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

'cyber-terrain', whose 'frontiers' are being 'opened up' and in which 'claims' are being 'staked'. In the course of th is communications revol ution and the ascendance of multinational capital and global news and entertainment networks in our new world order, geographical specificity is being displaced by global scenarios in all areas of human activity. I ndeed , accelerated by the use of computer-mediated communications, all economic variables in the global economy now fluctuate to the rhythms of powerful international players and the devastating effects of free-flowing speculative capital has been felt right across Asia with repercussions in the wider Asia-Pacific region . Just like national economic and financial systems, local cultures cannot resist the onslaught of information that ensues from globalisation. Satell ite television and computer-mediated communication are opening domestic leisure markets to international marketing. Cultural differences are receding as a transnational 'med ia machine' homogen ises the values and tastes of audiences around the globe. While the Internet offers the potential for the cultivation of difference, an assessment of information flows on the Internet reveals a heavy movement out of the Un ited States, in contrast with a less voluminous flow in, consisting mainly of requests for information. Indeed , a study of the computer network infrastructure of the world reveals the centrality and supremacy of North America in this era of global communications. It can be said that these communications infrastructures are 'Roman roads' of the virtual empire we call the new world order. I n 1 996, with the aim of indexing the cultural geography latent in this c�ber-terrain, I produced a web work - The Failure of Marcel Duchamp/Japanese Fetish Even! 2 Apart from a critique of European aesthetics, this parody of Marcel Duchamp's Etant Donnes attempts to mark the problem of cultural constituencies in the I nternet. The work has an erotic element that is unacceptable on Malaysian servers and so the site was located on a server in Germany. Yet, it directly addresses a Malaysian audience in a society in wh ich sexually explicit materials are purportedly taboo. The sense of 'geography' is heightened with the installation of Internet terminals in Malaysian art spaces, so surfers can decide whether or not to access 'inappropriate' content, transgress cultural taboos and undermine national obscenity legislation under public scrutiny. Radical Information and Transgeograph ical Strategies The ubiquity of the Internet is due to the meta-connectivity of its Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol. The TCP/IP suite has the ability to interconnect networks that use different local protocols, while also allowing networks linked by other internetworking protocols to connect with the Internet, forming the wider 'matrix' of computer-mediated communication . 3 The genius of this protocol is its abil ity to ensure that messages are relayed from one computer to another, even when parts of the network are inoperative. Any deliberate attempt to restrict the passage of information is circumvented by TCP/IP, quite simply, as if it were 'damage'. The result is that all information on the Internet is instantaneously and globally accessible, regardless of compatibility with local laws and values . fn Malaysia's bid to leap from rapid industrialisation into the global information economy, our government has embraced the free flow of information on the Internet. In contradiction to our approach to print and broadcast media, with regard to the Internet, it has been recognised that in the interest of development, government control over information might have to be set aside. In the course of the current political struggle in Malaysia, trans-geograph ical Internet strategies have been instrumental in the battle to win hearts and minds as well as in the mobil isation of crowds on the streets. Using servers outside national jurisdiction, the 'Reformasi' movement has kept networked Malaysians informed (and misinformed) of the ongoing crisis . 4 Indeed , the Internet has been used to propagate what m ight be called 'rad ical information', in order to undermine the state hegemony of the media and even change the dynamics of the Malaysian pol itical process. Of course it is not only the despotic governments of the developing world that control the dissemination of information . There are many forms of censorship and control of information in societies all over the world. The I nternet offers us the possibility of cutting through these barriers and of making critical reflection an unavoidable part of cultural and political l ife. Newly online is PostScript, 5 a forum for institutional critique in the visual arts. The forum begins with 'Dickheads, White Australia, Theory And Me: An Asian at the Second Asia-Pacific Triennial'. This article was commissioned from me by the editor of Eye/ine in 1 996, after my presentation of a paper 6 at the 'Present Encounters Conference' of the Second Asia-Pacific Triennial . That 1 1 9