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 The Promise of If
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관리자 2018-08-21 11:52
The Promise of If, Mixed media, Dimensions variable, 2015-2018, Courtesy of the artist
Minouk LIM
The Promise of If
The South Korean national TV networks, KBS’s ‘Finding Dispersed Families’ that was broadcasted live for 453 hours in 1983 left a strong impression on the artist. The program made her question the functions, possibilities, and superficiality of the media. In her work, Lim interpreted this situation as the public broadcaster, which had served on the front line of the government’s propaganda war, being occupied by many people whose families were separated by the Korean War and had to live in silence. Therefore, in the exhibition hall, a paralyzed broadcasting station is created and the set is filled by ironic objects. Lim took a reference from the real story of KBS, which had to replace people with mannequins to replay the situation when they submitted this archive to UNESCO’s Memory of the World Programme in 2015, and she uses many objects which the families on the TV show used. The artist’s new video installation “It’s a Name I Gave Myself” (2018) is presented in a space structured like a control room. The video features the participants—who did not remember their ages, names or families because they were too young during the war—answering the questions of TV show presenters. They are holding up signs on which they have written a question mark or ‘unknown’ because they could not find any other words to explain their vague and tangled childhood memories. Lim sheds light on some cases of the TV show regarded as (im)possible reunions. In the control room, 17 audience signs remade by the artist are exhibited in the monitors which seem to be blackout.