Asialink: Why it's good to be different

Alison Carroll  

In talking about Australian history and identity, Alison Carroll, Director of the Arts Program at Asialink, does not attempt to come to any final stance.

Neither apologist nor white-washer, Carroll is a rare example of an Australian who not only has come to peace with the complexity and polymorphism of the culture and Australian identity, but positively delights in it…

“I don’t mind that Australia is confused and complicated. [What is to Australia’s detriment as a centre for culture is that] if people think they have a simple history like the Chinese and English (though it never is) anything which is not simple is seen as a negative.

“So Australia has to be proactive in saying we have interesting things to say and to do and be more active than those that have more clarity in what they are.”

Based at Melbourne University’s Sidney Myer Asia Centre, and celebrating 20 years this year, Asialink is an organisation set up in 1990 to extend and strengthen business and cultural relations between Australian and Asia.

It is a fascinating organisation as regards its diversity and its uniquely proactive role in the world of arts and business in Australia in the promotion of awareness of the benefit of Australia’s key position as a developed country that sits in closest proximity to the cultural riches and business prowess of Asia.

Since Asialink’s inception 1990, many changes Asian/Australian dynamics have been witnessed by the world. Asia has grown stronger economically as have inter-Asian connections, with the ASEAN and APEC growing in membership, GDP and international weight.

Government funding, increased interest from the general population and a much more borderless engaged region have resulted in asian cultures developing stronger infrastructures in the arts. Increasing internationalisation has seen improved dialogue between Asian cultures. Korea and Japan have been forerunners in creating this inter-Asian dialogue; Singapore, partly due to its position, now represents an important hub for cultural activities in Asia, and is presently hosting a celebration of its neighbour’s culture, the Phillipines.

Along with Jenny McGregor, CEO of Asialink, Alison Carroll was there at the beginning of Asialink, and founded the arts program in 1991 following her time in the 1980’s as an independent curator in Asia. Soon to leave, Carroll has been the running the art residencies program and sustaining her department through funding bids. The majority of the funding for Asialink's arts program comes from the Australia Council and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

In 1990, when the two launched Asialink, McGregor and Carroll were motivated by a shared agenda to take advantage of the richness of the region of which Australia is a geographical part:

Carroll explains, “We have a long way to go until Australia realizes that its geographical proximity to Asia is of great benefit rather than suffering from a “tyranny of distance” from Europe...it is a joy to find ourselves, as a western nation, that we are close to this incredibly rich source of ideas and acitivity and creativity and history.”

The Asialink arts program develops partnerships involving artists, art organisations, government NGO’s, education institutions and business communities to create an awareness of the breadth of artistic expression and opportunities. The Asialink Residency Program funds 40 artists, writers and performers and art managers to live and work throughout Asia.

Since the program’s inception in 1991 Asialink has been responsible for sending 500 people to hosts in 19 Asian countries. It is also the body responsible for awarding the Dunlop Asia Fellowship which this year was given to a filmmaker to document the emergency ambulance services in Pakistan. The sectors of business, art and education work overlap in the projects Asialink funds.

Celebrating its 20 year anniversary, and also on the eve of her own departure as the director of the arts program of Asialink, Alison Carroll spoke to Artshub about the real challenges to and benefits that come from strengthening Australia-Asian co-operation.

I asked Carroll whether the arts program activites were prompted by concerns about racism within Australia. However she was keen to stress, with her unruffable exterior that masks a firm intellectual punch, that the arts program is not about community or political agendas but about exposing more Asian and Australian artists to each others' immense talents to promote creative dialogue and optimise the possibilities of the artists.

“It is not about overcoming racism or fear of exclusion; it is that there is so much fantastic stuff and we are so close and we don’t engage.” She adds,to reveal the strength of the Asian artistic community in Australia, “Asian Australian’s are slightly above the proportion of their engagement with the arts in comparison to non-Asian Australians.”

