A project of Design Kompany

July & August 2026
Current project: North Carolina visit to share ‘DESK,’ ‘Art & Copy,’ and ‘Shelter’ zines

Dear friends,

Thank you for your patience.

This page used to say, ‘We are figuring things out.’

Over time, I think what I found out, personally, was there’s no such thing as fully figuring out anything. The idea of knowing knowing is a farce, and the way of thinking out here in Cambodia and Viet Nam, from my first hand experience of acculturating here for the last 12 years, is that nothing is for sure, and there are more things to say about that, without getting too philosophical.

The problems with the way things were in the United States at the time of setting off for ‘The Year of Enchantment,’ in 2013, from Raleigh-Durham airport felt really real, at that time, and in that moment, for me. I was certain about what I felt, but, with time, reflection and watching the world change, as well as reading news–my only source of information on what’s what over in that hemisphere–I’ve changed. A lot.

I’ve put my reflections together in a small ‘zine’, a mini-magazine, called ‘shelter.’ I’ll be bringing it to North Carolina to read and share with people who want to know, ‘What was it like over there for 12 years, so far, far away, from us, and everything, here?’

The big questions are there but the answers change as we go; I will talk about it, or share about it, if you feel like meeting me in person.

Order ‘DESK’ by making a donation of USD 25 or more at this page: http://chuffed.org/project/art-copy. Or get ‘Shelter,’ a smaller zine, if you donate USD 15 or more.

There will be many things to say, when we talk, together, in person. I’m looking forward to it, and for representing the Orangutan Swing trio, when I get to the Triangle in mid-July!

Figuring things out isn’t the goal, for me, anymore. Enjoying the journey–that’s a way to go. Let’s discover? Let’s converse.

To get updates, kindly add your name to my new Mailing List: dipikakohli.com/newsletter Be sure to check ‘events.’ That way I’ll have all the requisite permissions to keep you up to date on possible meets, and greets, out your way. See you in the Triangle!

Dipika

Order DESK ($25)
Order SHELTER ($15)

Akira’s note from 2014

Taking time to think things through

Orangutan Swing started as a side project of Design Kompany, at the start of 2012. It was started as an event series around the idea of dialogue-making. Then, it was a touring circus of stimulating creativity in communities around the world. In march 2014, we found a temporary home in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. That’s when the soul searching journey started. It has now been almost 10 years! So much has changed, and yet, so little in how we address ourselves as a Kompany has, even as our partnerships multiplied across many projects. It is time for a reflection. Lots of questions that just need to be asked, questions that we need to simply sit with. So, while Orangutan Swing figures itself out, I’m putting the blog here on hiatus. Please feel free to get in touch (akira@orangutanswing.com) in the meantime, and tell us about yourself. I am always open to stories from new and old friends. Thanks, Akira

Zinemaking workshops

Chaing Mai 2014, pictured above, was the first ‘zinery!’ workshop hosted by Orangutan Swing in Southeast Asia. Today, Kismuth Books hosts zine workshops and an international zine club, Art & Copy…

View Art & Copy’s Portfolio >

Notes from the conversation on Sept 28

Designing on the road

Because we love to make workshops, we hosed an identity design one, ‘What does it mean to be Sikkimese?’, as part of a series called Modern Sikkim, our first projet on the road, in Gangtok 2013… Since then we’ve continued some of our old design work, but very selectively, now and again, in S.E. Asia…

View DK’s Portfolio >

City Photos

We took lots of photos and shared them in the early days of Orangutan Swing being out on the road, to ‘Practice the new, Uncertain, and Different.’ More recently, we use Instagram to share occasionally…

View IG >

Select projects

Some things our team of three had made together through Orangutan Swing: STITCH the one-word project in Durham, Modern Sikkim in Gangtok, SELF in Bangkok, Origin in Phnom Penh, and the Year of Dialogue on both US coasts that kickstarted all of those.

In Seattle and Ireland’s West Cork for a total of ten years, before returning to the Triangle, we’d also one lots of things that looked quite a bit like the below arrangement of photos from the archives and recent experiments in getting us all together to talk, come to think of it. All these iterations of trying new things led to community-focused, differently-minded-getting-together-by-design ‘ups’ and also art, writing, and graphic design projects that gave shape to some of th things we tlaked about, talked with others about, and talked about amongst ourselves, too. During the last 10 years, it’s been Atelier S P A C E zines like The Book of Feelings (Ho Chi Minh City 2021), Hi Summer (Karsamaki and Oulu 2018), and In the Vernacular (Riga 2019). I could talk more about everything, but maybe sign up for the newsletter, for current updates, instead. dipikakohli.com/newsletter

"voting" taking place
Come choose your words!
(re)WORK. a conversation roundtable / Photo by OMNI

A second zinemaking workshop, in Phnom Penh, early days… We met, wrote, talked, drew, and made collaged books, on the spot.

Phnom Penh

2014

ORANGE, a waffle cafe on Street 63 way south, like PAST Mao Tse Toung Boulevard, was the venue.

What we learned & how we’ve changed

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We Need Others

No man is an island and all that jazz. Creativity doesn’t live in a vacuum: we need others, to flow, to find flow. But not ‘like-minded’ others. Differently minded ones. Why?

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The Chance Encounter

If you stay in your box, you won’t grow. The chance encounter is a way to discover a new way of looking at something, and getting unstuck. The longer we were on the road in 2013, I think, the more aware we became that continuous learning was key to staying open…

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Field Notes

Of course it came time to come to a rest period, after 12 months of continuous movement and that was how we found Phnom Penh… A place to try anything, to explore creatively, to gain new kinds of experiences, both personally with an international group of people moving and living here all the time, and for our individual creative practices, too….

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Coming home

Twelve years after leaving NC and the Stitch project, Orangutan Swing is coming back to the Triangle for a ‘pit stop’. To see what’s there, what’s changed, what’s new. And if dialogue is something people want, especially when it’s about ‘a center, and not sides,’ as B. Isaacs writes in Dialogue & the Art of Thinking Together....

Reconnect with us…

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