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Datum.

l.,mcl Loc hty nu,..o, 1r urno11 >4Uinteracted with artists in less formal, but more spontaneous and intimate terms. In the process, we were able to raise some questions-over bottles of beer and plates of pasta at theCafe by the Ruins-which we discussed not in the usual academic manner and for which
we had no definitive answers. As we swapped experiences, we realized that such issues
were also on the agenda of similar multicultural encounters all over the world . While benefitting from some kind of support from official channels, these encounters were largely built
on personal friendships, private funds and networks spawned for instance in such unlikely
places as the Cafe by the Ruins. Many of the productive failures and nuances arising fromsuch set-ups may have fallen between the cracks of neat curatorial pigeonholes and routes
of more mainstream events . I therefore end my presentation by reiterating what I wrote somany years ago, when I was pondering over the uncertain fate of the Baguio Arts Festival:
In whatever form and scope and in whatever clime and time, exchanges like theseshould endure because they provide the ground, not only for a lively exchange of ideas,
but also pave the way for the integration of the arts into the community's daily life. ~For it is in such multimedia and multicultural encounters that artists and anyone seriouslyinterested in contemporary art can come together to eat and talk, drink, sing and dance while
exploring new horizons, uncovering fresh paths, and debating yet-to-be articulated directions.

FudnMa-,C't

PresentatlOfl 2

MAY23,2015

Off-Track~
TheMaking of Art with
Contemporaries

Session1

HomemadeStructureand
Smalland Medium-Sized
Speculation

Art Studies_02020

Ade Darmawan
Director, ruangrupa

The mid-1990s, which marked the last years of the Suharto regime, were the years when
the anxiety and anger culminated in Indonesia . For many years, "space" had been definedby the State and there was no platform to express critical thought in the public space. There
was always fear in the air and lack of imagination . During this era, some strict policies
restricted citizens from forming a collect ive, a group or an organization . Collectivism was athreat to those in power; it was easily framed as a subversive act. Art then played an important role in giving people something to hold on to, providing them with a little hope or anexit from reality using symbolism, metaphor and humor.
In the cultural field, we experienced and witnessed art and cultural infrastructure become partof the corrupt government, providing stereotypical State agenda and propaganda. For the
younger generation, several university campuses with long histories of subversive, creative,
progressive, and critical thoughts were where they kept their ideas safe and alive. University
campuses were where they all met and started . This generation was raised by parents who
were born in the Sukarno era and struggled under the Suharto regime, grew up with the
1960s and '70s music, literature and ideology, but were Americanized in the '80s during thegolden age of Suharto regime . A series of cultural activism took place then : organizing underground music gigs; publishing underground comics; working on sporadic art exhibitions or
projects in any places possible, ranging from the toilet, living room, train station, to the streets .
These all happened with the spirit of providing or opening up an alternative system, creating a
new space, or taking an oppositional attitude towards the establishment.
By then, an important and urgent need for space, to meet, gather, collaborate, and work on
a process or a research-based practice, had emerged. There was the need to see art practice as not merely a production process but also a process for research, collaboration, andeven intervention . Only in this way could art reach critical ideas. It was necessary for art
to take its social and political relevancy and engagement. There were real necessities thatcalled for experiments to find the best structure or a model, knowing that that's how art
could survive in the long run. Thus, in the middle of the insufficient and useless infrastructure, we tried to build, develop and fill in the blanks and gaps, here and there, and do it all.
The whole process had an experimental element in it because there were no ideal models towhich we could refer; we only knew the existing ones-the government institutions, which
we knew were worthless .
The Birth and Growth of the Artists' Initiatives

After the1998 reformation, along with the propensity to aspire for openness and change,
the surge of art spaces and artists' communities became eminent . There were those whocelebrated their momentary choice without long-term plans or ideologies, and others who
successfully developed art space initiatives with survival strategies . These spaces wereseen as the evolution from many art-campus practices that occurred in parallel with thestudents' movement during Suharto's fall in the late 1990s. They were realistic about theircapacity and desires and, although small, became significant by demonstrating their ability to survive with their organizational skills, ideas, and artistic visions. There were several

Ade > r'1lawan

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021

spaces and collectives that survived because they were specific with their target artistic
medium, for example, photography, street art, performance art, new media art, or with theirtarget issues, for example, urban issues and politics . With this strategy, along with theirintensity and consistency, the fruits of these initiatives' efforts became more evident in thescene after three years. In the meantime, outside the life and death cycles of art space initiatives in major cities of art, namely, Yogyakarta, Jakarta, and Bandung, art space initiatives
were emerging in smaller towns, with hesitation but with vigor.
The characteristic of the post-1998 generation and also the cultural changes that occurredin the post-1998 period in speculating the future can be seen in the strategies of art spaces
and collectives. One of the characteristics is the development of art space initiatives that
focuses on a particular medium or an approach, while at the same time keeping themselves
very open in their approach and consciously engaging and working in cross-disciplinary
areas. There was a progress in how art practices were perceived and addressed after 1998,
and these practices expanded and extended to involve other disciplines as tools for observation. They involved many actors from diverse disciplines as artistic collaborator . Doing
away with the need for an art education background also made future developments in thearts more attractive .
Where we (ruangrupa) and most of the space and initiatives started was a space that we
could afford and a place that is very intimate and mundane : a house . We immediately had
ideas to convert the house into a place of mishmash that oscillates between private/public
spaces, the introvert/the extrovert, as well as a living/presentation spaces. We turned theliving room into a gallery and workshop space, the bedrooms into studio, offices , library,archive room, and storage, and the bathroom became a working space.
In the last fifteen years, apart from the struggles of the artists' initiatives in the major
art cities (Jakarta, Bandung and Yogyakarta) to sustain themselves, several artists' initiatives
have developed in other cities, such as Malang, Surabaya, Semarang, Padang, Makassar,
Cirebon and Jatiwangi . Hence, the map of the art scene has been slowly changing . Jakarta,
Bandung and Yogyakarta have the tradition of developing art with their strong local art
schools. But the new development in other area proves that artists' initiatives can grow anywhere as long as they are relevant and suitable to the local context. Many of these artists'
initiatives also started from a house; it is affordable, intimate and serves the spirit of collectivity and communality.
In 1988, ten years before 1998, Cemeti Art House was founded in Yogyakarta, starting froma rented house that functioned as a contemporary art gallery. Rented houses then became
the choice for artists' initiatives that developed in the post-1998 period, who were seeking a space to begin their projects . These rented houses were located in residential areas,
and were affordable and accessible, enabling the artists to sustain themselves under better
financial conditions. Using a house provided pragmatic solutions to the artists .
We may suppose that these artists' initiatives represented a certain social class, because
the use of rented houses implied that the artists managing the space belonged to the sameclass with similar financial standing as their neighbors. But the house would be changed orsubverted or super-reused to become a headquarter, studio and meeting place, to conduct
collective projects such as exhibitions, workshops, discussions, film screenings and eventsof music and many other forms. It would provide the artists to get involved with the idea ofliving together with the ordinary citizens.
SocialAcceptance of Artists' Activities and Establishmentof an Alternative System

The condition in which the artists' initiatives based themselves among the citizens, naturally made the artists to be conscious of the local values in executing their projects . The artists thus could take the same position as the citizens and become part of the society. The

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Homemade Structure and Small and Medium-Sized Speculation

