Back to Basics: Trying for the “International” as Good

Two perhaps idiosyncratic perplexities have motivated this essay. First, if the process of normalizing the “international” as a good has simultaneously rendered questions about it silent, would this not be precisely the reason for calling the questions alive? For as circumstances change, obsolescence might return to relevance. Second, given that the “international” as a good has been understood with the grammar of use (that is, the benefits the good brings as a consequence of choosing it), with a pervasiveness and an eloquence that spread way beyond art, is it not equally important to ask what limits there are to this grammar, just in case that there is something it cannot exhaust? Would understanding the “international” with the language of the good yield not just the obvious, but the compelling (for this is what the good does to us – it compels us to act in its favor)?I need to quickly qualify that I have no intention of defining the “international” in this essay, although my thinking on the idea did arise in the specific, relatively well-defined context of the policy change in 2012 of the institutional model of Hong Kong’s participation in the Venice Biennale . Given that Hong Kong’s participation in the Venice Biennale is an international project from Hong Kong, I am interested in asking two questions. What is the biennale as an international institution for the production and distribution of art and what is regarded as good practice now? (That is, what are we participating in or getting ourselves into?) Since many circumstances in art and the larger society have changed (drastically even) in the past three years, what is good about the “international” for artists and curators now? (That is, what other kinds of imagination and experiences of the international are valued on top of the particular international circulated in official rhetoric that Hong Kong’s participation in the Venice Biennale promises?)