geographic location of 'downtown' area, including night Bazaar, combined with poor public transport system works against local hotel operators. Bangkok 'monopoly' uses 'poor access' to drive down room rates for out-of-downtown area hotels, and then use these low rates to drive down room rates for in-downtown area hotels. Local hotel owners have not worked together to establish minimum rates - they are cutting each other's throats. Hotels built in 1970's and 80's on a flawed business model. Oversupply of hotel rooms in Chiang Mai favours Bangkok 'monopoly'. Difficult for entrepreneurs to establish new viable tourist related businesses in Chiang Mai. 'Spa' business already fallen victim to poor business model syndrome. After less than three years as a new attraction, the local market is overcrowded with spas now cutting prices to compete. A combination of the Bangkok 'monopoly' and inept local management are denying the people of Chiang Mai the potential rewards from tourism. With the impending glut of hotel rooms in a city that tourists are increasing starting to dislike because of its loss of tradition, culture and charm, what is going to be done to make the city more attractive in order to attract more tourists prepared to pay viable hotel rates?
Within the local tourism industry there are two distinct opinions on which development model best suits Chiang Mai:
Group 1
- Supporters of Mass Market development
- Provide a low cost product aimed at the emerging Asian and Eastern European block countries.
- Improve old attractions and create new 'man-made' attractions.
- The volume of new tourists will compensate for the number of those who, dissatisfied with the product, will not return.
- Cannot rely on improved old attractions, must move forward in creating new modern products.
Group 2
- Supporters of smaller volume, higher yield per visitor model
- Environmental degradation cost of mass tourism is too great and unsustainable.
- City's geographic location, layout and character not suited to infrastructure development required by mass-market model.
- Mass-market development would destroy all that originally attracted tourists.
- Natural attractions to the north of the city are not suited to mass-market development.
- Don't extend the airport, move it away from the city. Address problems of pollution and congestion before attempting to attract more tourists.
Group 3
- The Government, development plans and strategies dictated from Bangkok
- Intends to pursue both mass-market and low volume/higher yield tourist markets.
- Regional Hub - committed to extending the airport to accommodate bigger aircraft and higher volume of air traffic.
- Major convention centre project to attract MICE (Meetings, Incentives, Conventions & Exhibitions) business.
- A raft of major infrastructure and tourism development projects to attract more tourists.
THE NEED FOR COMPROMISE
Groups 1 & 2 must play a role in the decision making process and develop their own development master plan. Any development plan should be part of a strategy to reduce the city's long-term dependence on tourism revenue.
Considerations for a master plan
- Long term, 30-50 year view. Anticipate global patterns that could lead to a downturn in tourism and tourist interest in Chiang Mai.
- Long term environmental and social health issues should be carefully considered.
- Resolve problems of traffic congestion, air and noise pollution.
- Implement viable, 'environmentally friendly' mass transport systems - trams, electric vehicles, underground railways, etc. More roads and conventional buses are not viable.
- Tourism development as a business venture. Each project should have realistic projections based on return on investment and profitability. Changing Chiang Mai from a 'stopover' to a 'tourist destination'
Three things need to be done to achieve this objective:
- Select new Unique Selling Propositions (USP). These must be unique in regional terms and have broad appeal.
- Create new, or redesign existing tourist activities that tourists will want to come back to do again.
- Design and implement an effective and sustainable campaign to promote Chiang Mai directly to the world.
Expected result - Increase in tourist numbers and length of stay. Direct bookings from overseas wholesalers and Foreign Independent Travelers (FIT). CREATING UNIQUE SELLING PROPOSITIONS (USP) FOR Chiang Mai
Unique Selling Propositions 1 - The Shoppers Holiday
- Reinvent and expand what already exists to make Chiang Mai a hub where its own product, as well as product from the Greater Mekong Sub-region is finished.
- Finished product then showcased to tourists, worldwide interior design/home décor and other markets.
- Newly emerging 'boutique shops' on the river road, Nimmanhaeminda Road and other areas in the city already attract wealthy Thais and are beginning to attract up-market foreign tourists. >From local attraction to shopping hub.
- Air and road infrastructure combined with relaxed regulations for the movement of goods between GMS countries facilitates the transfer of raw, semi-finished and finished goods from neighbouring countries to Chiang Mai.