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Art Studies_02

involvement of the local people, whether indirectly or not, became a strategy for and a partof their artistic negotiations . Moreover, the citizens ' involvement, whether intentionally ornot, influenced the artists to become more open to the possibilities of artistic explorations.
Hence, they combined various mundane social activities with their projects : neighborhood
events on Independence Day; workshops for local youth and children; and outdoor film
screenings at the square. Art projects became a social activity.
Such practices and events have enabled art to naturally find its position among the people.
This "living together" position has offered an example of an ideal relationship between anart organization and the society : art exists within the society and becomes part of it. It is a
strategy that is also developed based on intimacy and fondness. By overcoming the obstacles in their own ways, the artists ' initia tives continue to actualize their creative work .
The surge in public awareness among the artists' initiatives can be seen in the various kindsof collaborations demonstrated through art interventions in the public and commercial
spaces, such as malls, town squares and other urban spaces. By participating in the processof claiming the space, fighting for it, and attracting the public the way corporate products
do, the art intervention has expanded its space and ideas, while offering different experiences to a broader public.
Such public awareness can also be seen in the activities that function as daily social events.
Therefore, a broader access has been made available to the public with various backgrounds and networks . The activit ies have been designed to meld into the public's daily
lives so as to provide them with a free opportunity to interact and participate. At the sametime, these practices also widen the art istic experiences, redefine ideas and memory of the
public and rediscover and recreate new spaces of expression and reflection .
This development has also raised the consciousness of the importance of art practices thatconvey critical ideas, social discourses and artistic principles, combined with organizational
work, local and international networking , public involvement and financial management .
Another outcome is the networking among organizations, individuals and communities.
These networks are very advantageous as a medium of information exchange and especially sharing artistic strategies . The act ivities show the formation of consistently productive
and dynamic units in their local sites that are interlinked to each other, becoming a constel lation of networks.
The combination of the artistic and soci al practices as described above, gives way to a more
specific and organic method, since it can openly adjust to the various contextual needs.
Imaginative and speculative artistic approaches can exert a great influence on the event
formats, not only in terms of their program design, but also in terms of the whole strategy to
produce outputs, communicate their act iv ities, and deliver the contents so that they reachthe public for the idea to be absorbed . With these functions, an event can become a particular form of expression, just like an art wo rk: an "event" becomes an "art piece"; an "event"can be seen as a "happening." Some elements of the artistic event can also become an
open interface for any kind of intervention and unpredictable moments that allow encounters with many aspects of the society which leads to organic and flexible discoveries that in
the end can be appreciated by the publ ic. These communal activities then become a way
or a strategy to enter the area of public ideas and to intervene with the corporate and Stateendorsed structures that have shaped the consumer culture in the society .
Such creative and art-based activities have further evolved as social practices. They are
different from art exhibitions that have the tendency to be centralized; they are media fordeveloping interdisciplinary works and professions; they combine art with activism, management and networking abilities; and they develop capabilities to get support , analyze
circumstances, and utilize local support . In other words, they are one of the driving forces

Ado Oarmawan

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Chapter1that produce images, ideas, discourses and values .
The initial intention to claim the space has also evolved and become a strategy to claim thepublic. The social interactions that happen at the"events" have made art practices more
attractive and familiar to the public. In general, these art practices have become a facilitator for the public to gain experience and redefine their meaning on their own, in their own
private spaces.
Other negotiations that can and have occurred are defined by the level of public openness inthe practices demonstrated by these organizations . Some organizations, with a strong bargaining power, have been able to inject their ideas and projects into spaces that were previously almost impossible to enter, such as private or government-owned properties and art
institutions. These practices have grown and functioned as a receptacle that can continuously maintain ideas, passions, joy, imaginations, dreams, and, of course, friendship.
With the ability to read, map, and negotiate the realities in the public, we have been able tocreate a space that continues to seek our relevance through reviewing the needs and positions within the social context, while simultaneously expanding our spatial awareness.
These contemporary initiatives, which combine both individual/collective artistic productions with the public-oriented programs, are executed with long-term vision under a specific management strategy. Thus, they project a vision that takes the artists' initiatives/
collectives as small and medium-sized enterprises/institutions. In a similar context to theother examples in other countries in the Asian region, such initiatives offer an alternative
proposal to the ideas provided by the more traditional or conventional art institutions.

OAY1 MAY23. 2015

Homemade Structure and Small and Medium -Sized Speculation

Scm, part of the t xts s taker fmrr
'The Personal and The Social Aspects ,fArtists lnit1dt1ves,n lndones1il,'wntten
fort, e catalogue c:,ftt e 31j Manifesto

Order nd Conflict' exh1b1t1on
co-curat
ed by Rizk A Zae1an1,Na!lonal G, llery oflnd<m s1a, dkarta 2<Jl21

~Session1

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024

DiscussionI Session1. ..
-KamiyaYukie)t

L;,SIOn

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S arting out in the 1990 ·The Problems and Potential in the Arts"' ,eThank you all very much for the great presentations . For session one, we had three speakers
from Thailand, the Philippines, and Indonesia
who have all played key roles in the art scenesof the 1990s until now and who have also witnessed the many transformations in the art
scenes. What I find interesting is that we wereable to see instances or case studies of information sharing, problem solving, and challenging existing notions across many regions
discussed in the presentations. I would liketo dig a little deeper in these sorts of movements, but before then, I would also like topoint out that this was made possible by artists
and curators who traveled and were educatedabroad during the '90s. Some of you, too,studied outside your homelands and, maybe,
upon your return, you were able to have moreobjective perspectives on what was exactly
happening in your home countries and what
was needed. You could see both the problems
and the potential of existing systems of art.
For instance, I doubt anyone in Japan would
have been able to even imagine that residential
houses or abandoned spaces could become
spaces for art. But your individual activities andresearch have really made a great impact on
the art scene and challenged the conventional
system. Could you talk a little bit about the situations of when you started your spaces in the'90s? What did you have in your minds andwhat did you think you could do through artistic practices?
Ade, could you spearhead the discussion
for us?
A, D,e

I see.

There were heavy discussions going on atthat time. In 1998, I was in Amsterdam, not in
Jakarta. So, while my friends were going to theparliament building-as you saw in my presentation-I was doing my part in Amsterdam,
doing demonstrations which was actuallyvery, very light. To be honest , it was more likean exhibition opening rather than a demonstration .[laughter) But I did a lot of networking
with activists in Amsterdam . I think being a
student, an artist, and also an activist can easily occur in Indonesia. In short, the seeds werealready planted, but when you go outside yourhome to a foreign country, you see the seeds
grow. I think that in itself was very inspirational, and I tried achieving something fromthat very moment.

I~

Sure. It was a discussion about literally needing a space to meet and gather,and also to figure out how artists could be

DAY 1 MAY23 , 2015

different from the conventional notions of"artists," and how they can be rooted in thesociety, et cetera. I think it actually started,
as I mentioned earlier, when I was in art
school; so even before I went to Amsterdam,
to the Rijksakademie. So the seeds werealready planted . But it was when I went to
the Netherlands, of course, that the distanceenabled me to see things more clearly; it was
sometimes even more inspir ing. So there were
waves of emails and discussions that were
exchanged when I was in Amsterdam with fiveor six other members in Jakarta, and additional
one or two in Yogyakarta, too. The problem isthat my email was still using hotmail then, andI've forgotten my passwords to recover theemails. They 're somewhere .

You are talking about 1998, the year the
student movement occurred and theSuharto's regime ended . You did not join this~

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movement in Indonesia, did you? You were in
Amsterdam?

Yes. So it was a very emotional moment
as well. I did demonstrations with many activists in Amsterdam, who could not go backto Indonesia at that time. Now they can; butback then, they couldn't because they would
be captured for sure under the police surveillance. So, we organized our own demonstrations in Amsterdam. It was the first time, I
think, that such a demonstration happened in
Amsterdam, too. It was a very emotional experience . Why? Because during all of this, we
saw our friends get shot in Jakarta.
Adf' D, rmawan

How about you, Gridthiya? You came back toThailand in the early 1990s and started Project304. What kind of urgency did you feel thatmade you begin the project?

