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 Die Leere Mitte
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관리자 2018-08-21 11:57
Die Leere Mitte, Single channel video, 62min, 1998, Courtesy of the artist
ExtraSpaceCraft, 3 channel video installation, environment, HD video, color, sound, 12min 30sec, 2016, Courtesy of the artist
Hito STEYERL
Die Leere Mitte
ExtraSpaceCraft
In the context of the Busan Biennale’s theme of psycho-mapping divided territories, two works by Hito Steyerl seem especially relevant. Die leere Mitte (the empty centre, 1998) is a one-hour film essay telling the story of Potsdam Square, in the middle of Berlin. Once, before World War II, it had been the bustling heart of Berlin, teaming with stores, cafes, passers-by and traffic. During the Cold War, it became literally a minefield as part of the Berlin Wall. After 1989, in the wake of Germany’s reunification, it became a busy center again, this time full of construction sites by big global companies like Sony and Mercedes Benz. The “Neue Mitte”, the new center became a political catch phrase effectively excluding poor and migrant communities; and Steyerl’s film analyzes this turn. Steyerl’s video installation ExtraSpaceCraft (2016) also is concerned with a divided territory—this time with that of the Kurdish people, scattered across numerous nation states including Iraq. There, from a national observatory, drones are sent out by a Kurdish drone pilot, to fly over Iraqi Kurdistan; in a (science-)fictional turn, the artist evokes the possibility of a space agency taking over, as different narrative realities— video-game-like virtuality, or the pastoral talk of shepherd and sheep—are superimposed.