- Northern Thai designers and craftsmen could use to cheaper imported raw materials to create an expanded range of home décor, fashion and other products. Chiang Mai would become recognised as the shopping hub for the whole GMS area.
Unique Selling Propositions 2 - The River Market
- Build 3km long 6 metre wide floating walkways along both sides of the river, probably with Nawarat Bridge at the center. Moor environmentally friendly river barges of a classic 'rice barge' design, as shops, cafes' and entertainment venues along the length of the floating walkways to create the Ping River Market.
- The turnstiles at access points would facilitate both entry fee collection and allow policing for overall safety.
- Some barges could double as stadium styled seating units creating a special 'venue' for floating parades - Loy Krathong, Songkran and many others to be created, all capable of generating huge revenues for the city.
- Establish 'park and ride' stations some 2 km distant from each corner of the 'Ping River Market'. Ban roadside parking in the riverfront area to 'encourage' people to use public transport running on circular routes between the 'park and ride' stations and the Ping River Market.
- Use a combination of carrot and stick techniques (financial incentives and social restrictions - early closing hours), to entice tourist related businesses to relocate from the city centre to the new Ping River Market.
- Redevelop the 'reclaimed downtown areas' converting ugly buildings into 3-4 floor parking garages, banning roadside parking and turning pavements into tree filled promenades.
- Provide development funding for building owners willing to refurbish or reconstruct their buildings in keeping with an accepted La Na design code. These buildings can then become boutique outlets, sidewalk cafes, and accommodation clusters where perhaps three or four boutique style hotels share common public areas and restaurant facilities.
HOW SHOULD Chiang Mai BE REDEVELOPED AND REPOSITIONED
The city area . Short and medium term - the focus should be on the downtown area where existing tourist infrastructure is most concentrated. . Medium to long term - redevelopment of the old city within the walls. This would include restoring old buildings, banning or severely limiting vehicular access, relocating light industry outside the inner city area (perhaps to the airport area if the idea to relocate the airport is favourably considered.), complete the 'cobble stone' streets, increase green areas, ban all billboards, neon and electronic signs. . Between the inner and outer ring roads . Zone this area for housing, schools, universities, etc, with secluded sub-zones for light industry.
The hills around Chiang Mai
Develop the higher altitude areas in the hills/mountains around Chiang Mai into 'all year round' long stay resorts, health retreats and spas, golf courses, back to nature hill stations. These products to be target marketed at the more affluent tourist, the MICE (Meetings, Incentives, Conventions & Exhibitions) business, and the retiree market. The Tourist Markets If this, or a similar proposal was accepted and implemented - How would Chiang Mai benefit?
- Mainstream tourism - 'return visitor appeal' would increase the volume in all aspects of this market.
- Niche Market tourism - Golf and Spa holidays combined with low cost airfares would increase weekend getaways.
- Long Stay tourism - Golf and Spa attractions, plus cooler all year round climate of hill stations offering nature trail and soft adventure activities appeal to this market.
- Health Service market - When Chiang Mai hospitals establish a level of service that can compete with Bangkok hospitals, proximity to the recuperation facility will give them a distinct advantage.
- MICE (Meetings, Incentives, Conventions & Exhibitions) Market - Upgrading existing meeting facilities combined with room rates that are up to 50% cheaper than Bangkok would give Chiang Mai a distinct advantage in attracting small and medium MICE (Meetings, Incentives, Conventions & Exhibitions) market trade.
"We are confident that once the recommended Unique Selling Propositions (USP) are put in place, and properly promoted, the increase in volume and spending power of the tourist visiting the city and staying in deluxe boutique, or 4 and 5 star international hotels, will provide custom for a better product."
IN CONCLUSION:
Three elements have combined to provide the city with a second chance to redevelop and reposition itself:
- P.M. Thaksin has fast tracked tourism development for the kingdom, and in particular Chiang Mai.
- Low cost airfares now encourage more people to travel.
- The Ping River is a natural asset that can be the cornerstone of redevelopment. "There are very few second chances offered in life, especially to development planners. We should not miss this one."
