Busan Biennale
The Busan Biennale is a biannual international contemporary art show that integrated three different art events held in the city in 1998: the Busan Youth Biennale, the first biennale of Korea that was voluntarily organized by local artists in 1981; the Sea Art Festival, an environmental art festival launched in 1987 with the sea serving as a backdrop; and the Busan International Outdoor Sculpture Symposium that was first held in 1991. The biennale was previously called the Pusan International Contemporary Art Festival (PICAF) before it launched.
The biennale has its own unique attribute in that it was formed not out of any political logic or need but rather the pure force of local Busan artists’ will and their voluntary participation. Even to this day their interest in Busan's culture and its experimental nature has been the key foundation for shaping the biennale’s identity.
This biennale is the only one like it in the world that was established through an integration of three types of art events such as a Contemporary Art Exhibition, Sculpture Symposium, and Sea Art Festival. The Sculpture Symposium in particular was deemed to be a successful public art event, the results of which were installed throughout the city and dedicated to revitalizing cultural communication with citizens. The networks formed through the event have assumed a crucial role in introducing and expanding domestic art overseas and leading the development of local culture for globalized cultural communication. Founded 38 years ago, the biennale aims to popularize contemporary art and achieve art in everyday life by providing a platform for interchanging experimental contemporary art.
Busan Biennale 2012
Garden of Learning
Garden of Learning
A key element of Busan Biennale 2012 is to stage collaborations between artists and audiences. To become successful by creating lasting emotional relationships among the participants, these collaborations need to start well in advance of the official opening of the exhibition. Like the production of artworks they have to be an integral element of the preparation of the show.
Today more than ever, people need to have access not just to objects but to the poetical logic that drives the creative process. For various reasons, be it education or just enjoyment, people want to be part of the intellectual dreamwork but also of the little (and not so little) crises that accompany the realization of every true piece of art. Of course, not each artist is willing or gifted to let people participate in artistic production, and some elements of artistic decision-making will always be autonomous and intimate, even unconscious. This is, after all, part of art’s fascination: that something ? some thing ? escapes our control without mercy. But artists also gain a lot from being given a chance to debate and negotiate their proposals with a sensitive public. They want more than just presenting their work and also want to see it having a long and lasting effect on the community. 'Garden of Learning', this is the idea, will be structured along the vivid and often adventurous encounters between contemporary artists and audiences. Some learning councils will be set up in Busan, each of which consisting of citizens. In other words, the learning council' is the basic unit of production for the Busan Biennale - a small-scale laboratory that starts its activities long before the exhibition officially opens. The learning councils will act as a go-between by mediating between the general audience with its questions and queries and the individual artists who gets a privileged access to the urban, historical and psychic resources of Busan. This way, a structural deficit of most Biennials can be cured: that there is only a vague, a decorative or superficial link between the art piece and the site. By following closely the artistic process from beginning to end, the learning council-members will over time become experts of 'their' piece. They will own it on the level of ideas and provide it with a strong sense of belonging. A highly personal understanding of the artistic process and its outcome, accompanied by a personal attachment and individual expertise is a major asset when it comes to art education. This method of democratic art education helps to lower the threshold between art and its audiences substantially. Meaning is no longer communicated hierarchically by professional experts but by people who have invented their own language to communicate on the same eye-level with other people. A further advantage of this approach is to reach specific target groups, like people in certain areas of the city, people willing to engage in cross-generational encounters (kids and grandparents) or teenagers. Learning Councils could be designed easily to fit the agenda of teenagers by bringing up questions of identity, politics, ecology, gender and authority?issues that are also raised in many artist’s work. We would like to base Busan Biennale 2012 on the idea of a broad and inclusive democratic learning process that is structured by the magic and mystery and riddles of art. The central aim of the exhibition is to form organic links between the artwork and the community, links which can evolve over time.