Gndth1ya Gawoowong

There were three main reasons that I
found urgency in the Thai art scene. The firstis that Thai's society was mono-cultural andeverything was monopolized by the State.
The second is in that mainstream culture, weonly had Hollywood movies and mainstream
music. The third is that the visual arts weremonopolized by a single school, the Silpakorn
University . I felt suffocated by all of this, andpersonally felt that I cannot live in this kindof society. I needed an alternative; I needed
something different. I remember how when I
came back from the United States, I was sitting with Apichatpong Weerasethakul and wewere looking at each other thinking, "We haveto do something."
Project 304 is actually the outcome of mythesis from the School of the Art Institute ofChicago. I studied the possibilities of creating
an alternative space in Thailand where there

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are no infrastructures or support. I was looking at alternative spaces in the United States
during the 1960s and '70s, I must admit that
the PS1 in New York, found by Alana Heiss,
was one of my inspirations. So we were trying to start with that kind of space for artists,
who worked on things which that were different from the mainstream. I'd seen artists who
were working with experimental, conceptual
work, such as the late Montien Boonma andyounger generations like Apichatpong, butthey didn't have a place to show their works .
So, as I spoke in my presentation, we existed
as an alternative to nothing, because of thelack of the infrastructure, such as museums
and funding from the government. We had nosupporting institutions . If there were any, they
supported and promoted only traditional art.
I have to admit, unlike such institutions , I did't
really think about the audience then. When I
created Project 304, the priority for me wasto serve the artists in the community . I justwanted to create a platform for artists of mygeneration where they can express their ideas.
So it was more of a laboratory . That's why,
when I joined the Jim Thompson Art Center, it
was the first time that I came to value the significance of the public, because that was what
was required from working in an institution. A
small institution like Project 304 is niche, and I
don't think that the kind of art that we showed
there were for everyone . And that sometimes
made us question ourselves . We would think,"Why are we doing this?" I remember sittingwith my friend, Michael Shaowanasai, looking
at each other and asking ourselves, "Why are
we doing this?" We just wanted to help ourfriends to show his or her artworks, but no one
came to see them. Back in 1996, there wasno email or Facebook to promote or spreadthe word; it was such a dramatic experience
then . Nevertheless, I am happy that I did that.
Otherwise, we wouldn't have had people like
Apichatpong who won the Palme d'Or in the

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2010 Cannes Film Festival. There aren't many
"unique" artists with whom I work with now.
So that is the sense of urgency that I felt: I had
to, otherwise, I couldn't live with myself under
the conditions I was in.
Kamiy, Yuk,

Yes, I can see that both of you interestingly had
the same idea of opening a space as an artistic
platform out of necessity. And what is interesting is that you started the space by having
dialogues among your friends and peer artists who worked very closely with their communities on socio-political issues. I found asimilarity in Flaudette May's presentation, too,
which outlined the situation outside of themetropolitan area in the Philippines, where
people started to gather and make a platform
for the arts. So, May, could you also share withus your thoughts on how practices were notmerely for cultural and artistic purposes, butalso were closely related to their socio-politicalcontexts and their necessities as such?
Flay_d_1'te M_a_y
DatuinThe Visayas or Bacolod where the Black
Artists in Asia were located is one of the mostdepressed regions in the Philippines. It hada thriving sugar industry but it fell during the
1980s and the '90s. So we see a level of poverty there that we cannot even start to imagine. Nuneiucio Alvarado and Norberto Roldan
belonged to different socio-economic strata.
They were not as poor as those in the communities who were less better off, but they
were generally living in similar conditions. So,
the necessity for connecting with a community was done by default. There was an urgent
socio-economic condition in which these artists came together, not only to expose what
was going on, but also to employ or mobilize
art for transformation, regardless of how limited the effects could be.
I grew up in Baguio in the late 1980s. If

DAY 1 MAY23 , 2015

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027

you see the place now, it's an entirely different
Baguio altogether. The environment is deteriorating because one of the biggest malls called
SM (for " Super Mall") has cut down a lot of trees .
Water also has become a problem. One of themost memorable things that Cafe by the Ruins
and the Baguio Arts Festival did in the 1990s
was to establish a soup kitchen. We had a verylarge earthquake in 1992 and so the artists
came out of their studios and helped out in thesoup kitchen. You could see gradual changes
among the participants and organizers fromevents like these; artists became relief workers, et cetera. I think this has been duplicatedin Mindanao already and in other places in
Luzon, which deserves further study.
VIVA EXCON has a very, very long life andwe are puzzled over this. Maybe it has to dowith the geography because each island is justthirty minutes away by SuperCat, or maybe
the Visayas artists are just simply really goodorganizers.
But those are the socio -economic conditions. So, as I said, the artists inevitably got
involved, whether they liked it or not. They live
it and have to be researchers [at the same time].
Art has become the methodology for them.

K"Mlya Yukie

K?1111ya
Yuk1e

I agree. The case in Baguio reminds me of theBelgium-born, Mexico-based artist, Francis
Alys. After the earthquake in Mexico in 1985,
Alys relocated from Europe to Mexico. Alyssaid-and I'm paraphrasing - when existing
systems collapse, there is room for artists to
get involved, intervene with the city, and create new systems . So, art, being an innately
creative energy, can trigger a new infrastructure to surface in an environment where, as
you all say, there is no infrastructure . Artistic
imagination can become or instigate a new
infrastructure whereby new forms or practices
can be made. Although the three of you allpresented different cases, you all share similar~, udene May Datuin

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situations and conditions: creating something,"an alternative," where there is no infrastructure. I think people like yourselves embraced
your opportunities to explore this new kind of
possibility.
Another keyword here is "sustainability ."Within this new infrastructure, sustainability
is one of the issues that is very relevant andunavoidable. In addition to that, maybe "temporal" -as opposed to sustainable-is also
an important nature of these spaces because
they allow for more freedom to challenge andcreate something that does not yet exist. How
do you think "alternative" spaces can sustain
themselves within the new infrastructure?
Sustainabi 1ity of the Art Alternatives:
An Alternative to "What"[)

Yes, the "alternative" is bandied about,
but in the Philippines it is not as clear-cut . For
instance, the Cultural Center of the Philippines(CCP)was established by Imelda Marcos, but it
also became the site for rebellion against tra ditional art and the avant-garde . That is where
Roberto Chabet started; he became mainstream, but then, developed the modernist
aesthetics and went into conceptual art, andso on. The Baguio Arts Festival (BAF),Baguio
Arts Guild (BAG),and the Black Artists in Asia
(BAA) are"off-track"-they're
not in Manilabut most of their artists are very mainstream.
That is why they have private funding. It's
quasi-everything . So, it is hard to definitively
say that they are "alternative ."There is just one basic thing that welack: funding. But despite that, we produce
knowledge with the help of The National
Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA),
the one that brought us to the Venice Biennale.
So, with such a complexity, it is so difficult toname the "alternative"; an alternative to what?
So, what is the urgent thing that we can do, as)1scu s1on

educators, researchers, and theorists? Maybe
we can , or need to, establish a genealogy of
the alternatives first.
Again, let me introduce another example.
The Philippine Art Gallery (PAG)was established by a woman named Lyd Arguilla, andit was through this gallery that modernism
became established in the Philippines. The
Manila artists are enjoying the boom in art
with auctions, et cetera, in the system andmechanism which have become irrational interms of how works of a very small number ofartists are becoming unbelievably expensive,
while a large number of artists are hardly able
to sell or sustain themselves through their art.
The market has become fickle and skewed.
However, in the provinces there remain"cultural workers" who do have other markets,that are just not as large-scale as in Manila .
Nevertheless, some of them come to Manila tosell their works. So, within this shuttling backand-forth , where are they now? Maybe thequestion to ask is, "Alternative to what?"

I see, that is true .

