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

struck by the incredible hybrid ity of the architectural expressions and visual environment which are d iverse mixtures of western influences and local trad itions . In the meantime, the domain of the visual arts is even more precisely connected with and cond itioned by such a challenge-response negotiation . Today, in the context of the explosive development of global communication and new technologies, the negotiation of new positions and language in art is also a process of collaboration among people from different parts of the world on the global communication network. Instead of being an intimate or private kind of conversation, collaboration in networking is the most open, multi-oriented and interactive form of creation . Like the I nternet, it does not only change the media and forms of expression but also influences and modifies profoundly the contents and meanings of the expression wh ile the subjectivity of the artist has to be deconstructed and re-founded , based on the principle of opening towards the 'Other'. The artist's identity as well as the art work itself should inevitably be culturally and linguistically hybrid, opened to unexpected changes and influences of the 'Other', includ ing the participation of the public. It's in such a process that art can rediscover its new position in the shifting real ity. If constant movement is the sign of l ife in networking, and telecommunication , international travels and urban displacements are the concrete phrasing of such a sign of life, then John Rajchman's comments on the new existential s ituation of urban humans can be understood as absolutely relevant: he stresses that the contemporary u rban inhabitant is becoming an 'anyone' rather than a 'someone'. The human body becomes a constantly moving, unstable existence and open to the 'Other': 'once we give up the belief that our life-world is rooted in the ground, we may come to a point where ungroundedness is no longer experienced as existential anxiety and despair, but as freedom and lightness that finally allow us to move. Movement and indetermination belong together, neither can be understood without the other.' (J . Rajchman Construction, MIT 1 998, pp . 88-89). This constant movement and opening of the human subjectivity, or identity, of course , bring about new understandings of notions of innovation, creation and creativity, etc. It opens up unknown but extremely appealing spaces for our imagination . They are the perfect example of the 'profane spaces' described by Boris Groys as the space for innovation . The conventional bel ief and evaluation of l inear, stable and definite expression as the ideal language for a rt creation , closely linked with Eurocentric rationalism and h istoricist ideology, are now facing their final fate. The traditional structure of power is accord ingly deconstructed . Movement, instability, multipl icity and even chaos are now the real carriers of creativity. They are the most 'harmonious' languages with which one can depict one's wonderful and curious experience of roaming through the new urban and cyber spaces and invent a new kind of 'logic' of aesthetic expression . Based on this, really multicu ltural ideas and values can find pertinent channels to express themselves: how to open up new spaces for multicultural expressions in cyberspace is a particularly interesting and farseeing issue. On the other hand, because of the shift of forms and focus, art as a social and cultural critique can obtain an up­ to-date function and significance: art is perhaps the most efficient way to develop new strategies to negotiate with the standard isation, alienation of human l ife d riven by globalisation, new technolog ies and capital monopol isation . Art should now become a kind of d ispersed 'virus' and penetrate into the dominant system of global communication in order to provoke consciousness of resistance. At the end, not without irony, by using the most advanced technology, and especially the new situation of human existence in such a 'new world' of high technologies and globalisation, art is the best way to expose the entropy of such a rapidly developing and saturating world itself: after the entropy, there will be a nother unknown world . . . 1 06