When The Words Don't Exist

Het Nieuwe Instituut’s 2022 Design Drafts programme, in collaboration with Disegno journal (London), announced an open call for up-and-coming design writers to investigate and draft what it means to reflect on design today. The open call invited applicants to propose a piece of writing around the theme, “Is design just a game?”. Six proposals have now been selected by an international jury, whose authors will create a piece of long-form paid writing supported by writing and editing workshops with the Disegno and Het Nieuwe Instituut teams.

Malika Leiper’s proposal states that to profess design is just a game is a position of Euro- and Anglo-centric privilege. If design is indeed a game, with rules establishing winners and losers, then its parameters are determined by proximity to power, which has historically been, and continues to be, centralised in Europe and North America. In her contribution, Malika Leiper therefore asks: “How do we opt out of the game? Why is this needed? And where might emergent design languages stem from?” And, since there is no word for “designer'' in her mother tongue Khmer, “How to begin writing about design if the word does not even exist?” Malika will engage in qualitative and quantitative research to illustrate the unevenness of the enterprise of knowledge production in design, alongside data visualisations and photographic aids.

In 1953, King Sihanouk declared Cambodia’s independence, bringing an end to the ninety year old protectorate of France. Vann Molyvann, a student living abroad, who would go on to articulate the aspirations of this post-colonial modern nation as state architect and head of public works, received the news in Paris.

The oars of the wooden fishing boats dipped in and out of the river’s choppy waters. Down by the Seine, Vann sought refuge from the click-clocking of hurried wooden heels on pavement, whilst above him Quai Malaquais teemed with rush-hour traffic.

A word had taken shelter under his breath - or rather, a lack thereof.

There is no term for “designer” in my mother tongue. For the longest time, I’ve been using អ្នករចនា neak rochana. How do I speak about design when the words don’t exist? Vann pondered.

On this particular evening in the atelier, when Professeur Arretche launched into one of his frequent monologues on modernist design canon, Vann felt a familiar rupture inside of him - the same captive energy that befell him in the classrooms of the លីស៊ី lycée.

Perhaps it was because of his father’s letter he received that morning, a reminder of the immeasurable duty awaiting Vann as the first French-trained architect of Cambodia. Or perhaps it was the ease at which his classmate, Henri, slipped in and out of the conversation - the fluidity of his comments jeering in contrast to Vann’s immovable silence.

Still ruminating on the substance of this term, Vann remembered asking his mother its meaning once. “You know I don’t speak បារាំង barang”, she snapped at him in frustration.

And before she would even entertain the thought, it floated away, bobbing and dipping with the force of the currents. Like split coconuts in the water, the word was an empty vessel awaiting its delivery into diligent hands.

Vann left his contemplative angst at the river’s edge and began walking to the café to join Ngo and Sayed. Seven years had passed since they all arrived in Paris on a Gouvernement de la France scholarship.

As close friends, they often found themselves side-by-side sketching, painting, and studying the works of great Roman, Greek and French architectural styles.

Ngo’s uncle was the famous Le Duc Tho, the Vietnamese freedom fighter affectionately known as the “Hammer” on account of his uncompromising revolutionary fervor.

The Hammer spent most of Ngo’s adolescence imprisoned in a cage in the South China Sea. Nevertheless, the French guards had the inmates perform Molière plays, improving their minds with good French literature in fulfillment of their civilizing mission.

Maybe it was his uncle’s penchant for French theater that sowed Ngo’s early interest in scenography, eventually putting him on the same steamship as Vann on their way to Paris.

As he neared the Boulevard Saint-Germain, Vann recalled the scrutinizing glances of the passengers on the train bound for Marseille last month. Ngo had insisted on paying a visit to Unité d’Habitation - it was the last time the three were together.

It wasn’t the novelty of the piloti that struck a chord in Vann, it was the reference to an architecture of his homeland. Though the wooden stilt-raised structures of his childhood were not reinforced with steel and concrete, a rush of familiarity surged through him as he passed under the cool shadow of the building’s open ground floor and ascended up its exterior walkways. Had Le Corbusier spent time in Indochine? He wondered.

Standing on the rooftop, observing the city from a birds-eye view, a hunger inside of Vann swelled. He heard his father’s voice, “សង្គមរាស្ត្រនិយម Sangkum Reastr Niyum awaits you”. What form shall he give it? The vision was becoming clearer.

It was dark by the time he reached the Café de Flore. His two companions were seated under the vestibule in the red glow of a heat lamp. Plumes of smoke amidst a sea of bodies wafted from the tables surrounding them. Young men and women chattered into the night.

