This time around, we’re setting our sights on the bustling Phnom Penh, and its multifaceted creatives who are driving a new cultural consciousness for the Kingdom. With a population exceeding 2.2 million, the city stands as the nation’s largest hub. It draws people from every corner of the country, whether for work, leisure, access to essential services, or for artistic exploration.

In this episode, Globe Editor-in-Chief Andrew Haffner and his co-host Dy Sereyvoleak explore Phnom Penh’s role in shaping Cambodia’s contemporary culture, focusing on the city’s role in bringing art, music and other creative pursuits to the eyes, ears, and minds of the public. It may not rival global cultural giants like New York or Paris, but it undoubtedly plays a pivotal role in shaping popular taste and media in Cambodia.

The duo take a look at Phnom Penh’s evolving infrastructure supporting artistic endeavours, from art and music to various other lanes of creative craftsmanship. In the process, we hear from Sok Visal, founder of the music label and film production studio KlapYaHandz, and Yean Reaksmey, an art history lecturer, curator and critic. They also caught up with Sievphin Chong, better known as his alter ego Peace Chong, an independent musician and digital culture creator. All share some unique perspectives on Cambodian culture evolution.

Join us for the season – and maybe series – finale as we navigate through the city’s vibrant art scene and its role in sustaining Cambodia’s cultural ecosystem.

The post Anakut podcast finale: Forging Cambodia’s creative renaissance appeared first on Southeast Asia Globe.

On an unbearably hot day in April, Kong Mok pantomimed wrapping a material around his neck with one hand.

Mok, 67, was on duty as a guard at the ancient Koh Ker temple complex in northern Cambodia, which was inscribed on UNESCO’s World Heritage List earlier this month. As a small group watched, Mok mimicked how he believed looters used some form of explosive to break off the valuable heads from stone statues before transporting them out of the country.

He slowly moved his other hand around his neck before shooting his arms out to both sides. Bang – no more head. 

Throughout this year, far from the heat of Koh Ker, the U.S. federal government coordinated the return of illegally looted Cambodian relics from the Denver Art Museum and the private collections of billionaires as a wider reckoning in the art world has pressured collectors across the globe to give back pieces of dubious provenance.

Cambodia received 13 antiquities from the U.S. in March. Some of these had been looted from the Koh Ker complex in the grinding decades of strife that followed the Khmer Rouge regime, which collapsed in 1979 but waged insurgency until the late 1990s. These works included Hindu-era relics such as a warrior from a set of nine statues depicting a battle from the Mahabharata epic, a sandstone figure of the war god Skanda riding on a peacock and an enormous embodiment of the god Ganesha.

As foreign governments and law enforcement agencies track pilfered artefacts in their own jurisdictions, Cambodian researchers are investigating for themselves. Their work is part of a broader, often behind-the-scenes effort in the country to restore a historical legacy sold off to international dealers such as the late antiquities collector and accused smuggler Douglas Latchford.

The inquisitive group who spoke with Mok had come on behalf of the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts with a twofold purpose – to patch together Koh Ker’s history with local narratives, however incomplete, and to track down missing pieces of ancient sculptures. 

At Koh Ker, researcher Tek Soklida filmed the interview with Mok on her phone as another member of the team sat nearby, jotting details in a notebook. Senior researcher Chhoun Kunthea led the interview and interpreted for Bradley J. Gordon, a U.S. attorney representing the Ministry of Culture and working on the project. 

For Soklida, the work wasn’t just a way for her to help others understand the country’s history. She felt the sculpted figures were a way her ancestors intended to communicate with the future – in other words, with her.

“A statue is not just a stone; it’s an achievement from my ancestors, who made it,” she said. The icons show her “how hard they worked at that time, even bringing the stones to the temple and carving it into a human or animal statue to show their descendants.”

A first-time visitor to Koh Ker might see only toppled stone carvings and collapsed chamber walls, lying nearby a massive pyramid erected in the 10th century. But the research team, which has been studying the temples for years, envision the outlines of what these places looked like when they were first built. 

Assisted by other historians and archeologists, the team has created original drawings and maps of the area, scrutinised photos found on Latchford’s laptop, and gathered historical details through interviews with neighbouring communities.

In their on-site interviews, the team often uses photographs to help jog residents’ memories. Now, with the recent returns, the women have a new set of photos. Before moving on to another area of Koh Ker, Kunthea pulled up a picture of the Ganesha statue, which had been presented earlier at a celebration in Phnom Penh. 

Mok laughed, surprised to see the statue he remembered from childhood. He hadn’t yet heard about its return. 

Later, the team hiked to the back of the central structure in the complex, a seven-tiered pyramid standing more than 35 metres tall. There, Kunthea found another guard with whom she had previously spoken. Often, the team gradually gets to know people before meeting again with more explicit questions about looting. 

“The information, it is not easy to get it … We try step by step to get more and more,” she said. “The questions [have to] be careful. Sometimes it’s not direct, a little bit around, and then you get to the main point of what you want to know.”

The guard, 68-year old Run Ran, suspected he was one of the oldest living villagers from Koh Ker. 

Around 1980 he worked to clear the temple grounds for a time under the direction of Ta Mok, a senior leader of the Khmer Rouge nicknamed “the Butcher” for overseeing mass killings. After living near and working at the site for many years, Ran was sure he had a connection with the temple in his past lives. 

The guard told the researchers he remembered seeing the complex’s 10th-century dancing Shiva statue when it still had three intact faces of its original five. Shattered into more than 10,000 pieces, the seven-tonne piece is now undergoing restoration in Siem Reap. French archeologists had moved two of the heads and some other fragments to Phnom Penh before the 1970s. And while a third face was shattered before looters got it, the remaining two heads were likely looted during the early 1990s and are still missing.

After Kunthea tried to pin down when exactly Ran had seen the statue with three heads, which would help in understanding the timeline of the looting, the women were ready to move on to Koh Ker village, where they hoped to talk with more elders. 

The temple guard lamented before they left that those most knowledgeable about the statues had already died. 

Even when foreign museums have returned pieces to Cambodia, such institutions don’t always offer up all of the information or documentation that could shed light on the journey the piece took, according to U.S. attorney Gordon. Without more official information, he said details from fragmented interviews, such as the ones gathered by the team at Koh Ker, are key to tracing the supply chains of looted relics. 

“There’s a very small number of experts out there on Cambodia,” he explained. “They have their theories and they are doing their research, but we’re still at a point that we haven’t been able to connect the dots yet. We’re getting lots of individual pieces of the past. The question is: what does it all add up to? Why was this here?”

Despite the rounds of returns, many pieces are still missing or outside the country. A standing female deity on display at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art is thought to be originally from the Koh Ker. 

Back in the village far from the galleries of Manhattan, the team of Cambodian researchers spoke to some older women sitting under a wooden home raised on stilts. 

Yeam Koun and her niece Deb Sem, both 63, remembered seeing the set of nine warrior statues before several were looted. Sem said she remembered the area because a family member was bitten by a tiger there. At least one of these statues has still yet to be identified and brought back to Cambodia. The women suggested the team meet up with another older man in the village who might know more.

The research team stopped at a few more places in search of the village elder. They found his son-in-law, who told them to try looking for the man at a nearby pagoda. The team wasn’t able to track him down, and decided to end their research for the day. 

But spirits were not low. The team made new connections and dug up new details. Plus, they had already received a tip with names of Thai families who may have received the missing looted dancing Shiva heads. 

The team plans to travel to Thailand this year to follow the trail of the heads. Though plenty of investigation remains ahead, efforts such as theirs are slowly, finally bringing home the lost relics of Cambodia.

The post As looted Angkor relics return, Cambodian researchers uncover history appeared first on Southeast Asia Globe.

Hundreds of headless deities sit in rows in a warehouse in Siem Reap, lit by buzzing fluorescent lights and a rim of small windows. 

The largest statue, nearly five metres tall, looks down at the rest. Or, rather, it would look down if it still had its head. Five heads, in this case. 

