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 AI Weiwei
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관리자 2013-03-22 13:44
AI Weiwei
REBAR 41
On May 12, 2008, a massive earthquake struck the Sichuan Province in China, killing over 60,000 people and leaving millions homeless. A conspicuously high number of the casualties were schoolchildren. Somewhat mysteriously, though school buildings were reduced to rubble, other nearby buildings suffered relatively little damage.Official media outlets tried to sweep the scandal under the rug, but investigations by activists (Ai Weiwei among them) pointed out that the so-called “tofu buildings” were the direct result of substandard building practices and poor design, as local officials and builders had tried to cut corners by substituting steel rods for concrete reinforced with thin iron ones, for example.Ai began collecting the names of the Sichuan schoolchildren as part of his investigation into the incident. But given his architectural inclinations, Ai couldn’t help but pluck iron rods from the debris. Twisted by the quake into absurd shapes, these real-life calligraphies gesture towards both the violent impact of natural forces beyond human control and cynical neglect born of human greed.
Ai asked metal workers to make two exact replicas of the reinforcing bars he had collected. Simply displaying the original as readymade objects didn’t appeal to the artist, though one duplication wouldn’t suffice, either. All in all, it had to be three. And yet four would have been too many. Why? Seriality is an established idiom in contemporary art, and has been since no later than Minimalism. No matter what kind of thing is replicated, its own order will emerge when it is replicated often enough. It assumes its own form of being. As in other works, Ai borrowed this Modernist idiom for his own artistic agenda. But borrowing does not mean adhering to it. In fact, the opposite is true: Rather than see to the aesthetic value of the rebars, Ai tried to demonstrate the sheer absurdity of showing such a bloody piece of iron as a work of art. There is, in other words, a chasm between the piece from Sichuan and the replicas; it is barely visible, and yet it cannot be bridged. This abyss can be recreated, though – almost effortlessly – in any viewer’s imagination.