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

Here, Huang Yong Ping has actually evoked the desti ny of the progressive process of cu lture and history in general. While one tends to believe that tomorrow should be a better day, he teaches us not to rely on such an aspi ration . Rather, one should learn how to look at the world and, of course, the future, i n more dialectic way and 'accept' the destiny of things. It is the only way to negotiate with reality. Such a revelation has already been made in Huang Yong Ping's 1 990 work Sheng (Rise) . According to the orig inal project, a series of walls in the form of the sign 'sheng' from I Ching would be built upon a field in a village in Southern France. However, Huang Yong Ping decides to stop the construction once the concrete foundation is finished . And the project becomes a 'failure'. What remains there is only heaps of concrete and . . . emptiness. However, it is in the failure of the construction , or the 'non­ construction', that one can really encounter the destiny of things or real ity: the invisible wall is the real wal l , it is even more real than an actual wall made of bricks. If 'sheng' itself implies an aspiration for a better future, one should also see that there is always an invisible wall standing in the path of hope. How to confront and negotiate with the wall , be it visible or not, which i ncarnates the destiny of things? The Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas proposes a dialectical read ing of the Be rlin Wall in his 1 993 article 'Field Tri p, A(A) Memoir' (First and Last . . .) (S, M, L, XL pp.21 5-232) . He states his first impression of the wall: 'the wall was heartbreakingly beautiful', and 'The wall suggested that architecture's beauty was directly proportional to its horror'. Similar to Huang Yong Ping's understanding of the wall in his 'Sheng' project, Koolhaas said : 'It (the Berlin Wall) was a warn ing that - in arch itectu re - absence would always win in a contest with presence'. However, it can also be read , in a d ialectic manner, as an inca rnation of possibilities, or dynamics of change: The wall had generated a catalogue of possible mutations; sometimes the new object/zone slashed mercilessly through the most (formerly) impressive parts of the city; sometimes it yielded to apparently superior pressures that were not always identifiable. Its range from the absolute, the regular, to the deformed was an u nexpected manifestation of a formless 'modern' - alternately strong and weak, imposition and residue, Cartesian and chaotic, all its seemly different states merely phases of the same essential project. The confrontation between the destiny of th ings and the project of building and deconstructing the wal l as a step towards the future is actually the essential question raised in our conference and the event of the Triennial here. Asia-Pacific is a defin ition wh ich goes beyond the traditional reg ional division. By doing so , we are probably attempting to surpass the wall which , as a consequence of the colonial history, separates the Asia and Pacific regions. It is a process of remapping and reflecting , fi rst of a l l , economic and political i nterests in both sides of the Wal l . Of course, here the cultural a nd artistic life is also concerned , as observed by our event itself. Australia, as probably the most prosperous country in the region, is playing the role of the host of the event. Other 'brother' countries are invited to partici pate in the event i n Australia. Would all this imply an i ntention to construct a wall surrounding the coalition of the two regions which was separated by the 'Colonial Wall'? Shouldn't we prepa re from now on a space i nside the new territory drawn by the new wall in which critiques are still possible? And , at the end, shouldn't we prepare a deconstruction project of the wall, a project of wall breaking , at the same time as we construct the wall itself? Concl ud i ng the current changes provoked by the revolution of new technologies, the critic Andrew Ross tells us: 'There's no global village, of cou rse, but the villages are going global anyway' ('The New Smartness', i n Culture on the Brink - Ideologies of Technology, Dia Foundation, Bay Press) . Anyway, all projects of construction or deconstruction of the wall can never escape from confrontations with the fact that 'the villages are going global'. 1 4 1