Stone restorers and archeologists have spent more than a decade piecing back together the monumental statue of the Hindu god Shiva from the Koh Ker temple complex in northern Cambodia, which was inscribed on UNESCO’s World Heritage List earlier this month. The seven-tonne, 10th century work depicts a 10-armed Shiva in a dancing pose – but over long years of turmoil during the country’s civil conflict in the 1980s and 90s, looters gradually smashed the stone deity into more than 10,000 pieces.

Some larger fragments, including two of the heads, had been preserved in Phnom Penh before the 1970s. A third head was shattered before looters got to it, and the final two looted faces have yet to be found.

This year, the world has shone a spotlight on the return of looted relics to Cambodia, with federal indictments in the U.S. preceding returns from the Denver Art Museum and wealthy private collectors such as Netscape founder Jim Clark. The arrivals in the country met a joyous response, though much of the fanfare stopped at the point of repatriation. 

But now, even intact objects require deep historical research to fully understand their place in Khmer history. And the quiet restoration of the dancing Shiva by a team of French and Cambodian experts demonstrates the often-tedious, highly difficult process of piecing the country’s looted history back together.

The shattered statue now stands behind the gates of Angkor Conservation, an office of the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts in the temple tourism hub of Siem Reap. The facility houses thousands of ancient statues in various stages of repair. Its compound is closed to the public and flanked by “No Photography” signs. 

Hang Chansophea, head of the collection at Angkor Conservation, works on inventory and documentation on the project. She labels and maintains digital records of the various fragments, creating what she likens to a person’s ID card for each piece. 

On a hot day in April, she sifted through a styrofoam tray of pieces, some mere millimetres wide, trying to find connections. Eye drops, she said, helped her get through eight-hour days of staring at minuscule fragments.

“Sometimes I’m angry with looters,” she said. “Why do they try to break [the statues]? Because this is the heritage of the nation, the heritage for all.”

By the end of the Angkorian period in the 14th century, the statue had also fallen, breaking into a few large fragments. 

The toppled statue was in relatively good condition until the 20th century, said Éric Bourdonneau, an archeologist and historian from the French School of the Far East. He’s leading the restoration project in collaboration with Cambodian authorities. 

“Ninety percent of the fragments were still inside the [Kraham Temple] tower,” Bourdonneau said. “Still, you have some hands, some fragments that were moved at different periods of history outside the tower because of some villager or some child playing with it. It’s not surprising that you have some fragments moving.”

Between the 1920s and 1960s, French archeologists moved some large pieces of the dancing Shiva, such as hands and heads, to the National Museum in Phnom Penh. Bourdonneau described the movement of many pieces during the colonial period as problematic, with historians and archeologists from France and elsewhere believing they were “the best people to tell the history of other people.” 

It’s unlikely that statues from Koh Ker were taken during the Khmer Rouge’s reign from 1975-79. But in the late 1960s and early ‘70s, and then again in the ‘80s and ‘90s, looters descended on the temples of Koh Ker. Their forays were fueled by the demands of wealthy Western art dealers and curators, capitalising on the chaos in Cambodia at the time. 

In a shift from earlier times, looters of the late 20th century sought to evade the law by cutting the link between the objects and their origins.

Antiquities dealers such as the late Douglas Latchford – a prolific collector of Cambodian relics who was criminally charged before his death with smuggling looted artefacts – made use of this tactic of misdirection. Latchford had claimed a massive, three-tonne Ganesha statue he sold was not the original but merely a replica.

The dancing Shiva was one of the last statues in Koh Ker to be looted. While vandals absconded with other nearby pieces, the Shiva remained, possibly because of its large size and because its remaining two faces were worn and in bad condition. But in the early 1990s, looters finally lopped off those faces. In order to break off the heads intact, researchers believe the looters drove chisels lower down on the statue’s body, shattering the torso in the process.

Finally, some years after this mortal blow, there were throngs of local and foreign tourists weaving through the archeological site, likely stepping on stone fragments and broken pieces of history. 

The steady crumbling of the dancing Shiva dragged on until restoration work began in 2012. 

The project is more complex than almost any other restoration project in the world, Bourdonneau said.

“It’s extremely unusual,” he said. “Of course it’s not rare that you have many examples where you have to work with some dozens of fragments or even hundreds. But here, we have collected … more than 10,000 fragments.”

The restoration is made even more challenging because about 80% of the surface of the figure is smooth, with no designs to help the team.

After the excavation and a study of the found pieces were complete, the team spent  2019 connecting the largest pieces of the torso.

“At the beginning, when we put all the pieces on the table and looked around, it was hard for us to start. From what way? From what point?” said Chhan Chamroeun, deputy director of safeguarding and conservation of ancient monuments with the Ministry of Culture.

In their first phase, the team used digital scanning of the project to create a 3D model. A centre at Heidelberg University in Germany even used this to develop an interactive puzzle.

But the monumental task of connecting the pieces has been done almost entirely by hand. Bourdonneau said technology, including artificial intelligence, is not advanced enough to assist in putting the pieces back together as there aren’t enough regularities in how the fragments were broken off. 

“I won’t say that maybe in the future it won’t be possible, but for now, there’s nothing better than the human brain,” he said.

Some pieces remain missing but a basic shape has taken form along an internal scaffolding. This skeleton for the dancing Shiva may help put it back on its feet as it was in the 10th century

“As it is broken in so many parts and as it is so huge and so heavy, one real challenge of this kind of restoration is to design the metallic structure to make it possible to have the statue standing up,” Bourdonneau said.

The group plans to complete the majority of the restoration by the beginning of 2025 and hopes to eventually display the statue in Koh Ker in a new pavilion north of its original site. Bourdonneau hopes to keep the local community connected to the statue and has invited residents throughout the restoration to see its progress. 

Despite the enormity of their task, the stone restorers and archeologists working on the project seem somewhat unfazed by what can appear to an outsider as a gruelling process. They see their work, largely unseen by the public, as part of a larger mission for Cambodia.

Asked about his reaction to recently finding the right location of an important missing piece, Chamroeun said he felt happier than if he had been gifted “a box of beer.”

But amidst his muted responses was an earnest commitment to the job at hand.  

“If we just have the experience or we have the knowledge we learn from different fields to restore this object – it’s not enough if we don’t have our heart,” he said. “It’s not just for us in this generation, this is for our country and for our next generation.”

The post Five heads, 10,000 pieces: Restoring the dancing Shiva appeared first on Southeast Asia Globe.

As a child, Masters spent long hours just looking at the river near his parents’ house in former Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo, wondering where people and their stories came from. 

Some 40 years later, he became the author of one of those long-dreamed stories.

In his first novel, Charlot, Masters dives into the personal struggle of famed comedian Charlie Chaplin as he tries to come to terms with the two sides of his personality while on a journey in then-French Indochina in 1936. In Charlot, a fictionalised retelling of real-life events, Chaplin sheds his “Little Tramp” persona to find his own voice and a new sense of humanity amid Cambodia’s political turmoil. 

“This novel is a testament to the power of storytelling and the power of narrative to connect people and create meaningful connections,” Masters said.

Masters worked as a writer in the TV, film and radio industries for well over a decade before moving to Cambodia in 2010. There, in 2013, he started working on a TV comedy series, “Love9” for BBC Media Action, and began researching Chaplin’s trip to the region.

“We were developing a character for the show, and the team suggested the name ‘Charley’, to be modelled on ‘Saklo’, a Khmer corruption of Charlot, (which was) the French name for Charlie Chaplin,” Masters told the Globe. “I soon discovered that Chaplin was still a significant influence on comedians in Cambodia, who often sported his signature toothbrush moustache. … But more than that, I found out he’d actually visited Indochina in 1936 on an extended vacation after the release of ‘Modern Times’.”

Masters sought to examine who Chaplin was in this pivotal period of the comedian’s career – that of a middle-aged man, then 47, on the verge of being eclipsed by technology. Chaplin had pledged never to produce another film, but during his trip to Indochina, something changed, pivoting him from silent movies to talkies, from social comedy to political satire. 

The fictionalised account of burgeoning doubt in Chaplin’s life may strike readers as Masters’ method of describing the normal progression of a midlife crisis. Certainly, many people who thought they had discovered their true selves by their 40s are hit by a wave of unexpected upheaval that brings buried identity issues to the surface.

