The Fourth Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

FORKING TONGUES Michel Tuffery Aotearoa New Zealand b.1966 Patrice Kaikilekofe New Caledonia b.1972 Povi tau vaga (The challenge) 1999 Performance, 11 September 1999 The Third Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art , Queensland Art Gallery Nikos I think Ad Reinhardt was right when he said that you have to be crazy if you think that art can change foreign policy; but I also think his other famous phrase, claiming that art is art and everything else is everything else, is easily misunderstood as justifying an introverted and formalist perspective on the relationship between art as an idea and the spheres of action. The idea in art has a place in the world. It has a prehistory in discursive fields. It has consequences in the minds and responses of other people. It exists in a social system. Art may speak from its own zone and to its own practice, but it also spills into and draws from everything else. I am not trying to mount a call to arms, but a reminder of the complex network in which art operates. It is no coincidence that the critical junctures in historical transformation, whether it is the collapse of colonial regimes, the transition from feudal to industrial and then post– industrial societies, or the break-up of socialist hegemonies; they have all coincided with powerful and urgent artistic expressions. The point is not to return to a crude schemata of whether the social caused the aesthetic or vice versa but rather to appreciate the subtle but insistent streaks that crisscross these domains. If we are to recognise the capacity of art we must also rethink the ideas of political agency. How do old ideas shape our practices, and in turn how do practices spur new ideas? A more reflexive understanding of this dynamic would broaden our political horizons and invigorate our faith in art. Hetti I think the most effective art is where the issues are inextricable or inseparable from the artist. Brian Castro is the author of six novels and a volume of essays, Looking for Estrellita (University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, Queensland, 1999). His most recent work, Shanghai Dancing, will be published later in 2002. Hetti Perkins is Curator of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney. She is co-editor, with Hannah Fink, of Papunya Tula: Genesis and Genius (Art Gallery of New South Wales in association with Papunya Tula artists, Sydney, 2000). Nikos Papastergiadis is the author of The Turbulence of Migration (Polity Press, Maldin, MA, 2000), and is Senior Lecturer atThe Australian Centre, University of Melbourne. Hannah Fink is a freelance writer and curator, and former editor of the journal Art AsiaPacific. 123