Cho-Am

Abstract

This is a videogame where the player visits the cremation site of Pol Pot as a sleepwalker. They interpret the world their character is inhabiting by their gestures and brief glimpses inside their head.

The real life cremation site of Pol Pot in Cho-Am is a place of contradictory spiritual and political significance. As a "good-luck" shrine, offerings are continuously left by visitors who hope to have assistance in their prayers from a main architect of the Cambodian auto-genocide.

This is a way of dealing with the memory and presence of someone responsible for pain and destruction that is outside of the realm of forgiveness and punishment.

The site, itself, has very little aside from a tin roof covering a mound of dirt where Pol Pot's ashes used to be. Much of the experience of the site takes place in one's head.