Masters was almost exactly Chaplin’s age when he decided to grab his laptop and write this story during the 2020 Covid pandemic. Beginning with a 2,000-word screenplay, Masters quickly expanded upon his character’s history, blending fact with fiction to create the novel.

A reader of Charlot could easily wonder about an unspoken link between Chaplin’s and Masters’ lives. While Chaplin was moving from silent movies to “talkies”, Masters is transitioning from being a multi-awarded screenwriter to a novelist. 

The author told the Globe more about his journey.

Before this book, had you ever thought of becoming an author/novelist?

After my childhood in Congo, I moved back to the U.K. and really loved English literature. I got very involved in theatre and studied English literature at the University of Cambridge. I wasn’t really thinking about writing novels at that time, but I certainly started playing with my writing and imagination. I remember starting to write my first novel in the back of my physics book when I was about 12. I don’t recall having ever finished it. 

I then grew more into screenwriting and in 1999, my partner and I set up a screenwriting training programme in Ghana, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Sierra Leone, where we worked with new writers, new voices and making tonnes of short films.

I did my Masters in screenwriting, but mainly it was just this fascination of listening to people’s stories in different places and trying to think about what to do with all that raw material. You know, as an expert, you’re exposed to lots of weird and wacky character situations, and you try to turn those into stories.

Do you somehow personally relate to the life of Charlie Chaplin? Why this deep interest in him? Do you feel that your lives are somehow similar?

Obviously, my life doesn’t connect with Charlie Chaplin at all. He’s a complete genius, but I think there are things that artists and writers struggle with, as he did to a certain degree. 

One of the first memories I have about Chaplin’s work is being back in the U.K. after years in Congo and sitting in a room with an eight-metre projector showing Charlie Chaplin in “Mabel at the Wheel.” To be honest, I hadn’t really thought about it that much until I was in Cambodia a few decades later.

That time, I showed my daughter some of Chaplin’s films and she absolutely adored them, even though she’s a YouTuber-kind of generation.

I then started reading more and more about Chaplin’s life, and I noticed that lots has been done about the early period in his life, but far less about his later life when he was in his middle age.

And obviously, I was getting to my middle age as well and thinking, “Well, what are the kind of questions that artists and filmmakers and writers grapple with?”

People didn’t want the Tramp to speak, but they also needed him to speak because that’s what technology was demanding, and in the end, he had to “kill” the Tramp in order to speak in his own voice in “The Great Dictator.” But after that, his later films and his last few films, you know he was exiled from Hollywood. He was pretty much chucked out.

So that process of struggling with your voice, firstly, trying to find out what your voice is, not trusting your voice, and having all of that impostor syndrome is what I relate the most with Chaplin’s life. 

So now, with this in mind, how did you unfold each chapter of your book? 

It started off as a screenplay. I had written this story all the way through to the end in the form of a screenplay. I thought I’d come and paste that into a Word document and just add some adjectives to make it more fun.

Turned out it wasn’t as easy as that. I obviously had to transpose it from a screenplay into a novel. 

I didn’t want to write another of his biographies. There were already too many of those around. So it was a bit of a challenge to create enough of a fictional story that wouldn’t impact the biographical truth of his life.

But, fortunately, I already had the story in screenplay format. So, when it came to writing the novel, some of it felt very mechanical. It was like I was just transposing scenes into chapters. 

Are you planning to write more books?

I’d love to. Although I’m still writing screenplays at the moment.

My great-grandfather grew up and worked a lot in Congo and he self-published some novels. I was quite interested in talking with my grandfather about these novels and possibly transposing them into a new book. But that would be more of a kind of introspective piece if you like.

I’m also halfway through a novel, which is more about expat life in Cambodia at the moment. A lot lighter and fun and on the historical fiction side of things.

But first, I’m kind of waiting to see how Charlot goes.

What kind of impact are you hoping this book will have on its readers?

Well, I hate that the love for Chaplin is slowly fading away. I’d love to see people get into Chaplin’s work again.

I’d love people to really engage with this book and get some takeaways from the journey with a character they thought they knew, but they’ve learned something more about. 

It would also be fascinating to see it made into a movie because I think that’s when it really comes alive.

Do you have any advice for aspiring writers?

Don’t doubt yourself. So I’ve been writing for a long time since I started writing this novel. The advice is, don’t censor yourself. Just have fun with what it is you’re trying to say and try and speak truthfully to it. 

* Charlot will be published in October by Monsoon Books. Read an excerpt here.

The post ‘Charlot’ in Cambodia: New novel explores Charlie Chaplin’s midlife crisis in French Indochina appeared first on Southeast Asia Globe.

‘Look at us,’ snapped Phirath in disgust. ‘Asleep. Hungry. Spending what we earn on the poppy. In IndoChine it is opium which is the religion of the masses. We must wake our people up!’ ‘It will take more than comedians for the French to give up their pearl,’ said Charlie. His introduction to the politics of the protectorate — and in particularly the cruel reality of the rubber plantations in the French colony – had been a wake-up call. He found the clandestine discussions with his unlikely companion intoxicating and inspiring in equal measure.

‘How can they stop us? All around the country the signs are clear. Change is coming.’

‘Isn’t it always?’ replied Charlie, quickly regretting his easy Western cynicism.

‘We have Khmer newspaper. First time. Khmer graduates from the lycée. The Communist Party of Indochina. The time for acting is over. Now is the time for action.’

They crossed the grand threshold and into the cool dark interior. It was busy with porters and hawkers.

‘If we’re lucky our people compete to earn a few piastres as labourers or porters. But this is just scraps the French throw to us, a cruel competition which turns us against each other.’

He peered through the railings to the rear of the station, following the platforms until they extended beyond the main structure and into the open air. A handful of steam locomotives idled. Porters rushed with suitcases, trunks and cargo. Charlie joined him as the Battambang train arrived at the platform. The din and the smell of coal were an elixir. Steam hissed, whistles blew and there was a screech of brakes.

The two men exchanged glances. There was something in Charlie’s expression that made Phirath smile. He saw that familiar moment of inspiration, that first fizz of an artist’s creative neurons reacting to stimulus. ‘Tell me what you see.’

‘A railway scene, a set piece. After his arrival in the docks as a stowaway from America, this will be the moment that launches the story of Colonial Subjects.’

‘Explain.’

‘The Little Fellow’s unexpected departure on the train to Battambang in pursuit of the governor’s daughter.’

‘Go on. Maybe I can help?’

For an answer, Charlie lifted his camera to his eye and looked through the lens. The station was no longer the scene in front of Charlie. It was the studio backlot version of it, in black and white – an embryonic first vision of a Chaplin silent comedy.

ESTABLISHING SHOT: the main station’s grand art deco façade.

Tilting down a pillar on one side of the entrance to a sign which reads ‘Porters Required’.

There’s a queue in front of the sign – a line of labourers all wearing identical rice paddy hats. As we pan down the line, the pattern is broken by one lone derby hat – belonging to the indomitable Tramp. He’s beside Phirath in the line but Phirath shakes his head dismissively at the Tramp’s inappropriate choice of headwear. The Tramp looks first to Phirath, then to the porters to his left, clearly worried.

Before the Tramp can react, a French station master in uniform emerges and the line surges. In the hubbub the Tramp swaps his hat for his neighbour’s. A whistle blows and the labourers flatten against the station wall for inspection as the station master walks down the line. Until he reaches the derby on the unsuspecting Khmer labourer’s head. He’s yanked from the line and sent to the back. This starts a pantomime of hat swapping down the line as everyone tries to pass on the offensive derby. Distracted by

this, the labourers don’t notice as Phirath pulls the Tramp down to a crouch and they crawl through the station master’s legs to reach the front of the line. The Tramp taps the burly official on the shoulder and gestures inside with a sheepish grin. The station master’s bulging eyes narrow. He checks the line, then the odd couple at the front of it, perplexed. Undeterred, the Tramp pulls out a handkerchief and dusts down the station master’s lapels with a shrug and a grin, desperate to find favour. The station master bats him away irritably, but nods for them to go inside.

WIDE SHOT: a steam train idles inside the station. Smoke and steam billow.

