![]() ![]() My paper examines the visual and material strategies by which they try to undermine ‘the monocular seeing that conflates the camera with a weapon’ (Marianne Hirsch) and create less tainted forms of bearing witness and remembering. Since the late Nineties several artists, Cambodians and non-Cambodians alike, have created pieces (multimedia, video, installation, performance) using the mug shots. ![]() ![]() My paper looks at their re-appropriation into contemporary artworks. The black and white mug shots have become icons of the Cambodian Genocide. Over years this administrative record of extermination has been globally circulated through all kinds of media and into various settings. When Tuol Sleng was transformed into Museum for Genocidal Crimes in 1980 the photographs were put on display. ![]() The inmates were photographed as soon as they were brought in and their picture attached to their confession file. Formerly a school it became in the hands of the political police of Democratic Kampuchea a torture and execution centre were more than 14,000 Cambodians lost their life. The Phnom Penh-based prison Tuol Sleng is certainly the most infamous institution of the Khmer Rouge regime (1975-1979). ![]()
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