I would like to share my case in Bangkok .
I think that there is no alternative anymore ,because, like you say, May, alternative has
become a mainstream. That's why Project 304
became defunct; I was afraid that it'll becomean " institution." I have shifted my work toanother area since . But the question is, "alter native to what?" as May said. For us, before the1970s, '80s, and the '90s, it was an alternative
to the "lack ," the non-existent , or the absenceof infrastructures. It was an alternative to themainstream in the arts, academia, and also themarket. Now, most of the people with whom I
have worked have become pretty well-known,
and they travel around the world.
The younger generation is different. The

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way they create art spaces is not based on thesame ideas as ours because they know that wewere too idealistic in the '90s. We didn't reallycare about funding even though we needed it.
We may not have worked hard enough to really
get ourselves going. Even though we wanted
to create a platform for artists, we were notreally good at marketing, fundraising, or PR. So
one of the reasons we had to close was that we
couldn't get enough financial support. Also, we
didn't have a sound government-level infrastructure like the Philippines in the '60s; wedidn't have somebody like Imelda Marcos tobuild something like CCP.The Bangkok Art andCulture Centre (BACC)was only built in 2005
and it took ten years to realize it. We had beenin constant fight with the government because
they would not understand why our city needsa museum. It was the first time that the artists
fought for a space.
But now that we have the BACC andthe Ministry of Culture, there is no "alternative." Everyone, at some point in their careers,
now receives grants from them and works
for them, so to speak. Ade, you are also oneof them now; you've become like a mafia in
Indonesia. [laughter] I try not to be a mafia in theThai art world. That's why I've tried to constantly remain on the edge, to be in the margin, to not be consumed by the mainstream,
and to work independently, which, I admit, isvery difficult. It's very difficult to continue to bein that position .
Kam__r@_Yukie

Can we hear from you then, Ade?
Ade DJlrmawan

I think there are two things: first of all,I think we sometimes use the term "alternative" too carelessly. There is, of course, theWestern notion about being an alternative tothe traditional system of museums and academies. Maybe, for some in the region, yes, thisDAY 1 MAY23 , 2015

may apply. But in Indonesia, for example, we
don't have that. That is why I preferred to use
the word "oppositional" in my paper, because
we have actually been an opposition to something, working against something . In the firstdraft we wrote about ruangrupa-how it
should be run, the principles , et ceteraI remember how in article 2.1., we discussed
the market at the time (in early 2000) and how
it had slowed down the progressiveness andcriticality of the works. That's why we came up
with research-based projects. Second of all,
we have always thought that the infrastructure
provided by the State were too formal, slow,
and irrelevant. So, we felt we should oppose tothat. At the same time, just as Gridthiya said,
there was a lack. There were many spacesthat we thought should be there for young artists to pursue their artistic experimentations,research, and projects. But the infrastructure,at the time, was not there to support that. And
so, we thought that we should continue to act
as an opposition.
But when comparing the current market and the State infrastructure to those when
we started back in the early to late 1990s, themarket in Indonesia has become even stronger. [laughter] So, it is interesting to see howthat actually becomes a strong reason for us
to think that we should exist, although, it is
not direct cause for us to exist. I think creating our own scenes, our own fields of practice,or slowly building our network, is actually far
more interesting.
Let me respond to your remarks about"sustainability." I think sustainability has
become the buzz word; everybody is talking about sustaining themselves. But weneed to think why we need to sustain ourselves. Maybe that is also one question weshould ask ourselves. Are we going to work
like other institutions or corporate bodies
where "sustainability" is one of the key to success? In terms of ideas or strategies, the artist~Session1

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Contemporaries

initiatives or collectives that I've been looking after for some time, probably will survive
because they are in need, relevant, and, finally ,slowly but surely accumulating social capital. For example, if you go to the Jatiwangi art
Factory (JaF) or Histeria in Semarang, you canexperience how it [art] is literally connected tothe public. They make true and sincere gestures which cause a real impact on the public-something a politician can only dreamabout . That's why initiatives like them havebeen able to really change the power structures in certain local contexts. It really is interesting to see how something like what they docan be strategized, adapted and expanded into
the future.

I think one of the reasons that the alternative spaces in Bangkok failed was that
their life-spans were very short. For example,
Project 304 and About Cafe only lasted forabout six or seven years. I also realized that wewere not involved enough with the communities; communities not only in the sense of art
communities, but the public. This was one of
our weaknesses. Another weakness was, as I
already mentioned, funding. We weren't able
to secure substantial or continued support ofboth private and public funding. Those, I would
say, are the two main weaknesses .
I want to say, however , that what I
thought is very important for institutions,regardless of them being the mainstream oralternative, is the idea of building up social
capital for the public . This is very important
for a lot of us and especially for the alternative spaces. Many of us [in the alternative spaces]
haven't been able to really concern ourselveswith this, but I think museums, both private
and public, municipal museums, in particular,
place social capital as one of their priorities.
They have to build up their social capitals to
educate people and really get them involved.

We were not able to engage with enough people; we didn't make ourselves relevant . I thinkthat's why we couldn't sustain ourselves .

I understand . We often use the term , "alternative" out of convenience and practicality, as
a notion of another, or an opposite to institutions, or something merely different from theexisting institutional conventions. But as you
all say, "what exactly is an alternative?" It reallyis what you've all been doing : filling the gaps,
addressing urgent issues in societies and local
communities, figuring out what the sociopolitical needs are in a community, et cetera .
Tackling those issues has become in itself theso-called "alternative," changing the systemand transforming the very notion of artistic
idea and activity .
In a sense, you could say the same thing
about "sustainability." What does it mean
to be sustainable? The kind of flexibility andimagination you have maintained, finding themost urgent necessity and changing youractivity accord ingly, has really activated the
local communities . The fact that your spirit hascontinued until now means that your spirit haslasted throughout the decades .
From your presentations , I could also
pick up, not only connotations of intra-Asian
activities, but also global ones , stemming fromquestions addressing how one can relate to
the local activities within the global contexts
and networks . This question, I think, could bereally quite influential to the following generations, as well as to the other regions . So, I amvery impressed and inspired by how all of you
have been engaged in and have pursued yourown respective fields.
The discussion may very well continue
into the later sessions, but for now , I think weshould close the first session. Thank you.

SesSIOn 1

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Day1
Session2
Artists'and Curators'Views:
Foreignand Domestic
Representationsof "Asia"
The rise in Asian-art-related exhibitions and biennales/
triennales-an outcome of the pervading trends in
multiculturalism and subsequent postcolonialismgradually spurred the rise of the "curator" in theWestern sense. Extending their professional arena to
the West, these so-called mediators of culture played
key roles in the dissemination of the Asian arts .
Exhibition such as "Traditions/Tensions" (1996)and"Cities on the Move"(1997- 2000)are two that are notable .
In this session, artists and curators who have traveled
abroad to pursue their careers and who have been
involved in Asian exhibitions held outside of Asia werebrought together to discuss the overlaps and differences in the representation(s) of "Asia" from both local
and global perspectives.

~
The Makingof Art with
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Sessioi:,2True Journeyis Return

Art Studies_0 2

032

DinhQ. Le
Art istMy first return after living in the United States for fifteen years was in 1994. With a US
government grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to research on Vietnam War
photography by Vietnamese photojournalist from the communist side.
With the recently collapsed Soviet Union, Vietnam was forced to open it doors to the world
and liberalize its economy in the early 1990s after closing its doors for almost twenty years.
With a communist government and a struggling economy under the US economic
embargo, Vietnam was struggling.
Black out was a regular event. Internet was forbidden. The Internet became legal only in1996 but it was impossibly slow. All foreign newspapers and books had to go through thecensor before they were allowed to enter the country. Vietnamese national has to apply foran exit visa in order to travel aboard. Vietnam was completely cut off from the outside world.
In the visual arts, the government ran organizations like the Ho Chi Minh City Fine Art
Association and the Ho Chi Minh City Photography Association where memberships are
only by invitation. Membership is very much sought after by artists because the associations control the exhibition scene. They control who gets to exhibit and who gets to participate in exhibitions outside of Vietnam. The Fine Art Association usually favors artists thatare communist party members. New forms such as video , installation , performance are notaccepted as art forms by the associations.
In Hanoi, under the guidance of visiting German artist Veronika Radulovic and funding frommany embassies in Hanoi, a group of young artists from Hanoi began to explore installation,
performance, even painting, in underground space Nha San and NGO spaces like Alliance
Fran9ais.
Ho Chi Minh City is another story . The city was under greater control by the communist
government because Ho Chi Minh City was on the wrong side of the Vietnam War . With nofunding for the arts, there were virtually no art activities outside of the government-run Fine
Art Association .
My research on Vietnam War photography on this first trip was a total failure because theVietnamese photojournalists saw me as a traitor who had left the country . They were notco-operative because they could not trust me. They feared that I might misuse their images .
But for me it was a very important trip . In Saigon , I felt at home for the first time in a longtime and the issues I was interested in were there. So for the next three years, I would split
my time between Vietnam and Los Angeles . I had finally moved back and started living in
Ho Chi Minh City full time by 1997.
By 2000, I was living and working in Vietnam and showing regularly in the United Statesand sometimes in Europe. But none of the Asia-based curators contacted my

