The Eighth Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

education system. The result is an installation that completely reconstructs a remote village’s first-year classroom, with the artist inviting visitors to join a small group of students from a nation that is currently redefining its socio-political structure and international relationships. UuDam Tran Nguyen and Super Critical Mass develop temporary or unexpected social networks to transform and question everyday spaces and interactions. As the collective Super Critical Mass, Julian Day and Luke Jaaniste explore aesthetic and sonic compositions ranging from intimate encounters to spectacular events via groups in public or exhibition spaces. 11 They not only challenge the politics of space and territory, but assert the aesthetic and performative possibilities of random groups carrying out set, but unrehearsed, rituals. Just as these events often test the boundaries between music, art, ephemeral presentation and audience participation, Super Critical Mass’s multifaceted works for APT8, Open Plans 2015, are spread through the galleries as an evolving social and spatial intervention. Nguyen’s videos take this notion of seemingly accidental choreography to produce an artistic ritual drawn from common routine. Inspired by the ubiquitous sprawl of motorbike riders in cities like Ho Chi Minh, where swathes of people meander through the streets every day, he transforms the banal process of motor transport into a ballet-like performance. Clad in masks and draped in coats, or with exhausts attached to pipe balloons, the riders move with the pace of inner-city streets with the tense vulnerability of tightly-packed traffic, and the figures remain anonymous, evoking the inconspicuous nature of life in big modern cities where masses of people perform similar acts. LABOUR ANDMASS MOVEMENT The demand for cheap labour, and relationships between disparate economies instigate the relocation of vast numbers of people throughout the world today, affecting local