CUT TO: The Tramp and Phirath wait on the platform. They are now dressed in the uniforms of official station porters complete with baggage trolleys. The Tramp picks up a discarded cigarette butt and puts it in his pocket for later as a train rumbles into the station billowing more smoke and steam. All the porters wait, eyeing the doors (and each other) – primed for customers. The first door opens and the Tramp is off, rushing over to the nearest door with his trolley, but another porter beats him to it and shoves his trolley aside. Further down the train another door opens. The Tramp runs over, but with the same outcome. He’s being outmanoeuvred by the more experienced porters.

At the second carriage, a porter has positioned himself to help an ELDERLY DOWAGER preparing to disembark. The Tramp taps him on the shoulder and gestures back to an irate-looking station master glaring in their direction. The porter gulps, worried – but while his back is turned, the Tramp kicks the porter’s trolley away and replaces it with his own. He doffs his derby for an elderly grand dame dowager and offers his hand to help her off the train. She hangs her hatbox on it, ignoring his gallantry.

But when he turns to put it on his trolley, the disgruntled porter has pushed the Tramp’s trolley down the platform and replaced it with his own. And gives the Tramp an angry glare. The Tramp is livid. They push and shove each other’s trolleys, ramming each other out of the way and shaking their fists, until they realise that Phirath has snuck through and is now helping the grand dame dowager with her baggage. The trunks and cases are piled precariously on his trolley.

That’s when a poodle runs through their legs. The argument is forgotten as the Tramp sees again the governor’s daughter beside the governor, approaching from the end of the platform. She looks horrified, hand up to her mouth and shouting:

INTERTITLE: Descartes! My darling Descartes!

Descartes, the poodle, has climbed to the top of the pile of the grand dame dowager’s luggage on Phirath’s trolley. The furious porter, feeling cheated by both the Tramp and Phirath, pulls the bottom case of the pile out to put on his trolley. The pile jolts lower, with Descartes on top. Each case is swiped out; each time a bewildered Descartes plunges lower and lower until finally it leaps into the Tramp’s arms.

The governor’s daughter is there in an instant and the Tramp hands over Descartes with a shy smile. A hand taps him on the shoulder. It’s the governor. He glares at the Tramp and shouts:

INTERTITLE: Put our luggage on the Battambang Train.

First Class.

He hands the Tramp a piastre coin. The Tramp grins.

CUT TO: the interior of the baggage compartment on the Battambang train. The Tramp whistles to himself, pleased as punch, as he stacks the last of the governor’s trunks on the train. Job done, he walks down the carriage, nodding to the French passengers, and doffing his derby to the ladies. He passes the governor’s daughter in her seat by an open window, her folded parasol and dog beside her. The heat is unbearable, and she fans herself. The Tramp doffs his derby, but she’s completely oblivious to him and stares instead at the bustle on the platform. But Descartes sees the Tramp. He barks once and then leaps out of the open window. The governor’s daughter shrieks. A handkerchief dabs her eyes, she looks to the Tramp, pleading. He nods gallantly, about to set off when the whistle hoots and the train begins to pull away …

As the train moves slowly out of the station, the Tramp sees Phirath holding Descartes. He grabs the parasol from beside the governor’s daughter and runs down the carriage, leaping over the connections to the next carriage, and the next, until he’s at the back of the train.

Phirath is running towards him, hands outstretched holding Descartes.

Closer and closer Phirath runs, but the train is building up speed. The Tramp holds out the parasol from the tip and hooks Descartes collar and pulls him into the train as Phirath leaps aboard. They clap each other on the back as the tracks rush away beneath them.

INTERTITLE: Tickets please!

Shock on their faces. They turn to see the ticket collector passing through the last carriage checking and punching tickets. He sees them at the back of the train holding a poodle and a parasol. His eyes narrow. The Tramp and Phirath look back, but the tracks are rushing away too fast now to jump.

The Tramp retrieves the piastre coin from the governor but Phirath shakes his head.

‘It’s OK for you,’ he says. ‘But the punishment for Khmer to ride train with no ticket is ten years. Ten years hard labour.’

The Tramp stares at him open-mouthed. ‘What?’ asks Phirath, confused.

‘What are you doing?’ the Tramp shouts, ignoring the ticket collector barreling towards them.

‘I don’t understand.’ ‘You’re … you’re talking!’ ‘So are you,’ quips Phirath.

Charlie’s sketch came to an abrupt halt with Phirath’s verbal intrusions. The filmmaker lowered his camera, annoyed. The younger actor looked at his idol with a sadness in his eyes.

‘What must be said cannot be limited to intertitles, to a few cards,’ he said, his voice firm but friendly.

‘Then I need to rework the scene. The Little Fellow doesn’t speak.’

‘Think of the power if he did.’

Charlie glared at him, but the hour started to chime on the big station clock.

‘I’m late.’ And he put his camera back into his bag and rushed through the station and into the twilight. He was already at the line of rickshaws when Phirath caught up with him.

‘Forgive me, Saklo,’ Phirath said, worried that his comment had

jeopardised their budding friendship and creative collaboration. There was a lot riding on it, although Charlie didn’t know that yet. Before Charlie could respond they saw the headlights of a police car enter the square and circle round in front of the station entrance, coming to a stop close to the line of rickshaws. The driver immediately stepped down and opened the rear passenger door. It was Le Favre.

‘Merde,’ muttered Phirath.

‘Do you think he wants my autograph?’ said Charlie. The captain’s persistence was beginning to rattle the filmmaker.

Phirath leant into Charlie so they wouldn’t be overheard and whispered, ‘It’s he who stopped Yen Bai in Vietnam. Forty men sentenced to death. Over nothing. And don’t be fooled by the governor either. He and the rubber plantation owners are in this exploitation together. They take what they like, do what they like. We will talk more, but now you must go.’

He told the rickshaw driver where to take his guest and Charlie climbed into the back. Before they pulled away, Phirath grabbed Charlie’s arm.

‘Saklo, in two days we perform in Battambang. It would be an honour if you would grace the performance with your presence. I must be honest with you. It is not just an honour. If you believe that we have the right to challenge the excesses of the French protectorate, your presence would … it would give us greater … visibility. The press follows you everywhere. Think about it, I beg you.’

Charlie barely had time to acknowledge this heartfelt request when the captain barreled over. Phirath turned his face away.

‘Was I not clear, Monsieur Chaplin?’ said the captain.

For a moment Charlie was caught between Phirath’s request and Le Favre’s irritating threats. But it was the manner of the Frenchman’s intrusion which made up his mind.

‘I’ll be there,’ he whispered to Phirath. ‘I promise.’

The young actor walked off into the darkness. Charlie turned his attention to Le Favre and offered his wrists to the policeman. ‘I wasn’t aware that taking a walk was a criminal offence, Sergeant Le Favre.’

‘It’s Captain Le Favre. As you well know.’

Le Favre trailed off when he caught sight of Phirath melting into the darkness beyond the nighttime street stalls. His eyes narrowed.

‘What do you want to achieve in Indochina, Mr Chaplin?

Perhaps it would be best if you would just speak your mind.’

Charlie thought about that for a moment, choosing his words carefully. It was an opportunity, and he knew it.

‘Very well,’ he replied eventually. ‘I am struggling to understand why Modern Times has been approved for screening in every country of the Far East and beyond, every single one, except for French Indochina? I believe that this was on your insistence. I am no threat, and neither are my motion pictures.’

Le Favre glared at the filmmaker. ‘Perhaps in America they are seen only as light entertainment. But it is the opinion of the governor that you and your films are dangerous to the status quo of this colony. In America you may be a celebrity, Monsieur Chaplin, but here you are a guest of French-administered Cambodia, and I would remind you once again to keep your Hollywood politics out of Indochina. Do I make myself clear?’

‘Is that a threat, Captain? Are you going to arrest me for

walking? Now that would be front page news.’

He dropped his wrists and eyeballed the captain. It was the Frenchman who looked away first.

‘Very well then. If you’ll excuse me, I’m late for the governor’s garden party.’

The post Book excerpt: ‘Charlot’ by Ian Masters appeared first on Southeast Asia Globe.

