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

SESSION 9 : PARALLEL SESSIONS REPORTI NG BACK - STRATEG I ES AND D I RECTIONS Chairman's I ntroductory Remarks David Wi ll iams Yesterday we tackled the Crossing Borders theme by looking at temporal and spatial issues and we did that by dividing into two paral lel sessions, which focused on particular themes and regional concerns . I thought the idea of using the various languages - Bahasa, Japanese, Chinese and English - was a very important development in our conferencing approach . So here we are at day three asking how did all that go? What are the challenges of the present and the future? What are the issues, the strategies and the directions, and for whom are they relevant? This morning we are going to try the virtually impossible, and that is to have twelve people reporting back for 4-5 minutes each and allowing time for questions and comment from the floor. 7.1 : Asia-Pacific Art: Beyond The Future Chair Al ison Carrol l The session had a longer title : 'Asia-Pacific Art: Does It Exist? Is Regionalism a Lost World Between the G lobal and the Local?' This session led in I thought quite n icely from the global/local forum that ran before, but it was free from those words, which was interesting . It really did hold the middle ground. There were six speakers with very d ifferent voices coming from a variety of positions which I think is one of the great joys of the APT. Kanaga Sabapathy focused on Southeast Asia; Connie Samaras on the situation in the USA, of course another important region; Yasuko Furuich i on how Asian art is viewed in Japan; Akiko Miki and Dana Friis-Hansen wrestled with the scale and inner forms of the region and regionalism and Jen Webb finished with a flurry deciding the region did exist because of the number of web site hits under that heading. The three points distilled from the session are: 1 . Asia-Pacific art. Does it exist? 2 . Inside/outside 3 . Models for the future On 'Asia-Pacific art. Does it exist?', yes and no. It was Jen Webb's summation of the situation that the Asia-Pacific must exist if we believe in it. If we treat it as a real thing it is real . Ms Furuichi said the words 'Asian art' were too broad to be useful, and Ms Miki spoke of the levels and degrees of regionalism . The Taipei Biennale was an example of cultural commonalities between the works as well as a realistic space in contrast to a wider Asia. A comment came from Sarah Miller that western art equal ly was too broad , bearing in m ind no­ one here says 'eastern' in a similar way. Fumio Nanjo, following Jen's notion, made the point that the Asia-Pacific exists and doesn't exist, but it's useful and it's mutable with every individual's interpretation . On 'Inside/outside', Kanaga Sabapathy, speaking about Southeast Asian art, said it presumes regionality, but it is insufficiently defined, explored or organ ised from with in. He spoke of ways, including scholarship, to redress this. This isn't an exclusive or protective process he emphasised . Akiko Miki also spoke of the lack of consideration of what Asian art is within the region as an issue, and that in turn helped to continue the mystification of Asian art. Connie Samaras switched our focus to the USA, speaking of how the US has turned in on itself with examples of people boasting that they didn't have passports and so on, despite the multi-ethnic hyb rid basis of the population , which meant a lessen ing of desire to engage in cross-border cultural actions, and she contrasted this with , for example, Canada and Mexico. 1 34