Networking casually for professionals in Phnom Penh.
Meet new people. Discover the things you have yet to find out about, because that’s what happens when we go and see. Max 4.
Register for The Third Place on Eventbrite. Here is a link.
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-third-place-tickets-382919160517
Creative and artistic? Cool. Welcome to this blog.
I want to talk about sharing. Not social media, but behind-the-scenes sharing, when you are trying to decide if you should get some feedback, creatively, or not. It’s so hard.
Maybe you haven’t had much exploring time yet for your creative works, whether they are bits of writing, poems, or something more illustrative and visual. Or maybe you have. Maybe you think you’ve found a go-to person for sharing things that aren’t quite ready to press ‘go’ on and publish into the world.
Or maybe you think you have, but actually, they don’t have your best interests in mind. And you find out, somewhere along the way, and it doesn’t feel good to notice that, hey, after all that, they really wanted you to fail. All of us will encounter this persona in our lives. The hard part will be to recognize it for what it is. Here is an example.
[continued in Mirror]
There’s an article about ‘pangry,’ as in ‘pandemic angry’, in the Seattle Times. ‘Research has shown an increase in frustration, agitation and anger throughout the course of the COVID-19 pandemic,’ ST reports. ‘Pandemic anger, or “panger,” is a real mental health concern many people are dealing with… Feeling these emotions is perfectly natural response, however, we want to help people cope and respond in healthy ways,” says Dr. Patrick Bigaouette, a psychiatrist. “Yelling at others, dwelling on the situation or shutting down can negatively affect one’s health, work and relationships.”’
Here’s the full story.
https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/does-covid-have-you-pangry/
What do you think about ‘pangriness’? We’ll talk about it in The Mirror. See the menu item for ‘eWorkshops’ at Kismuth Books. Here’s a link.
Design Kompany will be hosting a mini-popup zine festival in Phnom Penh on 21 July. It will be in real life at a special location we have discovered, near Russian Market.
Book a ticket for the zinemaking workshop, to make a zine with Atelier S P A C E Phnom Penh on the day. Here is a link.
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/international-zine-day-mini-festival-tickets-369838977337
Why 21 July? It is International Zine Day.
What does that mean?
Studies conducted by Barnard College Zine Library in New York City show that there are at least 138 libraries in the United States that have an extensive collection of zines. Zines and independently published titles appeal to younger people and draw crowds to the libraries. Zines are not a brand new concept, and they have been around for almost a hundred years. Just like books, zines also foster communities. It’s a great medium for readers and writers to come together without having to worry about book sales and profits. International Zine Month was started in 2009 by Alex Wrekk, creator of Brainscan Zine. Source: National Today on International Zine Month
I love zines. I asked if I could come to Finland to be part of an artist residency there to make a summer’s worth of them. And I did.
Here is the popup show.
Relaxed and informal, that’s my style.
So fun.
Special thanks to Paavo Heinonen for noticing my zines and then also for inviting Atelier S P A C E to participate at the Oulu Arts Festival. Also to our host, Kahvila Tuokio. Here’s a picture or two of our popup zinemaking atelier, that year in August, too.
Even more fun.
Zinemaking and popups just get better and better.
I wish I could say that I made zine popups everywhere I went through the next few years, consecutively, but it’s a crowdfunded effort and not easy to pull off. So, I waited until I found the gumption to keep it up and then, this came into shape, next.
Fast forward to 2021. It wasn’t possible to host a real life event in July in Saigon, as there was a big lockdown for four months.
Plus no one I knew or talked to or had any contact with really cared about zines, or the purpose of them. Most people just wanted to work and ignore anything that threatened the status quo, I felt, and me existing and me having a zinemaking agenda just really wasn’t a thing that could fly. Easily. Or well. Except, it somehow did. This was amazing, and I will have a chance to tell you about how it went, when we meet in real life someday at one of the new popups, I hope.
Atelier S P A C E Saigon’s art director was photographer-chef Van Tran.
In November 2021, Atelier S P A C E made this: A photo show, a popup! Meeting in real life was out of the question. Still, we did host a popup as soon as the movement restrictions lifted. Very socially distanced.
Photos + installation by Van Tran. // VT 2021
Through the 20 months I was there, we did some once-off issues of the zine S P A C E, too. With Saigon-based Uyen Vu (‘Glamour Labour’), writer Quan Nguyen (‘Roads’, ‘Bittersweet’), and UK-based poet-artist Ilyas Kassam (‘Street Museums’).
Their stories were part of the collection of weekly issues that are now in our archives. Current issues are here.
The goal for me with S P A C E was to invite, and include. Seeing who comes, but not forcing it. All of this was supported by donations. See the story unfolding at the crowdfunding page.
Here is a link.
https://chuffed.org/project/spacethezine
Wikipedia’s entry on ‘America in decline’ says:
In a 2021 poll of 1,019 Americans just after the riot at the Capitol, 79% of those surveyed said that America is “falling apart”.
Is it?
