Trauma, Memory, and Representation: The Role of Collaboration in the Development of the Museum Exhibit “Remembering the Killing Fields”

Trauma, Memory, and RepresentationThe Role of Collaboration in the Development of the Museum Exhibit “Remembering the Killing Fields” Alexxandra Salazar (bio) In 2011 the Cambodian American Heritage Museum and Killing Fields Memorial opened an exhibit on the Khmer Rouge period (1975–79), entitled Remembering the Killing Fields.1 The exhibit documents life under the Khmer Rouge through individual and collective survivor narratives, documentary photographs, informational text, and artifacts. The foundation of the exhibit was formed from a collection of life history interviews with Cambodian survivors between the ages of forty-five to seventy years old. The exhibit was produced through a university-community collaboration involving Northern Illinois University anthropologist Dr. Judy Ledgerwood, her students, board and staff members from the Cambodian Association of Illinois (cai) and the museum, other Cambodian community leaders and members, and non-Cambodian museum professionals. This article describes the development of the Remembering the Killing Fields exhibit (hereafter referred to as the Killing Fields exhibit) and the collaborative process involved in producing a successful and meaningful exhibit for the Cambodian community and the general public. In the same way that Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban (2008: 175) describes collaborative research, the development of the Killing Fields exhibit involved the people who were the focus of the exhibit “in an active way, as individuals or groups having vested interests in the project through their participation” in the exhibit design, execution, and production as well as an interest in “outcomes potentially related to community or individual [End Page 83] improvement of well-being.” The collaboration involved Cambodian community members, the anthropologist, and museum professionals at each step in the development of the exhibit, including the collection and analysis of survivor life history interviews, discussions of exhibit audiences and goals, various stages of exhibit layout designs, and the collection and final selection of photographs, artifacts, text, and other elements to include in the exhibit. The inclusion of the Cambodian community, their knowledge, and their choices of how to tell their stories was essential to the success of the Killing Fields exhibit, particularly since it deals with a traumatic history. Under these circumstances, the role of the anthropologist in the collaboration was key in bringing together the Cambodian community with the museum professionals, who did not have the same kind of knowledge about the community, their culture, and their history. Unlike some exhibits on the Khmer Rouge period produced without collaboration with Cambodian survivors and communities, the Killing Fields exhibit emphasizes the perspective of victims and survivors (rather than governments or political parties, for example), provides more than adequate contextual information, and promotes ownership of the exhibit by Cambodian communities (for more examples of exhibits on the Khmer Rouge period, see Caswell 2014; French 2002; Hughes 2003; Ledgerwood 1997; Schlund-Vials 2012b; Simon 2011; Thompson 2013; Um 2012).2 Additionally, as a result of placing survivor narratives at the center of the exhibit’s overall design and by providing the powerful tools of visual narrative, the exhibit became a medium through which survivors could gain control over traumatic memories that can otherwise be disjunctive, relentless, and disruptive in everyday life (see Brison 1999; Langer 1991; Ly 2008; Um 2012). Once the exhibit was complete, the collaborative relationships between the anthropologist, the community, the museum, and the nonprofit organization did not end. New collaborations continue to form as a result of previously established relationships forged in the process of producing the exhibit. My thesis research was one of these new collaborations. My thesis project focused on how the Khmer Rouge period is represented, how genocide remembrance is enacted in a memorial museum setting, and how the development process of the exhibit involved negotiations, challenges, and decisions between the groups and individuals involved in the exhibit’s creation. As one of Ledgerwood’s anthropology graduate students, I participated in a summer internship in 2014 at cai, where I [End Page 84] assisted with designing outreach materials and website content. I also had the opportunity to build relationships with the people I would eventually work with during my thesis research. Over the course of the internship I had many conversations with Ledgerwood about her experiences serving on the Museum Advisory Committee and collaborating with...