The Second Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art exhibition catalogue (APT2)

what is different. As we move on in the process of the Triennials towards the end of a century and a new millennium, it is vitally necessary to recognise difference and to give even greater respect to what we have in common. CarolineTurner, Deputy Director & Manager International Programs, Queensland Art Gallery,Australia 1 Whileit is recognised that the concept of the 'Asia-Pacific' is somewhat ambiguous, it is generally defined as Asian countries with aPacific seaboard and island states of the Pacific Ocean. India'sinclusion is in acknowledgment of its status as afountainhead culture. Among critical responses to the Triennial those of Apinan Poshyananda:This challenging exhibition has "bulldozed" contemporary art from the Asia-Pacific region onto the world arena' (Bangkok Post, 4November 1993), and Redza Piyadasa:Those of uswho were inBrisbane lastweek came away feeling that we had been privileged to have been part of ahistoric cultural event for both Australia and Asia' (Malaysian Business Times, 25 September 1993), are indicative. 3 While the Triennial was the first exhibition in the world to bring the recent art of Asian and Pacific countries together in this concentrated manner, there had been exhibitions of contemporary Asian art in Asia,Pacific art in the Pacific and some contemporary art of the region seen in Australia.Anumber of these exhibitions, including the important Fukuoka Asian art exhibitions, are discussed elsewhere in thiscatalogue. Gareth Evans and Bruce Grant, Australia's Foreign Relations in the World of the 1990s, Melbourne University Press,Melbourne,second edition, 1995,p.x. CarolineTurner (ed.), Tradition andChange: ContemporaryArt ofAsia and the Pacific, Queensland University Press,Brisbane,1993. Furnia Nanjo, 'Abook that is never finished', in TransCulture La Biennaledi Venezia [exhibition catalogue],1995, p.13. Dadang Christanto For those who have been killed 1992 Installation comprising bamboo with metal supports Collection:Queensland Art Gallery. The Kenneth and Yasuko Myer Collection of Contemporary Asian Art Developing Regionalist Perspectives In South-East Asian Art Historiography T.K. Sabapathy In the conference component of the inaugural Asia-Pacific Triennial, speakers ranged over a wide terrain. Some sketched capsule histories of art of the twentieth century in their respective countries; others diagnosed preferred practices or productions, advancing for them fresh status and enhanced meanings. Yet others sought to delineate ideological parameters for explicating art produced in specific circumstances; at times these were cast in terms resisting totalising or homogenising strategies, prompted by national and/or global forces; at other times they were characterised as colluding with national aspirations aimed at connecting with global networks. Underlying these projections was a deeply felt current, one which surfaced in terms of a sense of wariness-a wariness towards accepting or succumbing to orthodoxies emerging, imposed or acquired, from the West, and then adopted, employed, re-tooled unthinkingly when looking at and writing about art in these regions. Regrettably, this sense of wariness was not articulated with any degree of rigour and neither was it made concrete and analysed sufficiently in the context of prevailing critical writings. If some such endeavours had been undertaken, then there may have emerged pathways along which methodologies for the historical explication of contemporary art in the regions of the Asia-Pacific could well have been engendered. Audience participation was enthusiastic but concern was expressed over the mapping of the Asia-Pacific.Was it to be envisioned as an integral, unitary entity? If so, what are among some of the shaping, converging forces that permit such a projection? Or is it the case that the mapping of the Asia-Pacific can usefully lead to constituting a mosaic of sub-regions, each having distinct historical demographies yet overlap, abut, with neighbouring and even far-flung sub-regions? To what degrees do such perceptions lead to constructing patterns of convergence and divergence? Discussants, however, tended to deal with the apparent and the obvious. Therefore, and unsurprisingly, interest swirled around exchanges as to who and what were included and omitted. Entering the proceedings from a different trajectory, a floor speaker called for a moratorium on a number of words and terms; among those mentioned were 'modern', 'modernism' and 'modernity'. The reason advanced was that such words did not spring from circumstances which were historically and aesthetically rooted in the artistic cultures of these regions; originating from the West, they continue to reverberate with the aura of their origination and were ill-suited when applied in any other situation. This is a sterling instance of subscribing to the tyranny of 'authentic origination'!1 Such a call is not new, although to hear it stated in such an.. unconditional or unmediated way, and in the face of scholarship over the past twenty years, is astonishing. The astonishment deepens in the light of an impassioned yet probing presentation by Marian Pastor Roces at that very Triennial, in which she advocated the need to deal with words, and do so rigorously and purposefully; she underlined the necessity to develop suitable tools that could 'do justice' to works displayed at the Triennial: The challenge is in fact to create new intellectual tools that can perhaps go beyond the terms 'syncretic', or even perhaps 'hybrid', and certainly beyond that sad word 'influences', into 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 hegemonies– though they may have managed to do so invisibly, or beyond the adequacy of dominant systems of representation to register. A calibrated terminology, therefore, that can also register the total extinctions of culture caused by the modern machine, and therefore, allows us the ability to mourn. 2 Her challenge to create 'a calibrated terminology' which can encompass an array of distinctiveness and difference, thrown as it is in the face of inadequate and a seeming absence of 'dominant systems of representation', is compelling and cannot be left unanswered even as it is daunting. Her call to inscribe, describe the extinctions of culture wrought by the onslaught of 'the modern machine', and in so doing facilitate, legitimise, mourning for such deaths, is moving, unsentimental and adds fresh dimensions to the study of historical processes. The remarks made by the floor speaker and the frontiers advanced by Roces, springing as they do from unconnected positions, instil vigilance against terms invested with absolutist values and fixed sovereignty. Even so, and here Roces is surely right, the struggle to cultivate and, thereby, constitute ways that are conducive for talking and writing about art in the regions of the Asia- Pacific must revolve around language, including the language of the master discourse-however this is perceived and propagated. Glimpses of such struggles can be had from reading a remark by Jim Supangkat, written in conjunction with recent encounters between artists from Indonesia and The Netherlands: To discern the differences, a recontextualisation of modernism is needed. Modernism is not an absolute concept, nor is it the opposite of tradition. It is also not just based on a Modernistic philosophy (with a capital M!). In this context, modernism is a pluralistic phenomenon. It is a principle that originates in the tradition of European High Art, which in fact interacts with local conditions all over the world thus creating a modernism that is multifaceted. The development of Es sAYs I 13