Rithy Panh has devoted his career to making films about the atrocities and legacies of the Cambodian Genocide, from the precisely documented torture facility described in S-21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine, to the indentured servitude faced by present-day sex workers in Paper Cannot Wrap up Embers. Throughout, Panh has remained steadfastly situated in the present: while his films concern the past, they do not attempt to enter or relive it, but rather interrogate historical meaning for the purposes of understanding a troubled present.

For their first public art commission, Brooklyn-based artists Sandra Gibson and Luis Recoder conceived Topsy-Turvy, a cylindrical camera obscura in Madison Square Park that projects on its interior walls an upside-down image of the Flatiron district. I spoke with the artists in Chicago, where they had just performed an untitled projection piece with sound artist and composer Olivia Block at the Chicago Underground Film Festival.

For their first public art commission, Brooklyn-based artists Sandra Gibson and Luis Recoder conceived Topsy-Turvy, a cylindrical camera obscura in Madison Square Park that projects on its interior walls an upside-down image of the Flatiron district