Inmidst the uproar about the nuclear bomb tests of North Korea,
I went to Korea to check out Media_City Seoul and the Busan
Biennale, where I was invited. As I recently went to see also the
Gwangju Biennale, this means that I've witnessed all of Korea's
three big Biennales this year. As usual, there were quite a few
things that made me think. Rather than contents-related issues,
once again it were mainly organizational and administrative flaws
that revealed the weak points of international art shows held in
Asian countries.
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Seoul Museum of Art: Key visual by Watanabe Go
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The first one I visited this time was Media_City
Seoul (through 12/10). The first thing I realized upon entering
the venue -- using three floors of the Seoul Museum of Art -- was
that about half of the works displayed on the ground floor were
more or less black and white. Watanabe Go's "face "portrait"",
which I would call a depicion of a neotenic albino; Chen
Shaoxiong's video "Ink City", illustrating the rapidly transforming
city with an ink painting kind of touch; Miao Xiaochun's "The Last
Judgment in Cyberspace", a computer animation of 400 naked bodies
dashing across the sky; Sawa Hiraki's videos "Dwelling" and
"Trail", letting the silhouettes of toy ariplanes and camels in the
desert wonder about in the room... After that come several works
using colors, but the dominance of monochromatic (or, actually
white) pieces in the introductory part reflects the idea of the
organizers behind the exhibition's theme, "Dual Realities". We're
living in an age where reality mixes with virtuality, and this
duality is symbolized here with veil-like, milky shades of white.
Many of the images deal with "floating" or "descending" motion,
which I don't want to comment on further because this is not the
place for critique.
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Lev Manovich's lecture
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Lev Manovich
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The second half of the show seemed to run a bit out of gas, but my
overall impression was not bad. Supposedly a budget-related
measure, there was a large number of video works, which had the
positive result of creating a sense of consistency. However, there
were several problems on the administerative side. The painting Liu
Ding placed on top of his "Tracing the Wind and the Shadows" was
damaged by visitors, and some interactive pieces didn't work
properly. In the case of Mathieu Briand, the artist got upset and
left the country because the management was unable to provide the
necessary materials to set up his work. What surprised me
personally was the fact that only about 30 people (including
officials) attended the lecture of Lev Manovich at Ewha Womans
University. Manovich is a leading media art theorist and one of
this event's curators. An artist couple I met the following day
explained regretfully that they didn't know about the event. I
wonder why it wasn't promoted better....
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Yodogawa Technique's "Naktong Chinu"
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The theme in Busan this year is "A Tale of Two Cities: Busan-Seoul
/ Seoul-Busan" (under the general theme "Everywhere", which
embraces also the Sea Art Festival, open through 11/25). Works
gathered as part of an ambitious plan to amplify the present
phenomenon of all of a country's functions being concentrated in
its capital to global magnitude, included some really excellent
pieces with clear and cleverly realized concepts: Cao Fei's video
installation "SIEMENS Art Project -- What are you doing here" with
images from a light bulb factory in Guangzhou; Mika Rottenberg's
ironical video "Tropical Breeze" that illustrates in a humorous way
how capitalist society and industrial establishment are being
upheld by minorities; Yodogawa Technique's "Naktong Chinu", a giant
fish made from garbage fished out of the Naktong River that runs
through Busan, and others. Nonetheless, I didn't see much attention
being paid to the theme of "A Tale of Two Cities". As last time,
the setup and display methods were not the best as well.
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"Study Room"
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"Living Room"
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"Rest Room"
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A surprisingly nice discovery was the "Living Furniture"
exhibition, held as part of the Sea Art Festival (through 11/25) at SK Pavilion
near the coast. Director Ryu Byoung-hak proclaimed, "It was only
100 years ago when art was easily found to be 'breathing' with our
daily lives. But since the beginning of the 20th century, art has
lost that link to our lives due to the ideology of 'art for the
sake of the art'", and with the help of three commissioners (Kim
Jyeong-Yeon, Minato Chihiro and Victoria Lu) he turned the entire
exhibition space into a house containing a "Child Room", a
"Kitchen", a "Living Room", a "Rest Room" etc., in which slightly
more than 100 items were placed like furniture. The whole thing
looked like a tastefully equipped model room, with contributions
from such great artists as Ai Wei Wei, Lee Dongi, Lee Sookyung, Kim
Kira, Higashionna Yuichi, and Mitamura Midori.
Personally I find Ryu's statement too simple, and I wouldn't want
to live in a house like this, but it's definitely a refreshingly
new way of exhibiting works of art. There do exist small-scale
shows and art fairs held in hotel rooms, but as a group show, this
one here makes more sense. One of my gallerist friends reported in
an email that, "Compared with the displays of conservative
Biennales, the show in Busan pleased with some interesting new
ideas." Indeed, such attempts to introduce art into daily life are
commendable not only for gallerists. I hope that this concept and
the exhibition it resulted in is an occasion for many people to
ponder the relationship between art and (interior) design.
Shortly before returning to Japan, I heard that Rhee Wonil, the
artistic director of Media_City Seoul and one of the curators of
the Shanghai Biennale, was accused of plagiarism. A text published in the
official Biennale guide is said to be a copy of a manuscript a
Dutch art critic had prepared for a seminar in Busan in 2005. Rhee
explained that "the translator omitted the footnotes by mistake
when translating the text from Chinese into English", but the
critic was apparently not convinced by that.
This is just another example that hints at the fact that there are
lots of problems occuring at international art exhibitions in Asia.
While themes and selections of participating artists are often
questionable, those exhibitions have surely reached a high level.
But issues like setup and display methods, promotion, and other
administrative tasks can't hold a candle to how such things are
done in Europe and the United States for example. As the case of
Rhee Wonil shows, it happens that the production of catalogues and
other documents isn't sufficiently supervised.
According to several professionals from the business, there are
almost no educational institutions in Asia where exhibition
preparators are being educated properly, and the number of firms
specializing in exhibition setups is very limited. In advertising
agencies or film promotion companies, it sometimes happens that PR
experts are being recruited, but like in the case of setup and
display, a transmission and accumulation of know-how is usually not
taking place. Even the tastiest dish doesn't attract people to a
restaurant when it's not properly prepared and promoted. Budgets
are of course limited everywhere, so it may be difficult to put
into practice, but I think that those Asian countries should now
work hand in hand and do their best to improve the situation.
2006-10-26
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