To celebrate its 20th anniversary, the Informal Northern Thai Group (INTG) is organizing a photo exhibition: "Mysterious Mekong: From Simao Port to Ho Chi Minh City by Hovercraft" by Reinhard Hohler.
In November 2002, the Brooker Group and Diethelm Travel in Bangkok co-organized the "Hovercraft Expedition Mekong" in which Mr. Reinhard Hohler was tour director. This expedition covered nearly 3000 km of the river from Simao Port in Yunnan to its delta in the southern part of Vietnam.
Through his photos, Mr. Hohler tries to position, protect and promote the different geographical, historical and economic aspects of the Mekong. The pictures highlight the landscapes seen by the expedition from Jinghong in China through Myanmar, Laos, Thailand and Cambodia down to Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam. There are some special moments, including a visit to the gravesite of the famous French explorer Mr. Henri Mouhot in Luang Prabang, the transfer of the hovercraft around the Khon Falls, and a trip to Angkor.
For this exhibition, in addition to the photos taken by Mr. Hohler, the Ecole FranÁcaise d'Extreme-Orient has added some pictures and documents from its own archives, together with an exhibition of books about the Mekong Region from the EFEO library in Chiang Mai.
72 photos taken by Mr. Hohler will also be available also on CD as well as some publications by the EFEO and IRASEC.
Venue: From SATURDAY, JANUARY 8 to SATURDAY, JANUARY 29, 2005 (9 am-5 pm) at the Ecole FranÁcaise d'Extreme-Orient 131 Charoen Prathet Road (opposite the Alliance Francaise) - Tel. 053 272421 Parking: Alliance FrancÁaise or Wat Chaimongkhon
Profile of Expedition Mekong's tour director Mr. Reinhard Hohler: Reinhard Hohler, 54, is an experienced tour director and media travel consultant in the Greater Mekong Sub-region. He was born in Karlsruhe, Germany, a port on Europe's Rhine River. After studying geology in his hometown and ethnology at Heidelberg University, Reinhard moved to Thailand in 1987. He has led more than 100 study tours, mainly in Thailand, Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Yunnan, Hainan, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore. He also co-authored a book about Yunnan and a TV documentary about the Emerald Bu ddha in Bangkok. Reinhard is currently working on a project about German explorer Dr. Adolf Bastian's travelogue of Southeast Asia in the early 1860s. Reinhard lives in Chiang Mai (Thailand) with his wife and daughter.
Minutes of the 259th meeting - Tuesday 22 February 2004
"How does an artist become international? Thailand as a case study "
A Talk by Annabelle Boissier
Present: Budil Blokken, Guy Chaturachinda, Lara Dangerfield, Lucie Dechfie, Bill Dovhey, Louis Gabaude, Yu Hanabusa, Oliver Hargreave, June Hulley, Martyn King, Hilke Koegl, Fumie Sasai, Sebastien Tayac, Pierre Wittmann, Pia Wunna. An audience of 15.
The full text of Annabelle's talk:
In my Ph.D. thesis I try to explore the notion of "legitimacy" in the context of contemporary art practice in Thailand. My aim will be: trying to bring out the process by which the contemporary art practice gains some legitimacy in the local context. On one hand by calling for international recognition, on the other hand by calling for local recognition in order to create a local "market" (world) of contemporary art in Thailand. I will expos here the first point: the call for an international recognition of Thai contemporary art.
If I think it's needed to start with the international recognition and not with the local one, it's in order to avoid limiting the study to the 'culturalist' point of view, which puts in opposition cultural traditions and contemporary art (which is a sterile opposition). I experimented with this at the beginning of my fieldwork; the result was the necessity at first to occult the cultural point of view in order to be able to later explore the social context of cultural implications (like identity or nationality).
First of all, I have to be precise about the meaning of the terms "contemporary" and "international" used here. We can't define contemporary art by its unique membership at the current period of time, it needs to incorporate as well some specific criteria which seals its professional membership to "the world of international contemporary art". In this context internationalisation is a fundamental characteristic, and likewise the term "international" can't be defined by its unique geographical meaning, but by the characteristics given to it by the structure of professional membership. That means that at the starting point of my work a choice has been made, the western category of contemporary art will be the profession in which this study will be developed (the reasons of this choice will be expanded further).
