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

I n 1 989 at the third Fukuoka Modern Asian art exposition , the director, Mikio Soej ima , shrugging off t he tentativeness of h i s predecessor, boldly struck out i nto t he realms of certitude and the fi nite. He outlined the aim in that year as havi ng to do with 'symbolic vision' which , above all other considerations, was i ntended to 'reveal what cou ld be termed as the Asian mental structure'. Such a revelation was deemed as the defining, essentialising nature of Asi an art , for the earlier expositions in dealing with the formal and technical properties brought to the surface characteristics that were and could only be derivative, and even then derived improperly! But let me not digress too far by way of a commentary and retu rn to the intended revelation of 'the Asian mental structure'. Set agai nst such an ostensive outcome is a denial if not rejection of shared ideals and collective identities. I n her lengthy, somewhat j udicious, introduction in Tradition and Change wh ich was published on the occasion of the inaugural Asia-Pacific Triennial in 1 993, Carol ine Turner states: There is no collective Asian identity, let alone an Asia-Pacific identity. Of cou rse this is not only what was said , for she proceeds to tease out some of the implications arising from I nternational ism and Regionalism as well as Paradoxes of Identity, wh ich constitute among declared issues in her introduction. Where do all of these lead me and , for that matter, [all of us] in advancing present encounters? My principal concern , as it is with many of you , is with the writing of h istories of art produced in the regions of the Asia-Pacific. How are such writings to be approached , directed and shaped? With what methods and apparatus? Of course these questions are not new; no r can they be answered i n the remaining allotted minutes. What I wish to do is briefly scan the landscape of art scholarship and signal ways of approaching the task and in so doing move onward from where we are . I n t he i naugural APT a sense o f wariness surfaced in t he presentations and ensu ing discussions, a wariness towards accepting or succumbing to critical canons imposed upon or acquired from the West and then adopted/employed/retooled unthinkingly, when apprehending and explicating art produced i n the regions of the Asia-Pacific. Such wari ness is not peculiar to that Triennial ; i ndeed , in varying deg rees it figu res in this one, as well as evident i n the formulation of the topic of this session (Globalisation versus Unique Identities) and in the next (Post Otherness) . This sense of wariness underpinned a gathering of writers in Singapore in Apri l , 1 995, under the sponsorship of the South-East Asian Ministers of Education project for the fine arts; the gatheri ng was charged with a brief which ran along the following lines: to re-examine received and prevailing methods of the practice of art history and develop new approaches that can be pertinent to the study of circumstances in which art is produced , consumed and publici sed in South-East Asia. In April 1 995 there was a large gathering of artists, curators and writers in Jakarta, in conj unction with the Non-Aligned Countries Convention ; although unwieldy because of the sheer size, d iscussion swirled around marking positions of difference and the construction of identities. And then again, in July of 1 996, the cultural office of ASEAN (Association of South-East Asian Nations) facilitated a meeting in Singapore of teachers, curators and writers i n order to examine ways by which art and art practices in South-East Asia are to be documented , researched and publicised ; on that occasion , there was one submission heralding the rewriti ng of world art history, whereby the art of 'other worlds' gain entry into and cla im equitable status in master narratives of the histories of the art of the world . The instances are numerous. Do they point to provisions that are usefu l? At the inaugura l APT in 1 993, Marian Pastor Roces underlined t he need t o develop suitable tools that could do j ustice in apprehending works displayed at that Triennial; it was an impassioned yet probing advocacy. I quote her: 24