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.
2018 Mother’s Day
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관리자 2018-08-21 10:56
Mother’s Day, 3 channel HD video, 6 channel directional sound environment, specially designed architecture, 15min (two alternating languages versions: English, Korean), 2006-2008, Courtesy of the artist
Smadar DREYFUS
Mother’s Day
In the Busan Biennale, the immersive structure of Dreyfus’s work is shown at its politically affective apex, in the work Mother’s Day (2006–2008). This piece places viewers in the heavily contested border area between Israel and Syria—specifically, the occupied Golan Heights. Young Syrians raised under Israeli rule were for many years permitted to cross into Syria for university studies, temporarily and under a rare agreement between the warring states. But in order to offer Mother’s Day greetings to their mothers, who remained in the Israeli controlled area, they came to speak across the border fence, at a location known as the “Shouting Hill”, using sound systems set up for the occasion. It was a festive occasion, a moment of contact, yet also conducted as a reminder of their ongoing liminal condition: in effect a public performance of resistance, in full view of military forces and news media cameras. Dreyfus’s installation immerses viewers in this emotionally and politically charged moment. Viewers stand in a darkened space, on a platform, separated from the projected video and text by a balustrade. The situation’s geographical reality is in this way emphasized. The work also raises questions about spectatorship and the act of bearing witness. The artist has stated: “Mother’s Day enacts an audio snapshot of a moment in historical time, in 2006. Between 2011 and 2018, the Syrian government lost control of much of the area bordering the occupied Golan in the Syrian war, and students from there stopped traveling to Damascus to study. The Shouting Hill in the buffer-zone has been deserted, the UN forces left the area, and Mother’s Day celebrations no longer take place at the fence.