For Thai contemporary artists, it doesn't seem that there is any doubt in regard to the "contemporary" value of their works from an aesthetic point of view. But, the "international" value needed for the "labeling" as "contemporary art work" has not yet been reached. Two texts have inspired this study: first the text of Liah Greenfeld, "Different worlds, A sociological study of taste, choice and success in art" (Cambridge University Press, 1989). In it she develops the notion of "gatekeepers" in the Israeli context, from an historical and sociological point of view. This notion is very useful in order to describe the link between the international and the local art scene, although Greenfeld uses it in order to describe the local context only.
Indeed if I want to describe how artists become international, it's necessary to understand the work of those who are at the point of intersection of these two universes. Thus, what I am exploring is the possibility that the structural separation between local and international can be a specificity of contemporary art context in non-western countries; for example there is no art space, gallery or event in Thailand that has an international standing (with the exception of The Land perhaps). There is no juxtaposition of those two universes in the same locality, as is the case in New York, London or Berlin.
The gatekeeper is the one by who artistic value is defined. Because of their status in the social context, their validation of an artwork has an effect of validation for most of the actors. This notion is a key way, which permits me to describe a situation; its sense is not fixed. My goal is less to define who the gatekeepers are or to suppose that the actors' objective is to reach the status of gatekeeper; this notion is more an aid for the description of a specific situation and the strategic action engaged by the actors. Furthermore it's not a professional status, there are plenty of gatekeepers who have their own primary field: critics, curators, officialsS even an artist can be a gatekeeper.
The second text is one of Raymond Moulin: "The Artist, the Institution and the Market" (L'artiste, l'institution et le marché, Champs/Flammarion, Paris, 1992). I will not develop the methodological strategies here; let's just say that the comparison with the French and international market studied by Moulin permits me to point out similarities and differences of the Thai contemporary art scene.
Using an Artist's Curriculum Vitae In order to clarify the structure of local/international relations, I will take the artist Curriculum Vitae as a starting point, and ask the questions: what advantages does an artist gain by doing an exhibition in a foreign country? What are the different ways of exhibiting in foreign countries? Is every exhibition in a foreign country an international exhibition? And what does that show about the recognition network of the contemporary artist?
I make the choice of using the CV because at the international level the statement of an exhibition list is a common way to express the international status of an artist; the presentation of this statement is the proof of their "professional" membership. Here is an example taken from a Master's degree thesis in history of art relating to Thai contemporary art:
"Born in nineteen sixty one, the artist [Manit Sriwanichpoom], who lives in Bangkok, is seen as the leader of a new Thai conceptual photography art movement. He is also recognized by the international art scene: 24th Sao Paolo Biennale (1998), 1rst Fukuoka Asian Art Triennial (1999), International Photography Biennale of Mexico (1999), Cities on the Move (1998-99), Quatre de Bangkok (Galerie VU, Paris, 2002), 50th Venice Biennale (2003)..." .
One question can be asked: is this exhibition list a real sign of the artist's international network membership? And following, what does this list say about the international network structure? By questioning the direct link between that type of list and the artist's international status, my goal is to question the reality of this relationship. I mean that there is no doubt regarding the symbolic value of those lists, my aim is to question the sociological value of them.
The second point I would like to clarify about using the artist's CV concerns the investigation's methodology. Materials used for the elaboration of this paper are: 1. Lateral analysis of CV made up of data found on the Internet and in catalogues or provided by the artist theirself; 2. Lateral analysis based on CV's interview with artists. These CV based interviews have the advantage over a biographical one as they restrict the dialogue with the artist to the exhibition structural context. What I am trying to find out is the process by which the artist has been able to participate in those exhibitions.
Artist's career path read through their CV I will now describe the different types of exhibition in which Thai artists are involved. Firstly, we can draw four groups of exhibition (table's abscissa ): 1.Local level exhibition, 2. Exhibition in foreign countries, 3.Asian regional level exhibition, 4.International level exhibition. And divide them in six categories (table's coordinates): * The first level is present in almost all the artist's CVs, however the higher the artist's international recognition, the more this type of exhibition disappears off the CVs. Those exhibitions have been held during the artist's study time or immediately following and disappear later; there is some art competition exhibition or national exhibition, some exhibitions are organized by the student artist alone or in a group and thesis show in the country in which they studied.
