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

Based on situations such as these, John Fiske's statement that popular culture 'is made from with in and below, not imposed from without or above as mass cultural theorists would have it' 5 cannot be so readily accepted . A more acceptable opinion - with its g reater emphasis on political factors - is that expressed by Noam Chomsky in Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media about the power of mass media and those i n the mass media who move behind the scenes and act as determiners of what is worthy or not worthy of public consumption. 6 Ultimately, it can be sa id that what eventually becomes popular with the masses is more or less determined by those specific community i nterests. As I have already mentioned , an observation of the g rowth of Jakarta and a number of other large cities i n I ndonesia appears to objectively support the notion that the formation of a 'popu lar culture' is indeed the same process as Osterworld aptly named 'Americanization ' . The American presence in Jakarta i s more real and vulgar t han i t is in Brisbane, for i nstance. Levi and Coca Cola are classic American icons that have entered I ndonesia (see the Arahmaiani work in the Triennial Nation for sale) and to these must be added American-styl e ci nemas, replete with Hollywood movies and popcorn , Hard Rock Cafe, Planet Hollywood and McDonalds, MTV, NBA basketball and all players attributes, and very soon, Fashion Cate. What kind of cultural resistance can be expected to emerge from this kind of 'popu lar culture'? Perhaps this is the reason for our fascination in noting that we currently speak about 'Popular Culture : A Metaphor for Change'. I n fact, the deeper we d ig into all facets of popular culture, the more we realise that we are simply staring into the face of consumer culture . Perhaps t h e close o f the 1 990s provides clearest evidence o f the logic o f capitalist industries: anything can be mass produced and , as a consequence, everything must also be mass­ consumable. I nevitably, everything can (or perhaps even must) either become popu lar or be made to become popular. Alternative Space This is not to say that, in public arena, the individual has lost h is or her true self. To view urban life that has been touched by the drive towards global isation as simply a process of hegemony (Gramscian model) - there is no free space left - is a g ross oversimplification, and it represents a view that is pessimistic. On the contrary, hegemony actually provides alternative space. A simple way to grasp this point is to look at the reality that cultu re - regardless of whether or not it is pop cultu re - is conti nually i n a state of fl ux. As text, cu ltu re comes alive in social relationships and i n relations among texts. A pair of jeans with a well known brand will always undergo a change in meaning the moment they are brought before an u rban professional person , or a female and a male, or a factory worker who sells her/his labour producing jeans, or a teenager. I n the publ ic space , i n the context of mass communication, ambiguity wi ll always be present despite efforts to ignore it. 7 I n view of this, for i nstance as demonstrated in most of the works of young artists from the 'New Art Movement' group i n I ndonesia in the mid 1 970s to early 1 980s, texts on popu lar culture have creatively appeared in the public space and they can be refined into the language of artistic expression . But, the ' relationship' between 'pop' and 'art' can a lso happen the other way around. As an example, we can consider the works of performance and installation art by Yi-Bui [Lee Bui] (South Korea) , who was invited to d isplay and perform her works at an exclusive boutique in the Myong-Dong shopping center in Seoul. This is representative of intervention by a contemporary artist and of the expression of contemporary art within the public domai n, which constitutes the centre of operations for popular culture and consumer culture. The artist, Yi-Bui [Lee Bui] , is also aware of this: 'I had achieved what I intended : to have art manipulate and undermine the force of commercialism, instead of the other way around'. 8 Thus, in the context of pop culture, or consumer culture, it is not only hegemony and resistance that have been experienced . The existence of alternative space has also allowed a process of 'intertextual collage' 9 to occur. The differences in cultural expression that a re typically labeled 'high culture' and 'popular/mass culture' are no longer significant. The interesting lesson offered by popular culture is the reality that its vitality is to be discovered i n its capacity t o utilise anything from anywhere. This i s also the case for contemporary fine art. What is used , and the origin of what is used , are of no consequence in consideri ng the 1 34