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

is situated with other locations. How is the art exhibited here contemporary with the other art of the present moment? Heri Dono was in Singapore early this year and gave a tal k at the Art Museum. He shared with the audience anecdotes of how Europe often sees him ethnograph ically, as well as anecdotes about h is rural Indonesia. About how his rural neighbours are largely ignorant about national and global celebrities, but are instead fascinated by local celebrities reported in their own daily press. H is anecdotes are reminders that global isation is not yet total, that not everything is made contemporary by globalisation. But if global isation is not yet complete, is this only a matter of fact? Is there a category of art that is not yet contemporary with global isation? And I ask this not from a standpoint of history, but as a question for the philosophy of art. Because if there is art that is still not contemporary with globalisation - the question then is, 'Can it be?'. For what characterises contemporary art is an endless abil ity to appropriate. To reiterate the question : can any and every thing be appropriated? The answer to this question is, I'm afraid, always yes . Which is not to say that I endorse appropriation , the 'anything goes' of contemporary art. On the contrary, I th ink contemporary art poses plenty of problems - its radical pluralism is not a guarantee of specificity and diversity but perhaps only signals an endless availabil ity for appropriation. But my purpose here is not to problematise the politics of appropriation . I should draw to a close by speculating on what the global contemporary means for the philosophy of art and the h istory of art. I am by no means suggesting that there is no more work for a rt historians of the region to do. Art historians will continue to do the work of articulating the different histories of the region . J im Supangkat is correct to insist that there are, historically, mu ltiple modernisms. And there is much to be done towards identifying and articulating these different modern isms. But Danto may be onto someth ing when he suggests that the future of art h istory will not continue these histories of multiple modernisms. I would not suggest a convergence of histories, but irretrievable appropriations. Our 'contemporary' may no longer be able to trace the outside of itself. If I may close with a thought performance. One of the Singapore artists at APT, as you may know, is Lee Wen . Since we have similar names, we often get confused for one another. Some of the good people at APT, for instance, have sent correspondence meant for me to h im - and he l ives in Tokyo. In our information age, however, these · confusions are almost instantaneously cleared up through e-mail . Lee Wen is noted for his 'Journey of a Yellow Man' series of performances . Number 1 3 is installed somewhere in the Gallery. In th is performance, Lee Wen walks around i n Brisbane carrying a heart. If I'm not m istaken, it is one of the few, if not the only art piece in the exhibition that puts images of Brisbane in the Gallery. Lee Wen's 'Yellow Man' is an ambiguous, ironic figure - h is 'yellowness' can be read as an exaggeration of his ethnic identity - but rather than simply affirm it, h i s performance plays with questions of identity. And more than just addressing ethnic identity, his performance evokes other questions as well . The performance of 'Yellow Man ' is a performance of posing and destabilising categories . Lee Wen are you here? 2 I hope many of you caught at least a glimpse of Lee Wen's performance today. What I ask you to imagine is me doing something of a 'White Man' performance right now. Unlike Lee Wen, I need· not cover myself in poster colour. I need not, in an analogue to h is yellow colour, paint myself wh ite all over, and wear a white business suit. To pose as this 'Wh ite Man', I need only appear as I do: as the Co-curator from Singapore. 60