The Fourth Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

NAKED HAPPENINGS by Al Van Startex 0 0btlterate your personality with polka dots," exhorts Kusama at her strlp..and•palnt exhibitions, which she calls "nal<ed happenings." "Become one with eternity. Become part of your environment. Talce off your clothes, Forget your– self. Make love. Self-destruction Is the only way to peace . . ." Kusama I• prepared to obliterate any country that indulge, In war ,:ames, particularly Australia. Al Van Starrex 'Naked Happenings' Man (Australia) October 1968 Courtesy: Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo Contemporary images of nuclear explosions are also central to Nalini Malan i's video installation Remembering Toba Tek Singh 1998-99 (Queensland Art Gallery Collection) . Malani's entry into the domain of the moving image was through a figurative drawing practice that now extends into animation; in its most elaborate form Malani's work amalgamates these media into video montages spliced with documentary footage. She entices viewers into spaces where they are subsumed by sound, reflections, shadows and the all-embracing flicker of the cinematic. However Malani also disassembles the components that make up the visual substance of film . She paints and draws images on transparent supports such as glass or mylar and uses the drama of darkness and illumination - vital constituents of the many proto-cinematic devices of the late nineteenth century - to toy with movement and light. Australian Indigenous artist Michael Riley approaches film through photography; both these interests coexist as formal practices within his career. Riley's film Empire 1997 is constructed around scenes of land, water and sky. Empire is a seamless stream of images, a serialisation and sedimentation paying homage to the Australian landscape, as an act of faith that black and white Australians value and revere the land. However the film is also bound by its title, a term laden with historical associations and implications; and it is grounded, literally, through a sequence of images that deal with the correspondences between appearance and meaning . Relinquishing narrative, Empire depicts a land in which sadness, refuge and survival have been and continue to be definitive. In his book Art and Revolution John Berger describes the work of Russian artist Ernst Neizvestny as art that reflects the courage of a whole people, commemorating their resistance, suffering and endurance. His words might equally be applied to the sensuous tensions evident in Riley's film: 12 APT2002 At the same time &nother young tnan from t'he audlenee 9hl'd his dothl!JI and dmoedwfth a betuddled looking tee~ bopper {a glr1 ln her sub,teen.t) draped only !n the shreds ~'£':•: 0 ~erkan 011.g that ~ad just cxpl:iretiu~~~:r,~l;~i~1 1 ::i: nt.-d new11pepermen and womJI'\ over thedlno!therock'n' roll bund,that took cv 0 cr. '"They af'l' m11klng Jove, ~:~~l~~i1~~~I;.~[~~~: :1~::r .!rrtt=~~':b1:'1~~~y s~r:;:~ ~\:~:,~ and thclr teenage girl• Tllc, draft.:,,g" men Invariably Join 1n, tearl11g up or burning Amerlcatl flags, or tilling thr, air with obscenl• tlci whenwer Kun ma would polka• fOontt1med O'IJ61"1fff1./) The imaginary surface, parallel to the earth and formed by the tips of the ears of wheat, the surface which the wind disturbs and inscribes waves upon, the surface which shivers and is smoothed out again, which gathers in excitement and is laid out concerted once more, this surface on which tracks of excitement, of horripilation, are usually curved and serpentine, this imaginary surface represents diagrammatically the sensations felt on the touching surface between the bodies and limbs. Each hair of each awn of wheat is a nerve-end. The wind is the touch of the other. The waves of light and shade are waves of repulsion and response. Both are the wheat and both are the wind.' PERFORMANCE Performance is a crucial extension of contemporary visual art and it continues to be a central focus of the APT project. As in previous Triennials, performance is included both as a manifestation of conceptually driven art and in the form of culturally specific expressions practised as part of contemporary Pacific culture. In APT 2002 there is a wide arc connecting the performances of artists who have been making gestures of political and aesthetic resistance since the late 1960s with those who currently use vernacular performative platforms for affirmation, banter and challenge . The most radical performances of both Yayoi Kusama and Nam June Paik took place within the heightened political climate of the late 1960s in Europe and America. Kusama's performances reside within, and cohere to, an overarching vision in which her perception of existence is constituted as a dynamic, energised 'net' or 'veil'. The 'happenings' took place as part of a broader feminist vocabulary developing at the time. They were theatrical and exaggerated. In the film Kusama's self obliteration 1968 the erotic is called forth as a form of dissent, using confrontation and shock to ensure attention. Paik too, in his collaborations with Charlotte Moorman, keenly utilised erotic content to inject a sense of speculative satire that challenged the established social and political orders of the day.