Once heralded as a potential blueprint for a more humane kind of incarceration, the penal colony on the island of Pulau Senang quickly became synonymous with chaos and bloodshed. In 1963, the detainees held on the island revolted, burning the structures they’d built themselves and murdering British Superintendent Daniel Stanley Dutton and three other warders. 

Though the riots garnered international coverage, the story quickly became muted, eclipsed in the wake of Singapore’s independence two years later. It was this slipping from collective memory that intrigued British director and producer Tom St John Gray, a long-time resident of the city-state who sought to unearth the story of Pulau Senang for modern audiences. The two-part documentary, Riot Island, devised and produced by award-winning Singapore-based Peddling Pictures, aired in October. It was commissioned by broadcaster CNA and is now available to watch on CNA Insider’s YouTube platform.

“[In the middle of] a well-told Singaporean narrative of  a nation emerging from colonial order was kind of an almost unknown story,” he told the Globe. “As a filmmaker, you’re really drawn to something that’s faded from history.”

In an interview, St John Gray shared more about the process of uncovering history and sharing the story of Pulau Senang with the world. 

What was it that drew you to the Pulau Senang prison island and inspired you to tell this story?
In the 1950s and 1960s, there’s this well-told Singaporean narrative of a nation emerging from colonial order, the end of empire, and Singapore’s road to self-rule and independence. And then, across that sort of decade, there was the merger [with Malaysia], separation, race riots, Konfrontasi, all seismic events. 

[And] the middle of all these, these very well-known events was [an] almost unknown story, very self-contained, happening on an island in Singapore. 

I felt as a filmmaker, as a storyteller, it always felt Shakespearean – this grand tragedy playing out on this sort of mysterious, almost mythical island. It was full of hope and ambition and ended in hubris and death.

When we started to make this documentary, at the beginning, I spoke to lots of people and the majority of people had never heard of it before. And so that’s obviously as a filmmaker, you’re really drawn to something which kind of feels very interesting and intriguing. Why has it faded from history? And it was a major event at the time, which is a curiosity in itself. Why did something which was always in the newspapers, always in the headlines, it was a coffee shop talking point that faded from consciousness.

Did you discover the answer? Why did the story of Pulau Senang fade from public consciousness? 
It kind of got moved out of the hierarchy of trauma, I guess, of  Singapore in the 1960s. But I also do think it’s really telling when you look at the pedigree of the island, in a sense, that it was spearheaded by a number of people, including (future third president of Singapore) Devan Nair. 

And later on, when it came to fruition, this island was visited by the VIPs, the great leaders of the time. Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, the president, all who at that time [were] young politicians, they’re coming to this full of hope. So I think the unmitigated disaster that erupted just two years later must have been a very deep cut. If you pay so much money and attention towards this project and it fails so cataclysmically it must have been very difficult at the time to reconcile that. It was a terrible disaster that smashed a lot of hopes and dreams. And so, in some sense, there’s an element of historical amnesia – why would you want to remember this story?

Do you think the attack on British Superintendent Dutton can be viewed as a microcosm of wider attitudes and resentment towards British colonial rule?
Dutton was a man of the colonial era of the British Empire, a system that believed in British rule. He’s obviously married to [Malay-Singaporean fashion designer] Vicky Dutton [so] had a connection to this Malay world and he also spoke Hokkien. So that was interesting, in a sense, as to how Dutton is seen. 

Certainly some people we spoke to said Dutton would have been a target because he was symbolised as Britain, British rule. But I think that’s a difficult one to know about ever finding any specific evidence. Very grisly ends were meted out to the other three men who died, so I certainly would advocate that maybe these are just people in positions of power. 

These are gang members who had their own power on the mainland, and they were taken to his island and were all pretty much rendered powerless. So you would look to those people who are wielding that power, who are calling the shots, and I think whoever would have been in that position would have been hated or reviled by a group within the island.

What do you think it was that ultimately triggered his death?
The fact that he lived on the island in the early days in a tent alongside the men and the fact he seemed to have the respect for the men at the beginning shows that perhaps the problem was the corruption that happened later on, the corruption of the guards, maybe the corruption of his mind as accolades and honours grew up around him. It was already a gold star prison [and] rehabilitation centre, but Dutton was driven to overreach. And I think that’s what triggered his demise.

You spoke to some of the last surviving detainees of Pulau Senang. What did they share and what did you learn from their stories and experiences? 
What’s really fascinating is that when you talk to these people who’ve been there, they are very matter-of-fact, they had witnessed all of this, but it was something that was very much of their experience. But what I also noticed was that the trauma that lingers from this was very much alive. Lots of people we spoke to, who would not talk on camera, [this is] still very heavy for them, this is something that was within them and their families today. 

People felt worried about talking about secret society members or the events that might have happened and no matter if those threats exist now or not, it just shows that they were lingering. There was something that was so seared into their memory, seared into their psyche.

Tell me a little bit about the process of sharing those stories and making the documentary. 
Peddling Pictures wanted to make a series that was research-heavy and rich in historical detail. The team had this whiteboard where we wrote down the names of all 18 men who were executed, but also alongside that other key men who were part of the group – obviously Dutton and some of the officers – and we really put that as a marker of who we could find, who still exists today. So that became our motivation: there must be people around who are willing to talk to us who can give us a new perspective on this.

We set out to track down these people and that took months of everything from going into the traditional routes, like going into libraries, looking at files, reading books, to trawling through social media and genealogy sites. And that’s how we found Michael [Dutton], through a genealogy site, and we found other members of the Dutton family on a Facebook post.

Episode One is more complimentary about Dutton and his achievements and Episode Two shows the darker side emerging. And that was important, layering in historical documents, historical facts and events, kind of getting a sense of the story but also not letting it be bogged down by too much history.

How did you approach the reenactments of the riots? 
Peddling Pictures filmed the drama reenactments in Thailand with a large cast and crew, and with locations, props and wardrobe that needed to look historically accurate. There were many team discussions about how to correctly depict the terrible death and destruction that later ensued. I think what was really important for us was to say this was an island with a name that translates to “Island of Ease”. There was this tranquillity which was then jolted into this absolute carnage, this sort of eruption. People met their end and in a very grisly way. 

But also there were scores and scores of guards and people around who were very badly injured, who survived but had terrible injuries. So I think it was really important for us to show this kind of jolting violence to take the audience into why it was so shocking. And I think if you don’t have those moments of carnage, it’s hard to understand why down the line 58 men would face potential death penalty and why 18 men were sent to the gallows.

The documentary was a three-time winner at the recent New York Festivals TV & Film Awards 2023 in April. How have you felt about the reception of the “Riot Island’ documentary?
What was really heartening was that when you make history documentaries, you try and make it for a broad audience. You don’t just want history buffs, you want to attract people from across the gamut. And I think [it reached] people who weren’t normally interested in 1960s Singapore history, people from across different generations. It felt like a fresh take on the era, something they hadn’t heard before. 

And getting these accolades, it was really heartening to realise that something very local can be recognised on a global level. It showed there are so many interesting facets out there about Singapore that have not been told, it’s a really rich history with lots of themes and stories that need to be shared. It wasn’t just a Singapore story, it was a story relatable to everyone, a story of great promise, great tragedy and with this very bloody retribution at the end. 

What, with decades of hindsight, would you say is the main lesson learnt from the Pulau Senang riot? 
You could learn about law and order, about having the right people in the right job. But for me, the reason it’s so tragic is there’s this question: “What if?”

In the first year, we see there’s a huge success rate, detainees who were rehabilitated. And obviously we now know with hindsight, that that’s not so rosy, because these men were detained without trial and they were essentially used as workhorses. But, with that in mind, what if? What if Dutton hadn’t pushed them too hard? What if he had set in motion this incredible infrastructure, where men could work on the island and be able to really contribute something meaningful to society? And my final feeling is: would the Singapore system be different today because of that? 

The post Behind ‘Riot Island’: Filmmaker talks Singapore prison documentary appeared first on Southeast Asia Globe.

This kind of iconic, yet hyper-local aesthetic to backdrop the Hanoi Community Radio live stream is exactly what station founder Maggie Tra had in mind when she founded the station almost three years ago.

