1993 APT1 Conference : Identity, tradition and change

9 t h a t the l a t t e r worked in Germany in the 1930 s . are c rea ted as two sides of an irreconc ilable gap as if J ap an e se painting: could not be seen as a mu lti- vo ca l discourse bu t as a se r ies of u n i - v o c a l and mutually incomprehensible discourses. Once n a tu r a liz ed as a way of handling: the p a s t, th is concep tua l gap comes to govern what can be seen as r e p r e s e n t a t iv e within the same discourse now, even though some the work of some a r t i s t s appa ren tly ignores it, like Arimoto Tadao. The b ifu rca tion of the modern' from the 'n eo - t r a d i t i o n a l ' should a t all cos ts be avoided p rec ise ly because it seems to be so cognate with the p r e s su r e s of an ea r lie r n a scen t u l t r a - n a t io n a l i sm on the one hand , and contemporary high consumer socie ty c a t e g o r y - t r a d i n g on the other. c.The s t r e e t Since I f i r s t noticed the v a r ie tie s of h is to ry entombed in the walls of the lanes of Beijing in 1981 , I have begun to be aware of an in tr in s ic a lly n o n - a r t phenomenon bu t one w'hich is the ground for a kind of modern a r t experience if not for modern a r t p rac tice in some Asian coun tries. It is what the Japane se n e o - d a d a i s t and l a t e r nove lis t, Akasegawa Genpei called the 'Thomason* phenomenon. Thomason was a completely incompetent US’ ba seba ll p laye r imported by a Japane se club a t unde r the rule which allowed for a number of e x p a t r i a t e p layers as crowd pu llers . But desp ite the g rea t expense Thomason d idn 't even play, yet always d ressed up for the match, s a t on the p layers' bench and became a g rea t popular celebrity . More genera lly the 'Thomason phenomenon’ refers to objects, items of s t r e e t archaeology, the relics of p a s t s phys ica lly p r e s en t bu t bare ly nameable within the .p resen t which w:e notice in the s t r e e t or more broadly in the phenomena of lived experience for which the re is n e ith e r exp lana tion nor use, bu t for which th e re is no p re s en t need to