UKS 20th Annual Culture Night (2016-2017)
"What defines an identity? Is it static? Or can it change? If it does change, is the change continuous? Additionally, if it is constituted by knowing where we're going, is it also constituted by knowing where we come from? What happens when our attempts to make sense of where we come from are hindered by silence, virtually making this part of us inaccessible? These are the questions that this year's production, Lost in Translation, seeks to investigate.
When the Khmer Rouge entered the capital of Cambodia on April 17th, 1975, it initiated a spiral of forgetting through its destruction of all institutions responsible for the transmission of history and memory: education, music, dance, art, and religion. What we have left are bare remnants of identity -- just a skeleton that no longer resembles who we once were. Tragically, this trauma, or the disruption of one's ability to make sense of one's self and one's world, is not temporary: it is everlasting. It is everlasting because it doesn't end with one generation of survivors; it gets passed on through what scholars deem as the 'intergenerational transmission of trauma,' in which trauma is transported through both verbal and nonverbal means.
It takes seven generations for trauma to subside. So what of our children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and so forth? Will they have to continue to endure the hauntings of an injurious past for decades to come? Lost in Translation illustrates that we don't have to if we can make sense of this history, the repercussions that followed, and how they manifest themselves within our day-to-day interactions with our loved ones.
Join us as we embark on a journey of self-discovery and cultural awakening with three Cambodian-American youth: Sam, Sophean, and Tavy. Set in modernity, these three high schoolers will learn what it truly means to be 'Khmerican.'
It has and will continue to take years to bring the perpetrators of the genocide to justice, so by partaking in the performances presented tonight, let us initiate our own revival of cultural memory in the beautiful art forms nearly lost to us almost 40 years ago. Let us continue to fight and refuse the directive to forget. Let us never see ourselves for what we lost, but rather, for the resilience that we have always and will continue to possess within ourselves."
When the Khmer Rouge entered the capital of Cambodia on April 17th, 1975, it initiated a spiral of forgetting through its destruction of all institutions responsible for the transmission of history and memory: education, music, dance, art, and religion. What we have left are bare remnants of identity -- just a skeleton that no longer resembles who we once were. Tragically, this trauma, or the disruption of one's ability to make sense of one's self and one's world, is not temporary: it is everlasting. It is everlasting because it doesn't end with one generation of survivors; it gets passed on through what scholars deem as the 'intergenerational transmission of trauma,' in which trauma is transported through both verbal and nonverbal means.
It takes seven generations for trauma to subside. So what of our children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and so forth? Will they have to continue to endure the hauntings of an injurious past for decades to come? Lost in Translation illustrates that we don't have to if we can make sense of this history, the repercussions that followed, and how they manifest themselves within our day-to-day interactions with our loved ones.
Join us as we embark on a journey of self-discovery and cultural awakening with three Cambodian-American youth: Sam, Sophean, and Tavy. Set in modernity, these three high schoolers will learn what it truly means to be 'Khmerican.'
It has and will continue to take years to bring the perpetrators of the genocide to justice, so by partaking in the performances presented tonight, let us initiate our own revival of cultural memory in the beautiful art forms nearly lost to us almost 40 years ago. Let us continue to fight and refuse the directive to forget. Let us never see ourselves for what we lost, but rather, for the resilience that we have always and will continue to possess within ourselves."