DmhQ Lit

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representative galleries in New York City and Los Angeles or try to contact me to meet orshow my work in Asia.
They simply didn't find my work interesting. At the time there were also not much funding
for Asia-based curators to travel in the region to do research, or funding for cultural
exchange in the region. Maybe because of this, they were not aware of my work . At thetime, the criteria to be considered as an "Asian Artist" were also different. One of the criteria
was you had to live in the region to be considered as an "Asian Artist." A lot of As ia-based
curators thought I was living in the United States.
From my first visit in 1994 to living in Saigon full time in 1997 to the year 2000, I was notinvited to participate in any exhibition in Asia.
In 2001, the curator Apinan Poshyananda from Thailand saw an exhibition of mine in Los
Angeles and was told that I live in Ho Chi Minh City. He invited me to participate in a groupshow "Floating Chimeras" that he curated in Stockholm, Sweden. This exhibition was thefirst time that I worked with an Asia-based curator.
Then in 2002, curator and theater director Ong Keng Sen invited me to participate in his
workshop "Window to Asia" in Hanoi, which lead the artist/ curator Tran Luong to invite me
to participate in a group show "Red Yellow Green" in Hanoi at the Goethe-lnstitut . Not
much followed even after I was invited by curator Francesco Bona mi, who saw my work at
the Chicago Art Fair, to participate in the 2003 Venice Biennale. Because of the Venice
Biennale, I was invited to show in many places in the United States and Europe but in Asia itvery much remains silence.
In 2005, I helped organize an international exhibition in Ho Chi Minh City called "Saigon
Open City" with curator Gridthiya Gaweewong and artist Rirkrit Tiravanija. Unfortunately,
the exhibition never took place because of censorship by the Vietnamese government. Outof this experience, I co-founded Vietnam Foundation for the Arts (VNFA) with Los Angeles
gallerists Shoshana and Wayne Blank of Shoshana Wayne Gallery to promote more art
exchanges between Vietnam and the rest of the world. In 2007, with funding from VNFA,
myself and three artist friends (Ha Thuc Phu-Nam, Tuan Andrew Nguyen, Tiffany Chung) opened
San Art, a not-for-profit contemporary art gallery in Ho Chi Minh City.
Through all these activities in Saigon, showing that I was living in Asia and committed to thecommunity in Vietnam, I was finally viewed by the curators in the region as a "Vietnamese"
artist. But by this time, the art world was also changing rapidly. More and more curators
started to travel in Asia, Southeast Asia in particular. The makeup of artist in the region also
were changing. Many are now coming back from Europe or the United States after being
educated there. Many artists in the region also split their time in Asia and Europe or theUnited States. Some even live full time in Europe or the United States now. The old criteria
like residency to determine what makes an "Asian" artist are no longer applicable . Today,
the term "Asian artist" is applicable to anyone artist who is of Asian descendant.
My journey home to Vietnam has been a long and interesting journey. These days, I workoften with curators based in Asia and elsewhere. This year, the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo
will host a survey of my works over the last twenty-five years. "Memory for Tomorrow"
exhibition is my first solo museum exhibition in Asia ." The journey home feels complete.
I look forward to the next journey.

DAY 1 MAY 23, 2015

True Journeyis Return

The title of this talk "True Journey 1s
Return" is borrowed from Ursula K.
Le Gum's science fiction novel The
Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia (firstpublished in 1974 by Harper and Row,
Publishers, Inc.)• Editorial Note:
Dinh Q Le: Memory for Tomorrow,"
Mon Art Museum, July 25 October 12,
2015, Tokyo~Art Studies_02

034

The Maki ng of Artwtth
Contemporaries

The Scale Question inContemporaryAsianArt

JoanKeeA ssociate Professor, Department of the History of Art ,University of Michigan

Although we tend to think about histories of art in terms of periods, chronologies , events,and moments, it is "scale " that perhaps best encapsulates the concerns of art produced in
the 1990s. More than a synonym for size or volume, scale refers to the ways through which
we conceive the world. Consider, for example, how what was previously known as " international" was increasingly rebranded or reframed as "global." In the 1980s, the international
often figured as a collection of nations st itched together with the seams always showing; in the '90s, that collection slowly gave way to a contiguous panorama that was not somuch large or overwhelming than it was seamless. Take, for instance, the number of exhibitions revolving around the dissolution of borders: "beyond borders ," "boundary rider," and"hybridity." Q1 Even more telling was how spatial generalizations reached an all-time highby the mid -1990s as indicated by the all-too -frequent use of dualisms like "West against theRest" or "center -versus-periphery."01"Beyond the Borders" was the title ofthe first Gwangju B,ennale in 1995;"Boundary Rider" that of the ninth
Biennale of Sydney in 1992. Discussed
by theonsts like Hom, K. Bhabha. Nestor
Garcia Canclini, and Stuart Hall, "hybnd
1ty" became an immensely popular termin criticaland curatorialdiscussionevento the point of becoming a cliche by theend of the decade. On the overuse of
hybnd1ty in the context of contemporary art in Hong Kong, see Joan Kee,
"Art, Hong Kong, and Hybndity: A Task
of Reconsideration," Yishu. Journal ofContemporary ChineseAtt 2, no. 2, June
2003, pp.90-98

The matter , or rather, problem of scale was vividly apparent in the rise of contemporary
Asian art . By "contemporary Asian art," I do not mean contemporary art made in As ia or byartists of Asian national and ethnic origin. Such art has been shown in numerous exhibitions
well before the 1990s. ~ Instead, I am referring to a particular set of discourses circulated
and made available to multiple audiences through various institutions , publications , and,most importantly, exhibitions. ~ Among the most significant were discussions generated
by the group exhibitions "Cities on the Move : Urban Chaos and Global Change, East AsianArt, Architecture and Film Now," which took place in seven venues across Europe, North
America, and Asia from 1997 to 2000, and "Contemporary Art in Asia: Traditions/Tensions,"a show of twenty-seven artists held in 1996 in New York. Both stressed the degree to which
contemporary Asian art actually took root as a sustained field of inquiry in Western Europe
and the United States during the mid -to -late 1990s. Although significantly different in conception and presentation , both shows were indebted to larger streams of identification
present in the European and US art worlds, namely, the institutional acknowledgement of
non-Western art in Europe and the debates over the idea of multiculturalism in the North
American art world .

02
Examples include the first Biennale of
Sydney ,n 1973 and the Asian Art
B,ennale in Bangladesh ,n 1981 I thankAlison Carroll for reminding me of theseimportant events.

