Nov 8th, 2007 by Jinja
Here’s prolific photographer Vandy Rattana at Sala Arts taking some pictures at the opening of ‘Flow’. Tonight he has his own show at New Art Gallery, ‘Chess’.
More about Khmer Chess? Click for rules and computer game. Link
More art stuff? Try ‘What’s On‘.
Tags:photo,photograpy,cambodia,khmer
Nov 7th, 2007 by Jinja
Painted signboards are still in use in Cambodia today, and during the more austere socialist era of the 1980s, they were one of the more effective tools for public media.
Today they are mainly used by nonprofits and the government. (Businesses use more slick photo billboards.) This particular sign bears the style and signature of former comic artist Or Yuthea.
Above: try not to fish with a car battery strapped to your back… not only is it bad practice but you can electrocute yourself pretty easily!
At their best these signs can be fun pop art. Signboards by artists of lesser skill and with a more complicated message don’t differ much from centrally planned propaganda of prior years.
Nov 6th, 2007 by Jinja
Jason Rosette, the muscle behind Cambofest has set up a new video portal: CAMBOTUBE.
I highly recommend Dean’s ‘Moto Cambodia’/Commute video.
Puts the podracing scenes in Star Wars to shame. http://www.cambotube.com/play.php?vid=93
Nov 5th, 2007 by Jinja
“Plus ca change, in some ways, but yes, the city has become a teeming metropolis, which it never was before. “… “I miss the almost somnambulistic Provencal quality that the town had in the 1960s, when Phnom Penh was probably the prettiest city in Southeast Asia.”
Go and read the full interview at New Mandala: Link
New buildings are sprouting like mushrooms, but you can still find oxcarts ambling down Monivong or Street 178 selling clay pots. I give it another year before they’re banned. When the building boom/housing bubble will pop? One can only wonder.
One urban development people seem genuinely enthused about is the new fountains and lights around the Independence Monument. Last Sunday saw a traffic jam of onlookers checking it out.
(Beats the lurid purple floodlamps briefly trained on the building a few years back.)
Tags:cambodia,khmer,urbanization
Nov 4th, 2007 by Jinja
November is NaBloPoMo – National Blog Posting Month, an offshoot of NaNoWriNo – National Novel Writing month.* I’m going to see if I can keep kosher by posting small daily bits and blurbs.
Early last year, I was off to Malaysia for a conference. I pinged BlogsMalaysia.com to see if anyone was game for a blog meetup.
Small world; almost two years later, Webbed Feet Web Log and Footsteps in the Mirror are both up for 2007 Weblog awards.
It’s an interesting assemblage; for topicality’s sake, I think Ko Htike’s Prosaic Collection is also well worth a look. Vote “early and often”: http://2007.weblogawards.org/polls/best-asian-blog-1.php
*”National”? Both gigs are pretty well international by now.
Postscript: numerous votes from the same IP addresses have been deleted from the final vote count. This is tricky question; what if they are multiple users from the same internet cafe? (Of course, if they are 100 users, then I’d be a little skeptical.)
Jinja
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