Tra, who grew up in Australia with mixed Vietnamese-Cambodian heritage, moved to Vietnam four years ago. Feeling that the scenes for music and art were a bit too separated in Hanoi, she wanted to find a way to bridge them while spotlighting Vietnamese creatives and giving them a platform to learn and grow in a field that was dominated by expats and foreigners.

“I wanted to do an online radio station for a long time, and wanted to give back to Vietnam in some sort of way,” said Tra. “There’s not a lot of space or freedom of expression for local Vietnamese people.”

The UNESCO Community Radio Handbook defines community radio as “radio by the people and for the people”, with stations usually meant to serve groups bound by geography or common interests. Across Southeast Asia, where several states have complex administrative barriers for media organisations, the ‘do-it-yourself’ approach embraced by community radio can be attractive for locals looking for a platform to share their music or learn a new skill.

In the Philippines, Manila Community Radio has been operating since 2020. Thailand has Durian Radio and Bangkok Community Radio.

All these community radio stations operate mostly through a digital live-stream format. Some broadcast on Instagram, some on old-school radio waves – others via a combination of both, all carving out space for young creatives.

The idea of a fully democratised media platform is at the core of a community radio’s mission, according to Pijitra Suppasawatgul, associate professor in the Faculty of Communication Arts at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok.

“The thinking of community radio is quite idealistic,” she said. “You cannot make money from it, or get advertising. It fails in terms of business model or making money.”

Historically, Pijitra said, Thai radio was used as a political tool during reforms and coups, with the government shutting down or co-opting community stations as it wished. But today, she sees promise in the medium’s more open nature.

“Radio can be something that opens people’s minds,” Pijitra said.

Bangkok Community Radio’s listeners are mostly in Thailand, with some in the U.S. and Europe. The heads of the station are trying to connect emerging artists in the region with one another, and give them a stage to work from.

“It’s about connecting with international artists, but also providing an adequate platform for a young, 18-year-old producer or jazz artist that wants to get into it,” said Frank Nankivell, one of the founders of Bangkok Radio.

Other radio organisers described a similar ethos. In Hanoi, Tra started by leading workshops to teach women and non-binary-gendered people how to DJ. Eventually, this grew into a community that became the foundation for Hanoi Community Radio.

Tuning in, listeners can both watch and listen to DJs bumping house and deep-house, experimental and electronic, disco and whatever lies between. When not playing music, the station features shows that are mostly in Vietnamese where hosts discuss topics ranging from philosophy to dating in the modern age.

The mix reflects Tra’s mission of creating a station where locals can play and say whatever they want – albeit within limits, given the political nature of Vietnam.

“We let anyone run a show. We just make sure to train them properly and let them know what they can and can’t talk about,” Tra said.

“Obviously, the focus is Vietnamese people,” she added. “[But] I want it to be as diverse as possible.”

To the south, in Ho Chi Minh City, Nguyễn Minh Tân noticed the same gap in the arts and music scene as Tra. After immigrating to Germany in 1991, Nguyễn moved back to Vietnam during the Covid-19 pandemic and had the same instinct as Tra.

He founded V2X magazine three years ago with the goal of building a platform to support young, upcoming Vietnamese creatives in the scene.

As DJs stream live from V2X’s booth, set in an apartment complex from the 1980’s in the middle of the city, Nguyễn reflects on the evolving art scene: “At the end of the day, they’re doing it for themselves, actually. We are just the platform.”

Since its founding, the project has expanded to include a community radio station, called V2X Radio, and music production workshops through V2X Academy.

Also known by the stage name, DJ Minoto, Nguyễn said V2X stands for “Vision to Express” and “Vision to Explore”. Much like Hanoi Community Radio, his station’s mission is to promote and support the creation of a new and unique Vietnamese youth identity.

“It can be different from Vietnamese traditions, but also, ideally, it should be different from anything else in the world,” he said.

His station’s slogan, “Đọc lập – Tự do – Hỗn loạn”, comes from the national motto of Vietnam, which is “Đọc lập – Tự do – Hạnh phúc”.

The first two words are the same – “independence” and “freedom” – but V2X changed the last from “happiness” to “chaos”.

“We picked ‘chaos’ to represent a rebellious spirit,” said Nguyễn. “It’s about breaking existing structures and redefining tradition and conservative ideology.

Contemplating the future of HCR, Tra echoes a similar sentiment:

“To be honest, I don’t even really want it to be my community radio. I want it to be [the local’s]. I would like them to take over it eventually and for them to just have that space.”

The post A new spin on an old medium: Community radio finds a new generation appeared first on Southeast Asia Globe.

Though London-born and raised, Das-Hassan lived in Southeast Asia for 12 years, bouncing between Cambodia, Thailand and Indonesia. He eventually landed back in London where, along with two partners, Das-Hassan began a publishing house called Soi Books. 

In Thai, the word soi means “side-street”. So it’s fitting that Soi Book’s most recent project is an upcoming, biannual journal named Plaza that will feature street photography spotlighting the everyday lives of people living throughout Southeast Asia. The arthouse-style images are in black-and-white, many with a high-grain, gritty style. The resulting frames are saturated with character, taking the focus from any individual person to a reflection of a familiar archetype, a memory or the shape of a feeling from a long time ago. 

Coming from a background in film and documentary-making, Das-Hassan knows the power images hold. And with a life spent between the U.K. and Southeast Asia, he knows the talent that comes from this region and what its artists can capture through the medium of photography.  

“I did a lot of migration documentaries, corruption films,” he said, reflecting on his own time in Southeast Asia. “It’s natural to marry those issues and these things, trying to see them through the prism of art, trying to basically talk about quite sensitive issues through the prism of art.”

From that, Das-Hassan believed a street-level approach to documenting life in the region was the way to go. Plaza features photographs of locals, taken by locals themselves. 

“It’s very important to give an idea of Southeast Asia through the prism of people from Southeast Asia,” he said.

Ahead of the publication of Plaza’s first-ever issue, Southeast Asia Globe caught up with Das-Hassan to speak about the process behind starting the journal, Soi Books, and the publishing industry in Southeast Asia. 

What is Plaza?
It’s a black-and-white Southeast Asian street photography journal. I think in a few releases, we might start changing it up and diversifying until its particular areas may concentrate on certain things. So it will probably end up being a series. 

Why make a journal of photography from Southeast Asia?
I’m half-Indonesian and I was based in Southeast Asia for 12 years. I feel as a creative, and an artist, and a photographer, that the consistency of releases is what I always feel the region kind of needs.

Where will Plaza be published from?
There’s three of us: myself in London, Ryo [Sanada], who is half-Japanese and based in Brussels, and Steve [Aston], who is based in Jakarta. We’ve worked together for many years. That way, we can cover the territories, the operations, and try to get our books to retailers specifically in Southeast Asia. It’s not the easiest getting books into shops there, as you can imagine.

I suppose we’re a remote publishing company and we have printers we work with everywhere, in China, Turkey, in the U.K. We have distribution places around the world.

How did Soi Books come together?
We all had a stint in advertising in Southeast Asia to some degree. Ryo and I ran a gallery in Bangkok for about a year. Then we opened a creative agency in Singapore for a few years. Steve worked in advertising in Singapore and then Indonesia for a long time. 

The circle is quite small as an expat in Southeast Asia, you start to know, like, “Oh, these are the people in Bangkok, these are the people in Phnom Penh, in Jakarta”. We always wanted to work together as a trio and come back post-pandemic, not really wanting to work in brand-land.

We wanted to go back to something a little bit more like art and a little bit more dynamic. Now we get to do our books, illustration books, potentially kids’ books down the line. We also get to do more political stuff and more social stuff, that’s something that we’re looking at.

Why did you start the street photography initiative now?
We were always documentary filmmakers, but we fell into publishing as authors many years ago. We did books on graffiti in Asia.

We’ve done a lot of books for a lot of different publishers. And then over the years of running our own studio, running our own business and then with Covid-19, it got tiring. We were just like, actually let’s just start our own publishing company. That basically means you can do the subjects that you want to do. 

We can basically build our own list of titles you want to release. Because if you’re a major publisher that doesn’t necessarily want to invest in a compilation of photographers from Southeast Asia, then we can because we know there’s a number good for it. We know people dig it and we’re not gonna do huge numbers, but we’ll do a solid amount of numbers.

