Category: Explorations

As a youth of Cambodia, I should know about the history and what happened to my country. Not just learning about the good ones, but also learning about the painful ones that contain those hidden perspective and understanding.  In this exploration, I can learn all briefly and deeply at the same time about the information from each era as well as how it transitions into the new ones. On the other hand, we mostly focus mainly on Khmer rouge genocide. That time it was a really dark and painful thing that ever happen to Cambodia. Instead of feeling sorrowful over this, we do something different. From my perspective, it also gives a good lesson for this new generation. We can clearly see how cruel and unhappy it was, so we as a new generation must not repeat in the same footsteps. Be happy with who we are today and keep developing our country. Be proud of what country had deveelop. 40 years after this genocide, I want other country to feel proud and impress for our country, that we can stand strong and don’t give up.

With all of those thoughts, we come up with different creative base ideas that we want to show it to everyone during our sharation. Our theme was to show different perspectives, so we form smaller groups for different projects. Those are, Poem, drawing, painting, song, dance, short stories and leader evaluation. I participated in Drawing, song and dance. 

In the dance team, we choose contemporary dance, because we want to tell a story in the dance. I suggested some songs, and we pick it together. After I edited all of those songs, we create the story line together and I choreograph about 90% of the dance. In the dance we choose two characters as sisters and then we showcase their lives before Khmer rouge, during and after the Khmer rouge as well. The audience will see the transition from each era based on the way we dress up and the mood of the music.I love doing this, because it’s my passion. Even Though there are some challenges, but I am fine with it (practice with everyone in while they are doing multi task, teaching the moves, prepare the stage, change the outfit fast enough for each transition). I bleed my feet and got some bruises on my leg, but I’m happy for it, because all of the audience feedback makes me happy and their reactions make me feel even stronger.

I also join the song team, which we choose the Khmer rouge anthem song and keep the lyrics, but we create the new melody for it. We make it sound modernize and happy. I also translate the lyrics into English version, so that the foreienger audience can understand the meaning as well. We ask our senior (B chhoue) to help us produce the music. 

The last project I joined is Portrait team. We pick leader or victims from s-21 ( A khmer rouge prison) to draw and show different perspectives. We drew the exact copy of the picture for the first drawing and then the second drawing will be modernized. Some students change their hair style, hair, clothes or even their sad face to look happy. We do this to imagine how would those people look like if they were in our present days. 

So far, this was such an amazing experience for me. I can learn about my history and make new commitment to  change Cambodia. Doing what I love (art base) will always turns out acceptable and make my day brighter.

 

The main purpose of our exploration is to see the possibility of household garden in Cambodia. Since our country has not produce the need of vegetable per day, it’s a really big deal for the economy,health and habits. We also want to compare the chemical usage with organic and then make an assumption about why they keep using inorganic way. 

From going to the trip, we’ve learned about making fertilizer, how to grow each vegetable that we choose, and so many more! In addition, one of the trip that I really reflex on is the trip to S’ang district, Kandal. My expectation and reality are very different!

I didn’t expect “some” farmer to use any organic fertilizer or cow dung, because I’ve heard that sa’ang is a chemical district. I also thought that they would grow something like, fruit type and root type. Interestingly, they actually grow rapid lettuce, including a lot of leafy types! Another thing is that,I was quite surprised to know that farmers don’t really care about the changes of land. They just keep using chemical, hoping that chemical will give enough nutrients to their vegetables. There is a tremendous amount of chemical that is being used during the farming process. Seeds, weeds, stem, leaves, insects,and disease are all required chemicals. Not just that, they even spray the chemical before harvesting! The fact that the rumor about increasing the size of vegetable overnight by using a specific type of chemical is ridiculous. Imagine, people eat vegetables everyday, but everything is made up of chemical compounds. Vitamins are useless to handle those already. Farmer knew that chemical surely harm living organisms, but they keep using it. They have to win the competition of growing vegetables. I mean, they do everything just for their vegetable to grow better than others. One of the farmers said “we eat the vegetables that we grow in front of our house, because it’s organic. The rest that we grow at the farm ( with chemicals), we export it to PP market including local market”. What is the point of having themself safe without thinking about others? There is even a greenhouse that the organization made for them, but they didn’t focus on it. Well, I guess it’s because greenhouse grow slower.  

if people keep doing that, we won’t live for long! I’m serious. This exploration have a big impact for social and the future. It’s not too late to start spreading our knowledge to farmer out there who does not know much about organic ways of growing. Imagine, if we can encourage everyone to have household garden in there house, it would be really valuable. Our country will produce enough vegetables for each year, stable economy and healthy citizens bring the best human resources. Wow, pure logic. To fulfill this expectation/dream, we need to start now. I need to start now. I believe, it should be a MUST for other students too!

