Anne Elizabeth Moore's Blog, page 3

Stunning Review of Hip Hop Apsara in Time Out Chicago

Wow:

The Vietnam War brought American bombs to Cambodia just as the nation finished an Olympic stadium—a long-shot attempt to lure the Games to Southeast Asia. As the war led to famine, the Khmer Rouge seized power. Under their leader, Pol Pot, two million were killed in the 1970s. Years of civil war followed. The trauma was so long and deep that today some Cambodians will tell you that the Olympics did in fact happen, though they’re not quite sure when.

Anne Elizabeth Moore, a Chicago writer, artist and teacher, explains this aberration by noting that “for Cambodians living after the trauma, there is no before.” Moore has been traveling to Cambodia for five years, reporting on the nation’s first spurts of economic growth since it began to stabilize over the past decade. Her latest work, Hip Hop Apsara: Ghosts Past and Present (Green Lantern Press, $20), is a collection of photographs and essays documenting Cambodia as it moves from terror to growth.

... Her photographs convey this uncanny beauty. Long and double exposures blur the images so that streetlights shine through the dancers. The bodies stretch into arcs and streaks, suggesting not just the movement of people, but of culture and money.

The rest is here. It's really a treat!

New Interviews and Tour Dates!

Chicago-based reporter Claire Glass did a massive interview with me about Hip Hop Apsara: Ghosts Past and Present that she divided up into two separate interviews—one, here, with Gapers Block, and another with Story Studio, here. Here's an excerpt:

It's funny because I had this person in my life I really cared about, and we separated for a while, and then were in contact again. And while we were in contact, I was writing these essays, and of course I was trying to write them about this place that's really far away in the world that I love, but I was also writing in a very literal and descriptive way about how important this person is to me, and how even more present they felt when they were gone. As I was writing it, I sort of knew that we would part ways again, and we did. And so when I read those essays I'm completely overcome with this very raw emotion of predictive loss, of knowing in advance the contours of this important thing I was going to lose. It's not, it can't be, the same as any of the losses I describe in the essays themselves, but I think that hollowness in the chest is the same, and maybe, if that can be scaled up to the 1.7 to 2.2 million people that died under the Khmer Rouge, and a couple hundred thousand more that died in the American bombings, then maybe we can start to understand why it would be so important to go out dancing when you can, just because you're alive.

And, excitingly, the tour's coming together! Check dates here and I'll see you out at an event soon!

Giveaway!

The Goodreads giveaway for Hip Hop Apsara: Ghosts Past and Present started and I am excited to see that 30 people have requested it already! Because giving stuff away is the funnest thing ever.

HOWEVER. Also fun was doing this Hostile Questions interview with my pal (and fellow horror movie fan) Daniel Kraus over at Booklist:

KRAUS: Just who do you think you are?

AEM: I’m reasonably sure I’m Anne Elizabeth Moore, three-time winner of the Anne Elizabeth Moore Award for Excellence in Awesomeness, not to be confused with Anne Moore, the other Chicago-based reporter who at some point covered the exciting world of women’s shoes for the local press and subsequently became upset when our opposite career paths—I was getting thrown out of American Girl Place at the time, and writing about that—netted her some undeserved letters of concern. And definitely not to be confused with Ann Elizabeth Moore, the first body discovered at Jonestown, Guyana, in November 1978. (I’ll also state for the record that in November 1978, I was super busy doing something else really far away, and 8, so you can’t pin that one on me, Kraus.) There was also an Anne Moore who died about a year and a half ago, and I don’t think I’m her, but I have been really tired lately.

The rest is here. You may or may not now wish to read it for yourself.

Special preview of Hip Hop Apsara on the Rumpus!

Hi friends,

I have a new essay up on the Rumpus today on dance and music as commemoration and celebration called "Thoughts on the Hip Hop Apsara." The essay doesn't appear in Hip Hop Apsara: Ghosts Past and Present—although the accompanying images do, and they're some of my faves in there.

Well, here, lemme just tell you how the piece starts and you can see if you like it:

In Cambodia, in my lifetime, somewhere between one and a half and two million people died under the brutal regime known by the world as the Khmer Rouge, and by the Khmer Rouge as the Angkar, or Organization. The world sees the Khmer Rouge as an ultracommunist revolution; The Angkar saw themselves, largely, as an American resistance movement. I am an American. When I am in Cambodia, I gather together with people my age—survivors, all—and their children, and their children’s children, to dance along the revitalizing waterfront.

Want more? It's here. More than that, though, and you'll have to wait for the book. Out August 28!

Blurb request!

Pals,

I run a small publishing company that mostly prints collaborative projects about globalization, gender, and economics called Pressing Concern. We believe that everyones' opinions count, so we have a very unusual blurb policy: you tell us what you think of something in a sentence or two, and we'll put it on the back of our next edition.

Our recent publication, HAND JOB: A Labor of Love , is a collaborative comics anthology and work of theory on gender, sexuality, economics, and race created by ten artists from all over the US at The Adventure School for Ladies.

It could use some blurbs—the more inappropriate (to us) the funnier. Better yet—write a review. Want some inspiration? Check these out.

I'd write more, but I can't stop laughing.

New book, in the works

Hello Good Readers!

I'm extremely excited to announce that GoodReads will be hosting a giveaway of my upcoming book of photographs, Hip Hop Apsara: Ghosts Past and Present from Green Lantern Press. It includes over a hundred images I've taken in Cambodia in the last couple of years, documents of an emerging middle class and the struggle for economic justice that accompanies it. It also includes a lyrical essay on the nation under development, reflected in the massive public dance parties held in front of the prime minister's house that combine traditional Khmer ballet with modern hip-hop moves. It's my first book of photographs—something I've always wanted to do!—and the first edition features hand-made, two-process covers by Angee Lennard of Spudnik Press. (Whoever wins the giveaway will get one of those!)

So keep an eye out for it, and let me know if you have questions in the mean time!