1993 APT1 Conference : Identity, tradition and change

20 impediment in a field where many in te lligen t and informed explorers s till map the topology of the East and the West, of the J ap an e se and the Others, and of the Yellow and the White. When, one wonders, will though t ca tch up with the aborigine and his video camera, the migrant Scotsman p a in ting China on an Aus tra lian beach, or the Tokyo- and New Y o rk - tr a in ed Taiwanese minimalist leav ing he r l i f e - t r a c e on the void to the sound of ? 1. I do not call th is 'colonial' or 'neo -co lon ia l' because , for me, such descrip tions about processes are secondary and not primary to the s tru c tu r e of a r t discourses. The description Euramerican is de libe ra te . Ou/mei and oA)ei are the Chinese and Japanese neologisms for Europe/America, bu t the use here of 'Euramerica' and re la ted adjec tives is more serious. It marks the pos ition t h a t 'Western' cu ltu ra l produc ts do not in essence belong to coun trie s in Western Europe and North America where 'Western' cu ltu re may have originated . They are tran s fe rab le and trans fo rmab le in locally a u th en t ic ways outside th a t contiuum. It also ind ica tes t h a t 'Western' is in fac t too unspecific, when we discuss what developed in a c u l t u r a l - h is to rica l continuum, implying th a t desp ite its c u l tu r a l spec ific ity , the America which Japan and China encoun tered in the 1 9 th cen tu ry was a cu ltu r a l and h is to rica l extension of Europe. Thus Euramerica drops the hyp then from 'Eurlope andlAmerica'. ". Pa rticu la rly wrhen one looks at the s ty lis tic d iv e r s ity of th e la te Ayu tthaya and early Ratanakosin temple murals w:hich I have seen such as Wat Yai Suwrannaram [la te IT t h - e a r ly 18 th cen tu ry ] and Wat Ko Keo Su ttharam [1734 ], in Pe tchaburi and Wat Phu ttha isawan [la te 1 7 th cen tu ry ] in Ayu tthaya . See also Ringis, R., Thai Temples and Temple , Singapore, Oxford University Press, 1990, p . 9 7 - 1 0 2 . O . Or in Habermas' terms, th a t va lues are the same as arguments about th e ir va lid ity . . See Bateson, G., The Logical Categories of Learn ing and Communication’ [19 64 ], rep r in ted in his S teps to an Ecology? o f , New York, Ballantine, 1972 , especially p .293 .