Martine Neang, School of Performance and Cultural Industries

A Faceless Name (*Content Notes)

“You speak three different languages? That’s so cool!”
“You’re so lucky to be multicultural!”
Lucky.
But where, or what do I call home? Is it my homeland, where post-genocide trauma persists with the nation's traditional emotional reticence, or the liberal and expressive European culture I was raised in, chosen by my parents in the hope of a better future? Life is a circus, when one grows up juggling between two contrasting worlds.

When the Khmer Rouge seized power in Cambodia in 1975, a purgatory 'Year Zero' followed, exterminating almost 2 million innocents in the project of building a new Marxist society. If my family escaped the Killing Machine in time to reach asylum in France, it is a longstanding cultural practice to sink into silence in an effort to erase the past. But growing up, how does one find their identity without knowing their history?

'A Faceless Name' is a tribute to my Grandpa, whose existence within the long list of victims is now a simple blur in my family's memory. By encouraging dialogue, venturing into delicate terrain, and sometimes even unintentionally raising tension, what started as randomly filming my relatives about their stories with my old iPhone became a personal documentary project that gives them a chance to finally speak about the events that stole their childhood – and that hopefully fulfills my identity quest.

Because behind the enriching life experience of multicultural children, lies a conflicting identity crisis, deeper intergenerational trauma and constant imposter syndrome. Welcome to my take on the Immigrant Paradox.
Where do I belong?
*Content Notes: presentation will address war themes, killings and trauma, nothing too explicit.

BA Global Creative Industries, Second Year (she/her)
August 1995. Dad – “Papa” – chooses to move back to Cambodia 16 years after the end of the war, leaving family and friends in France to reconnect with his roots. Today, I am the product of this cultural hybridity, constantly exploring my dual identity as the driving force behind my artistic practice. My name is Martine and I am part of this young diaspora that advocates the fostering of a powerful creative scene in the process of reconstructing a post-conflict nation.