Sea Art Festival 2019
Sea of Heartbreak
‘Sea of Heartbreak’ is a all-time favorite by Don Gibson that portrays a mind of a seaman longing for his lost lover. Starting with “the lights in the harbor they don't shine for me, ” the song might first appear that it is about a dark sea of despair, a heart break. However, as the song goes on, the despair and the heart break become purified when one cries his heart out singing them before the ocean. Then the empty heart fills again by the sea shores spread out in front of us and sea that fills till the horizon.
The waves rushing in the shore of Daddaepo now are not different from the ones in the past. Waves have continued surging in and sweeping out since the epoch when the land is formed the way it is. The sea next to the land continue its being in the future with the waves of eternity. It is where lie the arts; sometimes spilling sometimes breaking like waves.
If sea works as they wave unwearyingly, what is the work that art can commit? In the world of uncertainty; climate is in crisis; refugees issues are hard to stitch up; and we need at least three more planets to provide resources when considered the current spending rate of the raw materials, what art must do? Nature must continue doing her work with perseverance, and artists must create and speak up their voices to reach the others across the great abyss. The Sea Art Festival in turn, should make a festival that fills the hearts of the citizens of Busan again at Dadaepo of nostalgia for them with the art works that reflect the reality.
The Sea Art Festival is not only an art event unique to Busan, but also an event underwent both the history of achievement and pains. With the mindset as if we are standing at a start point, this year the festival rethinks the roles and functions of the festival; which way the Sea Art Festival can respond to the demands of the time to connect the arts to the real life?; what kind of forms should the Sea Art Festival take in order for people of Busan may enjoy it together? The Festival starts with such questions.
Art is a barometer with which one can reflect the lives of contemporaries. Art may shine at the most only when they are connected to ‘our lives, now and here.’ Thus Sea Art Festival 2019 must renew itself as a new form of festival by turning the condition of art which is alienated from the life into its original, ideal state and connecting the lives of the people.
2019’s Sea Art Festival pays attention to ‘sea.’ In other words, the exhibition theme was developed around the issues of ‘environment,’ and ‘eco-system’ upon which our livelihoods are depended and other various issues derived from them. It suggests artists from the countries where share same body of water take sea as common issue. After all, the issue would achieve universality of telling through art the stories of ours who are surrounded by seas and who exploit the Earth.
The exhibition is composed of three sections that employ the ways of participation by large number of viewers to talk and communicate about issues intimately connected to lives. In these exhibitions, the viewers are to participate both directly and indirectly while artists participate as one of the member of producing collective rather than sole creator of an art work.
Sea Art Festival 2019 not only celebrates the arts but also provides a platform on which ‘healing’ may co-exist through ‘Ecology,’ ‘Environment,’ and ‘Regeneration.’ The participants and the viewers alike will get hands on experience and feel the ecology and environment in this genuine festival. Furthermore, the exhibition offers an opportunity for us to reconnect the arts to everyday lives moving away from the notion that art is something special separate from lives.
The awareness of the ecological and environmental issues among other social problems, would create impact to draw attention to Sea Art Festival again. Furthermore, this would also bring in more citizens the arts who had not paid much attention. As a result, contemporary art(Sea Art Festival 2019) would show its positive function contributing for people to improve their lives become self-reflective.