The Fourth Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

Hannah Does this then mean that everything is ambivalent, equivocal; neither here nor there? There is such a thing as ethnicity and, one would hope, transcendence. Can't something be both? I am thinking of Western Desert painting, which, while it may operate in worlds outside its sphere of production, is utterly culturally specific, and in so much as the intangible world the paintings refer to is alive and changing, they have fixed meanings - albeit meanings that are inaccessible to anyone outside that world. There is a preserve of meaning that cannot be inflected, that is not available to others, or - to pursue your point, Hetti - to assimilation. There are differences that can only be acknowledged, that cannot be understood. On the other hand, while I think it is true that everything, as you say, Nikos, is subject to translation, shouldn't our aim be to move past this coincidental mode towards a more enduring knowledge? How do you create meaning outside the traveller's solipsistic narrative? Hetti I suppose we encounter the dilemma - so dramatically revealed in the Hindmarsh Island Bridge affair - of protecting sacred information. 9 It seems obvious to point out that this should merely rely on respect, particularly for the custodians of this information. However, as we know, respect is not a common commodity these days - especially towards Aboriginal people. There are implications that we've had the wool pulled over our eyes: whether it's women's business, the Stolen Generations, queue jumpers disguised as refugees - or even contemporary art, for that matter. In respecting what cannot be known, it is also important to resist projecting your own meaning upon it. Sacred information is gaining currency in Australia - whether it's in raising the value of an object or art work (for example, in regard to the protection of our cultural heritage) or determining the validity of a native title claim . There has to be an endpoint where the authority of our cultural custodians is respected and final. Nikos The issue of refugees is obviously in front of us, and in this exchange we have expressed our outrage, but I also feel we should work towards developing strategies that can make new links between these issues and contemporary art practices. We know that the refugees have taken tremendous risks in their desperate journeys, but I was wondering in what ways we could rethink the boundaries of our region from the perspective of these migration paths. Australia is always seen, and sees itself, as isolated. Yet there are very strong paths that connect it with the other parts of the world . Every map of phone cables or Qantas flights confirms many of the old colonial coordinates between the old and new world. But what of the new desire lines that have been scratched out by refugees ? How do they present new connectors across the Indian Ocean? Perhaps these are similar to the voyages from South-East Asia by Vietnamese refugees, which predated the new commercial links that traverse the western rim of the Pacific Ocean. 122 APT2002 Xu Bing China b.1955 Introduction to new English calligraphy 1994-99 Mixed media/classroom, study materials The Third Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Queensland Art Gallery From this perspective, I think that the fundamental principle of collaboration which is at the core of the APT could be given a stronger twist. In the current political climate the relative autonomy of the Gallery needs to be bolstered. Perhaps only in the institutional space of the Gallery will artists find the technical and communal support to realise new projects that can address these issues. I think the last APT, when it provided space for artists to express a position on the Timor crisis, gained a sense of urgency and presence which was invaluable. We need to develop a number of exchanges that allow experimentation and criticism on a level that might not otherwise be possible. Hannah I find it interesting that you seem confident about the capacity of art to effect some kind of political agency; for it to be the instrument of something other than itself. Certainly so much of what is happening in Australia right now is as absurd as it is appalling.The very idea that Australia should 'dump' asylum seekers on Nauru, a tiny island ravaged by mining and surrounded by a sea emptied of marine life, seems incredible, the subject perhaps of some theatrical satire, not of our national foreign policy. 10 Perhaps this is the reason that so many Australians find it impossible to believe the dark aspects of our past - and our present: precisely because they are so ludicrous, so unbelievable. For Bill Hayden, a former Governor-General, the testimonies of children and parents of the Stolen Generations in the report Bringing Them Home were so shocking he could only conclude they comprised a mass instance of false memory syndrome. 11 Since its inception, the APT has implicitly involved artists and thinkers in its processes and results - particularly in the pre– eminence given to performance. Performance is something you can't control or contain; it is anti-institutional by nature. It is also infinitely responsive to the moment or the times in which it is staged. The Pacific component in particular has really messed things up, and made them urgent in the way you describe - from Michael Mel's performance of himself as 'native' to the explosive celebrations of Michel Tuffery. Or think about the islander culture coming out of Aotearoa New Zealand, in which fashion, music, drag and art are juggled together in such a way that things like identity or ethnicity or sexuality are not 'issues', but are expressions of people's lives.