We can observe that those exhibitions enter in three abscissa categories: national, foreign country and regional; however they are mostly held at the local level. Like shows for other national contexts, exhibiting a work in a National Exhibition is a way for a young artist candidate to be recognized as an artist, but they don't really seem to have an effect on the artist's career. The case of Montien Bonma is especially explicit, during the time of his studying in Paris he presented works in 42nd and 43rd Salon de Mai, which was at that time already acclaimed as a necessary way though for recognition. Though there is a very large selection for those exhibitions, they have the ability to raise the art student to the status of artist or young artist. It's quite similar for the art competition but instead of being only at the local and foreign country level we can find some at the regional level (Jakapan, 2nd ASEAN Young Painting Workshop and Exhibition; Kamol, Young Art in Asia Now 1980). Once artists have been recognized at the upper level, for example, participation in a regional biennale, they don't do those types of exhibitions anymore.
Concerning the shows organized by the artist candidate theirself or a thesis show, these are usually the first solo exhibitions of the artist. These shows function as a way to show the work in a non-classroom situation and to larger public audience. These exhibitions mostly take place in the university, and in some cases can have an impact on the artist's career (the young artist can be "discovered" by a curator and enter the local art scene in this way). Artists don't often widely publicize the show; they just want to show their work under exhibition conditions.
* The second level participates of the University's Professor level, like the preceding one this level is present in the three categories: local, foreign countries and regional. These exhibitions are part of the university program in which the artist teaches. At the international level, they are part of bilateral exchange between two universities, and at the regional level they can be part of a network university program. This depends on the university network and exchange program that they organize. In this case as well they don't reach the international level.
* Next, there are the third and fourth levels. These two types of exhibition are unique because they can be disconnected from the professional Thai art circle. As with the first two levels, these illustrate that not all exhibitions shown in a foreign country are necessarily international exhibitions because they are not part of the international network of contemporary art. Most of them are bilateral exchange, in contexts separate from the contemporary art scene; either it is the Thai scene, international scene or local art scene of the country where the exhibition is taking place.
* The first level is present in almost all the artist's CVs, however the higher the artist's international recognition, the more this type of exhibition disappears off the CVs. Those exhibitions have been held during the artist's study time or immediately following and disappear later; there is some art competition exhibition or national exhibition, some exhibitions are organized by the student artist alone or in a group and thesis show in the country in which they studied. We can observe that those exhibitions enter in three abscissa categories: national, foreign country and regional; however they are mostly held at the local level. Like shows for other national contexts, exhibiting a work in a National Exhibition is a way for a young artist candidate to be recognized as an artist, but they don't really seem to have an effect on the artist's career. The case of Montien Bonma is especially explicit, during the time of his studying in Paris he presented works in 42nd and 43rd Salon de Mai, which was at that time already acclaimed as a necessary way though for recognition. Though there is a very large selection for those exhibitions, they have the ability to raise the art student to the status of artist or young artist. It's quite similar for the art competition but instead of being only at the local and foreign country level we can find some at the regional level (Jakapan, 2nd ASEAN Young Painting Workshop and Exhibition; Kamol, Young Art in Asia Now 1980). Once artists have been recognized at the upper level, for example, participation in a regional biennale, they don't do those types of exhibitions anymore.
Concerning the shows organized by the artist candidate theirself or a thesis show, these are usually the first solo exhibitions of the artist. These shows function as a way to show the work in a non-classroom situation and to larger public audience. These exhibitions mostly take place in the university, and in some cases can have an impact on the artist's career (the young artist can be "discovered" by a curator and enter the local art scene in this way). Artists don't often widely publicize the show; they just want to show their work under exhibition conditions.
* The second level participates of the University's Professor level, like the preceding one this level is present in the three categories: local, foreign countries and regional. These exhibitions are part of the university program in which the artist teaches. At the international level, they are part of bilateral exchange between two universities, and at the regional level they can be part of a network university program. This depends on the university network and exchange program that they organize. In this case as well they don't reach the international level.
