CHAM ELDER PERFORMS RITUALMUSIC IN PHANRANG, VIETNAM. PHOTOGRAPHER: THANH PHAN

Curators: Mohamed Effendy bin Abdul Hamid, Emiko Stock, and Michael Schuster
Installation: Michael Schuster and Lynne Najita | Visiting Scholar: Thanh Phan, Vietnam National University

This exhibit was funded by a Title VI National Resource Center grant, with additional funding from Doris Duke  Foundation for Islamic Arts (Shangri-la) and the Hawai‘i Pacific Rim Society.

The Cham of Vietnam and Cambodia are one of the most fascinating communities in Southeast Asia today.
The Cham, descendents of the Kingdom of Champa that once ruled much of southern Vietnam, developed a vibrant civilization. Their achievements were manifest in the building of unique Cham temples (bimong) that can still be found scattered throughout southern Vietnam. Originally a Hindu empire, the majority of Cham people converted to various forms of Islam over the centuries. Both Hinduism and Islam greatly influenced Cham political, religious, and cultural life.

In Southeast Asia, Islam has been widespread since the seventh century A.D. It is more than just a form of religious identification; it allows for a sense of commonality within a highly diverse Southeast Asian region. Islam is a dynamic religion that has been adapted by its followers from its arrival from the 12th century to a form which has today became the basis for the ethnic and political identities of Southeast Asian societies and states.
How Islam is localized by Southeast Asian communities is a fascinating and complex study. This is especially so for the Cham people who have localized and understood Islam through their own cultural perspectives, a process which is not yet well researched nor well understood.

This exhibition illustrates visual aspects of Cham culture and how the Cham have preserved their identity
through ritual and religious practices, art and architecture, writing and language, and everyday life experiences.
The exhibition showcases textiles, ceramics,metal work, basketry, calligraphy, photography, and video fromVietnam and Cambodia that underline both the continuities and diversity across borders.

TEACHING ARABIC IN PHANRANG,VIETNAM
PHOTOGRAPHER: THANH PHAN

Special Events

All in the EWC gallery, admission free
Friday, January 22, 1:00-4:30 p.m.
Cham Symposium Cham culture and history will be discussed by six Southeast Asian cholars from Vietnam, Cambodia, Singapore, and Hawai‘i. Discussions will be of interest to the general public.

Sunday, January 24, 2:00-3:30 p.m.
Opening Festivities including reception and walk-throughs by the curators.

ANCIENT SCULPTURE OF GARUDA
DA NANG MUSEUM OF CHAM SCULPTURE

Monday, January 25, 12:00-1:00 p.m.
Visual presentation by visiting curator Emiko Stock, Cambodia,
‘‘Visualizing Cham Diversity in Cambodia’’

Sunday, February 7, 2:00-3:00 p.m.
Visual Presentation by Paul Lavy, assistant professor, UHMArt Department,
“An Introduction to Ancient Cham Sculpture and Architecture”

Sunday, March 7, 2:00-3:00 p.m.
Visual presentation by Claire Park, artist and lecturer, Pima Community
College, Tucson, Arizona, “Creating with Reverence: Art, Diversity, Culture and Soul,” a discussion of diverse art forms and artists from India, Japan, Mexico, and the U.S. Southwest native Americans.

EWC arts programs are supported by the Hawai‘i Pacific RimSociety, Friends of Hawai‘i Charities,
the Cooke Foundation, Atherton Family Foundation, Jackie Chan Foundation USA, and
generous contributors to the EWC Foundation, including members of the EWC Arts ‘Ohana.

Coming up:

AURA-J: Music from Japan
March 6 and 9, 7:30 p.m.
Contemporary repertoire,
UHM Orvis Auditorium

March 7, 4:00 p.m.
Japanese traditional repertoire,
EWC Imin Center-Jefferson Hall

KAbU Ni VANUA:
Dance & Music from Fiji
April 3, 8:00 p.m.
UHM Kennedy Theatre
Further information at http://arts.EastWestCenter.org

East-West Center Gallery

John a. Burns Hall, 1601 East-West Road
(corner Dole St. & East-West Rd.)
gallery hours:Weekdays: 8:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m.
Sundays: noon-4:00 p.m.
Closed Saturdays and holidays
Parking on the UH-Mānoa campus is
normally free and ample on Sundays.

AUSTRALIA DAY @ Snowies Bar
THE CAMBODIAN SPACE PROJECT
play live at the iconic Snowies Bar, Phnom Penh
8pm Tuesday Night Jan 26th
cross to the other side of the river, turn right after the Japanese Bridge, Look for the bar lights.

www.myspace.com/thecambodianspaceproject

Toutes nos conférences sont traduites en trois langues : français, khmer et anglais !
All our conferences are translated in three languages : English, French, Khmer !

Après Copenhague

Ce que cela change pour le Cambodge

Pheakdey Heng, Minh Cuong Le Quan , Eric Beugnot
Jeudi 21 janvier, 19h
Cinema du CCF

En décembre 2009, la conférences sur le climat a Copenhague a été un événement majeur sur la scène politique et diplomatique mondiale. Comment ce sommet va t-il modifier l’approche du changement climatique au Cambodge ? Le GERES et l’Agence Française de Développement vous donnent les clés pour mieux comprendre.

After Copenhagen

What does it change for Cambodia ?

