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Culture crisis

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While the latest Covid-19 spikes in Southeast Asia have complicated plans to finally begin boosting international tourism, some countries are still pushing forward. Thailand has announced it is sticking with its 1 July opening of Phuket to vaccinated foreign tourists, a scheme it hopes will draw nearly 130,000 tourists by September. Indonesia is similarly planning a July reopening of Bali and several other tourist hotspots. In Malaysia, meanwhile, a new round of lockdowns has prompted a $9.7 billion stimulus, with significant funds earmarked for the hard-hit tourism sector.

For those countries where tourism makes up a significant portion of the GDP, the impact of the past 18 months has been staggering. Tourism is the second biggest industry in Cambodia, after the garment sector, and typically makes up about 12 per cent of the GDP—employing hundreds of thousands. Tourism revenue last year dropped 80 per cent, netting just over $1 billion compared with nearly $5 billion in 2019

Among those suffering badly are Cambodia’s artists, artisans and arts organisations—all of which depend heavily on outside visitors. Unlike the more easily quantifiable metrics of visitors to Angkor Wat or beaches, however, measuring the impact on the arts has been difficult.

‘Our temples, dances, rituals, festivals, architecture, and visual expressions are all cultural assets that help us Cambodians identify who we are. However, the cultural and creative industries are not yet appreciated as a major financial contributor to Cambodia’s economy because our sector is considered fringe to other industries like tourism,’ Huot Dara, Chief Executive of Phare Performing Social Enterprise, said in a statement.

Dara, along with representatives of Cambodian Living Arts (CLA), Bophana Audiovisual Resource Center, and other leading arts organisations, are now launching an association to advocate for Cambodia’s creative industries. The membership based alliance is open to both individual artists and formal or informal organisations. Armed with two years of funding from Unesco, they’re seeking, first, to survey Cambodia’s landscape of artists and artisans—a vast, informal sector about which little comprehensive data exists.

For the past year, Cambodia’s arts organisations—as those elsewhere—have responded to the strictures of the pandemic in creative ways. CLA’s Bangsokol: A Requiem for Cambodia, a multidisciplinary production by internationally renowned filmmaker Rithy Panh and composer Him Sophy that had previously toured five continents, was expanded into an ambitious virtual festival last December. In March, Phare circus artists performed continuously for more than 24 hours, drawing hundreds of thousands of global viewers as they sought to break a Guinness World Record.

‘I could not properly move my body and muscles,’ circus performer Choub Kanha told VOA. ‘I was exhausted.’ Innovative as their efforts have been, artists and organisations are likely to struggle with the fallout of the pandemic and tourism loss for years to come.

From the archives

The silence of 1976

By Emma Larkin

Meet Chair Guy, the subject of a black-and-white photograph taken on the morning of 6 October 1976, in Bangkok, Thailand. Though Chair Guy is smartly dressed—in a safari shirt and what appear to be matching trousers, neatly ironed—he is barefoot. The expression on his face is impossible to read: it could be anger, exhilaration or nothing more than the result of physical exertion. The camera has caught him mid-action as he leaps up and raises a metal folding chair over his head, preparing to bring it down with full force upon a dead body hanging from a tree.

A crowd of onlookers form a neat semicircle around the scene, as if they are watching some kind of outdoor circus performance. Most of them are casually dressed young men; their expressions are mixed, but a number of them appear to be smiling. One small boy’s face is lit up with what looks like a broad grin of sheer delight. Clearly visible in the background are the austere facade of the Supreme Court and the golden spires of the Grand Palace.

Though nearly forty-five years have passed, Thailand remains haunted by this image, and by Chair Guy.

Read the full review here, which was recently named a finalist for the Kukula Award for excellence in nonfiction book reviewing.

Watch it:

From 4-13 June, the Burma Spring Benefit Film Festival offers dozens of film screenings and panel discussions. A single pass (suggested donation $30) buys access to every film and talk, with the funds distributed to grassroots organisations working to restore civilian rule

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