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

SESSION 1 0 : NEW MODELS/NEW ART/NEW CENTURY THE FUTURE OF ART AND ASIA Fumio Nanjo I t i s difficult t o predict anyth ing that i s t o come. In ancient Greece, people thought that the past is in front of us and the future is behind us because the past is that which you can see, but the future is that which you cannot see. I understand this is similar to Maori and Indigenous Australian belief. But here, I dare to say something about the future of art by observing some current social and cultural phenomena. To start, I would like to point out three features of our society and culture at present. 1 . The development of new technology in the areas of communication and transportation 2 . The intermingling o f and communication among d ifferent cultures around the globe 3 . The changing circumstances of global thought Of course, everyone talks about the impact of the Internet, a fruit of high technology which , as we all know, has provided political, cultural, scientific, social or other varieties of information to different corners of the world . This information has yielded new visions and new ideas and the Internet has been a catalyst for the disclosure and democratisation of those ideas that have formed a new base of knowledge and a new world vision. In the Internet large quantities of data consist not only of text but of innumerable images as well, and these have been exchanged and downloaded . This perhaps explains the great demand in recent years for photographs and film images. This made us more aware of older and forgotten photographs, or those of the everyday lives of ordinary people, or of images constructed , retouched , created - including computer graphics - or those too special to meet the public demand. These have seen the light of day on web pages and E-Z I NES , creating an enormous consumption of images. The significance of photographic images has changed . Previously, they were used mainly for news, advertisements or as a means to record personal life or events, but they are no longer confined to these specific purposes: the scope of photographic application is expanding freely and rapidly. This change has led to the creation not only of images wh ich are single, well-composed still pictures but an increasing number of blurred , hazy and accidentally shot abstract images and thematically vague works. Along with the developments in new media, art has come to place more emphasis on communication and interactivity. For example, there are many works which depend on the use of letters, words and texts which try to convey some pol itical, personal, artistic or absurd message. Works with a strong, simple concept fit with the I nternet format because they have to be simple, visually striking, and brief in form to fit the space l imitations of web pages. Some art works in those forms require viewer participation and are often constantly changing, and we may wonder if we are seeing the final form of the work. 1 48