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JOURNALIST AND CULTURE CRITIC HIGHLIGHTS CAMBODIAN ‘MOVES’
Hip Hop Apsara provides
images of a nation’s people emerging from generations of poverty
CHICAGO, IL – July 2012 – “Radical” (L.A.
Times), “poignant” (Boston Globe), “should
not be missed (Time), “a notable underground author” (The Onion), and “brilliant”
(Kirkus) are all ways to describe Anne Elizabeth Moore and her
writing. The award-winning author and artist has worked for years with young
women in Cambodia on independent media projects, and her newest venture is a
compilation of photographs and lyrical essays taking readers to the streets of
the country’s capital city, Phnom Penh, and out into the countryside—where few
get to travel. Hip Hop Apsara: Ghosts Past and
Present releases Aug. 28, 2012 from Green
Lantern Press.
Alternating
full color and black and white photographs depict Phnom Penh’s bustling
nightlife as locals gather to dance on a newly revitalized riverfront directly
in front of their prime minister’s urban home, thus forming a portrait of the
nation’s emerging middle class. Images from a southern province depict a nation
in dialogue with its government, hoping for development that lifts all
citizens. A series of essays complement the imagery, investigating the
relationship between public and private space, mourning and memory, tradition
and an economic development unrivaled in the last 1,200 years.
“Traditional movements push against young passions,”
Moore writes. “Development is fluid and janky. But a generation is learning
what comfort feels like, learning what it feels like to have survived. To celebrate,
to honor, they dance most nights like they are possessed.”
Hip Hop Apsara aims
to break through the cavalier and hardened consciousness many hold about
Cambodian culture and its recent, violent, past under the Khmer Rouge.
“People
seem rooted in this belief that Cambodia’s very far away and very weird,” Moore
said. “It is far away, but for 14 million Cambodians, it’s not weird at all –
plus it’s a place the US has had a lot of negative influence over. So it seems
like we should know something about it, as Americans.”
A
Fulbright scholar, Moore is the Truthout
columnist behind Ladydrawers: Gender and Comics in the US, and the author of Cambodian
Grrrl: Self-Publishing in Phnom Penh (Cantankerous
Titles, 2011), Unmarketable: Brandalism,
Copyfighting, Mocketing, and the Erosion of Integrity (The New Press, 2007) and Hey
Kidz, Buy This Book (Soft Skull, 2004). She was co-editor
and publisher of the now-defunct Punk
Planet, and founding editor of the Best
American Comics series from Houghton Mifflin. She has twice been noted in the
BestAmerican Non-Required Reading series.
Anne
Elizabeth Moore
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Anne Elizabeth Moore is a Fulbright scholar, the Truthout
columnist behind Ladydrawers: Gender and Comics in the US, and the
author of Cambodian Grrrl: Self-Publishing in Phnom Penh (Cantankerous
Titles, 2011), Unmarketable: Brandalism, Copyfighting, Mocketing, and the
Erosion of Integrity (The New Press, 2007, named a Best Book of the Year by
Mother Jones) and Hey Kidz, Buy This Book (Soft Skull, 2004).
Co-editor and publisher of the now-defunct Punk Planet, and founding
editor of the Best American Comics series from Houghton Mifflin, Moore teaches
in the Visual Critical Studies and Art History departments at the School of the
Art Institute of Chicago.
She works with young women in Cambodia on independent media
projects, and with people of all ages and genders on media and gender justice
work in the US. Her journalism focuses on the international garment trade.
Moore exhibits her work frequently as conceptual art, and has been the subject
of two documentary films. She has lectured around the world on independent
media, globalization, and women’s labor issues.
The multi-award-winning author has also written for N+1,
Good, Snap Judgment, Bitch, the Progressive, The Onion, Feministing,
The Stranger, In These Times, The Boston Phoenix, and Tin
House. She has twice been noted in the Best American Non-Required Reading
series. She has appeared on CNN, WNUR, WFMU, WBEZ, Voice of America, and
others. Her work with young women in Southeast Asia has been featured in USA
Today, Phnom Penh Post, Entertainment Weekly, Time Out
Chicago, Make/Shift, Today’s Chicago Woman, Windy City Times,
and Print Magazine, and on GritTV, Radio Australia, and NPR’s Worldview.
