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

Noted Dutch scholar Jan Nederveen Pieterse poi nted out that the debate on post-modern ism has been conducted almost entirely with backs turned to the world outside the West. In trying to see the connection between the deconstruction of modern ity and developments outside the Western world , Nederveen Pieterse saw the importance of seeing the specificity of Western development. In his opinion , the way to come to terms with the specificity of the West is to explain the singu larity of its development i n contrast to that of other continents. In short, unpacking the specificity of Western development. 4 The unpacki ng of Western modernity i n Nederveen Pieterse's thought is based on the same platform as the rethinking of Modern ism which has been my interest in recent years. Neither approach can be seen as deconstructi ng modern ity but rather, are criticisms of the singular development of modernity reflected in the Modern ism belief. (Modernism here is Modernism codified in the 1 950s, which has been believed to be related to the Modernist tradition , and differs from Realist tradition , which coloured the early development of modern art). Based on absolutism , totality, and many impacts of g lobalisation , Modernism has been seen as resu lting in only one Modernist development reflected in I nternational Art. Through capitalism and a world communication system dominated by the West, this belief became dominant in world art development. Not only because of pressure beh ind the dominati on , but also because the dominant concepts were adopted without pressure among the dominated . But the extent to which Modernism has been critically discussed within the Third World should be questioned . I n a way it can be seen that the understanding of Modern ism i n the Third World is not clear. This lack of understanding became apparent when Third World artists and curators became involved in contemporary art activities. It was a rgued that Modernist development was the cause of domination and marginalisation. Contemporary art, which critiques modernist development had freed the Th ird World from being dominated and marginalised . Then , what was the motivation behind the Third World criticism of Modern ist development; be it against Modernism, or the resulting marginalisation? Within contemporary art itself, the domination continues. In the Third World , the domination of contemporary art 'conventions' began when local artists, art h istorians and art critics started to use the term 'contempora ry art', again without pressu re. Further, the Third World's artists have to make their works, expressions, idioms, visions conform to contemporary art 'conventions'. Some have succeeded , some have not, and some have had t o betray their artistic vision. The majority of Thi rd World artists - whose works still show modern istic tendencies - however, stay outside this 'excl usion/inclusion game' of contemporary art. No doubt it was the d iscourses around contemporary art wh ich criticised Modern ism and opened the awareness of plurality in contemporary art. However, differences in contemporary art have been discussed through a perception similar to orientalism, where cultura l backgrounds i n t he Thi rd World are nearly always seen as related t o trad itions and ethn i city. In a word : uniqueness. Even within the Thi rd World, d iscussions of differences show the same errors. Most of the analyses again identify differences through cultu ral backg rounds, but here, cultura l background has become a tool to show national identities or other defensive identities, which i n many cases became a continuation of East-West confrontation . Based on t he spirit o f seeing differences, t he social and cultura l backgrounds were forced t o become 'the others'. I n representing realities withi n t he Third World, most o f t he analyses i n contemporary art discussions were again trapped i n elaborating 'otherness' . The representations have become false since the rea l ities represented were not really considered within the process of representation. Seeing how difference has been discussed in contempora ry art, I realised that the effort to find a platform for d iscussing the world's contemporary art has resulted i n a n other confrontation, misinterpretation and misunderstanding. This condition is an indicator that contemporary art discourse has been trapped i n the frame of post-avant-gard e/post­ modern ity. Too much effort has been taken to incl ude what Honneff pointed out as 'genera l 28