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 Photographic report of the dismantling of the migrant camp known as “State Slum” or “New Jungle”, Calais
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관리자 2018-08-21 11:56
Photographic report of the dismantling of the migrant camp known as “State Slum” or “New Jungle”, Calais, 24 - 27 October 2016, 78 Photographs, digital files on usb stick, a set of inkjet prints on sticker paper, Dimensions variable, 2016
Carnival of Independence Series
Bruno SERRALONGUE
Photographic report of the dismantling of the migrant camp known as “State Slum” or “New Jungle”, Calais, 24 - 27 October 2016, 78 Photographs, digital files on usb stick, a set of inkjet prints on sticker paper, Dimensions variable, 2016
Carnival of Independence Series
Shown in Busan, the series “Carnival of Independence” (2011) includes seventeen prints documenting the celebrations that followed South Sudan’s declaration of independence, from the Republic of the Sudan. Serralongue’s images give pride of place to a kind of looking that is not pursuant of compositional complexity or pictorial drama. To scan these pictures is to adopt the gaze of a spectator patiently and scrupulously taking in the moment-to-moment progression in events. In some ways joyful, the images retain a healthy respect for the essentially granular nature of life and political progress. We see South-Sudanese people dancing and playing football in bright colours under a muted blue sky. The same is true of several decidedly less hopeful images, selected from the series “Calais” (2006–ongoing). These photographs were shot during extended periods spent in France’s infamous Calais refugee settlement—a focal point of the ongoing migrant crisis. In a didactic text—such as that which accompany all of Serralongue’s series—the artist details the futile efforts the French government has made to dismantle the camps, and thus discourage further refugee arrivals. Again, Serralongue’s images are somber and patient. Under cloudy skies, migrant people waiting and walking amidst their haphazard shelters, the latter often burning, sending slow billows of black smoke into the air.