Pheakdey Heng, Minh Cuong Le Quan , Eric Beugnot
Tuesday 21 January, 7pm
at Centre Culturel Français Cinema

In December 2009, the climat change conference of Copenhagen has been an historic event on both diplomatic and politic ways. How will it change the way to deal with the climate change in Cambodia ? GERES and the Agence Française de Développement will offer clues for a better understanding.

www.ccf-cambodge.org
Centre Culturel Français
218 rue 184

We, the Association of Khmer Rouge Victims in Cambodia (“AKRV” or “AKRVC”), are survivors of the Cambodian killing fields (April 1975—January 1979) who are joined in our fellowship of suffering, in our demand for justice, and in our work for a just peace. In coming together, we become stronger and we are shaping our past for our future.
We have each other. We have hope.

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CJR National Conference on Victims’ Participation: MOVING FORWARD, TOGETHER – Transforming Killing Fields to Healing, Living Fields at Pannasastra University, 11 Dec. 2009. AKRVC members raising their hands in response to query “who have lost father, mother, husband, or wife during the KR years?”

We are widows and orphans, former child soldiers and former prisoners; we are hard-working farmers and middle-class city-dwellers; we are well-known actresses, playwrights, journalists, authors; we are teachers, translators, security guards, taxi drivers. Some of us reside in the United States, France, Australia or another country, but the majority of us are from all the provinces and towns of Cambodia. Some of us are recognized civil parties to the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia; others are still yet civil party applicants; some may become witnesses. While some of us are neither of these.

We, the AKRVC, would like to acknowledge the technical assistance provided by the Center for Justice & Reconciliation in registering us as an association and in facilitating our involvement (directly or indirectly) in the ECCC. Until our website is fully functioning (and also in the Khmer language), if you would like to become a AKRVC member or an ECCC civil party, please visit www.cjr-cambodia.org or contact Mr. SOK Leang at sokleang@cjr-cambodia.org or Ms. MORM Sokly (AKRVC president, also playwright and actress of Breaking the Silence, inter alia) at president@akrvc.org, Ms. Theary C. SENG at thearyseng@akrvc.org, a member of and founding advisor to the AKRVC and representative of the Civil Party of Orphans Class.

Many of us came together as a result of the Justice & Reconciliation public forums facilitated by Ms. Theary beginning in 2006 till 2009 and Civil Party Seminars facilitated by both Mr. Leang and Ms. Theary beginning in 2007 till 2009—engaging victims (and perpetrators) from all 24 provinces of Cambodia and generously funded by Diakonia, German Development Service (DED) and The MacArthur Foundation.

The Association of Khmer Rouge Victims in Cambodia (AKRVC) is independent of any political or religious affiliation and is officially registered with the Ministry of Interior (No. 2880 SCN, 24 December 2009), the second victims’ association to be registered and the first to be actively functioning in Cambodia.

(We have worked with the only other MOI-registered victims’ association based in France and hope to continue working and coordinating activities with them, as well as with any other groups and associations to be registered. We believe in inclusiveness and the unity of our voices as victims and are deeply distressed and saddened by the ‘competition’ or ‘hierarchy of victims’ and the ‘Super-Victim’ status we have encountered, and work to strongly dissuade this unproductive mentality.)

Click this link to download in Khmer text

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For more information and photos, please visit us at: akrvc.org.

CALL FOR PAPERS – EUROSEAS CONFERENCE, GÖTEBORG, Aug. 2010

“Victims, survivors, mourners, re-constructors: southeast Asian responses to massive social destruction”

Convenors: Anne Yvonne GUILLOU (CNRS, France) and Silvia VIGNATO (Univ. Milano-Bicocca, Italy)

Contacts: anne.guillou@vjf.cnrs.fr; silvia.vignato@unimib.it

Deadlines: February, 15, 2010: submission of the abstract and short résumé.
In the last decades Southeast Asia has experienced civil wars as well as major “natural” disasters (typhoons, earthquakes and tsunamis). This panel focusses on the aftermath of such massive collective deaths, especially seen in the long period. We would like to examine what happens after environmental, social and human destruction has happened with its load of psychological, physical and social suffering. More precisely, we are interested in how Southeast Asian societies live after catastrophes, what processes they go through in order to make sense of the disaster and to cope with the destruction.

This panel invites participation of scholars from different disciplines studying various scales and fields of suffering and repairing suffering. Nevertheless, we would like to call the applicants’ attention onto a few common themes.

Social resilience.

Outside or beyond international humanitarian aid or national policies, each local society sets up specific “devices” which aim at coping with trauma engendered by exposure to catastrophes: practices of mourning and other techniques of symbolic reconstruction. We call such devices “social resilience”.

Categories of suffering

Social units and individual bodies and psychisms are unequally hurt when a catastrophe occurs. We are interested in analyzing the dialectic between disrupture and continuity in social and individual lives, which is expressed by defining “trauma” and its remedies. Different uses of the category of “trauma” are liable to unveil sometimes contrasting definitions of normality. We assume that conceptualizing “trauma” is as important as conceptualizing “violence” or “victims”, and that in both cases southeast Asia can help general reflexion on such themes.

Policies of memory

Many mourning/remembering actions are being decided now in Southeast Asia. Who decides how, when, and by what means a war or a natural disaster are to be remembered ? How does it affect the planning of a future time ?

Helping and being helped

Nowadays, countries are never alone in managing their dead and violated citizens. Besides, even the meaning of notions such as citizenship and nationality must be questioned when international help steps in (or is forbidden to step in). We think the temporary or permanent presence of international helping structures has to be seen in its political and social role for the future generations.

We hope that a better picture of Southeast Asian social resilience stemming from this panel will set good ground for a permanent research group, liable to be funded by national and European agencies.