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 No. 18 (The outside can never reveal what is happening inside)
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관리자 2013-03-25 09:42
N° 18
Carroll’s query began, at least in the beginning, with the question “What is the Korean building?” This question was of course triggered by the kind of anonymous, prefabricated architecture that dominates Korea’s built environment: crystallized high-rise complexes that signal both a culture’s seeming adherence to an ideal of conformity, and the militarily enforced implementation of a modern standard. In Busan, the situation is more peculiar. The city became a haven for refugees during the Korean War, and their slums needed to be turned into decent living quarters.N° 18 is precisely this kind of first-generation apartment building. Built to house families displaced by the war, it is located in Jwacheon-dong, one of the old (as old as “modern” can be), densely populated areas of the city close to the port. Carroll chose to work with this building or, as she herself would say, “make architecture perform”.To obtain an apartment, a contract had to be made between the owner and the Busan Biennale office. Korean rental agreements are quite unique in this respect: rather than pay monthly rent, the renter pays the owner jeonse, a lump-sum deposit on the rental space for a large part of the property’s market value. This sum is then returned to the renter after the contract has expired.Carroll then designed a built environment that could be inserted directly into the apartment – which had a unit size of 4 pyeong (1 pyeong is about 3.3 square meters) – without touching the walls. This structure is the conceptual core of Carroll’s work and is anchored to the environment in three ways:
1) It belongs to the building and is a part of its everyday activities.
2) The view outside onto cultivated roofs creates a connection to its urban environment. This roof uses GAIA soil, which has Styrofoam as its main ingredient (Styrofoam is also the main structural material used in Carroll’s architectural insertion).
3) It broadcasts all the formal and informal activities that take place in Jwacheon to the museum (or the exhibition proper) and over the internet.
The museum installation includes a massing study model and a model of the apartment, which demonstrates not only the use of jeonse, but also a set of categories including, for example “Religion and Philosophy”, “Busan”, “Life and Style” and “Dining and Food”, which are meant to register and articulate the different layers of experience at N° 18.In other words, Carroll’s is an artwork that means to find something out.