Beyond the Future: Papers from the Third Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

Conferences and foreshadowed in the Conference organised by the Humanities Research Centre at the Australian National Un iversity and convened by John Clark in 1 99 1 :'Modernism and Postmodernism in Contemporary Asian Art'. 3 The expl icit call from Geeta Kapur, Kanaga Sabapathy, Marian Pastor Roces, Redza Piyadasa, Apinan Poshyananda and others at the first APT Conference for a new language of art criticism for the region echoed what had been said at the Clark Conference and has informed the development of the APT model since 1 99 1 . The structure devised for the Conference by the plann ing team included a consideration of future directions, taking into account that the APT is both international in audience and regional in focus. After the local welcome by Chairman of Trustees Wayne Goss and Indigenous Trustee Lilla Watson , keynote speakers took up the transcending theme of 'Beyond the Future'. The first afternoon sessions centred on ' Regional Perspectives', while the evening of the first day was devoted to ind ividual artists' talks and performances which reinforced the local and regional theme. Day two of the Conference was themed 'Crossing Borders: Temporal and Spatial' and the morning was devoted to sessions highlighting new ways of approaching trad itions and the critical issue of the local versus the global . The afternoon was given over to parallel sessions, exploring specific reg ions (including in Chinese, Japanese and Bahasa), and also issues of ethn icity, patronage and popular culture across borders. This section of the Conference interacted with the MAAP Conference, crossing borders with new media, while the evening featured the stunning cross-cultural transmisi performance . The theme of day three was 'Crossing Borders: Challenges of the Present and the Future'. The morning began with a series of summaries of parallel sessions. A session on new art for a new century followed and in the afternoon the last session of the Conference, prior to the plenary, was devoted to the voices of artists whose work is about societal change. The papers in this volume are presented following the outl ine of the program . The issue of what Asia-Pacific art is today was at the heart of debate. On one point delegates were agreed: that it was dynamic and changing and that there is something peculiarly colonialist and Westcentric in the notion that non-Western cultures should remain frozen and locked in the past. It was notable that Pacific artists in particular asserted that the continu ing vital ity of their cultures had always been demonstrated precisely by their capacity for change. Indigenous Australian Curator Margo Neale declared in th is connection that; 'Tradition is a template provid ing unlimited possibilities stimulated by external stimuli . ' International exhibitions necessarily labour under the perennial difficulty of steering between the Scylla of globalisation and even homogenisation and the Charybd is of exoticisation in striving to present local difference. One early stream of discussion grew out of the proposition , opened up by Marian Pastor Roces, that international exh ibitions could produce what was described as 'Expo art' selected by foreign curators for a spurious exotic quality. It would seem, from discussion at the Conference, that curators and artists on the whole accepted that almost any creative work and international exh ibition carries such dangers which can be overcome only by a sophisticated exploration of cultural contexts; that a rigorous application of excluding local perspectives would deny artists in many cases the opportunity to present issues important to them (eg the coup in Thailand in 1 992 or ind igenous concerns in the Pacific); and that there is nothing inherently corrupting in providing artists with the opportun ity to exh ibit their work on terms of equality with each other, especially for those artists who have fewer opportunities of being selected for international exhibitions. It was noted that this was still the case for many artists in the Asia-Pacific and that the APT exhibitions have allowed such opportun ities for artists from the region . It was further noted that the APT model of selection seeks by rigorous research and involving local experts to provide what Roces so cogently demonstrated was critical, ie, a thorough understand ing of cultures. The teams for APT3 spent the equivalent (if only one curator had been involved) of eight months continuous field work and research, thus allowing a rigorous examination of current local issues. An important educational objective of the APT, carried through in the Conference structure, was to break down the erroneous notion that there is such a reality as a monolithic Asia or Pacific rather than a region with myriad cultures and histories each needing to be contextualised to be understood . 1 0