In preparation for our upcoming symposium, we would like to introduce our members to another upcoming TSA presenter. Magali An Berthon will be presenting “Reclaiming Silk Knowledge with Cambodian Weavers: An Action Research Experiment” at TSA’s Virtual Symposium 2020 in Session 2B on Thursday, October 15, 2020 from 1:30-3:30pm EST, "Embodied practice and shifting identities: Silk weaving as a Cambodian refugee during and after the Khmer Rouge regime" in Session 3C on Thursday, October 15, 2020 from 3:45-5:45pm EST. Please look for her full abstract in the upcoming Symposium program. Register here today so that you can attend the full program of presentations at TSA’s Virtual Symposium October 15-17, 2020.
Silk and Post-Conflict Cambodia, by Magali An Berthon
In 2011, a series of articles penned in The Phnom Penh Post pointed to the benefit of Western fashion and “sexy dresses,” for causing the disappearance of the “traditional” attire, which comprised of a cotton or lacy blouse (aor) and a silk tube skirt (sampot), especially to attend Buddhist ceremonies at the temple.[1] Cambodian officials and media linked what they considered signs of cultural decline to globalization and liberalism, while the youngsters interviewed for the articles invoked a desire to wear comfortable clothes, as well as the high cost and maintenance of silk garments. Fashion scholar Margaret Maynard has argued that globalization and migration have created tensions in the way people dress—caught between the desire to perpetuate cultural practices and welcome foreign influences. My research reflects on these cultural developments in contemporary Cambodia and in the diaspora of Long Beach, California, which is considered the largest demographic concentration of Cambodian immigrants outside of Southeast Asia.
Since 2005, I have been to Cambodia on different occasions, as a designer working on local textile artisanal projects and a reporter on cultural and women stories. Since 2016, my work has built on this prior engagement with Cambodian textile practices, this time adding the specific set of analytical tools of design history and anthropology. My PhD research in the History of Design department at the Royal College of Art investigates the definition of silk as intangible heritage, from raw material, craft practice to national production since the early 1990s in light of the country’s twentieth-century political upheavals.
Cambodian dress and textile practices have a long history, following key moments of domestic, regional, and international socio-political changes. Archeological records show that Khmer royal court members donned imported luxury patterned silks from China and Central Asia in late antiquity. Silk weaving developed into a cottage activity into the 12th century, producing textiles for ceremonial use and for the domestic market and trade. Until the early 1970s, production continued in rural areas, almost exclusively led by women, with a marginal share of luxury items destined for the royal court and international exports. Silk weavers have produced a rich variety of styles from the intricate brocaded (chorebap) hip wrappers, to patterned solid silks (phamuong) and lavish polychromic weft ikat (hol).
From 1975 to 1979, the destructive Khmer Rouge regime, which claimed nearly two million victims, put textile practices to a stop by displacing makers and destroying mulberry tree crops, whose leaves feed the indigenous breed of bombyx mori silkworms. In the wake of these events, knowledge was lost, and domestic silk dropped to 0.8 tons yearly with only fifteen hectares of mulberry tree fields left (compared to 6,000 hectares and about 50 tons of yarn per year in the 1960s). When the weaving workforce resumed its activity, it massively turned to imported silk threads from Vietnam and Thailand. Since Cambodia’s pacification and reopening to foreign investments in the early 1990s, actors such as UNESCO and international NGOs have relaunched the sector by implementing vocational training programs in rural areas, shifting towards production and distribution for export and tourism. The successive waves of conflicts and forced migrations in the late 1970s to the 1990s socio-economic transformations have also redefined the significance of silk for Cambodian consumers.
To examine the workings of “transformation and persistence, loss and continuity,” as contended by anthropologists Judy Ledgerwood, May Ebihara and Carol Mortland, I conducted five periods of fieldwork between 2016 and 2018 in Cambodia and in the Cambodian immigrant communities of Long Beach, California. To offer a multilayered perspective, I have gathered a polyphony of voices from the present and the past: makers, consumers, key players in the industry, materials, textile objects in museum collections, techniques, and records of historical events.[2] Anthropologists Clare M. Wilkinson-Weber and Alicia Ori Denicola have argued that “craft, like history, is a tool that people use to negotiate their roles and places within the material and social environment.”[3] I have chosen ethnographic and collaborative methodologies including oral history and Action Research to explore how weavers can reclaim a sense of agency through practice and how Cambodian immigrants use silk dress in the face of acculturation and displacement. Ultimately, my research considers the role of silk to embody Cambodian culture across borders in a post-conflict, globalized context.
Magali An Berthon is a textile historian focusing on Southeast Asian textiles and silk in particular, local craft cultures, and sustainable processes, also incorporating filmmaking in her practice. She is currently completing a PhD in History of Design at the Royal College of Art in London, exploring the dynamics of silk heritage in contemporary Cambodia. Since 2018 she has been teaching Textile Studies at NYU Costume Studies and FIT Fashion and Textile Studies MA programs in New York.
Magali Berthon’s web documentary World Textiles & Artisans: www.tissusetartisansdumonde.fr/en
Magali Berthon’s recent documentary film Dancing in Silk: www.dancinginsilk.com
Magali Berthon’s Tissues et Artisans du Monde Project: www.tissusetartisansdumonde.fr
More about Magali Berthon: PhD V&A/RCA HISTORY OF DESIGN
[1] Phnom Penh Post Staff, ‘Khmer culture,’ The Phnom Penh Post, 2011, Accessed May 16, 2018, https://www.phnompenhpost.com/lift/khmer-culture ; Kim Samath and Touch Yin Vannith, ‘Why do women wear sexy clothes in pagodas?,’ The Phnom Penh Post, 21 September 2011, Accessed May 16, 2019, https://www.phnompenhpost.com/lift/why-do-women-wear-sexy-clothes-pagodas
[2] May Ebihara, Carol Mortland, and Judy Ledgerwood, eds., Cambodian Culture since 1975: Homeland and Exile (New York: Cornell University Press, 1994), 22.
[3] Clare M. Wilkinson-Weber and Alicia Ori Denicola, eds., ‘Taking Stock of Craft.’ In Critical Craft: Technology, Globalization, and Capitalism (London: Bloomsbury, 2016), 1.
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