03
As a case in point, in Korea, the idea of"contemporary art" or "contemporary
Korean art" has long been used (the former since the 1920s; the latter from them,d-1950s, Just after the Korean War)but only from the 1990s did the idea of a·contemporary Asian art" ga,n any cur·rency in popularor academic discussion.
Japan ,s the exception; ·gendai ajia bljutsu" has been in use since at least the late1960s. See Hariu lch1rii, "Ajiateki seikaku
wa kireruka umareruka? (Can an Asiansensibility arise?)," Asah/Journal, August
18, 1968, p. 47

Journeysto the West: "Citieson the Move" and "Traditions/Tensions"

Co-organized by Swiss curator Hans Ulrich Obrist and Hou Hanru, then among the critical mass of Chinese expatriates based in Paris, "Cities on the Move" was another instanceof the kind of recognition paid to modern Asian art by European institutions during themid-1980s . Cases in point include "Japan des Avant Gardes 1910- 1970"(1986- 1987)at theCentre Pompidou and "Reconstructions : Avant-Garde Art in Japan, 1945-1965"(1985)at theMuseum of Modern Art Oxford . Sustain ing such recognition were initiatives like the jour nal ThirdText,founded in 1987 by the Pakistani-British artist and critic Rasheed Araeen, andthe Institute of International Visual Artists (lniva), created and funded by the British govern ment as part of a kind of "New Internationalism " arising in the context of state-mandated
multiculturalism .
Featuring artists from India, South Korea, Thailand, the Philippines, and Indonesia,"Traditions/Tensions" was curated by the Thai curator and critic Apinan Poshyananda. Its

Joan Kee

PresentatJOn
2

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035

curation-by-nation approach belongs to a genealogy that includes the long, if inconsistentstring of attempts to recognize a distinct contemporary Asian art field within Asia. Not only
did Poshyananda's model echo how Asian artists were directly supported by US institutions
and individuals eager to secure East and Southeast Asia from Communist encroachment,
it also recalled events like the Saigon International Festival, whose first and only edition
took place in 1962, just before the Vietnam War escalated with increased involvement of
the US military. ~ Patterned after "the examples of Venice, Sao Paulo, and Paris," twentyone countries were invited to send artists to participate in what was basically a communion of anti-Communist countries "friendly" to the Vietnamese government then underduress from insurgent Communist forces. ~ The counterpart to this mode of international
exchange was one that revolved around Socialist Realism, the embrace of which in China,
North Vietnam, and North Korea amounted to a de facto pledge of allegiance to a unified
Communist visual imaginary .
"ThirdWorld" lnter:nationalismand the Asian Postwar Era

The deliberate omission of artists from China and Japan read as a tactical move, one
perhaps intended to help balance a field of Asian art history which in North America
was then dominated by studies of Chinese and Japanese art. In this way, "Traditions/Tensions" might be regarded as a distant cousin to what might be called the rise of a"Third World" internationalism as exemplified by the Bandung Conference of 1955 orby the founding of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) in a Soviet-wary Belgrade in 1961.
For many artists living and working outside the United States, Western Europe, theSoviet Union, or areas controlled by the latter such internationalism helped provide ameans of thinking differently about the postwar era. Q§.
Perhaps the most ambitious manifestation of Third World internationalism vis-a-vis thevisual arts was the Triennale-lndia . Established in 1968 and organized by the state -runnational academy of art, the Lalit Kala Akademi in New Delhi, the Triennale was intended toaddress the situation in which "many Asian, African, and socialist countries have not beenable to establish a platform where the desired images of the oldest and youngest continents (youngest in the sense of secular achievement in the arts) may be seen together withthe achievement of the dynamic West." Q1 Certainly it was the only major international arts
event of the 1960s and '70s to include works from the so-called First, Second, and Third
Worlds as well as those dubbed "traditional" and therefore excluded from mainstream
narratives of modernism. Only the second Havana Biennial (1986) would actively feature
works from Communist and supposed Third World countries, with the third edition moved
towards what art historian Rachel Weiss described as a "post-realist, post-nativist, transnational solidarity ." !!!!
Against a socio-political context deeply inflected by Cold War politics, the Triennale-lndia
managed to preserve a measure of political neutrality that enabled a level of inclusiveness unmatched by any other visual arts event of that time . Yet it attracted substantial
criticism for its endorsement of what critic Geeta Kapur described as the "cult of internationalism." !!l! What I think Kapur meant was not only that the Triennale repeated the logicof the exhibitions it hoped to challenge, but that it did nothing to create a new communityof viewers and makers to which prior models of exhibition-making would no longer be relevant . Her admonition was taken up decades later by Singaporean critic C. J. Wan-ling Wee
who traced the Fukuoka Art Museum's attempts to promote a discrete body of contemporary Asian art through its series of "Asian Art Exhibitions" to Japanese imperial ambitions.
He claimed that the resurrection of Okakura Tenshin's famous declaration, "Asia is one" in
1903, at the first "Asian Art Exhibition" in 1979 was nothing short of a decided "inability totranscend or obviate the older moment of the modern." 1Q
In an important 1994 article on the growing phenomenon of exhibitions on contemporary Asian art, Fukuoka Asian Art Museum curator Kuroda Raiji fretted over the "serious

DAYl

MAY23, 2015

The Scale Quest ion In Contemporary Asian Art

04
In 1962, the US drastically increased m1htary assistance to the South Vietnamese
government in ,ts attempts to quell thersp,d expansion of the Viet Cong. Bo1tran
Huynh Beattie has suggested, t owever,•hat US influence had far less of an
impact on visual art in South Vietnam in•he 1960s than i• did on other forms ofcultural production. Modernity versus
Ideology. in Culturesat War· The Cold

War and Cultural Express,onin Southeast
Asia, ed. Tony Day and Maya HT Liem
(Ithaca Cornell University Press, 2010),
pp 87, 98.
05
First lntemational Ext>1bitionof Fine
Arts of Saigon,· Catalogue of the rirst
International Exhibition of FmeArts
ofSa,gon. exh. ~at. (Saigon: Tao-Oar
Garden, 1962). p. 20.
06
An important recent attempt to h1stori-

c1zethis atternat,veview of postwar art
was Postwar- Art between the Pacif,randtheAtlant1c, '9451965," a conference taking place at the Haus der Kunst in
Munich in May 2014.
http://www.rausderkunst
de/en~ am/symposium/2014/postwar art-between•he-pac1flr-and-tre
tlant1c 1945 19651
1Accessed June 30, 2015)07
Mulk RaJAnand, "'Chairman's Welcome
Address,· La/It Kata Contemporary 36(September 1990), p 12

08Ract>elWe,ss, •A Certain Place and£CP-rtainT,me· The Third BiAnal de L
Habana and the Origins of the Glot>al
Exh1b1t1on,"Making Art Global /Part 1l
The Th,rdHavana B,enmal 1989 (Lor don:Afterall Books, 20' 1), p. 6:l.
09

Geeta Kapur, quoted in Unk (February 7,1971), p.38.

10
C.J Wan-hngWee,"'WeAs,ans?'
Modernity, Visual Art E'xrib1t1ons,andEast Asia,· boundary 2, Spnng 2010, 37(1), 2010, p 115.

