Present Encounters : Papers from the conference of the Second Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Brisbane, 1996

Pat Hoffie Not So Serious (Transcultural Dialogues) I n this paper I want to allude to three issues, two of which have emerged as u nstated concerns in the previous days of this conference . In particular, I would like to make a n attempt t o somehow racialise my own whiteness; j ust a s there i s no monolithic 'Asia', there can also be no singular acceptance of 'whiteness'. This is in no way an attempt to describe some kind of identifiable 'white' perspective within a forum where, regrettably, it seems to have already been accepted as an a priori identity. Rather, I would have it heard as some kind of plea for an understand ing that within the racial group that has been reductively described as 'the freckled , pale skinned members' of the Asia-Pacific region, there is also a diversity of experiences and identities. My own experiences as an immigrant to this country, together with a growi ng awareness that the land belonged to a people about whom non-I ndigenous Australians knew very little, as well as an art education that seemed to al low no place for role models with whom I cou ld identify, contributed to a vague sense of dislocation from the culture I fou nd myself with i n . The glut o f American soaps that filled the television channels and pop music that fi lled t he air waves seemed to over-dub the sense of Australian identity that was steadily growing through more locally-produced forms of popular culture. It was not that these forms were rare ; rather, it was that the really important stuff - culturally, socially, politically - was always made to seem as though it was happening elsewhere. The second aspect I want to sketch out in this very short time is a sense that the general association of popu lar culture with Pop Art and the world of international consumerism , advertising and mass production does not fit when we look at much of the development of popular culture i n the Asia-Pacific region. Rather, I will argue that the diverse manifestations of popu lar cultu re in this region have often been motivated through a spirit of resistance to the infl uences of popular culture imposed from elsewhere. The th i rd point I i ntend to address is the mercurial theme of this Triennial - 'Present Encounters'. Over the past few days it seems that we are much more comfortable i n addressing t he tangibles o f t he past and t he potentials o f t he future t han we are i n describing the 'encounters' of the present. The title of this forum session 'Popular Culture - Metaphor for Change' suggests that popular cu lture should automatically be associated with notions about the futu re - associated with some kind of nebulous idea that things that will somehow be different to how they have been before . This i nterpretation o f popular culture falls readily into line with mainstream Western views that have identified popular culture with those values of international modern ism that have accepted and promoted homogenising tendencies over and above a recogn ition of local and specifi c contexts. I n dominant accounts of Western art history, the incorporation of popular cultural icons into the arena of fine art is most readi ly associated with Pop Art, and with white male Ameri ca n artists like Andy Warhol and James Rosenquist. There are others from other contexts - but artists like Britain's David Hockney and Richard Hamilton have been lionised to almost the same extent as the American heroes, and they share i n common the status of being white, male and essentially privileged i n terms of education and access to information, powerfu l art i nfrastructures, etc. . When I was a student this kind of imagery didn't speak to me of a reality that I could afford to be complicit with. The sexism was all too obvious, even for a fledgl i ng feminist, and the in­ you r-face up-frontness of the advertising imagery seemed a little overstated withi n the mo re laid-back ambience of Brisbane. Through time, the imagery has grown i ncreasingly fam i liar, but no less alien; there can be little doubt that my awareness of being slightly outside the history of my own culture was further fostered by my early train ing i n Western art h istory . Who were these men who painted women like disembodied ciphers for consumption? I n t he end I didn't care too much any way, because already, other obsessions far more pertinent t o my own proclivities had surfaced . 1 24