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

to join and the first Festival, in 1 993, attracted 3-5000 visitors per day. It's done on goodwil l . Only the labourers get paid . Local hotels support i t . I t costs, says Santiago Bose, who has been involved since the beginning, around $US20,000. This comes from the National Commission for Culture and the Arts in Manila, who in tu rn get it from a 1 0% travel tax on Filipinos and interest from casino profits . Santiago was tell ing me the Havana Biennale, which has included so many artists from the Third World, a few years ago cost around $US60,000. I remember seeing a letter of invitation from them to Filipino artist Roberto Villanueva, offering total support of $200 to go towards freight, airfare, costs in Havana, the work, everyth ing . But he, like so many, found the rest himself. ARX in Australia is similar. It comes from a small town , it has tiny resources, and relies greatly on volunteers . It is thorough ly supported by key people there. Long may it survive. This is not to advocate lesser resourcing. Just to say money or lack of it does not preclude a vital, useful, rewarding event. Kassel loves its Documenta: incidentally another event dominated by its European local ity. It costs a lot but it also makes a lot of money for the town . Obviously the town supports it, with even the most unlikely hardware stores d isplaying information in their windows . Ven ice is an interesting comparison . For all its attractions as a site for events, the least interested people seem to be the Venetians. No signs; few crowds. Maybe it's because it is the historic virtual city, floating above reality on that fuzzy lagoon . Al l these events are in regional cities. Heri Dono spoke to me about the importance of people in smaller cities supporting such ventures because those communities are not constrained by categories of art, or hold such expectations of how to do things as the capitals. In Yogyakarta, his city, for his Yogyakarta B iennale, they come and see and participate. The other issue of the local is the importance of this context for understand ing the art which comes from it. It's a challenge to us all always. It's about meaning coming from context. We can work across cultures, and even enjoy seeing work from cultures about which we know nothing, as long as we don't offend the makers with our own , perhaps totally erroneous, interpretations. But for meaningful understanding and awareness, we have to know the context - where the work is from . A last point. In the transglobal world, the nation-state takes on the mantle of the loca l . I'd like to make a parallel between the art world and the corporate world . There are three levels of global corporate practice: the transnational, with no home; the multinational , with lots of homes; and the national, or in the terms I'm using, the local, with one home. Transnational companies themselves have no place of their own , which they think is fine. The head of the giant US-based transnational corporation National Cash Register, Gilbert Williamson, when asked what he thought about American competitiveness, answered 'I don't think about it at all . We at NCR th ink of ourselves as a globally competitive company that happens to be headquartered in the Un ited States.' 1 Some international art events can seem like this - with no place of their own, and not even a sense that the product, the art, needs to resonate with the local commun ity. Transnational curators can seem like transnational executives - with no allegiance to anywhere . The mu ltinational compan ies operate differently according to where their products are sol d . They answer to home base, but adapt to what the overseas markets are interested in. Travelling art exhibitions can work like this. The national , however it is defined (and not necessarily by pol itical border), remains the base. It is where art and projects are generated . I know words like 'national' and 'nation' strike fear in many hearts, but I mean them at their most benign . In a democracy the national government is the only powerful entity wh ich will insist on the interests of its citizens against the might of the transnational . As an aside, this has implications for governments like 1 63