Traversing the sidewalk, Vann caught the gaze of Henri, from Arretche’s atelier, and seated next to him was an unfamiliar face. The man was introduced as Richard, an American writer here to complete his second novel. Seeing Vann, Sayed beckoned them over.

“So, what is this big news we’ve been waiting to hear?” Sayed asked once the five men settled into their cramped wicker chairs.

“I’m not going to Rome. I bought a ticket to Saigon to join my uncle” Ngo announced.

How could it be? Vann’s stomach lurched. He thought they were just here to bid a temporary farewell to Ngo, on his way to live and study at the Villa Medici - the first Indochine to ever win the coveted residency!

“How can you expect me to watch from a distance when the deafening cries for freedom are finally being heard all around the world?” Ngo continued, clenching his fists with urgency.

“Freedom? The only freedom is in our craft, my friend.” Sayed replied despondently. He had no intentions of returning to a partitioned India. Daily news of the violent outbursts of nationalist fervor sweeping his homeland beckoned him deeper into the solitude of his brushstrokes. For now, Van-Gogh, Cezanne, and Gaugin were his gods.

“But, isn’t it dangerous?” Henri wondered aloud. “Just last week I read over one thousand people were killed by a Viet ambush”, he pressed.

At that point, the newcomer, Richard, began to laugh. “I wonder what the headlines in the Vietnamese press were.” He said to Ngo while taking a drag from his PallMall.

Then, leaning forward with his palms clasped on the table, he continued, “I’m curious - for how long have you all been at the école together?”

“Seven years,” the four responded in unison.

“So, you must know the proportions of the Vitruvian man?” The American’s thick-rimmed glasses magnified the golden brown of his exacting eyes as he posed the question to the table.

“Why is that relevant?” Sayed chuckled bewilderingly.

“It’s a serious question.” Richard insisted.

“The complete face,” Sayed began, “that is, chin to hairline, is one tenth of the human body.” Then, spreading his thumb and pinky fingers wide and bringing them to Henri’s face, “the head - chin to the crown - measures one eighth.”

“Fascinating. And that Corbu fellow. What’s his name?” Richard pointed to Vann, “The Maligned Man?”

“You mean The Modular Man?” Vann corrected him.

“Right! The Modular Man. What are his proportions?” Richard directed his questioning back to Henri.

“He is one-and-three-quarter meters tall. Two-point-two-six meters with his arms overhead” Henri said, raising his hand and accidentally beckoning a waiter to the table.

“Now, how tall - if I may ask - is your mother?” Richard turned back to Vann.

“And what’s her shoe size?” Sayed said, a grin forming in the corners of his mouth.

At that moment, Vann recalled the figure drawing lessons they all attended in their early years of instruction. Hard as he tried to depict the form of the male nude, the tutors were unimpressed by his incongruous results.

“It’s because their proportions are all off!” Ngo yelled when Vann finally came to his friends in desperation.

“Of course they are! I bet you there’s not a Cambodian alive with feet that big!” Sayed chimed in whilst gesturing at the model’s toes with a flick of his pencil.

Vann emerged from the cafe to a deserted Rue Malaquais. He was walking home, bending the tattered corners of his father’s letter in his pocket when the wispy fragments of last night’s vision returned with piercing clarity.

In his dream, Vann was standing in front of a magnificent slab of sandstone. The ground seemed to tremble from the force of wooden mallets hitting metal as an army of វិស្វករ visvakar chipped away at the temple’s facade.

“កូរសមុទ្រទឹកដោះ Kaur Samoutr Tukdaoh” Vann whispered under his breath as he continued down the Pont Des Arts, the memory holding steady in his mind’s eye.

Beyond him, Vann could see elephants, wild boars, monkeys, and rabbits, clusters of thatched roofs surrounded by palm trees, water buffalo swatting at flies in the verdant rice fields, and the delicate pink of lotus flowers illuminating the dark green shadows cast by round lily pads.

Emerging from the dusty cloud of sandstone, an អាចារ achar came walking carrying a silver bowl in his weathered palms. Into it, he dipped a bundle of twigs and splashed water onto Vann’s forehead, which was now bowed with palms pressed and thumbs resting at his nose.

A thunderous chant erupted from the contours of the old man’s toothless mouth, which were barely moving as he recited:

“Just as rivers with water
Entirely fill up the sea,
So will what’s here been given,
Bring blessings to departed spirits.
May all your hopes and all your longings
Come true in no long time”.

The End

For more information, please visit The Vann Molyvann Project