* Next, there are the third and fourth levels. These two types of exhibition are unique because they can be disconnected from the professional Thai art circle. As with the first two levels, these illustrate that not all exhibitions shown in a foreign country are necessarily international exhibitions because they are not part of the international network of contemporary art. Most of them are bilateral exchange, in contexts separate from the contemporary art scene; either it is the Thai scene, international scene or local art scene of the country where the exhibition is taking place.
* The fifth level is the one I will call the 'Gatekeepers' level. We can see that there is no case of exhibition at the foreign country category, and that they have an impact at the international level. The work developed by Gridthiya Jaweewong is a very good example of this class of gatekeepers: at the local level she has a role of discoverer; at the regional level she tries to develop a specific network; and at an international level she's a curator or co-curator of Thai contemporary art shows. Outside South East Asia, in Japan and Australia or even in Europe and North America, we can see that the role of these gatekeepers is quite different, because they are mostly co-curators of Asian Art Exhibitions; in that case they are considered as experts of Thai contemporary art. In some cases they are also considered as an Asian contemporary art expert. Another important part of their role: they can also be advisors for international curators who come to Thailand to do research. Their role here is very important as they influence the choices of these curators. In addition, because these curators spend very little time in Thailand these advisors/gatekeepers have a great influence in the constitution of the exhibition.
* And finally the sixth level, the one of individual networks, is the only one that occurs in every category of exhibition, this one doesn't go through the gatekeepers. At the local level, the artist is involved in the local art scene, they know all or a great part of the art scene actors; they can propose some projects to those actors (gallery owner, art space manager, other artists or curators) and those actors will invite them to participate in projects that they organize; they knows the key people and how to navigate in this network.
At the foreign country level, the artist has developed some special relationships with actors, mostly during their study time, this contact can propose an exhibition for them (this exhibition can be for this contact a way to give an international status to their art space, to exhibit some unknown artists to their community, and to differentiate theirself from the other art space of their area). Again, the foreign country level works mostly in bilateral relation.
At the regional level, the artist has some contact with other artists in the region because they have previously exhibited together, they can be an organizer of group exhibitions of various artists in the region. This contributes to the dynamic of developing a South East Asian network. At the international level it's the same principle, because of the contacts they have already made the artist has been offered participation in an exhibition without going through the gatekeepers. The participation of Sutee Kunavichayanont, for example, at the exhibition Disappearance Recent Thai Art: when he was in Pittsburgh at the Mattress Factory, Sutee met a Chinese curator who recommended him to a New York curator when he was in Korea doing research. In addition, Sutee gave some Thai artists names as well.
But there is also a difference between artists who go through gatekeepers
to have those contacts; Sutee went to Mattress Factory because the curator
knows his work through Klaomard Yipintsoi (director of About Art Related
Activities), and those who never went through gatekeepers.
The Internet can also provide links for recognition. In the cases of Manit,
Nuts Society, Varsha and Angkrit, curators found the artist's work on the
Internet and made contact by mail.
In regard to the last two levels, gatekeepers and individual networks, we
can't really say that one is more international than the other. The
temptation is great to say that the individual network seems more
international than the gatekeepers network, because the artist is the
direct owner of the network, but actually this is not the case.
Here, the analysis of Raymonde Moulin can be very helpful especially if we
take the case of Surasi's career, which entered the international market
through a team of French curators. In her analysis she shows that in the
current recognition structure of contemporary art, artists need to
collaborate (to work) with museum conservators or curators who will be able
to "place" their works in international events or museums which have
international status.
This means that in the international art scene, working in relation with
gatekeepers is a more common way than handing an individual network; this
doesn't mean that there is no individual network for artist like Surasi,
but the influence of curators is great. This kind of artist is probably the
closer to the international structure of recognition.
THE ROLE OF "INFORMATION CONTROL"
In this last part of my presentation I would like to demonstrate that the
question of "information control" is the key point that permits us to
understand the difference between the last two types of exhibition
categories: Gatekeepers and Individual network.
1. BIENNIALS & GATEKEEPERS
The 'information control' is a fundamental part of the international
structure of contemporary art and has a strong effect on the choices made
by international curators for events like biennials. Participation in such
international biennials is currently a very powerful way to access the"symbolic" status of international artist. And we can observe that the
inclusion of Thai artists in those events is generally due to the influence
of the gatekeepers or the gatekeepers' network.
