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 conversations & exercises [installation-area + collective conversation]
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관리자 2013-03-25 09:45
CONVERSATIONS & EXERCISES
Basbaum’s architectural construction turns space into place. Like an island, it offers its audience a possible retreat. It is a place where you are free to do nothing, but also an opportunity to listen calmly to a series of conversations the artist initiated with members of the Learning Council, or the body of around 50 people from Busan and wider Korea who participated in making the “Garden of Learning” along with artists and the Artistic Director.Basbaum’s piece is not a standalone contribution to this exhibition.It is rather part of a larger series of interventions that the artist has systematically pursued over the years, all unfolding from his NBP – New Bases for Personality project, which comprises his more well-known series “Would you like to participate in an artistic experience?”.
In this regard, Basbaum continues a particular Brazilian tradition that was pioneered in the 1960s by such figures as Lygia Clark and Hélio Oiticíca. This Brazilian tradition – first under the name “Neo-Concretism”, then “Tropicalia” – is characterized by the attempt to treat our human subjectivity not as a self-same core but rather as artistic material, or a substance in need of being worked through and transformed.In submitting ourselves to this process, we become receptive to questions of life, self, and living together.Naturally, this artistic program has political roots. It was first meant to address the traumata that had been caused by the colonial system, and then again after 1964, to heal the wounds that had been inflicted on the social body by a military dictatorship.Basbaum’s contemporary conversation pieces do not address our political environment directly. The artist has no interest in what officially counts as “politics” anyway, which he considers a mass media charade.For him, politics enters through the back door. Listening to its message requires an attentive ear, but also an atmosphere that feels right.The attentive ear cannot be pre-programmed, of course, but the artist’s conceptual design means to lay the groundwork for the general atmosphere.