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“Tools and
practices”
Change and continuity in the Cambodian countryside
Opening reception,
March 14, 2001
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The idea to collect and exhibit a set of "traditional
tools", gathered from the Cambodian countryside, began as
the project of a group of students from the Department of
Archaeology of the Royal University of Fine Arts. Over a
period of months, working in collaboration with Reyum, the
students traveled to the countryside and gathered the
collection of tools which we display here.
Their activity could seem to replicate the actions of those
who today traverse the countryside, gathering what they
regard as quaint and handmade, in order to sell such objects
to urban and foreign buyers. We are uncomfortable with the
trajectory by which long-standing ways of survival in the
countryside become sources of decoration for those who live
"modern" and "developed" lives. At the same time however, we
think that ways of living in the countryside provide an
important resource for the future and a counterbalance to
the rush to develop.
Therefore we wondered if there was a way to show the
practicality and ingenuity of practices in the countryside
to an audience which has largely abandoned such habits. By
their very nature, exhibitions tend to show objects for
visual contemplation and thus to cut out living practices
and ongoing uses. While our exhibition is certainly guilty
of this as well, we have tried to keep the dynamic of the
tools displayed by emphasizing their use, the way they are
made, and the meaning which they carry. By doing so, we hope
that viewers will consider the larger social habits and ways
of life embodied in the tools exhibited here.
Our exhibition is one small step in what we hope will be an
ongoing process of thinking and researching. The catalogue
which accompanies the exhibition expands upon the tools and
themes presented here.
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