Speaking of, how did you go about finding the photographers for Plaza?
It is literally just research. We’re lucky enough to be working in the region a lot. I do have a lot of creatives, meaning street artists, illustrators, graffiti writers, photographers, people working in development literally around the region from China down to Papua. So it’s not too difficult to just hammer people on Instagram or email them.

If there’s one region in the world that’s got a lot of photographers in Southeast Asia. So it’s actually more of a case of discerning who’s relevant and not. It’s very important to actually give an idea of Southeast Asia through the prism of people from Southeast Asia. 

Obviously, there’s a few expats but the lion’s share of it is essentially very hyper-local people.

Are there any specific photographers that stand out to you? Why?
There’s a guy called Edmond Leong in Malaysia. I think he’s fantastic, he’s like 19 or 20, a fantastic young photographer. He’s got that energy of wanting to do work, got a whole community of photographers around. I think he’s done some wonderful work.

There is a photographer in Indonesia, in Sulawesi, Aziziah [Diah]. She does some great work, just really honest, real work. It kind of touches into development. She’s done a lot of the land grab stuff in Sulawesi, which you probably know about from Phnom Penh. She stands out.

Yeah, there are so many good and talented photographers. We’re just trying to get a good cross-section. There’s a Thai photographer called Pokchat Worasub and she’s very much an artist like a super, super artist.

So, it was just trying to marry the world of super high art and maybe reportage to some degree, and try to create a platform where both can exist in the same place.

Are there any specific themes that have come up in the photographs?
The first issue is very much an overview of Southeast Asia. You know, you’ve got urban life – just a little bit of how people live, essentially. It’s street photography from the lens of photographers who live there.

Things that will come up again, urban life, housing, etc., these things are there in the visuals for you to take out yourself. We’re not putting heavy amounts of text in here. I feel that the book should exist in the world of photography, if that makes sense.

How else do you think this space has changed in the past couple of years or maybe since Covid, or even further back? Has it always been difficult to publish or is that a new thing?
I think actually it’s changed a lot. There is an element of things that feel slightly more conservative these days than really they were 10, 15 years ago, but there were good, great shops that just don’t really exist around the region.

You’ve got social media, you’ve got TikTok, so many dynamic ways of engaging the audience. It’s not just emailing the shop and they’re gonna buy some stuff. And that’s super, super, super frustrating.

I think in some respects you have to hardcore engage with social media in Southeast Asia, but then it doesn’t always translate to more cerebral stuff, if that makes sense. It’s quite hard to translate a compelling picture. I mean, it works with the photographer, but not so much in a sales kind of way, or a marketing way, for a title.

Do you think it will change?
I think it will change. I do think because of socials and more people doing interesting stuff, it will change. But who knows when and how. 

In short, I think it was easier, and it’s a lot more difficult now.

Will the next issue have the same photographers, or will it be a whole new round? What about the subsequent ones after that, are they all going to be different every time?
What might happen is that a key bunch kind of stay with us, that we work with here and there. We already have some interesting people who aren’t in this one lined up for the next one. You want to basically hit 70% new people or 30% of people who worked in the last one, I think just to keep it fresh. I do think what we might do is like start going for a specific theme on the next one.

The first one is just basically a good solid street photography kind of vibe. I think the next one, we might push for something more stylised. Just push the bow out even more in terms of our layout and start seeing what works for the audience and getting feedback until we hit what we think Plaza is and that’s it.

The first issue of Plaza should be out in July, with availability by the end of the year in parts of Southeast Asia plus the U.S. and Europe, and can be purchased through the Soi Books website.

The post A new lens on Southeast Asian street photography appeared first on Southeast Asia Globe.

But the meatiness is an illusion, the satays are soy-based and the steaks pumped up with shiitake mushroom. But, Love Handle, Asia’s first plant-based butcher, is not targeting Singapore’s vegans, or the vegetarian diets of the country’s Buddhist and Hindu communities. About 70% of its customers are meat eaters and its mission is to reach the mainstream. 

“Our target audience is specifically not vegans,” said Ken Kuguru, Love Handle’s CEO and founder. “It’s a bit of a paradox. [But in everything] we are a little bit paradoxical.” 

As a city-state that imports more than 90% of its food and has little room for actual livestock, Singapore has a vested supply chain interest in shifting from traditional meats. 

Last year, a three-month chicken export ban from Malaysia, which provides the Lion City with about 34% of its poultry, halted the normal inflow of approximately 1.8 million broiler chickens a month. The ban caused a hike in poultry prices and concern over the country’s food security.

At the same time, environmental sustainability concerns are pushing many in Singapore and beyond to rethink their diets to reduce consumption of animal products. Restaurants and suppliers are increasingly following a similar path as Love Handle in using plant-based foods to reach customers beyond just vegans and vegetarians. Though challenges remain in making a convincing meat substitute, a rising class of Singaporean food entrepreneurs are betting on new techniques to recreate favourite dishes in a more eco-friendly way. 

For some of them, this isn’t just a business decision – it’s a way to possibly prevent the worst outcomes of global climate change while preparing for a new world brought on by environmental crises.

In the Lion City, about 7% of the population are vegan or vegetarian, according to a 2020 poll by research firm YouGov Singapore. Individual reasons for the diet typically include environmental and health concerns, which together accounted for 70% of the reasons to give up meat.But it is unlikely that change will be driven by the small minorities who are willing to fully embrace a plant-based diet. 

“There’s a lot of dishes that already cater to this community,” said Kuguru. “It’s established, it’s traditional, it’s there – but it hasn’t grown.”

To penetrate beyond this small and set demographic, he believes it’s important to emulate the “meaty” flavours that might hold people back from moving away from animal proteins. 

Love Handle’s products replicate the umami tones of meat by catalysing the natural chemical interactions released from vegetables through the cooking process. Some plant-based companies replicate meat’s bloody qualities through leghemoglobin, a red protein found in soybeans. 

These kinds of efforts are already showing promise in the marketplace as consumers around the world gain a taste for the meat-free lifestyle. According to Bloomberg Intelligence data, the global market for plant-based foods could see fivefold growth by 2030. 

On the other hand, the quantity of meat produced over the past 50 years has increased threefold and remains on an upward trajectory, according to an October report on sustainable food by accounting giant PwC’s strategy consulting business. 

Another report by the Stockholm Environment Institute a month later stated animal-based foods could be responsible for at least 16.5% of total greenhouse gas emissions. The report warned that if current consumption trends continue, it will be impossible to keep global warming below the 1.5° Celsius mark and increasingly challenging to stay below the 2° Celsius upper limit.

Vegan alternatives of popular local food … appeal[s] to the masses, draws them in to give vegan food a try”

LK Ong, Chef, VeganBliss

The high environmental stakes have provided extra motivation to those hunting the elusive secrets of re-creating meatiness. 

For VeganBliss restaurant, which opened last year amongst the bright Peranakan shophouses of Joo Chiat Road, the key to selling a wider market on sustainable eating has been emulating not just the meat, but also the meal. The restaurant’s “roast chicken rice” bestseller is made from natural gluten but resembles the sliced fillets found at most of the country’s popular hawker food markets. 

“Making vegan alternatives of popular local food … appeal[s] to the masses, draws them in to give vegan food a try, [and shows them] that the switch to veganism doesn’t entail sacrificing your favourite food,” says LK Ong, chef at VeganBliss. 

For other restaurants, branching out from familiarity of local favourites has raised a challenge.

“In Asia, we eat based on tradition. You eat what you do because that’s what your mum did and grandmother did,” said Christina Rasumussen, a chef and entrepreneur. “But this doesn’t work for our planet anymore … we have to change.” 

After working at Michelin-starred restaurant Noma and a plant-based collective in her native Denmark, Rasmussen moved to Singapore in 2022. When launching Mallow, her first pop-up concept in the city-state, she grappled with the challenge of how to integrate a vegan business into a culinary culture that celebrates local dishes such as poached Hainanese chicken rice and seafood laksa soup noodles and where traditional hawker food markets have gained UNESCO heritage status.  

“Overall, vegan concepts are not popular like you may find in other western cities,” she said.

