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

such a repositioning of imagination, creation and expression . The relationship, or interactions, between art and architecture/urbanism is central to such a repositioning . Here, one can identify a highly interesting and accurate understanding of the post-colonial/post-Cold War reality of our era being deeply transformed by the waves of globalisation : the trad itional binary relationship, polarised distinctions between the West and East, between the centre and periphery, as the basic structure of the world order is now gradually but rapidly dissolved together with its geopol itical model and way of thinking. What is in turn coming up to the front stage of the global change and becoming a centralising power is the 'network of global cities', as Saskia Sassen strongly puts forward in her analysis of the state of the world. This network connects all major cities around the world and turns itself into the central nervous system of global economy and communication . These cities are called 'global cities' because they are key points in the control of global economy and culture with their developed structure of economy and technology. They are spreading throughout the five continents, rather than being limited in the West as in the past - this makes the dissolution of the establ ished borders between the West and East even more inevitable. With the facil ity of international communication and transportation, capital flows through the veins of the network connecting all these global cities to drive the global economy and reshape the image of our planet. Our existence, from everyday life to intellectual life, is being fundamentally changed . In other words, today's centre is a global network, far beyond any geographic definition . The separation of the centre and periphery happens in the segregation between the economic and technological 'haves' and 'have-nots'. This re-empowerment of the new centre and dis­ empowerment of the new periphery pushes us to face a new real ity and react to it urgently. This very contradiction appears even more radical, violent and explosive in the new global cities - major cities in the so-called Third World countries which are undergoing economic booms and integration into the global economy, such as the Asian dragons and tigers. How they negotiate with all kinds of contradictions on the route to modernisation and globalisation is a critical element influencing the general interest of humanity in the com ing millennium while the traditionally dominant, namely western , economies have to adjust themselves to catch up with the change of the climate. From the cultural point of view, this negotiation can be seen as the one between the global and the local. What is more interesting is that in the process the new global cities, and sooner or later the 'older' global cities, or western metropoles, are becoming a kind of hybrid of global influences and local realities that we can coin as the 'glocal'. One can reasonably imagine that the network of global cities will be turned into a network of 'glocal' cities. It is in these new battlefields that one can encounter the most dynamic and creative scenes of economic, cultural, social and political transformation today. The outcomes of the transformation will undoubtedly determine the future vision of our globe. Naturally, this process of transformation and its results exert and will continue to exert decisive influences on global culture and art creation . The current and future perspectives of the evolution of the urban environment and our vision of the world as well as humanity itself are more and more reliant on the progress of this negotiation . However, one should also notice that imagination, creation and intellectual engagement as the driving force in our cultural and artistic life, beyond the dominance of economic powers, can contribute active impacts on the formation of our future world and propose d iverse, d ifferent and critical answers to the fundamental question posed to humanity. There is another tension and negotiation between economic, pol itical dominance and imaginative and artistic resistance in the formation and transformation of this network of global cities, the very central nervous system of our destiny. It is this new tension and negotiation that brings us to rethink the significance of artistic creation today and to deal with some specific themes, domains and issues. At first, there is a remarkable change of orientation of attention in terms of creative imagination and practice. Our attention is more and more brought towards the question of restructuring of urban spaces, especially in new global cities under the pressure of urban explosion . The over-speedy constructions as an inevitable reaction to the demand of demographic growth and high density as well as an artificial strategy to encourage the 'Great 1 01