> [!INFO]+ Meta > Author:: Kevin Murray > Date:: 2008 > Reference:: This dream was presented at the _Out of Bounds_ conference at Monash University 22 August 2008. > Tags:: #text #south Alexander Shengzhong is one of the bright stars in the Australian art scene. As a new media artist, he has produced interactive global public screens that connect crowds from major cities around the world. As an academic, his theory of the ‘geo-politics of art’ is the subject of much attention and he is getting regular invitations to address international conferences on the subject. He has just arrived in London, the day before he is to give his first paper at ISIA, an international new media conference. It is only 8pm, but he didn’t sleep at all on the plane. He collapses into bed and falls into a deep sleep. He is dreaming. In this dream, he is standing in a field on a mild summer afternoon. Around him are people of widely different dress and background—togas, pin-striped suits, kimonos and grass skirts—strolling and chatting with one another. Floating between then are opalescent bubbles, glowing in the afternoon sun. A learned looking gentleman approaches him. The face looked familiar. He has seen his portrait countless times on the covers of books. He looks just Walter Benjamin. - Young man. I’m glad you can make it. He speaks perfect English without trace of a German accent. - Walter Benjamin? - Yes, I was that once. This is the afterlife now, but don’t worry. You’re not dead yet. Occasionally one of us can make a request to bring someone up temporarily when we feel it is important to do so. Just then a beautiful multi-hued bubble sails between them. - Gorgeous aren’t they. Each bubble is an unborn person. They are floating around the field, listening to our conversations, working out what kind of being they would like to born as, whether to have a boring life of luxury as a king or the inspiring challenge of a beast of burden. When they make their decision, their bubble is burst and they forget entirely their reasons for selecting their particular incarnation. But that’s not what I wanted to tell you. Please come this way. I have something to show you. Benjamin leads young Alex up the path to a domed reading room, made out of honey-coloured sandstone, glowing in the afternoon sun. It looks just like the State Library Reading Room, except at the centre is a large globe of the earth. There is a strange assortment of people peering at it. Alexander notes that the globe actually appears to be the earth itself. He can see cloud patterns slowly changing. Only half the world is illuminated. It’s daytime across the Atlantic. - Now let’s get down to business. We don’t have long before you wake up back in life. Let me show you something of your future. Now you are barely 25 years old. Let’s look ahead another 25 years. Look here in New York, where the Museum of Modern Art will be hosting your retrospective exhibition. The exhibition will be gathered from works in collections previously shown at the Venice Biennale, the commission for Tate Modern, the work at Documenta, and numerous other leading art events that featured your work. And over here, on the other side of the Atlantic, in Paris, at the Sorbonne, there is a conference around your publications on the ‘geo-politics of art’. The year after your retrospective you will be giving the keynote address to a wrapt audience, after which a panel of the leading thinkers in the field will respond to your ideas. Yours is an exceptional path. If only I had lived long enough to see my ideas bear fruit, to be a participant in all the countless conferences in my honour. - It’s a little overwhelming to see all this now. What more could anyone like me dream of? - Well, the real substance of this dream is yet to come. There’s something very important that I wanted to show you. Let’s cast our eyes down to the other side of the world, the underside of Africa and South America. Despite your great success in the cities above, the vast majority of people down here will never hear your name. That’s the rub. Despite all the success you might have in life, you must always remember that there’s another part of the world for whom your name will mean nothing. For them, it is as though you were never born. - Look, what you have shown me of my future is beyond my wildest dreams. Who could hope for anything more in professional life? But looking at it now, I kind of wish I didn’t know what was going to happen. Seeing this now makes it all seem, like, predictable, even boring. If it isn’t me, like it would be someone else. They’re just institutions needing their stars. Maybe in a way it would be better to be something down there, in Africa or South America, even if you were invisible up the top. - Interesting. Here’s a singular opportunity to follow this course for a while, to see where it leads. Let’s look at Africa first. Let’s ask that man there. There was a man crouching down and peering into southern Africa. Alex recognised him immediately. The beaming smile, the contrast of the grey hair and black skin, and of course the purple robes. It