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.
2012 Analects of Xin Lamu and In Auguration: A Hypothetical National Archive and Myth Play for an Unnamed Afro-Asian Micronation(Part One of the project ‘The Red and the Black‘ )
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관리자 2013-03-25 09:51
Analects of Xin Lamu and In Auguration
THE RED AND THE BLACK
Ng’s work for “Garden of Learning” addresses the relationship between Asia and Africa. The relationship is a tense one, despite its absence from official discourse. This we learned no later than the 2008 coup d’état in Madagascar, for example, which was directly triggered by a government contract that would lease half of the country’s arable land to the Korean company Daewoo. It is reflected again in the five Somali pirates serving life sentences in Busan for their involvement in the 2011 hijacking of a Korean tanker, and again in the 4th High Level Forumon Aid Effectiveness, which was held at BEXCO (opposite the museum).While Asia and Africa are linked in a perfectly symmetrical regime that associates growth with Asia and debt with Africa, Ng envisions an alternative scenario – one that explores the overlap of Asian and African traditions and cultures in ways that allow the two continents to enrich each other.
To realize it, Ng will build an Afro-Asian micronation. Though it is a conceptual space, this micronation has a physical presence in the exhibition proper: a wooden stand that looks like a platform, but also recalls a stranded ship skeleton, or maybe even the pirate utopias set up by the corsairs of Barbary in the 18th century on the North African Coast.A further element of the micronation is an “Inauguration Ceremony” for which school children will create flags and national myths, compose a national anthem, write a constitution and so forth.This Inauguration Ceremony will be performed as a theatrical play in November 2012.