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

household objects). At other times, objects contributed by invited participants are utilised - such as 5,000 used toothbrushes for their Fukuoka Triennale project, Presences and Absences #6; or family treasures brought with Filipino immigrants to Queensland for their APT3 project, Project be-longing #2. This installation comprised household items and mementos laid over a bed of salt accompanied by the scent of Filipino sampaguita flower and recordings of interviews by the artists' Brisbane-based cousin (Ric Aqui) with the owners of these well-travelled items. The Aquilizans spoke about these collaborative projects as becoming metaphors for 'feeling, family, and memory', thread ing a multitude of rich and varied personal associations into the complexity of each distinct project. The on-going presence of family {their own ) was constantly referred to as a central touchstone within their practice. (Their artists' statement, for the APT3, for example, was written from the imagined perspective of their three-month-old baby, Anaiwa i). Taiwan-born Lee Mingwei (artist, New York) offered an engaging introduction to a number of his projects that formed a background to his APT3 work, Writing the unspoken. 'The audience' plays a central role throughout his practice. He traced the l ife of various projects including Money for Art, wh ich was a well-documented experimental play on art and commerce. Origami sculptures (made by the artist from individual US dollar bills) were g iven away to a variety of people. A year later, the artist contacted the recipients to find out what had become of the paper 'sculptures'. Through the project, the question was raised , 'What is arU what is money?'. Another audience-based work outl ined was The Dining Project, undertaken over a period of months at the Whitney Museum in New York. The project involved the artist carefully cooking the nominated 'favourite meals' for over sixty invited guests on separate occasions. Each meal was consumed in the evening in a dedicated space in the Museum , and the 'intimate' conversations between the artist and his guest were recorded and played back in the allocated space for daytime audiences. In this work, the question was raised, 'What is arU what is food?' Lee Mingwei spoke of 'the psychology of the moment', and noted that he has 'noth ing to say' as an artist, but it is the audience whose voice interests him. 1 44