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

paper had dealt critically with the politics of representation in the emerging regional arenas for art and I was invited by Eyeline to produce more of the same. After acknowledging receipt of the finished article in November 1 996, Eyeline abruptly terminated communications with me. Despite making several telephone calls, I was unable to speak to the ed itor and received neither a reason for rejection nor a payment for my submission. I assume the article was not published and imagine that it was rejected because of the sensitive nature of its contents. The ideas in the article, which seemed so urgently in need of expression in the wake of the second APT, seem relevant once again as artists of the region engage in the fanfare, festivities and forums of the APT3. Thanks to the interactive and inherently libertarian nature of the Internet, I am able to publish this 'radical information', and invite discussion , overcoming the stifling effects of editorial censorship. The 'Site' The traditional H indu view relegates physical and psychological existence to the subordinate realm of maya, while ultimate real ity is located with in our being in that 'immanent place in the heart' . In the Ved ic Hymn of the Cosmic Man or Purusasukta the gods sacrifice the g iant Purusa to create the physical universe. 'Purusa is this all , that has been and that will be . . . From his navel was produced the air; from h is head the sky was evolved ; from his feet the earth . . . ' 7 The human body is the source or, in lingu istic terms, the root metaphor for the universe, which in turn, is what is 'modelled ' or represented in the Hindu temple. As Titus Bruckhardt observes, 'that which is in ceaseless movement within the universe is transposed by sacred architecture into permanent form. ' He further observes that a temple is a sanctuary for 'divine being' and 'spiritually speaking, a sanctuary is always at the centre of the world'. 8 Analogously, as a result of the instantaneous connectivity and interactivity of the I nternet, the contemporary notion of 'being' is no longer rooted in the physical realm . Indeed, as I outlined above, the Internet is a network of computer networks, forming a ubiqu itous communications metanetwork with in wh ich all sites are in virtual proximity. The 'centre' is everywhere in the virtual geography of the Internet. In an attempt to develop this analogy, a temple to Lord Shiva has been 'erected' in VRML and soon it will go on-line, inviting video conferencing pilgrimage. As d igital simulacra proliferate in the secular realm, the d istinction of an actual place, person or thing, from its image or representation , is being dissolved . In Tortoise Zone 9 Ting Ting Hook explores the relationship between interior and exterior in human consciousness in terms of the notion of 'place'. Using the conventions of painting and installation art as points of departure for an I nternet work, he invokes a slightly hallucinatory mode as the viewer's d isembodied impressions of a virtual place impinge on his or her encounter with an analogous physical site. The d ifferences between the outdoor site in Kuching, Sarawak, and the online interactive domain increase with time, as the i ntense tropical climate rapidly takes its toll. Eventually the physical place is left as a residue of an event, a 'marked site', a scar even, while the virtual site remains unweathered and unchanged in perpetu ity. Documentation of the real site was uploaded to the website as the event progressed . Indeed , with the impermanent and/or inaccessible qualities of the 'site specific' installation works of recent decades, photographs have become a surro @ ate medium of experience. At the heart of my second web project, La Folie de la Peinture 1 is a multivalent linking of photographic documentation of a previous installation work. As the photographs are articulated with video, audio and interactive elements , objects from the original installation are invested with an online interactive presence . The presentation of this work in the gallery involves re-presenting the actual objects along with an Internet-ready workstation in the exh ibition space. Some of the objects are exh ibited as i n the original installation , others in a vitrine to index h istory and the museum. Regional Networking And Techno-orientalism I n the last decade, art from the 'Asia Pacific', 'Asia' and 'Southeast Asia', has been gathered and exhibited in various regional centres with superior cultural infrastructures. The administration of these expansive and comprehensive exhibitions, curated on the basis of national sections, has produced what can be described as neocolonial curatorial hierarchies with national co-curators feed ing powerful central selection committees and, invariably, there seems to be an insistence on national particularities to wh ich the co-curators are obliged to comply. In the course of these developments, an auto-orientalism has emerged in wh ich 1 20