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 Ruins of the Intelligence Bureau Memorial Chamber of the Intelligence Bureau
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관리자 2018-08-21 10:59
Ruins of the Intelligence Bureau, Single channel video, 13min 30sec, 2015
Memorial Chamber of the Intelligence Bureau, Mixed media, 263.6 x 634.3 x 40 cm, 2015, All courtesy of Producer Le Fresnoy & Co-Producer Liang Gallery
HSU Chia-Wei
Ruins of the Intelligence Bureau
Memorial Chamber of the Intelligence Bureau
His video work Ruins of the Intelligence Bureau(2015) is part of a larger project, Huai Mo Village (2012–15), that concentrates on a small village on the border between Thailand and Myanmar. In 1949 on the brink of the Chinese Communist Revolution, which had begun right after the end of World War II, Kuomintang (KMT) led by Chiang Kai-shek was defeated by the Communist Party of China (CPC). While KMT was retreating to Myanmar some of the KMT soldiers settled down around the border of Thailand and Myanmar, where Huai Mo is situated. After years of stateless living, the KMT soldiers eventually earned permanent residency after helping the Thai government fight the Communist Party of Thailand in the 1970s. The United States, who secretly supported the Taiwanese government during the Cold War, also established an intelligence bureau in the village from where they monitored the People's Republic of China. Because of this, most of the residents of the village were intelligence agents and their families. Ruins of the Intelligence Bureau (2015) has two different overlapping stories; one is a puppet play about Hanuman, both a god and a hero that looks like a monkey; and the other features a pastor, who used to be a CIA agent and currently lives in Huai Mo, who speaks about his experience while watching the play in a recording studio. The puppeteers, either current Thai soldiers or former intelligence agents, wear black masks while performing the play. In the mythical puppet play a prince returns home after the war, but the soldiers who participated in the wars could not return to their homeland. The film, which ends with the play screening in an empty recording studio, reveals the people who were forgotten during the wars and their complex identity issues through the memories of the villagers. The Memorial Chamber of the Intelligence Bureau (2015) installed alongside this video work is composed of architectural drawings and design models. Villagers and former intelligence agents stressed the necessity of building a museum about the intelligence bureau to serve as a memorial. This piece is a blueprint for the museum they have dreamed of. Although the plan could not be realized, the idea came alive through a piece of artistic work.