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

suggests. I n the shared experiences of colonisation , marginalisation and cultural resistance, there are new paral lels to be drawn and new comparisons and cross-references to be sought. For some of the artists participating in the Triennial, the dilemma of dislocation which cha racterises this era is doubled. Because of the frequency with which these artists exhi bit in international survey exhi bitions, they can be described as a new kind of transnational floating tribe, whose home turf is with in the international gallery spaces of the world, whose local commun ities are generic i nternational audiences, and whose lingua franca is the non­ contextually specific language of i nternational art jargon . For this tribe, as with other contemporary 'tribal' groups who are forging new communities from with in the liminal territories of a ruptured sense of geography, the doubled sense of exile comes from a ruptured sense of place. Experiences of displacement, disjuncture and disorder have become their personal terrain. Amidst this g roup of g lobe-trotting artists, there is a subculture who grasp a trans-global 'dual citizensh ip' and use it to advantage: international symposia such as these are used to buy a certain status i n 'home' territories. I n turn, the international recognition buys the currency to deal with local issues, communities and aud iences that may be d ismissed as marginal. Some of these artists come from I ndigenous cultu ral backgrounds, and use i nternational forums such as this one to bri ng attention to the issues at stake in more localised contexts. Even for I ndigenous cultures there can be no turning back to an authentic or mythic past. Those kinds of fixed identities are only available within the highly controlled walls of theme parks, reservations and Universal Studios. Territories familiar in the past have been so transformed by the ongoing impacts of cultural col l isions that new ways must be invented through which to bri ng traditional knowledges into new relationshi ps with present contexts. At this point in history, as d ifferent cultural groups struggle to rearticulate their identities in a changed world order, forms of popu lar culture are often used to signal the transcultu ral transit zones of identity that are necessarily temporary, but no less valid because of that. At this point i n the paper, I would like to refer to some of my personal experiences within these 'transcultu ral transit zones'. My own art practice in the past decade has been strongly infl uenced by the experiences of d isplacement, disju ncture and d isorder I have described as common to this era . My experience as a traveller who is 'j ust passing through' has often lead to my adoption of tou rist art and bric-a-brac as the materials most appropriate to experiences where only the veneer of other cultures can be experienced . This is not meant as an apology but rather, as a stated reality, where mistranslations, even though not always willfu l , often lead to fru itful engagements and i nteractions. Admitted ly this is dangerous stuff - at times wil lful mistranslation can be offensive to the cu ltures whose cultural forms are bei ng reinterpreted - and only able to be negotiated through exposing your own position as an outsider within the work. In the work Charnel I appropriated the topeng masks originally used in the Hindu e pic the Ramayana, but which today are more often used as tourist curios. These masks were represented within the work as bleached skeletons, devoid of their traditional colour and decoration . This work was originally made for 'Adelaide Installations', a component of the 1 994 Adelaide Festival where work from Aboriginal artists, non-I ndigenous Australian artists and artists from the Asia-Pacific region came together for the first time. The computer­ generated chattering that responded when someone entered the room fell somewhere between a death rattle and a technological rend ition of the traditional Balinese ketchak dance chant. In Halo Halo, which I i nstalled at the Baguio Convention Centre in 1 993, I used the popular drink made from layers of i ce, beans, coconut milk and coloured syrups as a metaphor for the layeri ng of cultural i nfluences that make up contemporary Filipino cultu re. The work was part of an exhibition of the Baguio Arts Guild where I ndigenous materials were used to make a range of i nstal lations. My interpretation of the term 'I ndigenous' was deliberately contentious within that context; I used various forms of plastic - colourful bags, plates, cups, coathangers, cheap toys, etc. - readi ly available in all Filipino markets and all-too visible as an aspect of the Filipino ecology. Understandably my 'mistranslation' elicited a range of 1 27