Cultivating Communities
Dana Langlois, OCF Founding Director
Initiating Our City Festival in 2008 came as a response to the shifting urban environment in Phnom Penh, increasingly quantifiable with the growth in economic and political stability of the last decade: buildings being built and destroyed, shifts in ownership, experimentation with infrastructure and reconfiguring public space. What seemed lacking was a forum for discussion and feedback from the public. To further exacerbate that, limited institutional structures existed to provide the space or resources to facilitate exchange, discussion or creative responses.
To offer one solution, the festival positions itself as a networked platform that creates a dialogical space through modes of creation—arts, architecture and performance. The festival does not aim to finger-point problems but instead creates events, cultivates communities, and opportunities for discussion amongst and with designers, artists, architects and the public. Intentionally, it brings together a multi-disciplinary population to expand the discussion and to consider how each of these disciplines function alongside each other in the development of urban spaces and the way its people thrive and interact within cities. By creating a program that integrates each of these practices without drawing lines of division, it offers opportunities of collaboration but also for the public to experience them as part of a larger eco-system.
In the process of creating the festival, it was necessary to consider the infrastructure to develop it. After years of war and trauma, Cambodia is still rebuilding the necessary systems to allow it to participate in the international arenas of economy and politics; creative industries, specifically contemporary arts, not being one of the priorities. Without this institutional or formalized support, the festival has turned to its own community, working within the natural structures and relationships that already exist. In pooling resources and ideas the festival built a viable network that one, provided the necessary resources, but moreover created a flexible infrastructure that is not co-dependent on institutional systems. It emerged that “informality” became the methodology rather than a problem to be “solved.”
Cooperating with many individuals and organizations is not without challenge, however. Bringing together multiple visions, practices, and attempting to move between several cultures and languages can at times fracture the process and dilute resources. It also puts the festival in the position of constant re-assessment and self-questioning, which, although time consuming, is a welcome process. Seeing these challenges as opportunities, however, they provide the impetus to embrace multiplicity and seek ways not to homogenize but to highlight the individuality of the works and the participants.
As the festival has developed since its first appearance in 2008, it has increased the number of participants, disciplines and locations. This year the festival hosted over 30 projects at 17 sites in 2 cities with the contributions of nearly 150 individuals. It also has expanded its role as a commissioning agent, supporting new works by artists and architects. The festival sees itself as a platform not only for dialogue but also for creation. It also works to place works, events, and encounters in public spaces making it accessible to the wider public.
We offer a selection of essays as a starting point for a larger conversation amongst ourselves and with the wider international audience. It represents some of the thoughts and concepts that this year’s festival was built on. It is only the beginning of a dialogical process that will incorporate multiple languages, feedback from the community, and on-going contributions from participants.