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 As matter stands
Read 11,534
관리자 2013-03-25 10:15
AS MATTER STANDS
Simon Wachsmuth’s artistic interest lies in historical periods that vanish into the past. The Neolithic Age is such a period. We don’t know much about it, and never will, except that it was a formative age even for our modern ways of inhabiting the world. It was then that people invented agriculture and social hierarchies.For “Garden of Learning”, Wachsmuth journeyed to Korea’s famous dolmen sites at Gochang, Hwasun, and Ganghwa. The massive stones are markers of burial sites; their formal arrangement clearly reflects what was once considered appropriate or even necessary, but also what could be done in terms of manpower and technique.In his media installation, Wachsmuth gives a topographical account of those sites projected as almost black-and-white video. Its editing syncs it with two more documentary video sequences: views of display cabinets in an archaeological museum, where we can observe the authentic lifestyle of the Korean Neolithic, and a sequence showing a group of elderly people who collectively tend the dolmen site, but also engage in singing and dancing.Three smaller screens serve as a counterpoint to the three large projections They show the artist’s hands arranging and re-arranging a dolmen model in a playful manner.Wachsmuth’s installation creates a situation in which this mute monument is made to speak up and tell its story. An artist is no magician, though – and the story of the dolmen will never be disclosed in its entirety. And yet, by drawing formal parallels between the (largely fictitious) Neolithic Koreans in the display cabinets and the (very real) group of elderly Koreans on the dolmen site, the artist overcomes the perception that the dolmen is merely a thing of the past.