Asia Looking Towards Asia

Abstract

Until now, different parts of Asia have neglected each other, each of them busy looking towards Europe. If the discourse of contemporary arts so far has been placed in ‘the West in the eyes of Asia,’ Asia Culture Complex (ACC) Theater has built a system where different Asia today can look at each other and at the same time produce and share their works in order to form a contemporary arts discourse of their own. According to the standards set by Westerners in the modern era, the West was the center of the world, all the rest being the savages (tropiques). The idea of ‘Asia’ also functioned within the Western fantasy. Contemporary arts of Asia in our view is about us showing our own critical perspectives on the Asia we are living in now, instead of an Asias from the Western point of view. Our vision is to become a ‘hub of Asian contemporary arts.’ The hub of Asian contemporary arts we as­pire to is the most interesting works of contemporary Asian artists being produced, spread to the world, and in doing so, making the world look at Gwangju in return.

Hence the big problem that we are facing is the complete lack of infrastruc­ture for production in Asia and of a circulating system which enables each produced work to continue its life after 2 or 3 performances. To deal with this problem and realize our vision, we established ‘Asia co-production system’: institutions and or­ganizations from all over the world co-support the process of creating Asian works, which will be presented in participating institutions and further linked to world tours. This foundation can solve both of Asia’s chronic problems, production infra­structure and circulation