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

SESSION 4 : REGIONAL PERSPECTIVES I I COEXISTI NG WITH DI FFERENCES: THE NEW REALITY OF CONTEMPORARY ART I N THE ASIA-PACIFIC REGION Huang Zhuan Please accept my apologies for not being able to give this address in the common language of the Conference. One of the reasons for choosing 'Coexisting With Differences' as the title is to find a good excuse for my apology. Samuel P. Huntington once said that the d istribution of language in the world reflected the d istribution of power. He even predicted that with the growth of the superiority of Chinese civil isation, Chinese Mandarin would one day replace English to become the global common language. To be honest, however, I am not grateful at all to Mr Huntington for what he said. I am afraid I would not be able to live to see the coming of that day. In fact I hope that day will never come. This is because I agree with another statement of Huntington's, i.e., language is an instrument for communication . Therefore a common language should be a means of deal ing with lingu istic and cultural d ifferences rather than a means of eliminating them . My own feeling is that a conference conducted in d ifferent languages would be more interesting and valuable than one that is conducted in only one language, although the former would be more costly, time-consuming and liable to cause more difficulties in communication . The main argument of my address is that art, just like language, is an instrument for communication . It should not be a symbol of cultural authority or superiority, nor should it become a means of eliminating cultural differences . The end of the Cold War, the emergence of global capitalisation , the growing flow of the world cultures and the rapid development of the electronic communication revolution have created an illusion of 'the global village' in our world . However, the efforts to build a un iversal value system in the realms of culture and art have not achieved the desired results . Rather, they have become more d ifficult and vague. All kinds of interest groups such as nation states, ethnic groups, people of the same sex and rel igious groups are showing more interest than ever in seeking how they are d ifferent from others . A un ified worldscape and a growing multiplex international cultural relationship have formed the basic background to art of our time. The new reality of the development of contemporary art in the Asia-Pacific Region is also linked with this background. In the Asia-Pacific region, there exists a complex national , ethn ic, political and cultural geo­ relationship. In th is region , there are nation states with long trad itions, such as China, Ind ia and I ran. There are also new industrial or post-industrial countries, such as South Korea, Singapore and Japan. There are western countries like Austral ia and New Zealand . I n recent years, however, with the economic development in Southeast Asia and the growing confrontation between Muslim countries and the West, with a diversion of policies to Asia in Australia and Japan and the rising of China, a new cultural centripetal force has been created in the Asia-Pacific Region . The characteristics and trends of the new cultural centripetal force will, to a large extent, influence the setup and d irection of world art in the future. APT3 with its wide range of celebratory events marks the new cultural centripetal force. It has also provided an opportunity for us to discuss this centripetal force in the l ight of contemporary art. Contemporary art is the product of the western cultural system in the twentieth century. This fact is liable to result in an oversimplified conclusion; that contemporary art in the non-western world is no more than a country version of the product. Such a dominant status of western contemporary art has seriously prevented contemporary art in the non-western world from expressing its own cultures. As a result, for a long period of time contempora ry art in the non­ western world has been in a 'non-mainstream' position . This situation, however, has changed significantly in the post-Cold War era . On the one hand, influenced by deconstruction and anti-egocentrism, the western art world has re-recogn ised and re-accepted a rt in non-western 62