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

CH I NESE DREAMS ON PAPER: EXPLORING THE 'VI RTUAL REALITY' OF CHI NA'S FUTURES Sang Ye Abstract The theme of the Third Asia-Pacific Triennial at the Queensland Art Gallery is 'Beyond the Future'. This paper is a revised version of a keynote speech made at the APT Conference in September, 1999. It explores some of theways that China has attempted to go 'beyond the future' by taking a look at some 'Chinese dreams' in poster form. The theme of the Third Asia-Pacific Triennial is 'Beyond the Future'. 'Beyond the Future' is a concept, and like most concepts, there ar e at least two possible interpretations wh ich are usually in opposition to each other. On the one hand , we could say that it is impossible to 'go beyond the future' because the only thing that you are 'going beyond' is time. In this sense, the future is l ike a piece of meat stuck on a dog's nose. We are that dog who can never quite catch up with and eat the meat however fast it runs. The dog can never run beyond the meat stuck on its nose just as we can never go beyond ourselves . But on the other hand , you could say that it is possible to 'go beyond the future' to the extent that these days virtual reality technology has already gu ided and continues to guide us 'beyond the future'. You could say that virtual products are legal drugs: we want light so let there be light: we want to kill, so let there be Superkiller 30 V4. 0 . The alternative interpretation t o this is that we cannot possibly go beyond t he future. Virtual reality products are secondary substitutes based on their creator's consciousness or experiences. They are what other human beings have chewed up and spat out for us. Virtual reality technology is, after all, human technology. All that virtual reality technology 'goes beyond' are the first-hand experiences of the user. But again, let's go back to the idea that we can go beyond the future. The argument cou ld be made that even if the idea of virtual reality technology was never invented , we would still be living in the future of the past. For instance, when I was a young boy I dreamed of being a tank driver when I grew up. Unfortunately, so far, I have not had the opportunity of d riving a tank. Nevertheless, I have now gone beyond the future that was imposed on me by the times I lived in and by the social and political system of my childhood . I n this regard , going beyond the future is a process of gaining as well as losing , and through th is process it is not j ust time that we are going beyond. But let's not quibble about all this. Let's be a little more practical a n d have a look at some Chinese posters to see China on paper and its future on paper. Rickshaws were introduced into China in 1 874 . They very soon became the common mode of transport in China at a time when the nation had just begun to open its doors to the world . At the time, in fact, the word 'world' didn't even exist in the Ch inese vocabulary. There was only a word called 'wan guo' meaning 'ten thousand nations'. Up until then , Ch ina had been a self­ conceited nation for over 2,000 years, believing that it was the largest country at the epicentre of the 'ten thousand' smaller countries . In the same year in Fuj ian, the wives of two British m issionaries started a jou rnal called Kid's Monthly. Children are the masters of the future and Kid's Monthly was the first journal established for children, these 'Ch ina futures'. The journal popularised to Ch inese children some basic modern knowledge, informing the 'China futures' of such th ings as the fact that the world is round and that China is just China, not the centre of the world. We will then start from a poster of rickshaws and children. Hello Uncle PLA Soldier, 1 958, Shanghai 'China's futures' at th is time were still travelling by rickshaw, but we can see that to make life appear better, the artist has partly removed the rickshaw from the frame. Apart from the 28