~

The Making of Art with
Contemporaries

11

Kuroda Ra111,Practice of Exh1b1t1ors,nGlobal Society by Asians. for As1aPsana~mA Assoc,ated Problems," ,n Globa,

v,s,or,s Towards a Nw, lnterr>at,ona/,sm,,, the V,sua!Art!:, ed. J ar 1sPer!London Kai Press na~..onw,t,•Pe Ir st,tute of nte~ • onal Visu I Arts
'994). 1144
12

Jd,e Ew1Pgton, A MoMenr 1Pa Journey
T' e F rst Ouee'lS1aPdA,t Gallery Asia
P..cf,c TnAnnial of Conte~porary Art
A,, ndAstahc,f,clfllo 2 Apnl 1 994

p12
13!re "As, n A,t Shows' first reld at theFuk, oka Art Museum later gave way to
the FuKuok Asian Art Tnennale held at
the Fukuok, Asian Art Museum, n 1Pst1
tut,c n planre<' n 1992 '>y FukuoKa City
ard completed ,n 999 ,n tune for th •1rst
F.ik_e,kaAs,orArtTrern
I ,alsoth 5th
A;1ar Art 'irow
http./lfaam c1ty.fuk oka.lg.jp/e11g1~boul/
abt h1story.html#a(Acc.essedJUiy 4. 2015)14

Ar thony Gardner and Cr arlos Green.
"Mega Exh1b1t1ors,New Public;. and
As1aPArt Biennials," An m the Asta

Paun, mt1matePub/1e,.. ,d. Larissa
H1orth. Natalie King. and Mam, Katac-kd(New York am:.Abingdon: Routlndgc
2( 14:. p,o15Francesc dal L,Jgo. "C1t1eson the
Mov:,, ArtAstaPacif,c 20 1998, pp.36 l8
16

Acc:.,,;:hng to the H yward Gallery
rc~1ves.l'ou and Obrostrontempl ted
expard1Pg the ow to c.ovcr India.
17

0fhe• prop0sed venues included th <;anFranc. >C >Art Institute, tht. Ml..seurr c.f
Contemp0r.ry Art K1 srna P iels1rk,
nrl r unnamed venuP n To1eyo
18

Yun,:i «o Chang. ' (;1t1eson th Move
A Dialogue roundtat,le disc uss1onwith hou Hanru, 5h,geru ban. Yung
Ho Chan{,. Judy ~reya 510ayaP David,j He,llv. Wong Hov Cheorg, Cher Zh n
nu Ole S<.h er n, Art Asta Pacmt2">,()()(, p 70
19

Hans Ulm h Oh, st, 1bd p 73.
20

Pv1n nne Krogh J€J"'!;er, C1t1~ en tt-¥:'v1ove NU Tho NnrcJ1rArt R view 1"l'9) . ., 86.

Session2

036

Art Studies_02

problem" of "cultural, geographical and political classifications" obviating the physicaland psychological mobility of artists and artworks .-'- He may have been subtly referring toother concurrent attempts to consolidate the contemporary Asian art field, in particular, theAsia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT)at the Queensland Art Gallery. First established in 1993, it was marked by what curator Julie Ewington observed was its attempt tobe "determinedly inclusive" by delegating some curatorial duties to various country specialists. g Art historians Anthony Gardner and Charles Green have pointed out how the APTsought to distinguish itself from other events of this scope by promoting regionalism without reverting, as the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum did, to the nation as the core unit of organization. ll. Such inclusion also supported the efforts of the Triennial and similar other events
to secure a central position in a newly recalibrated geography of artistic circulation (a tactic
also pursued by the more recent efforts of Singapore to establish itself as a cultural hub for Southeast Asian
culture). Yet having to "outsource" knowledge meant reinforcing these divisions between

those who understood the specificities of a particular place versus those who did not orwere generalists. But few initiatives were as successful as "Cities on the Move," whose own movement from
Europe to the United States, and, finally, Asia helped propel contemporary art from Asia into
the very forefront of how globalism was seen in Europe and North America . -'- Valorizing
the city as the unit for the new globalism that contemporary Asian art was said to represent,
the show included over seventy artists and architects primarily based in Asia yet not exclusively Asian by national or ethnic descent. Although technically a survey show focused ona single region, "Cities on the Move" differed from other shows of Asian art in its refusal togroup works according to the nationality of the artist or to style . - In fact, the show all but
subjugated any possibility of looking at individual artworks in favor of promoting a distinctive general viewing experience . Designed by various architects, the exhibition was a carnivalesque sprawl of objects-Kurt Schwitters' Merzbau for the anticipated twenty-first
century realized a thousand-fold .
The other significant aspect was how different each of the show's six iterations looked fromone another. rr On one level, the difference in appearance reflected the disparate levels offinancial and logistical support offered by each host institution . At the Vienna Secession,
the show looked more like a project of tr iage. Though designed with care by the architect
Yung Ho Chang, his attempt to make the show "reflect the density of Asian cities" sounded
more like an alibi for what was a highly claustrophobic display that inadvertently encouraged audiences to seek refuge outside the museum . .J! Less convincing still were the second and third versions at the Musee d'art contemporain in Bordeaux (CAPC)and MoMA PS1
in New York, respectively. The former had to forego the services of an architect due, perhaps fittingly given the frenetic pace of the show, to "timing problems"; the latter had serious financial limitations that compelled the show to exist largely in the form of slides andprojections (Obrist even described this edition as a "trailer" to the show). The closest "Cities on the Move" got to being a conventional exhibition was when it took
place at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark. Despite Yung Ho Chang's best
efforts, the viewing experience was relatively contemplative, one that ran counter to the helter-skelter clutter marking "Cities on the Move" Vienna, Bordeaux, and New York. Certainly
audiences seemed to behave according to conventional museum protocol by keeping theirdistance from the work, even when interaction was encouraged. A red carpet laid on thegallery floor as part of Malaysian artist Liew Kung Yu's installation Pasti Bo/eh/Sure Can One(1997) was left pristine, a stark contrast from its display in Bordeaux where so many people walked on the carpet that it had to be replaced. Marianne Krogh Jensen applauded theshow for trying to do away with traditional modes of exhibition based on fetishizing single
works of art. Yet she wondered whether the "perfect white cube" of the Louisiana Museumwith its elegant interconnected spaces prevailed after all. By far the most coordinated version took place at the Hayward Gallery in London. There,

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it seemed to have a third curator , Rem Koolhaas, then so famous as to promp t one British
critic to describe him as the " flavor of the millennium ." ~ Together with German architect
Ole Scheeren, Koolhaas designed the exhibition so that viewers might experienc e the gallery as opening up onto "the whole of London outside ." ~ It was a show bent on refusing
object -oriented aesthetics of the kind evident in " Magiciens de la Terre," the show cited(sometimes uncr itically) in numerous histories of art as a starting point from which globalism
became central to how contemporary art was discussed and presented . Held at t he Centre
Pompidou and the Grande Halle at the Pare de la Villette in Paris in 1989, the show was a
blockbuster with a twist, one whose claims to social relevance were based in its attempts
to rebut "'PRIMITIVISM ' in 20TH CENTURYART: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern," the1984 show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York that sought to explore how " modern" European and American artists understood "primitive " non-Western art by j uxtaposing works from both camps . "Magiciens de la Terre" featured over one hundred artists andsought to position works by non-Western artists on a par with those of its Western counterparts under the sign of "universalism. "

21

·see

Tromas Dvckhoff,•he future.
TheTimes,July17, 1999. lraletterto
H;:iyw;:.rd
ex~1b1t1orcrganizer F ona
Bradley, Koolhaas '11msettvigorously
obIected to being seen as one of theshow s organizers est he be seen as
tdkmg credit away from Hot. and Obrist"11,s cn,c1al th t my role as '1es1gner
rerna1ns,i;econddryin rec;pectto the roleof the curators Koolhaas. letter to F ona
Bradley, March 29 1999
22
Ole Scheeren. "C1t1eson the Move A
Dialogue." p.74.

