Devastated vision(s): The Khmer Rouge scopic regime in Cambodia

Art Journal

Volumn 62, Issue 1, 2003, Pages 66-81

  Ly, Boreth ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 60949645908     PISSN: 00043249     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/00043249.2003.10792149     Document Type: Article

References (30)

1. the trials were covered, though less thoroughly, in the New York Times, January 5, 1999.
2. Also see Judy Ledgerwood, ed., Cambodia Emerges from the Past: Eight Essays (De Kalb, Ill.: Southeast Asian Publications, Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Northern Illinois University, 2002).
3. Constantin Floros, Gustav Mahler: The Symphonies (Portland, Ore.: Amadeus Press, 1985), 109-31. The text of the fourth movement comes from the collection Des Knaben Wunderhorn.
4. Sir Isaiah Berlin discussed very eloquently the idea of utopia in histories in his essay "The Sense of Reality," in The Sense of Reality (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1997), 1-40.
5. I found out many years later that King Norodom Sihanouk did return briefly in 1976, but not as king, to attend his mother's funeral. His Majesty officially returned to Cambodia in 1991. See Milton E. Osborne, Sihanouk: Prince of Light, Prince of Darkness (Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press, 1994).
6. Boreth Ly, "Storytelling on Stone: Patterns of Visual Narrative Intention on Ancient Khmer (Cambodian) Temples" (Berkeley: University of California at Berkeley, 2002).
7. David Chandler, Voices from S-21: Terror and History in Pol Pot's Secret Prison (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), vii.
8. For further discussion of Tuol Sleng Prison, see Moira Roth, "Obdurate History: Dinh Q. Lê, the Vietnam War, Photography, and Memory," Art Journal 60, no. 2 (summer 2001): 38-53.
9. Judy Ledgerwood, "The Cambodian Tuol Sleng Museum of Genocide Crimes: National Narrative," Museum of Anthropology 21, no. 1 (spring-summer 1997): 85.
10. Chea Soheacheath, "Keeping the New Year Ghosts Happy," Phnom Penh Post (April 13-29, 1999): 14.
11. "Celebrated Sculptor: Im Chan (1943-2000)," Phnom Penh Post (February 18-March 2, 2000): 3.
12. Chet Chan teaches traditional Khmer painting at the School of Plastic Arts in Phnom Penh. See Ingrid Muan and Daravuth Ly, The Reamker: Painted by Chet Chan (Phnom Penh: Reyum Institute of Arts and Culture, 2002).
13. Paul Verlaine, One Hundred and One Poems by Paul Verlaine, trans. Norman R. Shapiro (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 78. "Il pleure dans mon coeur . . ." is from "Romances sans paroles" (translation mine).
14. Vann Nath, A Cambodian Prison Portrait: One Year in the Khmer Rouge's S-21 (Bangkok: White Lotus Press, 1998), 24-26.
15. The paintings from this series are reproduced in Vann Nath (see note 16). See also Moira Roth, "Oan Hon (Lost Souls): Lament for Cambodia, Vietnam, Hiroshima, Kosovo, and East Timor, May-September 1999," Performance Research 6, no. 1: 108-16.
16. The distinction between description and narration is addressed by Svetlana Alpers in her essay "Describe or Narrate?: A Problem in Realistic Representation," New Literary History 8 (1976-77): 15-41.
17. The term "scopic regime" is borrowed from Martin Jay's essay "Scopic Regimes of Modernity," Vision and Visuality, ed. Hal Foster (Seattle: Bay Press, 1988). 3-28.
18. It is more accurate to characterize these Khmer Rouge plans as provisional, because the regime's ideal vision began to disintegrate as the organization weakened. See Michael Vickery, Cambodia 1975-1982 (Chiang Mai, Thailand: Silk Worm Press, 1984).
19. Pol Pot's real name was Salot Sar. See David Chandler, Brother Number One: A Political Biography of Pol Pot (Boulder: West View Press, 1992).
20. John Marston, "Metaphors of the Khmer Rouge," Cambodian Culture since 1975: Homeland and Exile, ed. May M. Ehihara et al. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994), 107.
21. Ingrid Muan and Daravuth Ly, The Legacy of Absence: A Cambodian Story (Phnom Penh: Reyum Gallery Press, 2001), 13.
22. Sara Colma et al., "Arrest," in The Killing Fields, ed. Chris Riley and Douglas Niven (Santa Fe: Twin Palms Publishers, 1996). 94-101.
23. Allan DeSouza, Dinh Q. Lê: The Headless Buddha (Los Angeles: Center for Photographic Studies, 1998), 4-5.
24. Alec Wilkinson, "A Changed Vision of God," New Yorker (January 24, 1994): 52-68.
25. Tran T. Kim-Trang, "Ekleipsis," from the Blindness Series (video), 1988.
26. See also Irene V. Small, "Blind Spot: The Video Art of Tran T. Kim-Trang," Art Asia Pacific 30 (2001): 52-67.
27. James E. Young, The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993). Dinh Q. Lê was born in 1969 in Ha Tien, on the border between Vietnam and Cambodia. He experienced the Khmer Rouge invasion of his village in 1979.
28. See Roth, "Obdurate History," 39-55.
29. For more information about the relationship between color and ritual, see Leedom Lefferts, Jr., "The Ritual Importance of the Mundane," Expedition 38, no. 1 (1996): 37-50.
30. The annual day of remembrance is May 20. See Annette Marcher and Yin Soeum, "Will They Find Peace," Phnom Penh Post (March 17-30, 2000): 6.