How systems of thought prevail like old and new pandemics that changed the world.
The scope of the cultural turn of geography emerges from the numerous applications of this discipline, encompassing an unprecedented reflection on space, which admits the existence of other alternative worlds that are the result of the progress of information technologies and that we identify with the creation of virtual universes and the elimination of distances thanks to the immediacy of transmission. The reduction of the dualities of nature-culture, man-machine, house-territory, country-planet, are a consequence of the invention of the Internet and the progress made in the field of robotization.
This shift is inseparable from economic globalization and its equivalent, the globalization of thought. The North American sociologist and researcher Georges Ritzer has dedicated a large part of his work to the study of globalization and, so to speak, to its selfless acceptance by national administrations and their citizens, as the only valid survival system. Since the publication of “The McDonaldization of Society” in 1993, where he compares the assumption of global society with a fast food restaurant, until the publication of “The Globalization of Nothing” (2004), he has not stopped referring to the nature of globalization as a phenomenon associated with global integration and the interdependence of economies and cultures representative of the different nations of the planet, which has stimulated the consumption of goods and services. Ritzer analyzes globalization also from the beginning of global communication through television and the Internet, and the formation of a global consciousness. This transformation, which is also identified with what is understood by globalization for Ritzer, is a process of re-enchantment of a disenchanted world, through consumption and the credit card, which is the equivalent of its DNI.
The corresponding de-materialization and de-socialization that has occurred in the last two decades due to the use of the Internet in all communications has changed the perception of the world order and has eroded the concept of territorial identity, paradoxically reinforcing in many cases the sense of belonging and appropriation that is constitutive of the new nationalisms that have emerged in the last two decades. The question about how to make mappable phenomena associated with the rise of contemporary Asian art responds to the lack of information, which slows down the predominant ethnocentric and Eurocentric discourse. Simulating an openness and a presumed interest in their productions, as in the past for the “curiosities” from the East , the Western strategy in the face of the appearance of new agents in the art system and the corresponding territorial expansion usually lies in the control of the market. Without obviously dissociating the commercial value of the product and the contribution in artistic and aesthetic terms, the economic transactions in the sector constitute the logistics of the operation. But, beyond the visibility that certain international organizations, biennials, museums and galleries have given to artistic projects from Southeast Asia or the Asia-Pacific region in the West, there is still a long way to go before we achieve knowledge that is ultimately so necessary. The powerful presence of Eastern cultures in the global art scene cannot continue to be denied, nor can it be conceived as a block, because territorial singularities impose economic, political and social difference, and therefore cultural in all its expressions.
The ancient Silk Roads have been a legendary, but no less essential, reference to the grammar of trade between East and West for centuries, but the virtual borders and tariffs of the routes have replaced physical walls, hindering the movement of people and goods or imposing obstacles to the knowledge of the “other” in order to perpetuate their exclusion, despite the appearance of an inclusion that is not such. Prejudice and prejudice continue to be widespread, when the art market is no longer led as it was until the end of the 20th century by the USA or Europe, but largely by countries in Southeast Asia such as China, Korea and Japan or Asia Pacific countries such as Australia. This is demonstrated by the economic variables of the sector since the move of the headquarters of Sotheby's and Christies to Hong Kong, in search of Asian clients, and the attraction of Western investors and agents of the art system that were established at the beginning of the 20th century. XXI in a country like China. Having a delegation or an operational base in Asia was nothing more than proof of the interest aroused by production and the market directly related to artistic practices and the authority imposed by the new.
The phenomenon, however, is inseparable from the progressive Asianization of the West and the Westernization of Asia. Since the acquisition of the Hong Kong contemporary art fair by Art Basel in 2013, known as Hong Kong Art Basel Fair, Hong Kong has become the hub of contemporary art produced in Asia and one of the meccas for Southeast Asian galleries as well as those European and North American galleries that include contemporary Asian artists in their tribes.
The sponsorship of UBS (Union of Swiss Banks) seals the alliance between this entity, leader in international private banking, and the multinational known as Art Basel with its headquarters in Basel, Miami and Hong Kong, world leader in the contemporary art market . UBS's strategy is not only to offer from its more than fifty offices and branches around the world a sustainable investment within the framework of the global economy, but to partner with prestigious brands to attract clients and at the same time make its assets profitable. . On the other hand, faced with competition from the main auction houses, international galleries seek to be legitimized by the respective selection committees that make their entry into Art Basel possible. The coverage that the fair gives is the brand and the safety or quality control of its products that is associated with it. The establishment in Hong Kong has revolutionized the art market in the region by facilitating exchanges and market expansion in all directions.
The art system in Southeast Asia and the Asia Pacific has adopted models and discourses that have triumphed in the West, as can be seen from the proliferation of biennials and triennials where local artists have been able to present coexisting with international artists in settings that centralize the discoveries of the youngest artists and continue to legitimize the most significant trajectories. The Venice Biennale continues to be the event that every two years fulfills the function of presenting in the central exhibition the discourse capable of transmitting developments and trends that contemporary artistic practices display in the global space of production, the expansion of which has increased with the inclusion of new national pavilions in recent years, such as Indonesia (2013), the Philippines (2015) and India, this one in 2019, which complete the Arsenale itinerary. In India, China, Korea, Japan and Australia, biennials and triennials have taken place regularly since the end of the last century, completing a panorama that undoubtedly helps to better understand what is happening in other parts of the world. “My East is your West” was a collateral event of the 56th Venice Biennale (2015) that highlighted the existence of an awareness of the ambiguity of the relationship between east and west and the applications that They could be derived by placing these two latitudes in different parts of the world. In this case it was about opening dialogue on a scale between India and Pakistan then without a national flag, represented respectively by Shilpa Gupta (Mumbai) and Rashid Rana (Lahore). Currently, biennials and triennials continue to be spaces of geopolitical representation and instruments to transmit information and knowledge.
The Sydney Biennial, created in 1973, is the oldest in this large geographic area adjacent to Southeast Asia, where initiatives have been taking place that have managed to institutionalize the biennial or triannual events with contemporary art from the region. Starting in the 90s, the Gwangji Biennale (1995), the Shanghai Biennale (1996), the Taipei Biennale (2002), the Kochi-Muziris Biennale (2012), the first Echigo Tsumari Triennial (2000), the Yokohama Triennial (2001), curated by RaqsMedia Collective, the Aichi Triennial (2010), the APT Asia-Pacific Triennial (1993) and the Auckland Triennial (2001) are the main events to have a global vision of the artistic panorama current nothing negligible. Quite the contrary, they are essential if you want to know the international art scene, which is certainly no longer limited to the narrow circle of legitimizing discourses that the West has tended to impose on all those artistic practices that were associated with the new for its value in the market. The 22nd Sydney Biennial, inaugurated on March 14, closed its doors on the 28th of the same month, just 14 days later, when it was supposed to remain open until June 8, due to the spread of the coronavirus. However, through the website you can access the contents and some images of the projects presented, allowing you to assess the scope of this event. In September 2020, the openings of the Kochi.Muziris Biennale, those of Busan, Gwangjiu and Shanghai, in addition to the Yokohama triennial, among other scheduled events, coincide, but it is still unknown if they can take place or if they will have to be postponed, since everything depends of the evolution of the great COVID 19 pandemic that affects the entire planet and the changes that will occur in the world order and in the global art system.
Menene Gras Balaguer, Director of Culture and Exhibitions of Casa Asia
