GWANGJU < invest Korea

(GWANGJU = Newsis) Gwangju Biennale, which marks the 20th anniversary in 2014, will push ahead the project to seek the Gwangju spirit.

The Gwangju biennale foundation announced on December 27 that it will during the 20th Gwangju Biennale between September 5 and November 9 in 2014.

The project is named “Sweet dew, since 1980”, and it will mainly focus on the 33 years of modern history of Korea since the Gwangju Democratization Movement and display them by art.

After the project, the city will create the “Gwangju declaration” and announce it to the world.

The project comprises the exhibition, lecture and performance.

In exhibition, the city will work together with the Gwangju Museum of Art to invite residents and artists from the time of the Gwangju Democratization Movement and create citizen’s prints and large hanging pictures.

The “exhibition” will take place in the Gwangju Museum of Art for 100 days from August 1 to November 8, and 50 artists from 15 nations will participate in the exhibition to aesthetically and socially demonstrate the similar historical cases of Okinawa, Taiwan and Jeju Island based on the theme “state violence”.

“Lectures” will be given at the various meaningful places in Gwangju by more than 70 people from the world-famous philosophers to the ordinary citizens.

Participants of the lectures will diachronically explore the changes that happened since the 1980 Gwangju Democratization Movement, which had triggered the democracy in the modern history of Korea, as well as the changes and historical events that happened in the world history after the movement.

Topics including the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989), birth of the World Wide Web (1989), Tiananmen Sqaure Massacre (1989) and struggle of the South Africa against apartheid (1994) will be discussed as the sub-themes.

“Performance” will give the participants the opportunity to trace back the history of Gwangju by walking the roads and visiting the space that remind 5•18.

Activities like “say nothing”, “take a walk”, “gaze” and “experience” will take place to provide an opportunity to experience Gwangju back in 1980.

The project will be planned and run by members designated by 20th anniversary advisory committee.

Yoon Beom-mo (Professor of painting in Gachon University), Baek Ji-sook (Director of 2013 Anyang Public Art Project), Jeong Yeon-sim (Professor of Hongik University) and Michelle Hyun participated in the exhibition area as curators.

Kim Nam-si (Professor of formative arts in Ewha Women’s University) and Kim Sang-yoon (Co-representative of Gwangju creative citizen’s forum) will take the role of curator in the lecture area.

The committee also nominated Lee Moo-yong (Professor of Graduate School of Culture at Jeonnam Univesity) and Jang Gyeong-hwa (Gwangju Museum of Art) as the curator for the performance area.

“We decided to push ahead the project because we wanted to promote the fact that Gwangju is the only city to combine “spirit” with itself. The project will be a meaningful cultural work to take a view of the social and political changes of the world since the Gwangju Democratization Movement and create a new spirit of the age,” said Lee Yong-woo, President of Gwangju Biennale Foundation.

hgryu77@newsis.com

Source Text

Source: Newsis (Dec. 27, 2013)

** This article was translated from the Korean.