23
Joap Kee, c,1,es on the MovePar"JChute (October-December '999)

p.88
24

What "Contemporary Asian Art" Means"Fast C1t111s
01 tt-e East," Evening
Standard, May 18, 1999

But did "Cities on the Move" do enough to distance itself from the "Magiciens de la Terre"paradigm? In New York, the show looked like a holiday -in-a-box geared towards a certain
sector of Western city dwellers seeking a taste of the "speed, chaos and ostenta tion " associated with Asian cities . ~ The press release for the CAPC show described it as a "sweep ing tour of art and architecture in Asian cities " while the catalogue for the Haywa rd edition
inexplicably included a Time Out -like guide to Asian restaurants and retailers in London .
Others had similar reactions; one viewer of the Hayward version wrote that [ in " Cities on t heMove " ], "the East comes across as inscrutable, mysterious and alien, which is how it wasseen a century ago." ~ For some, at least, "Cities on the Move " was " Primitivism " for the
1990s, with high-tech wizardry and urban acceleration being the new exoticism . Or to paraphrase artist Ken Lum's description of his 1998 work Souvenirs from all the Chinese restau rants in the world outside China, the show had less to do with the fact that it was about Asia
than with the idea that Asia was now a de facto symbol of globalism . As the proposal for the
Vienna Secession edition noted , this was a show of "contemporary Asian art " th at was a"driving force in global art at the brink of the 21st century ." ~For the parochial or less affluent , perhaps . Architecture critic Jonathan Glancey impl ied aclass element at work by describing Koolhaas's design for the Hayward show as a reflectionof the deja vu travelers sometimes experience when going from one metropolis to another .
Was the show best understood only by those well -heeled or well -connected enough toknow first-hand how there were "moments in Hong Kong when you suddenly th ink you are
in London, and, equally, moments in London when you think you are in Hong Kong" ?~The elitism implicit in the design of "Cities on the Move" at Hayward was far less apparent in the Bangkok version, the only time "Cities on the Move " took place in mult iple venues across the city . It was organized by the Siam Society, a well -established non-profit in
Thailand dedicated to the promotion of Thai culture , and the French Ministry of Foreign
Affairs. ll The show 's impact was significant for at least three reasons:
1 It was the first large-scale exhibition of contemporary art in or on Asia to take place inThailand.
2 It took place in non-traditional as well as conventional exhibition venues includ ing a shop -ping mall (Central Rama 3), an alternative space (Project 304), and a cafe (About Studio / About
Cafe) which were all freely accessible to the public .
3 Given the lack of infrastructure and funding for contemporary art in Tha iland, it wasa chance for the various constituents of the contemporary Thai art world to work
together. ~DAY1 MAY 23, 2015

The Scale Question In ContemporaryAsian Art

25
ProPosal for ·c,1,11son the Move. Viennd
Secession undated.

26~onathan Glancev.' Hayward GalleryUrban Myths The Guardian. May 8, 1999.
27

The Th I Art Arrh,ves ,n B~ngkok Is cur
rertly gathering research on C1t1esor
the Move" Bangkok which ,t plans tom ke public
httpJ/tha,artarchives mono net/
spec1al-proIects 1(Accessed June, 2015)28
For m ac....:ountof ti e ex 1b1t1ons hec
tic opening days see Kok Meng TaP,
'Invisible Cities on the Move"
http,/www.art4d eom/bangkokoNhemove/2542/list/webworkliPv1slimv1s1 •html(Accessed June 2015)

IIIDll2!

S_e~slo_n_2TheMakingof Artwith

038

Art Studies_02

Contemporaries

29

Hou Hann., "Cities on the Move: A
Dialogue." p 75.
30David Teh. 'Travelling Without Moving:H1storic1singThai Contemporary Art,"
Th,rd Text 26, no. 5 (September 20' 2),
p.575

Perhaps ambivalent towards the Hayward version, Hou saw the Bangkok show as an
attempt to establish "a much more direct dialogue with the Asian city itself." ~ "Cities on
the Move" Bangkok was the most poly-vocal of the six editions; its very lack of cohesionironically made visceral the abstract intentions of Hou and Obrist in a way not evident inany of the five previous versions. Yet as critic David Teh observed, the show was regarded
as a show of "international" artists rather than an exhibition of Asian artists per se, one thatamounted to a biennale without being explicitly called such. ~31

I have argued this point elsewhere vIsa~v1s C1t1es
on the Move," in "Trouble
in 'New Utopia,"' Post/Ions. East Asta
Cultures Crrt,que 12, no. 3 Winter 2004,
pp. 667-686
32
From 1992 to 1999, the Queens Museumof Art was among the most active in hosting exhibitions of non-Western artists
and their d,asponc counterparts, largely
thanks to ,ts director of exhib1t1ons.Jane
Farver Iwasaki H,tom,, who has continuoi..sly worked in the museum's curatorial
department since 1994, has stated thatthe museum "tried to do shows otherinstitutions would, or could not do. Part ofthis has to do with 1 he pressure of competing with the many cultural 1nst1tut1ons[in New York] for a l1m1tedaudience."
IwasakiH1tom1,interview with the author,
November 30. 2005
33
Jim Supangkat. "Multiculturalism/
Mult,modernism," Contemporary Art in
Asia.· Tradrt,ons/Tensions, exh. cat.(NewYork Asia Society, 1996), pp. 70-73.
34
Apinan Poshyananda, "Pos,t,oning
Contemporary Asian Art," Art Journal 59,
no 1 (Spring 2000), p. 12.
35

Jane Farver, interview with the author,
November 11, 2005.
36

Apinan Poshyananda, "The Acrobat, theChef, the Go-between, and the Dreamer,"Words of Wisdom A Curator's Vade
Mecum on Contemporary Art, ed. Cann
Kuorn (New York: Independent Curators
International, 2001). p.135

Still, if "contemporary Asian art" is now more convincing as a term used to refer to a system of institutions, images, and discourses, rather than artworks or artists, it is in large part
because of "Cities on the Move ." It refigured the material work of art as a metaphor or allegory, an entity operating primarily at the level of pure image . 11The show asked whether aglobal art world was only possible if we let go of close looking much in the same way thatthe idea of world literature only makes sense when one doesn't read texts so closely. Does
one scale of operation exist only when another disappears? The great lesson of "Cities on
the Move," then, was to show how entities (human or otherwise) mattered less than their circulation in a network over which they as individuals have little, if no control.
The frequency of artist and artwork movements between continents, nations, and categories exemplified the heightened sense of scale that helped flush into circulation the very
idea of being "global." Many of the artists featured in "Cities on the Move" exemplified
larger social, economic, and political concerns including the Tiananmen Square protests of
1989-which indirectly led to the expatriation of numerous Chinese artists, particularly to
New York and Paris-as well as the economic liberalization of South Korea and Taiwan. Not
only did the latter make it possible for an unprecedented number of artists to move overseas, it also helped finance the construction of new artistic infrastructures. An example isthe founding of the Gwangju Biennale that first took place in southwestern Korea in 1995.
The magnitude of migration compelled US institutions into broadening their own scopes,
as demonstrated, for example, by the decision of New York's Queens Museum of Art tohost "Across the Pacific: Contemporary Korean and Korean American Art" in 1993. ~"Traditions/Tensions" took place in this context, one inflected by a decade-long struggle
by multiculturalism's advocates to promote the works of non-white artists memorably
emblematized by the 1993 Whitney Biennial. ~ One cannot think of the show, for example,
without also thinking about "Asia/America: Identities in Contemporary Asian American
Art," the panoramic survey of recent Asian American art which took place at the Asia
Society in New York two years earlier in 1994. Only in this case, the argument was repurposed to bring non-Western artists into the contemporary fold, a point made clear by both
the Asia Society (who took the lead in bring ing the show to New York) and the curator . ~Could Poshyananda forego the nation-state as his organizational rubric? In 1996, probably not. As reviews of "Traditions/Tensions" suggest, even New York audiences were
not quite ready to think about non-Western art outside national or regional frameworks.
Moreover, among the seventy works that were exhibited, in the limited gallery spaces of the
Asia Society and the Grey Art Gallery at New York University, it was hard to see the works
in these galleries individually. Art fared somewhat better at the relatively spacious Queens
Museum of Art where each work had its own space, which in fact was Poshyanada's origi nal intention. ~ But it was hard not to see the work as so many goods in a trade fair booth,a perception Poshyananda was perhaps all too well aware when he described himself asa "broker of cultural goods, [an] aesthetic arbiter, and gatekeeper," language reflecting anacute, even painful awareness of the market-like art world. ;!!
An under-recognized issue for both "Cities on the Move" and "Traditions/Tensions" wasthat the larger and more inclusive exhibitions became, the more likely it was that artworks
from poor and/or authoritarian countries would be routinely excluded. In his essay forthe "Traditions/Tensions" catalogue, Indonesian critic Jim Supangkat observed how the

Joan Kee

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