In particular, Carroll stresses that Asia offers profound gifts to the audiences of Australian as regards presenting “different ways to think”, which are “incredibly interesting”.

“[exposure to Asian art and business provides] an understanding that there are different ways to think. Simple ways you can think which come out of 19th century western logic,for example, that you move through time in a straight line. But time may not automatically go from “a to b”, you can think in circles. I find that incredibly interesting and it reflects how western thinking teaches us in Australia to think in a certain way.

An understanding of Asian culture presents an alternative to the hegemony of the European inheritance of 19th century western logic, and provides a liberation of a sort. Carroll is a rich source of such cross-cultural observations.

“It causes people to see there might be different ways to see how the world operates. You can see it literally in cultural activities, but it is also in the way they work politically and the way people operate towards each other which leads to economic relationships. So it is much broader than just a cultural exchange or an exchange of exhibition.”

That Australia has a poor reputation as “cultural place” and how that operates as a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy is one of the “bete-noirs” Carroll has been battling with for the last 20 years in her contact with international art organisations:

“You have got to be out there and telling people we do interesting things. French, Germans or the Japanese put a lot of effort into saying “what we do is terrific”. We in Australia don’t spend enough or do enough and so there isnt enough known about us.

Secondly, promotion of Australia that does occur is not supportive of Australia being a culturally sophisticated place with its emphasis on sport and iron ore and the farming.

Her third observation is that in her view, the fact that Australia is a multi-cultural place in Asia confronts from people who come from cultures which are mono-cultural or historically depict themselves to be so. For example English or Chinese history can be thought of (and is taught, inaccurately, as such) as a simple thread; Australian history is huge interwoven blanket which can suffocate those onlookers who want to relate or have see cultural signposts akin to their own home cultures.

Australia has an irregular “look” to the European and Asian visitor. The absence of truly old historical monuments, its Anglo-expressions of nationalism, the near annihilation of its native people, its layers upon layers of recent immigration communities, its bloated sports culture, its self-image as a country of “outdoor types” when most of the population cluster to urban centres along the coast can all mystify the non-Australian used to different cultural and historical peramaters and sign-posts.

According to Carroll this “different look” can operate as Australia’s biggest obstacle but also it can be seen as its drawcard, if, as she asserts, “people are encouraged to understand that difference (as regards to multi-culturalism) is not bad and Australia is a different space.”

Through the arts program, Australian and Asian artists are given the opportunity to meet, and to shift their gaze from Europe and America as the sources of contemporary new thought to closer to home.

“After all”, she adds, smiling, “The people in Korea are interested in us, I don’t know if the people in France or the British are.” Why Australia remains largely unacknowledged as a producer of art and culture, why it exports so little and why it still elicits so little interest from the international art world relative to many other countries is a key issue that concerns her.

“Many people agree with the principle that we are on the doorstep to Asia but an awful lot of people have not made any action to changing anything.”

Carroll has approached and formed relationships with most Asian countries over the last 20 years. Most recently Japan, Korea and Indonesia (Joygyakarta, Java and Flores) have been countries that have received particular focus.

Complexity, space and viewpoints were the words that occurred again and again in my conversation with Carroll. She is very good at gently exposing the inadequacies of generalisations and cultural presumptions and seems much more comfortable for the conversations to ease into positions of “non-knowing” and exploration.

Certainly on leaving her office I realised I how many sides there are to the Australian-Asian dynamics. Many conversations are needed to begin to understand the complexity of the Australian/Asia relationship. The vastness of the regions concerned, the mind-boggling number of cultures, languages and traditions they contain and the diversity of Asian identity within Australia (whether Asian background people want to identify as Asian and what knowledge is carried on by the culture) further complicate the situation.

Asialink is determined to continue to forge deep relationships between Asia and Australia; to increase Australian and Asian knowledge of their closest neighbours and to overcome the splendid isolation that Australia creates for itself with its misguided self-image as an adrift, breakaway piece of Europe or the US.