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Reclaiming Cambodian dress and textile practices, identities, and collections under the Khmer Rouge (1970s-1980s): New approaches to archival materials of conflict

Project description

The material impact of the Khmer Rouge on Cambodia

Between 1975 and 1979, Cambodia saw the rise to power of the Khmer Rouge, leading to nationalisation, deindustrialisation, and genocide. The EU-funded TEX-KR project will study the country’s genocide history through Cambodian dress and textile practices. It will explore the textile collections of the Cambodia’s two leading cultural institutions: The National Museum of Cambodia (NMC) and the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum (TSGM). For instance, when NMC reopened after the dictatorship in 1980, most of the staff had disappeared, and two-thirds of its ethnographic collection of silk and dance costumes had been lost to looting and environmental damage. The overall aim of the project will be to shed light on Cambodia’s dark heritage.

Objective

The TEX-KR project investigates the history of textiles and clothing in terms of practices and production during the destructive rise and ruling of the Khmer Rouge (KR) regime (1975-1979) in Cambodia. Working in the fields of history and anthropology associated to textiles, I will do so by exploring the textile collections of the country’s two leading cultural institutions: The National Museum of Cambodia (NMC) and the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum (TSGM). When NMC reopened in 1980 in the aftermath of the dictatorship, most of the staff had disappeared, and two-thirds of its ethnographic collection of silk and dance costumes had been lost to looting and environmental damages. TSGM was established as a memorial site and genocide museum on the secret KR prison site S-21 in Phnom Penh and left with thousands of textile and clothing remains that belonged to the prisoners. Looking at what has been lost and reclaimed in these two archives, as well as visible signs of tears and repairs on artefacts and acquisition histories, will help establish these remaining objects as crucial material embodiments and evidence of Cambodia’s dark heritage. Combining object-based study, archival research, and participatory methodologies, TEX-KR uses textile techniques, objects, and dress practices to provide a sensory material turn on Cambodian genocide studies, an overlooked aspect of scholarship to the present day. I will implement innovative outreach activities incorporating practice and oral history to engage different audiences, including weaving groups in Cambodia and immigrant women communities in Europe to explore the topic of textile making, memory, trauma, and displaced identity. Combining politics, heritage, history, this project is an incentive for memorialisation and transitional justice through textiles with the potential to devise a new research model transferable to other cultures of conflict owning textile collections.

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MSCA-IF - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF)

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Call for proposal

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(opens in new window) H2020-MSCA-IF-2020

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Coordinator

KOBENHAVNS UNIVERSITET
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 207 312,00
Address
NORREGADE 10
1165 KOBENHAVN
Denmark

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Region
Danmark Hovedstaden Byen København
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
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Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 207 312,00
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