The Advantage and Disadvantage of Zine, a funding proposal

Hello friends,

Thanks for stopping by Democracy Guest  List today. I’ve prepared for you a special treat: a funding proposal I’d like you to consider supporting called The Advantage and Disadvantage of Zine: Self-Publishing in Cambodia. In brief, the project intends to tell the stories of young women in one of the poorest and overlooked areas of the world—when possible, in their own words. (Please consider donating by visiting my donation site, here.)

The Advantage and Disadvantage of Zine is a long-term, multifaceted collaboration with a group of young women college students in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. I first met these young women when I was offered a residency in their dormitory, where I lived for two months during the winter of 2007-2008. (To read more about this work, go to Camb(l)o(g)dia and scroll down to the right-hand section, Camb(l)o(g)dia, Condensed.) During my time there I initiated a close relationship with all 32 residents, and together we created two seperate bodies of self-publishing work and initiated an international dialogue about human rights and young women in developing nations. I intend to return in December to continue this work during a time of tremendous need.

On my first visit, I spent the winter teaching a single skill with two primary applications to the residents of the first all-girls dormitory in the history of the country: we learned to self-publish zines, that would be easy to make even in the impoverished countryside, and we used our experiences in zines to co-write a book I later completed, New Girl Law. Although the concept of self-publishing is not new in Cambodia—the lack of publishers often makes it the only publishing option—the dormitory, and its feminist roots, are. Universities, since they were rebuilt after the Khmer in the early 1990s, have been centered in larger cities and have not offered housing to students. Admissions policies do not technically discriminate on the basis of gender, but girls in Cambodia cannot live in monasteries, where some boys reside while they attend school, and are prohibited by strong cultural mores and often their own families from renting apartments in the city. Unless they have family nearby, most are left with no housing options and thus no university education. This doesn’t even begin to account for the economic barriers that keep most smart students of all genders from attending any school at all. (For this reason, some of the dorm residents are older than the usual age for entering university, 18; because they have been awaiting a chance to attend school.) Many of the girls are still so relieved and excited, they cry as they relay the story of how they came to live at the dorm.

Unfortunately, due to an oppressive political climate, journalists and writers frequently find themselves threatened for expressing political or social views, and visual artists are discouraged from drawing from a very early age. So although the concept of self-publishing exists, few examples of it do. Yet as a group of 33, the dorm residents and I created close to 50 zines on topics as diverse as rice production and agriculture in contemporary society, women’s issues, spirituality, health care in the countryside, and Cambodia’s disturbing genocidal history.

New Girl Law, the work we cowrote, is a letter-pressed, hand-bound book created in conjunction with all 32 young Cambodian women leaders in Phnom Penh—and undertaken at their request. Over a two-week period these women collaborated on a revision of the traditional text known as Chbap Srei, or Girl Law, which circumscribes proper roles for women in Cambodian culture. Our version calls for basic human rights, gender equality, the eradication of corruption, and funding for cultural production. It is, as the girls describe it, a re-envisioning of a potential future for the country. Co-written in Phnom Penh, and printed at AS220’s Community Print Shop in Providence, Rhode Island, New Girl Law, as well as the girls’ individual zines and an audio documentary (New Girl Law Audio Book) I later edited based on recordings done during the writing process, have initiated several international discussions of women’s relationship to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, including two such conversations (and zine-making workshops) among groups of economically disadvantaged creative young women in Providence and San Antonio.

Elements of this work have also been included in the 2008 Whitney Biennial, shows in Los Angeles, CA and Champaign-Urbana, IL, and the Chicago exhibitions Holle Cambodia (at ThreeWalls gallery) and Dismantling the Corporate State and Other Amusements (at Columbia College Center for Book and Paper Arts). Features have appeared in the print publications Time Out Chicago, Make/Shift, and Print, and on the radio. I have delivered lectures on this work across the United States. While in Cambodia, my blog Camb(l)o(g)dia was widely read both in South East Asia and in the US. All this occurred during a time when media outlets across the US rejected stories about Cambodia for not being “timely.”

In short, my original visit to Cambodia, and the nature of the work we conducted there, acted as a trojan horse, sneaking stories of gender discrimination, human rights violations—and far more important—hope that these will change under the new generation into a media environment that claimed disinterest.

Now, however, disinterest is no longer acceptable. In the months since I was last in Phnom Penh, the collapse of the US economy has disproportionately affected Cambodia. By far the nation’s fastest-growing industry, garment manufacture (the second largest industry in the rice-farming country), accounted for 15% of Cambodia’s Gross Domestic Product. Approximately 70% of the goods produced were purchased by US companies until a year ago, when the garment factories were forced to close down. The significance of the economic impact of the US dollar is symbolized by the fact that it operates as the national currency of Cambodia.

The jobs lost in these factory closures were largely held by women, who comprised 90% of the workforce. The status their newfound economic worth brought in had begun to shift their social standing, and conversations about lowering rape statistics and demanding more employment opportunities in more fields for women had become possible. Now, however, even aid and food programs have disappeared from the country. In the absence of garment factory jobs women are turning to sex work—now a rapidly growing sector in a country still struggling to pass or conform to human trafficking, domestic violence, and child sex legislation. In the midst of this downturn, a new hope is emerging. In the middle of January 2010, a second dormitory will be completed, which will house 48 new young women. A few months later, the very first residents of the dorm will graduate to an uncertain future, and their places will be taken by another new batch of young, bright women. The hope this brings is tentative, as it will be up to those first graduates to forge an entirely new economy in which women are active participants. But their hopes have a better chance to become reality with a base of international support.

I intend to offer that support, not only as a witness to the organization during this time of great change, and as a physically present mentor to the 32 young women about to graduate to an uncertain future and their new sisters, but as an artist and educator hoping to continue sharing their stories and needs with an international audience that claims not to care. This will be done with a series of news stories and audio documentaries and on Camb(l)o(g)dia, and with further zine workshops—hopefully to be lead by my earlier collaborators and attended by the new dorm residents.

Again, you can support this ongoing effort by donating here. Please help me support these emerging young women leaders in their time of great need.

Tags: Cambodia, fundraising