The Symposium 2015, Busan Biennale(Sea Art Festival)
Biennale of Demiurgos : Institution and Communication
As the Venice Biennale intimates, biennales often appear and disappear in the global art scene, at times wielding absolute power over the world. Unfortunately however they have degenerated into nothing but the sources of the rise of stars or newsmakers, forgetting their initial purposes of seeking a new land at the forefront of art, experimenting with unknown art forms, and inspiring an avant-garde spirit. Behind the scenes, formidable commercialism and capitalism is trying to devour even human souls, aided by tremendously bloated neoliberalism.
The biennales are in transition from the image of Demiurgos as a fashioner to the source of Eurocentricism or an advance base of local hegemonism and enormous ideologies. The biennales are thus expected to be wrecked before an enormous confrontation between matter and spirit and are thought to be arriving at a time when the foothold for the leap of the human spirit has to be newly established.
At this critical phase we realize that we have to explore revolutionary strategies and methodologies pertaining to the institution of biennale for communication with viewers, the subjects of aesthetic enjoyment, through new discourses and concepts. Our awareness of such a reality is grounded on the fact that there has always been discord and conflict between the artworks exhibited at a biennale and their viewers. The matter of communication has once again come to the fore as a pending issue in contemporary art as the two factors in a biennale seem to communicate with one another but actually are doing the exact opposite.
In the age of mobile phones and web-based social networking services (SNS), domestic and foreign experts are urgently requested to discuss issues on what authentic artistic communication is and how viewers might easily access it.
That is why at the Symposium 2015, Busan Biennale(Sea Art Festival) prestigious art critics, art historians, and curators will make their subjects public and have in-depth discussions on the following topics. As the theme of this symposium is the issue of communication between artwork and the viewer in regard to the institution of Biennale, more immediate, concrete solutions to this matter have to be sought after in a strategic respect.
The Biennale’s identity: For whom the biennale is?
Diverse discussions on the biennale’s identity and function
Biennale as an institution: Avant-gardism vs. commercialism
Is the biennale’s experiment camouflage or an instrument to enter the art market?
Communication: the aesthetic experience of the viewers and changing environment
Biennale and social networking services, viewer interaction, death of the author (Roland Barthes)