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.
Korea Strait/Genkai Sea (Masanori Tomii)
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관리자 2022-12-19 10:25
Collaboration Professor, Guga Urban Architecture
Located to the northwest of the Japanese island of Kyushu, the Korea Strait/Genkai Sea is a body of water that extends toward the Tsushima Strait to the west and the Hibiki Sea to the east. It is home to many islands and reefs, with a continental shelf extending through its waters. Warm currents branch off from the Kuroshio Current in the East China Sea and wind vigorously northward through it. It abounds in plankton, making it an excellent fishing ground for snapper, squid, and blowfish. In the winter, powerful seasonal winds from the northwest stir up high waves, causing mishaps for many fishing boats. With its blackish-blue (gen) waters and dangerous currents (kai), it has long been feared by sailors, who referred to it as the “black sea.”
A key maritime transportation point for both the Korean Peninsula and Japan, the Korea Strait/Genkai Sea has been the subject of several literary works. The Zainichi Korean novelist Kim Tal-su (1919–1997) wrote the novel Genkai Nada (1954) about the struggles of the Korean people during the Japanese occupation. Ichiro Shiraishi (1931–2004), a Naoki Prize-winning author who grew up in Busan, wrote the short story “Genkai Sea” (1997) about a Yuan Dynasty expedition to Japan. The Korean writer Kim Sa-ryang (1914–1950) also wrote “The Genkai Sea Stowaway” (1940).
I first came acrossed the Korea Strait/Genkai Sea in the winter of 1982. The boat’s intense rocking left me feeling terrible, and since then, I’ve contented myself with looking at the lights of the ships drifting from the night sky to the sea’s surface. Whenever I see it, I am reminded of the “vagabond architect” Jun Itami (born Yu Dong-ryong, 1937–2011). A second-generation Zainichi Korean architect born in Tokyo, Itami spent his life roaming freely between architecture and art, tradition and modernity, Japanese and Korean—an outlaw and lone wolf working on the boundaries in the currents of modernism. He may have seen himself in those small boats pushing through the swift currents of the Korea Strait/ Genkai Sea. Homages to boats were an ongoing motif in his work, starting with his first Korean structure, the Onyang Art Museum (now the Gujeong Art Center) in Asan. Unfortunately, he passed away just before I was scheduled to have a conversation with him.