One reason for the symbolic power of the Biennales can be read through the
specificities of information's circulation as analyzed by Raymonde Moulin.
As an example, here it is a citation of Apinan Poshyananda preparing the
Australian selection of the second Asia-Pacific Triennial:"I have visited Australia on a number of occasions in the past five years.
I have been exposed to contemporary art in Australia through exhibitions,
contacts with curators and artists as well as art journals and magazines.
Being involved in the 1992 Sydney Biennale "The Boundary Rider" and the
first Asia-Pacific Triennial also allowed me to assess contemporary
Australian art. I was able to follow Australian representations in various
biennials in Venice, Johannesburg, Kwangju, Istanbul, Havana, and through
exhibitions such as "TransCulture" and "Antipodean Currents" (both 1995).
My expectations during this trip were more or less confirmed. Having said
that I must add that there were several surprises as I was able to meet
artists whose work had not widely shown outside Australia."
This citation makes very clear the importance of information, the way in
which the curators access to this information, and how the Biennales have a
strategic status in it. Moulin adds that "the information's control is the
equivalent for contemporary art of the erudite knowledge for classical
art", by this fact 'Who' holds the information becomes an issue. Thus we
can easily understand that one person alone can't handle all the
information concerning contemporary art in western countries, plus Africa,
Asia, etc. Furthermore there isn't a very strong infrastructure of museums,
galleries, and art spaces in those countries; that sort of infrastructure
has the role of spreading information.
International curators can't do
their own research in every country. Gatekeepers in non-western countries
seem to have taken this role; if an international curator can't handle all
the information himself, he can control the access to this information. In
that sense the gatekeepers have a very important role in the international
structure; but if they have a role in the international art world, they are
also very locally based because they need to control the information at the
local level. In the case of non-western countries, where local and
international don't have the same territorial space, a new type of mediator
appears in response to the need for information.
2. TWO TYPES OF CAREER - MANIT SRIWANICHPOOM AND VARSHA NAIR
In regard to the table I present to you we can postulate that Varsha has a
more international network because her network is a mostly individual
network. Manit, on the other hand, was supported by a Thai curator before
being recognized. Actually, the specificities of international network show
that Manit has better visibility in it than Varsha. The statement of
Manit's exhibition conforms more to the international structure of
recognition than Varsha's.
We can see that Manit seems to have been integrated in to the dominant
market of contemporary art (like Nawin or Surasi), while Varsha belongs to
a parallel market. And we can see how she tries to make up for this status;
if she is firstly an artist, she had also developed a lot of parallel
activities, which have permitted her to create her own network. Let's read
how she defines herself, the statement that she's using:"Varsha Nair's solo and cross-disciplinary collaborative works have been
exhibited internationally and in Thailand where she lives currently.
Since
1997, she has also co-organized various art projects and is actively
involved with Womanifesto, an international event that takes place in
Thailand bi-annually. She was an invitee speaker at Co.operation, a
conference on feminist art practice and theory held in Dubrovnic, Croatia
in 2000; and in 2001, at Asia Now-Women Artists' Perspectives, an
International Symposium held at Moderna Museet, Stockholm. Varsha has also
published her writings in art and architecture journals such as n.paradoxa
(UK), Art AsiaPacific (Australia) and art4d (Thailand). Born in Kampala,
Uganda, Varsha has a BFA from Faculty of Fine Arts, Maharaja Sayaji Rao
University, Baroda, India." (Provided by the artist)
When she came to live in Thailand, Varsha was assisted by those same
gatekeepers to enter the local Thai contemporary art scene.
However,
because she's not a Thai born artist she will not be helped to enter the
international art scene through Thailand, even though she started her art
career in Thailand.
By this comparison we can answer one of the first questions: the structure
of the international art scene, which needs some facilities to access the
information, uses the support of gatekeepers to access artists in
non-western countries (where local and international don't share the same
place); especially for international events like biennials, which need to
present the actuality of contemporary art all over the world. Those
gatekeepers are not only locally based, and their capacity to develop
international networks is a fundamental point. Likewise, the artists'
networks have to be continuously updated as well as their local knowledge,
especially by looking after young artists.