was none other than…. - Is that Bishop Desmond Tutu? - Young man! You have the world at your feet. Yet you choose to cast your gaze down to Africa. So you see, not all that glitters is gold. Please, let me introduce you to my corner of the world. See there, down the bottom of Africa, that’s a court scene. That ugly looking old white man in the dull suit is an ex-policeman. And see that poor black woman with her head in her hands, it was her son that the policeman killed under torture in 1977. For twenty years she has lived with the impotent rage against the men who deprived her of the beloved son, who stood up for the powerless in a deeply evil regime. She has heard the policeman admit the relentless beatings that eventually took her son’s life. The courtroom is waiting to hear her response. There she stands, in great dignity, looking directly at the policeman, ‘Sir, what you have done to my son and his family is unforgiveable. I would like nothing more than to choke you to death now with my bare hands. But I remember the spirit of our people, of Ubuntu, that _Umuntu ngumuntu ngabant_, a person is a person because of others. You are a person, _umuntu_, just like my son. I hope that by forgiving you that I will honour Ubuntu, the memory of our son, not to continue the violence that brought his death, but to remember those who have gone before.’ Tutu looked into Alexander’s eyes. ‘So who makes you, Alexander?’ - I don’t think I could ever do what that woman has done. That man was evil. You can’t pretend it never happened.’ - ‘Well, then you obviously don’t understand Ubuntu, do you? Perhaps you should visit when you are back down on earth and find out.’ Benjamin gave Tutu a big hug and thanked him for interrupting his busy schedule to be there today. Then he introduced Alex to another gentleman on the other side of the world, a very frail elegantly dressed man studying the globe with great attention. He looked for all the world like Jorge Luis Borges. - Of course, a fine young man you are too. You look like you would make a good dancer. Please, let me show you some steps. Here, look at this… Alexander looks across the Atlantic Ocean and sees a crowded club, with men of all shapes in suits, and women in dark skirts. Eyes flit across the room. They meet. The music starts, with a sharp syncopated rhythm. The man and woman rise and walk towards each without moving their eyes from the target. They stop when their foreheads touch. Man and woman lock arms and begin a complicated series of steps that seem to continually fail to make contact with each other. For a moment, the man pauses. The woman traces a lacy figure eight with the toe of her shoe. It takes just a few seconds, and then they are on the move again. Three minutes and it is over, they return to their seats on either side of the room without exchanging so much as a word. - A real authentic milonga. If you are lucky as a tourist, someone will take you to one of these and you can return home saying you have seen the real Buenos Aires. But it’s a complete fiction. No one knows where it comes from, but everyone pretends. They fantasise it comes from white people imitating the African slaves. They imagine it comes from men practicing knife fights waiting in bordellos. They dream it comes from a mazurka gone loco on the other side of the world. They pretend anything rather than admit the truth. No one invented tango. Tango invented them. Schopenhauer said that music does not need the world to exist. But tango creates a world around it, a house of mirrors, a delta of dreams, a cul de sac of fantasy that nurses wounded pride and creates the illusion of sympathy for those abandoned at the bottom of the world. Tango is the quintessence of poetry, how we create meaning from the little breaths of wind that inflate language. Borges squinted for a moment in Alexander’s direction, then returned to his study of the pampas. - Thank you señor Borges, we’ll let you return to your studies now. Well, Alex, so you’ve seen two sides of the bottom of the world. The collective spirit of Ubuntu, or what we might call humanism, and the individual enigma of tango. If you had your choice, which world would you choose? - That’s difficult. Ubuntu is certainly inspiring, but I couldn’t help feeling a little suffocated by this collective karma. I am an individual, after all. On the other hand, the culture of tango is alluring and poetic, but ultimately lonely. Is it possible to combine both? - Sorry, they are two different worlds, as different to each other as they are to the north. There’s no way that you can combine them. You have to choose one or the other. There’s no in between. - But want about here. Alex walks around to the other side obscured in darkness, where was a large dark patch encircled by little lights. - Australia? But that, dear Alexander, is nowhere at all. The alarm rings, Alexander staggers out of bed. It’s 3am. He doesn’t know where he is. ### Note It is based on Cicero’s _Dream of Scipio_, part of his _De Re Publica_ written in 51BCE. It is part of the ongoing inquiry [Idea of South](http://ideaofsouth.net).