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.
Cooperative Movement of the Good Book (Cha Seong Hwan)
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관리자 2022-12-16 16:38
Research fellow, Institute for Democratic Society
A year and a half before the Busan-Masan Democratic Uprisings erupted, an unusually named cooperative appeared in Busan, which was then regarded as something of a cultural wasteland. The official title was the “Busan Yangseo(“the good book”) Sale and Use Cooperative Association.” Young people came together in the hopes of achieving liberation from the yoke of the Yushin dictatorship and—in the words of their foundation statement—“overcoming the backwardness of Busan’s intellectual and cultural landscape through the sale and use of good books and reforming the dark and diseased aspects of our society in order to achieve a society abounding in the true love of humanity based on cooperation and trust.” Veteran dissidents also took part, serving a kind of fence role. Because the stated aims of the association had to do with a wholesome cultural campaign, the police were unable to repress their activities too harshly. Starved for stimulation amid the dictatorship’s controls on information and culture, people came together from all walks of life—including university students, working people, housewives, and schoolteachers—to join the association and communicate through various small organizations. On the eve of the Busan-Masan Democratic Uprisings in September 1979, the association counted over 500 members and was in healthy financial shape. Busan’s experiment began radiating to other parts of the country, as Cooperative Movement of the Good Book were founded in cities like Masan, Daegu, Seoul, Gwangju, Suwon, and Ulsan. When the Busan-Masan Democratic Uprisings erupted in October 1979, the dictatorship tried to assign blame to the Busan Cooperative Movement of the Good Book, but that effort ended up falling apart when Park Chung-hee was assassinated. In November 1979, the Busan Cooperative Movement of the Good Book was forcibly disbanded by martial law forces. The situation in other regions was more or less the same. Although it was intended as a cultural movement in the name of reading “good books,” the Cooperative Movement of the Good Book campaign ended up becoming part of a popular movement and organization movement toward achieving democracy.