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

I NTRODUCTION The papers in this volume were presented a t a Conference i n association with the Queensland Art Gallery's Third Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art {APT3} in 1 999. The Conference attracted over 700 delegates, making it the largest art conference ever organ ised in Australia. The theme was identical to that of the exh ibition it mirrored - 'Beyond the Future'. It reflected a spirit of generous sharing of ideas by the more than 90 speakers from over 20 countries . The Asia-Pacific Triennial project, in the almost ten years of its existence, has always been far more than an exhibition . The project has been about building a genuine dialogue between the Australian hosts and artists, curators and writers from the Asia-Pacific region . It has also had as one primary objective educating Australian aud iences about the region in wh ich we live. The three Conferences, ' Identity, Tradition and Change' in 1 993, 'Present Encounters' in 1 996 and 'Beyond the Future' in 1 999 have been hugely significant in extending the contexts of the exhibitions and pushing the parameters of debates about contemporary art in the Asia­ Pacific for international as well as Australian participants . 1 The third Conference was organ ised with the Centre for the Study of Australia-Asia Relations at Griffith University (whose D irector, Professor Russell Trood , has been a convenor for all three conferences}, and the Humanities Research Centre, Centre for Cross Cultural Research , Australian National University represented by Professor lain Mccalman. They joined Dr Morris Low, a Trustee of the Queensland Art Gallery, QAG D i rector Doug Hall, QAG Deputy Director Dr Carol ine Turner and APT Senior Project Officer Rhana Devenport as convenors. However the Conference was in fact organised, and the topics for the program selected by, a much larger group of advisers. Four national forums with over forty participants were held in Brisbane, Sydney and Canberra to canvass a wide range of artistic and scholarly opinion, international co-curators as wel l as experts in each country were asked for their ideas during curatorial visits and the final selection of topics was made by two committees comprising Australia-wide representation wh ich met in Brisbane. I would particularly thank Associate Professor Pat Hoffie for her contribution over three conferences . The APT team, and especially Project Officers Christine Clark and Bronwyn Mahoney together with Robyn Ziebell, Julie Walsh and from Griffith University Katharine Myres, comprised the implementation team for the Conference. The shaping of the program for the third Conference aimed to 'move the debate forward' from the previous Conferences and new approaches were adopted including language sessions in Chinese, Japanese and Bahasa, parallel sessions, a greater emphasis on Australian art, and an i ntegration of artists' tal ks and performances with the program. A paral lel Conference organ ised by MAAP 1 999 (Multimedia Art Asia-Pacific) introduced new media. Keynote sessions gave a stimulus to each day's discussions . Sessions were held at lunch times for Pacific art and women's art and the latter session papers are included in this volume with a fine introduction by Anne Kirker. The APT Conference was linked to the APT website, to the Virtual Triennial artworks, to the MAAP website and to an onl ine discussion . 2 It was inevitable that papers del ivered at a Conference with the stated theme of 'Beyond the Future' should be concerned in large part with speculating on the best way of theorising about what might l ie beyond the future , rather than specu lating on where such theories m ight lead. Yet it was the call for new critical approaches, specific to the region, that was paramount in the debate. Organisers and delegates were agreed that a Western linear conception of time and 'progress' was inappropriate and th is concept was fundamental to the adoption of this theme for the exhibition and Conference. Throughout the Conference what was striking to any observer was the confidence of artists in the region to embrace past, present and future, including pluralist futures not necessarily constrained by Western art paradigms and hermeneutics. In many ways the Conference returned ful l circle to the groundbreaking 1 993 Conference in which the continuities of centuries old cultures remained central to discussions of identities, tradition and change in the region . At that first Conference delegates resoundingly rejected EuroAmericentrism . This has been a consistent position articulated in all three APT 9