Preah Kunlong (The way of the spirit)

2017 - Film & Video (Film & Video)

18:43 minutes

Khvay Samnang

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Originally commissioned for documenta 14, Khvay Samnang’s two-channel video work Preah Kunlong (The way of the spirit) takes land politics, resource extraction and Indigenous Cambodian resistance as its primary concern. Created in collaboration with the classically-trained dancer and choreographer Nget Rady — who is also the performer in the video — Preah Kunlong powerfully utilizes a lexicon of gestures and movement to point toward the need for embodied forms of knowledge and understanding amidst the mechanistic frameworks of rapacious development, which are threatening not just forests and Indigenous communities in Southeast Asia, but also worldwide. More specifically, Preah Kunlong offers a proposal for the language of the body to exercise what political ecologist Nancy Lee Peluso has called “counter-mapping”, a form of “critical cartography” that has been practiced by Indigenous forest communities in Southeast Asia to strengthen claims on their traditional territories and resources by defying hegemonic mapmaking methods, which have long abetted strategies of colonial rule and resource extraction. To the Chong people of the Areng Valley in Southwestern Cambodia, knowledge is transmitted through speech and body, and land is mapped through embodied methods rooted in ancestral and oral histories. Khvay first developed an interest in the Chong people because of their high-profile protests in defiance of a hydroelectric dam development (Cheay Areng Dam), which threatened to destroy not only the largest remaining expanse of rainforest in Southeast Asia, but also their way of life. He stayed with the community for a short period of time in order to learn about their spiritual practices and beliefs, and as he came to understand their everyday belief in animism, he worked with Rady to develop an embodied language that could potentially point toward the communities’ relationships to particular animals, water sources and land. As Rady stomps, squirms, writhes, slithers and trembles against mud, water, bark, and rock, his body takes on the form of a moving map, and sounds of his body press against the viewer’s ears, creating a sensory bridge between the tactile and the moving image.

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Khvay Samnang’s work critically examines the interlocking nature of ritual and politics, the humanitarian and ecological impacts of globalization, colonialism and migration, and the cultural-material histories of exchange that have shaped the Southeast Asia region. Working in performance, film and video, photography, sculpture and installation, his research-based practice draws heavily upon traditional cultural rites, dance choreography, spiritual iconography, and methods of critical remapping. Frequently collaborating with local communities or other artists, Khvay is a founding member of Stiev Selapak, an art collective dedicated to reappraising and commemorating Cambodian history and resuscitating visual practices disrupted by civil war and the Khmer Rouge regime, and has exhibited a diverse body of work that deals explicitly with issues of environmental degradation, extraction of natural resources, and the suppression of the rights of Indigenous communities. Hearsay, intuition, direct exchanges with people, and a belief in dreams and premonition often prompt Khvay Samnang who then follows stories he believes require intervention. Approaching what he considers to be universal themes through the Cambodian context, his works deal with unknown yet important events or current contentious social issues for his surrounding community. In his works spanning photography, video, sculpture and performance, the artist frequently uses simple and playful gestures as visual language to shade new lights onto of historical and cultural events and a means for resisting to the polarizing language of dominant media and legal powers covering the issues.

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Colors:

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• country.n.02
• environmental.a.02
• politics.n.01
• resource.n.01
• autochthonal.s.01
• development.n.01