Moore recently mounted a solo exhibition at the Museum of
Contemporary Art in Chicago and participated in Artisterium, Georgia’s annual
art invitational. Her upcoming book, Hip Hop Apsara: Ghosts Past and Present
(Green Lantern Press, Aug. 28, 2012), is a lyrical essay in pictures and
words exploring the people of Cambodia’s most rampant economic development in at
least 1,200 years.
Website: AnneElizabethMoore.com
@superanne
BOOK DETAILS
Hardcover,
$20
ISBN:
978-1-4507-7526-7
Photo/Essay,
100 pages
Green
Lantern Press, Aug. 28
The
city of Phnom Penh, Cambodia hosts public dance lessons most nights on a newly
revitalized
riverfront directly in front of prime minister Hun Sen’s urban home. Shortly
before dusk, much of the city gathers to bust a few Apsara moves and learn a
couple choreographed hiphop steps from a slew of attractive young men at the
head of each group. Outside the bustling capital city, the provinces come
alive, too, as the nation’s only all-girl political rock group sets up concerts
that call into question the international garment trade, traditional gender
roles, and agriculture under globalization. Cambodia is changing: not what it
once was, not yet what it will be.
Following
on the heels of Cambodian Grrrl: Self-Publishing
in Phnom Penh, Anne Elizabeth Moore compiled
photographs that document Cambodia’s bustling nightlife, the nation’s emerging
middle class, and the ongoing struggle for social justice in the beautiful,
war-ravaged land.
A
series of essays complement the imagery, investigating the relationship between
public and private space, mourning and memory, tradition and economic
development. It is a document of a nation caught between states of being, yet
still deeply affecting.
Guest
Post
My upcoming
book, Hip Hop Apsara: Ghosts Past and
Present, is sort of an unusual project for a journalist: it’s a lyrical
essay in pictures and words that describes a country moving from a static state
of mourning into the most rampant economic development it’s experienced in at
least 1,200 years. In image and text, I attempted to explore the state between
loss and desire, a beautiful half-noticed sense between smell and sight,
between hearing and touch that is pure
unverifiable memory. I think of it as an apology, a coming-of-age tale, an
exposé, and a love story.
The book looks at a very
traditional nation beginning the process of integrating modern life—both the
good (cultural forms, like hip hop) and the bad (the uneven distribution of
wealth). Told mostly through photographs. It emerged organically from the last
five years I’ve spent investigating Cambodia, while it was undergoing the most
rapid period of change in its recorded history.
Not everyone gets to go to
Cambodia, and certainly not everyone’s had the insider access that I have—I lived
with the first large group of educated young women in the country (as described
in my last book, Cambodian Grrrl: Self-Publishing in Phnom
Penh), and I can’t even tell you how much gratitude I have for the
education they gave me: about food, about tradition, about gender, about
language, about social customs, about Cambodia, about the US.
My young friends also took me out
to my first big aerobics dance party, the ones that form the basis for most of
the images in the book—and tried to teach me all the dance moves, including the
Apsara. I can’t dance, though—I mean, I did,
but even the otherwise very supportive young women nurturing my cultural
education eventually told me I should just stop—so I concentrated on making
good, experimental photographic images of what was basically a park full of
genocide, mass killing, torture, abuse, and starvation survivors and their
children. It’s a beautiful thing to witness: people in public space learning
how to trust each other, move their bodies for pleasure, and have figuring out
how to fun. People just emerging from poverty, finally able to afford to eat
enough that they can spend calories exercising. It was really joyful.
The essays in this piece are my
first non-journalistic take on Cambodia, and thus are more playful reflections
on the emerging nation than I usually get to put out in the world. It’s also
sort of a new view on Cambodia, a place people generally think they know about,
that they believe does not and cannot change, because the Khmer Rouge regime
looms so large. But it is changing, very very quickly.
A lot of the images are about what
happens when traditional forms begin to adapt to globalizing forces. In the
public exercise and dance images, traditional Apsara dance moves get combined
with hip-hop choreography. They show how people move on from loss. In the final
images, of a concert I was lucky to attend in Kandal province of this amazing
group of musicians called The Messenger Band, the images are of how traditional
notions of gender and sexuality are impacted by the global garment trade and
the local sex industry. The concert space offers a chance for Cambodians to
rethink that impact, and question who supports it. The book is really about
that space, about the moment before tradition shifts, to more efficiently allow
for profitability.
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