 

Well, I love both! I love acting since I was young and I love taking pictures or videos since I started my secondary school.  I thought these two subjects have a very good combination. That’s why I choose to learn both. Now, it is my chance to learn and dig deep into it. We only got 7 weeks to learn both of the subjects, but it’s every meaningful to me. It’s like the most valuable course in my life. I emphasize this as much as I do to myself. Alright, let’s get back to the topic.

We got some tips for acting, such as:

• Warm up activities
• How to memorize the script
• Breaking the fourth wall ( interacting with audience)
• Acting method
• Handle the mistakes on stage
• How to be professional on stage
• Last but not least, face expression!!

Those sounds easy to me at first, but when it comes to real learning process, it quite hard. I got to work with an actress from Hollywood, which is even more amazing. I love how she interact with us and how she guide us through the whole weeks too. I felt confident in acting in front a lot of people now, so I guess I’ll be fine in the next show.

On the other hand, i learn a lot of stuff from Aviv Rubinstien. He taught me about editing video professionally on premiere pro, writing screenplay on fade in, shooting video in different camera angle, lighting for shooting, production design and more. After he taught everything, he assign some works to do. I did photo Roman ( like below). I wrote a screenplay, that i selected to be the top 3 in class, but unfortunately, voted for top one, I did not make it. But it’s okay! I am happy, because I do my best.

For the screenplay that was selected, we all got 1 week to shoot the film and edit it. It was tough, because we have a short time to finish. I am the main character, so I spent the whole three days just for shooting, which is very tired, but fun at the same time. Everything went gracefully. We have the cinematographer, producer, director, actors, production designer, asst 1, asst 2, camera asst, sound people, editor, and slat holder! It was such an amazing experience. I feel like I am actually working with real professional film maker. They are doing their great job! Me too, i guess….

*i’ll put the link once it’s posted

 

It is a very unique exploration. We research about it, we share it, we do it and we achieve it. In the first to third week or so, we studied about different types of engineering. I really like medical engineering, because i love saving people’s life. After this lesson, we learn about 6 different types of simple machine. I don’t know about all these before i learn this. Well, i know few, but not all. All of them are really important for my works in life. I just realized that, everything that we use to help our works, require those simple machine! Next lesson is, designing process. It does not mean that, we can only use it use it for engineering, but everything needs that. Even writing, creating a products and more. On the other hand, this is not it. Our exploration goal is to get Cambodian kids in public school engage in stem projects. We find a projects that we want to make, and then do it as a Cambodian friendly. Which means, all the material must be easy to find in Cambodia. After we know exactly what we are going to do, we go out into different schools and then teach them how to do our project. We also get some feedback from them, so we could make changes to our instruct-able. My team create a slingshot car, because it is a toy so, the kids will be interested in it. We really want to kid to engage in some creative activity, so we decide to challenge them to, design their car by them self. They really enjoy the projects, and i’m so glad that they all show their ingenuity for the cars and appreciation towards us that we go and teach them something new. For me, I really want to do this project again, because it really help the kids to relax and give them some more fun time as well as improving their creativity. They can even use this car to compete each other, like a race in their free time. So, the best part is, it is easy to make, and easy to play. If you want to see our instruct able, you can see it under my text. I wrote it both in Khmer and English so, Cambodian can see it and follow it easily.

 

Set design is an exploration, which we are going to make a mobile theater for our community. This exploration involve  a lot of creativity. We start off by making a brainstorm for our mobile theater. We end up by choosing a type of theater that we will create from the trailer instead of the bus or storage.

After choosing the idea, Me and the other two friends went to the containers and bus shop for doing survey and get the idea for our new design. We also divide our team to do different team task. Some people do sponsorship, designing theater in 3D, crowdfunding, managing, planning and some more small jobs that we did it.

The fourth week, we went to two provinces which are, Tbong Khmum and Kampong Chham. We went to interview people in the afternoon, and we also invite them to join our play at the evening and night time. It was going very well. We got our footage and photos to put in the crowdfunding as we want. The people also enjoy our play a lot. Our play was about the food chemical which cause a lot of people to be sick, so after we told them the protection, we have helped them a lot.

After all of the work, we hope that we will have the mobile theater soon and continue giving and sharing to people about more educational plays that we are going to perform for them. Our first try without theater is a little challenging, because it was raining seasons, so we needed to face the raining time. If we have the mobile theater, it will be more easy and quicker for setting up. My visualization is, all the people will soon, know more about the social life and protections even they did not learn when they was young by our TOS MERL LIGER TRAVELING COMMUNITY THEATER.