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

The chal lenge is i n fact to create new i ntellectual tools that can go beyond the terms 'syncretic', or even perhaps 'hybrid', and certainly beyond that sad word 'infl uences', i nto terminology that can nuance the level of co-optation by the modern vis-a-vis the levels that some other systems of meaning has been able to insist upon through its tenacity. A calibrated terminology, therefore, that allows respect for cultures that structured the absorption of things from outside, with a system of meaning that managed to grow and survive violent encounters with global hegemon ies - though they may have managed to do so invisibly, or beyond the adequacy of dominant systems of representations to register. At the Canberra conference of 1 991 on modernity and post-modernity in Asian art, Apinan Poshyananda questioned ownership or proprietorship of terms and concepts, and repud iated the notion of 'authentic origi nation' (John Clark) . Even as Roces's advocacy and Poshyananda's response have deep resonances, they are not alone. I know of no other writer from South-East Asia who has examined the implications of the term modernism as tenaciously as Jim Supangkat; and it would be instructive to review the range and depth of his endeavour in this regard . I n an essay written in conjunction with recent encounters between artists from I ndonesia and the Netherlands, he offers the following thesis: To d iscern the difference , a re-contextualisation of modern ism is needed . Modernism is not an absol ute concept, not is it the opposite of trad ition . . . modern ism is a pluralistic phenomenon . And I note that in his essay titled 'Contemporary Art: What/When Where', published in the catalogue for this Triennial, Supangkat continues with h is mediations on modern ism as a concept, and has extended h is compass to coin a new term, namely: multimodernism. As he is maki ng a presentation this afternoon, I will leave it to him to expound on the reverberations emanating from this extension. In 1 980 Rod Paras-Perez set about examining and pinning down nomenclatures recu rring in art discourses i n The Phili ppines; it appeared in publication as Visions and Voices. In it, terms such as realism, neo-realism, non-objective, magic rea lism and hyper realism , among others, were discussed and scrutinised by means of conversations with artists whose practices were affiliated with these categories; it affords a rich ly nuanced documentation of fundamental terms and their lexical permutations. Marian Pastor Roces, Apinan Poshyananda, Jim Supangkat and Rod Paras-Perez constitute a li neage that is compelling . I now come to the hub of the matter which concerns me. Presentations at regional, i ntra-regional and mega-regional conferences tend to be cast in symptomatic terms; this condition is close to that sense of wariness which I mentioned earlier. These are, in my view, the outcome of reactions against subscribing to the dominant canon from the West. It is true that it is at or along boundaries that differences and therefore defi n itions occu r. However, the d rawing of boundaries need not only entail wariness of and vigilance against forces from the outside. It must also entail prospecting and cultivating that which is boundaried i n . (One has to g lance at the citations of most of such presentations to real ise how weighted and dependent they are on the very canon which is being fenced off or resisted) . My references to writings i n the Fukuoka catalogues and to citations from Jim Supangkat and Rod Paras-Perez are aimed at d rawing attention to the existing literatures on art in South­ East Asi a and how important it is to deal with them in the endeavour to create bases and frames for the provision of contexts pertinent to u nderstanding creative/cultu ral developments i n this region. It is with such aims in mind that in the essay on developing regionalist perspectives now published in the catalogue for this Triennial , I stepped back i nto an earlier historical phase in South-East Asian art history , so as to bring into relief views on regionalism that had been articulated and which stem from fi rmly held ideologies regarding history and cu ltu ral values. 25