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

means when Australian artists for example are in Asia, they are pretty sensitive to d ifference and pretty sensitive to not maki ng negative value judgements about that difference. The APT has an interesting role in this. The cultural infrastructures I'm indicati ng in Asia have been loathe to support the type of work that APT has shown both in 1 993 and now in 1 996. APT has asked a lot of individual cu rators to work together - and given them carte blanche on selection in principle - bearing in mind certain logistical constraints. Everyone has been treated equal ly, whether older or younger, more or less experienced . It's a new role really of individual freedom working i n a consensual structure. The success of the show is the success of this process. Queensland Art Gallery took a big risk in this - much , much more so than the curators involved , unlike the single artistic d i rectors who carry so much [responsibil ity] at the Biennales I mentioned - whether Sydney or Venice or Kassel , and even Kwangj u . This is not to say there are not unspoken cu ratorial limits in the APT; for example no artist was selected who articulates the views of Pauline Hanson or David I rving. Artists i n Asia know the issues facing their country's curators. They understand the forces against a more assertive and proactive program, especially internationally, for their cu rators. I wonder if they wi ll continue to accept this in the futu re. Currently almost all exhibitions of Asian contemporary art seen outside Asia have been i n itiated by non-Asians (with some notable exceptions, including Japan's and Korea's participation in Venice) . The more people outside Asia see the range of work in such exh ibitions as this, the more this issue will be raised . I said public service systems were more antipathetic to the issues of contemporary art i n Asia than elsewhere: that proactivity remains the province of the individual artist, and to a degree the academic and t h e rare independent curator. One of this situation is the enormous growth of contemporary art museums being built in opened in cities all over Asia, run by government and corporate groups. How will the two opposing forces evolve? We in Australia have had excellent partnerships with Asian administrations, even through Asialink's office - with the 'Rapport' exh ibition between Monash University Gallery and Singapore Art Museum, of Merryn Gates of Canberra School of Art Gallery working with South East Asian curators on joint projects to do with pattern ing as a contemporary issue, or an exchange with the Sonje Museum in Korea being worked on . I assume this wil l continue; but will it get easier, or perhaps harder? John Prescott, head of Australia's biggest company, BHP, recently said that success in Asia meant success in the rest of the world . He is an i nternational man, espousing an international position , and I thought it was a strong statement. I n this climate , wil l Asian arts infrastructures become easier for Westerners to approach? Wi ll globalisation of the world impi nge on the authority modes noted i n the Far Eastern Economic Review and flow through to art organisation? Or will regionalism strengthen? Or, more overwhelmingly for all of us, will the changes in China mean a strengthening of the so-called Asian positioning? Will China's increasi ngly strong role tip balances in our art world? Will this put pressures on where we might have thought them lifting? Will we have to negotiate with Chinese cultura l agendas as we currently do not? And most i mportantly, wil l China's agenda sway the way others in the reg ion i nteract, and make the difficult negotiation with Western ways easier to avoid? The role of the Asian curator remains pivotal here - almost a symbol of the centre of the seesaw balance between an expanding regional art admi nistration on one side and the more and more confident international artist on the other. Wh ich way wil l the seesaw settle, and for how long? 43