Most of Mallow’s customers were not vegan. As she prepares to launch her first permanent restaurant, Fura, she has consciously moved away from “plant-based” or “plant-forward” labels, to instead focus on “what our diet could look like in the future, due to climate change”. The menu will use ingredients that are in abundant supply, including insect proteins. 

“We don’t openly brand ourselves as being vegan on purpose as it turns many away, instead we say plant-focused,” Rasmussen said. “[We’re] slowly changing people’s perceptions of what being conscious can look and taste like.”

As a small island metropolis, making sustainable diets the norm in Singapore will rely on sustainable supply chains.

Last year’s upheaval of chicken imports brought this fact into stark relief. 

“We intend to grow more food locally to serve as a buffer in times of supply disruption,” said Grace Fu, minister for sustainability and the environment, in a parliamentary response to the chicken situation.

Fu and others in government used the issue to promote Singapore’s “30 by 30” campaign, an ongoing effort that aims to boost domestic food production to about 30% of everything consumed in the city-state by the end of the decade. 

Restaurants including Love Handle and Fura focus on native ingredients such as soybeans, jackfruit and mushrooms. But the market still faces serious challenges in cost accessibility. Currently, Love Handle’s prices parallel those of high-end meat butchers in the city. 

“Green Rebel” beef steak, made from mushrooms and seasoned with Cajun spices, costs $5.91 (SGD 8) for a 180 gram portion, while a 100 gram packet of vegetable “sausage” mince is priced at $5.17 (SGD 7). 

In comparison, $10.16 (SGD 13.75) can buy 500 grams of Australian grass-fed beef mince and a 250 gram New Zealand striploin beef steak costs $8.49 (SGD 11.50) at local supermarket FairPrice. At local wet markets, prices can be even cheaper. 

“In order to bring plant-based meats closer to the [meat-eating] consumer, the company will often add in additives, flavourings, colours, textures – when you add in all these new ingredients, you add to the cost, you add to the energy consumed in the process,” said Willam Chen, a professor in food science and technology at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University. 

“Subsequent processing of plant-based protein foods to suit consumers’ demand also needs energy. There is no holy grail.”

To address this issue, some innovation hubs are developing alternative proteins grown from animal cells in labs. Last year, Singapore became the first country in the world to grant regulatory approval for the sale of lab-cultured meat.

It’s a sector of innovation that fascinates Kuguru. For Love Handle’s next venture, he is  partnering with a research lab to fuse animal and plant cells to create alternative proteins at a larger scale. 

While not involving the slaughter of live animals, these new hybrid meats would not be considered vegan. But Kuguru is confident this move will not shut most vegans out.

“Anecdotally, the vast majority of vegans and vegetarians opted to move to a vegan and vegetarian diet because of either environmental reasons or animal cruelty reasons,” he said. “For those groups, moving to hybrid meat products would solve their core issues and allow them to reintroduce sustainable and ethical meat products back into their diets.”

As companies vye to keep up with consumer tastes, the wider industry has a more pressing issue on its plate. For Kuguru, switching to greener alternatives from traditionally farmed, animal meats may quite literally be a way to save the earth. 

“Given the data on the beef industry, the carbon emissions, the amount of land that’s available, the math doesn’t work,” he said. “The planet is going to implode.”

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As crowned by subsequent victories in national chess competitions of 2014 and 2015, Bora was humble and soft-spoken as he waited for his teammates to finish their matches. They were all playing for the home team in this year’s, Southeast Asian Games (SEA Games), hosted in Phnom Penh.

Bora was happy to be there – it was his first time representing Cambodia on the national team. In fact, it was the first time ouk was played in the regional sporting event across its 32 iterations. 

As the host country, Cambodia added the chess game to the roster of 37 different sports for the games, which drew to a close on Wednesday night.

“Whenever I play chess, I feel super calm,” Bora said after his SEA Games match, held on a balmy afternoon at the Royal University of Phnom Penh. “It makes me think consciously – whenever I want to do something, the way that I think, [the way] my mind processes, the order is not messy.”

Ouk is distinct from international chess in several ways, and though the variant is played throughout the Mekong region, many SEA Games athletes had to quickly learn the rules ahead of time to participate in this year’s contest. As ouk undergoes a resurgence in the Kingdom, the regional sporting event provided a showcase for the game on a wider stage, elevating the style to a new level of play and a never-before-seen visibility at home and around the world.

Still, despite what some might consider an inherent advantage, it wasn’t all easy for team Cambodia. Players from Laos, Thailand, Vietnam, Myanmar, the Philippines and Malaysia were stiff competition for a team that might seem like it would have a home-field edge. 

“The Philippines and Malaysia, we had no idea that they would play very well like this,” said Pen Khemararasmey, another member of the Cambodian team.

The exclusion of international chess from the games met with some grumbles from the Philippines, where the ouk variant was unknown. But that isn’t such a bad thing, according to Kuch Kimlong, the president of the Cambodian Ouk Chaktrang Federation.

“Through the 32nd SEA Games event, [ouk] is becoming popular for people of ASEAN countries,” he said, pointing to the variant’s presence in Thailand and Vietnam. “They like to play this game very much.”

They also turned out to be pretty good at it. 

The rival Thais walked away with four gold medals, the most of any team through the seven ouk events, and Vietnam bagged two. 

Overall, Cambodia’s chess team closed out the SEA Games with one gold medal, four silvers, and one bronze. Bora, the former King of Chess, ended up placing second in the men’s triple 60-minute final event, netting a silver medal.

A modern tradition with ancient roots

Though ouk is typically described as Cambodian chess, the game is also popular in Thailand, where it’s known as makruk, and in Myanmar as sittuyin. 

Believed to have possibly split more than 1,000 years ago from chaturanga, an Indian ancestor of the internationally known version of chess, the exact historical roots of the game are lost to history. The progenitor of ouk may have come to Southeast Asia with travelling merchants by about 800 AD.

In the Angkorian period, at least two kings built temples and shrines with bas reliefs depicting what could be a version of the game. Today, ouk is commonly played in cafes and parks by tuk-tuk drivers, nine-to-fivers and anyone else who knows the rules and is up for a challenge. 

“Ouk chaktrang is a part of Cambodian national identity,” said Bora, “there is a sculpture [of it] on the wall of Angkor Wat.” 

The pieces used in the game are the same as those used in international chess. But their names and rules of play are very different.

Where international chess calls pieces pawns, rook, knight, bishop, queen and king, a player of ouk would refer to them respectively as the fish, boat, horse, pillar, maiden and king. 

Both games share the aim of capturing an opponent’s king but vary in the ways of getting there. For international chess, the queen is the most powerful piece on the board, able to move as far as it likes in any direction. In ouk, the maiden can only move a single square at a time, and strictly on a diagonal line.

To find potential champions of this tiny battlefield, the Cambodian team drafted players through rounds of qualifications. This included recruiting competitors, such as Bora, who have already dominated the sport in the country, but also finding new faces with players who learned on the streets and in cafes.

The sound of clattering pieces and calls of “ouk”, which is said in the same way an international player would say “check” when attacking the king, are common in such settings.

While the game has always been held as a national pastime within Cambodia, Bora thinks recent years have seen an increase in its popularity.

“In the past, after the fall of the Khmer Rouge, most of the Cambodian chess players passed away,” he said. “Now, gradually, Cambodia is getting back a lot of ouk chaktrang players.” 

As the game’s visibility expands, its base of players might stand to change with the times. 

Ouk has traditionally been seen in Cambodia as a male pastime – while women are often expected to go home from work to care for their households, men are free to retire to cafes or other drinking spots where they can play with friends. 

National team member Khemararasmey, one of the women who represented Cambodian chess in the SEA Games, said she only learned how to play because her father owned a cafe where men gathered over ouk. 

She grew up around the game and said she doesn’t remember exactly when she learned to play. But when she heard ouk was to be featured in the SEA Games, she was quick to enter the qualifiers and win a spot on the national team. 

She hopes the future will see more women included at ouk boards around the country. 

“The society has changed, the next generation is more open,” she said. “After the SEA Games, this game will attract more women in Cambodia to play, because this game is very nice, it trains us to think, to be patient, to work hard.”

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