3. The information sharing, non-profit and commercial galleries in Bangkok
An analysis of the galleries' work in Bangkok can help us to further
understand the structure of the local art scene, and the importance of"information control" in that context. Interviews have been done with
commercial and non-commercial art galleries. We can observe that the
separation between commercial and non-profit galleries fits the separation
between neo-traditional or decorative art and contemporary art. There is
only one commercial gallery that belongs to the contemporary art category
(another, much younger gallery seems to be evolving in to this category.
This one has an attraction for artists because of its space more than its
reputation or network).
Again we can observe that the strategies concerning information control in
those two categories are in opposition. The owners of ommercial galleries
were sometimes hesitant to give me some information, while owners or
managers of non-profit galleries never had any hesitation concerning the
questionnaire I presented to them (The questionnaire for non-profit and
commercial galleries was exactly the same). The fact that the owner of one
commercial gallery, which has entered the contemporary art category,
offered to introduce me to one of his best buyers without any request from
me, while in the other commercial galleries even questions about buyers
were a delicate issue, indicates that the structure of the two systems is
radically different.
In conclusion
We can observe that there is an interesting phenomenon of developing a
regional network attempting to link the important contemporary art spaces
in South East Asia. The curators of the region travel a lot, in order to
present artists of the region in there own "locality". Because they start
to know a lot of artists they don't need to go through gatekeepers each
time they come to Thailand for research or they go through a great number
of Gatekeepers. In this way there is a diversification of the ways the
information is circulated at the regional level, which indicates the good
health of the network.
But this point has not yet been reached for the relation with the
international scene. And we can see that, more or less, the Thai artists
present in the international art scene are always the same. This is due to
the fact that the gatekeepers are promoting the same team of artists, which
is actually a normal way of working. But because the people in-between
local and international (those I call the gatekeepers) are limited in
number, a great diversification of Thai artists in the international art
scene can't be reached.
At the conclusion of the question and answer session, the meeting adjourned
to the Alliance Cafeteria where members of the audience engaged Annabelle
in more informal discussion over drinks and snacks.
REMINDER
Next meeting: Today, March 8th 2005 - 7:30 p.m. at the Alliance Française 131 Charoen Prathet Road Opposite Wat Chaimongkhon
THE "SINGHALESE" BUDDHA Thailand's Highly Revered Guardian Image in the National Museum Bangkok. Is This Image the Original? Two Others Claim the Title.
A Detective Story A talk and slide presentation by Carol Stratton
The Buddha image, called the "Phra Phuttha Sihing", is now ensconced in the place of honor in the Chapel of the National Museum Bangkok (formerly the Palace of the Second King). This revered image is considered one of the two major guardians (along with the Emerald Buddha) of the Chakri Dynasty and thus a palladium of Thailand as a whole. Purportedly originally made in Sri Lanka, the history of the image, both written in chronicles and as understood in folklore, is extremely complicated with the possibility of a replica appearing at every juncture. Which is the original "Singhlese Buddha" and what facts have been marshaled by the three major claimants to back their position? Carol Stratton will try to give us some answers by approaching the problem from an art historical viewpoint. By analyzing the iconography and the style, she will place this particular image in its historical context. This "detective work" leads to a conclusion that may not be currently accepted by most Thais, although a number of Thai and foreign scholars might agree.
In the process of researching the subject, Carol has been able to identify a workshop in the Chiang Mai area that was casting superb bronze Buddha images during the late 15th and early 16th centuries, a workshop whose name, place and production will be revealed at the lecture.
Carol Stratton has been working on the art history of Thailand for over thirty years. She and her family lived in Bangkok for six years during the early 70's where she worked extensively for the National Museum Bangkok Volunteers as guide, researcher and writer. With a colleague, Miriam McNair Scott, she wrote THE ART OF SUKHOTHAI: THAILAND'S GOLDEN AGE published by Oxford University Press in 1981. With the aid of several major US grants (the National Endowment for the Humanities, Rockefeller Foundation, Asian Cultural Council) she has been researching and writing on the art history of Northern Thailand. Her second book THE BUDDHIST SCULPTURE OF NORTHERN THAILAND was published last year by Silkworm Books in Chiang Mai.
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