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.
2010 Some Questions on the Nature of Your Existence
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관리자 2011-04-11 22:38
The film Some Questions on the Nature of Your Existence, which is included in this exhibition, records the Tibetan-Buddhist monks who escaped from Tibet and rebuilt their Drepung monastery in India conducting question-and-answer sessions. In groups of two in the meeting area or the garden of the temple or facing each other in a group, the monks clap their hands in high spirits and conduct a dialogue in voices rich with inflection, moving their bodies as if participating in a sporting activity. The question-and-answer sessions that use a three-step logic for understanding the concept of samsara(the endless cycle of life and death), a fundamental principal of Buddhism that believes that everything in this world is related to everything, is part of traditional Buddhist training with a history of more than 1,000 years. At the same time as these images make us realize the depth of Tibetan Buddhist history, the monks moving as if dancing across the sky and occasionally shouting intensely appear to have entrusted their bodies to some great power beyond the material world.