PICAF 2000

INTERNATIONAL CONTEMPORARY ART EXHIBITION

The international Contemporary Art Exhibition introduced 108 art pieces from 35 countries. Among them, 66 pieces were for the main exhibition and 42 for single channel videos. The art works employed the state-of-the-art images and mediums of the 21st century, reviewing the cultural competitiveness of the new century and laying the foundation for culture industry.

Period Oct. 2 ~ Nov. 27, 2000 Places Busan Museum of Modern Art Theme Leaving The Island Artworks108 works from 35 countries (Main Exhibition 66 works, Single Chanel Video 42 works) Theme of Exhibition : Leaving the Island

The "Leaving the Island" refers both to the desire and the need of making political, aesthetical and existential borders more fluid and porous. Geographically, islands are pieces of surrounded by the sea, and they are usually conceived as isolated worlds. In the human imaginary, islands have been mythical allegories of dreamed paradises, places for adventure and locations to rest after difficult journeys. But without human beings speaking about them, islands are physical, economical and spiritual geographies. Water is the matter that sets the distance between islands and at the same time it is the medium that needs to be traversed to reach those distant realities. It is a frontier and a means of communication.

Artworks have long been seen as islands that condense meaning and beauty. Today the notion of the co modified art object linked to capitalistic ideologies is put into question and art is becoming a means to create new situations and to connect symbolically different individuals and communities. The sea is a powerful metaphor of a fluid and changing medium. Artists can then be seen as producers of deep streams or superficial movements of the waters. Art can be a tool to create new ways of navigation.

A new space of confrontation, negotiation and exchange between different cultures is hence created. It allows us to explore fundamental and urgent questions from aspiration to a better world in a new millennium to everyday violence, from social progress to new conflicts between classes, from globalization to small events in life. The three curators of the show have taken into account the maritime character of the city of Busan as a laborious and rich harbor where different kinds of trade take place. Relating this to the above mentioned need to erase aesthetical borders and to provoke new interchanges, they have decided to integrate their visions and their passions for different international artists with the goal of creating a unique mosaic in which the frontiers of who has selected whom are erased. By joining their forces, they are creating a temporary archipelago in which the artists, like floating islands, offer to the public their understandings of a very fast changing present.

In the context of an increasingly globalized world where the power of the media is commodifing even ideas and attitudes, " Leaving the Island" wants to update the utopian idea of connecting art and life, and it expresses the will of shortening the distance that separates art from other spheres of reality. The modernist glorification of the autonomy of art is not seen anymore as a sign of power but as an evidence of its loneliness. The idea of originality is no longer connected to the individual inspiration of a "genius" but to the establishment of collaborative networks of critical interchange.

The meaning and the function of art being reinvented in relation to the last scientific, anthropological and technological developments, as well as in connection to the global economies that make cities among them. We conceive exhibitions as zones and interrelated systems. This is why we hope that the show "Leaving the Island" makes of Busan a meaningful place where the artists and the public share an atmosphere of esthetical innovation and ethical concerns :where they can interchange ideas, emotions and sensations, and where they can understand a little bit better contemporary social, ethnical, religious and economical contradictions. Like this, maybe the different islands become peninsulas related to the rest of the world.

(Young Chul Lee, Hou Hanru and Rosa Martinez)

SEA ART FESTIVAL

37 installation works and performance works from 5 countries participated in the international Sea Art Festival, establishing the event as the largest sea art festival in the world. Underlining the characteristics of the city Busan, harmonized with blessed natural environment, this festival came to emerge as an important cultural tourism resource. Period Oct. 2~Oct. 16, 2000 Places Haeundae Beach Theme SeaㆍHumanㆍArt Artworks Total 37 works from 5 countries (8 Invited Works, 20 Competition Works, 9 Performances)

INTERNATIONAL OUTDOOR SCULPTURE SYMPOSIUM

13 stone works from 7 countries entered the international outdoor sculpture symposium. The production processes of world-class sculptors were open to the viewers, making an attempt to get closer to the public. 160,000 visitors came to see the artworks.

Period Oct. 2~Nov. 27, 2000 Places Olympic Sculpture park Artworks 13 works from 7 countries

PICAF 2000
"Togetherness in life"

mit Adel Abdessemed, Ahn Kyu-Chul, Ana Laura Alaez, Helena Almeida, Francis Alÿs, Ghada Amer, Katarina Apostolidou, Akane Asaoka, Sylvie Blocher, Cao Fei, Chen Shaoxiong, Charles Christophe, Alexandre da Cunha, Honoré d´O, Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragset, Michel Francois, Hiroshi Fuji, Wineke Gartz, Kendell Geers, Federico Guzman, Ham Jin, Carl Michael von Hausswolff, Solrun Hoaas, Ken Ikeda, Jae-Hyun Park, Joo Jae-whan, Jung-Ran Lee, Sora Kim, Elke Krystufek, Surasi Kusolwong, Kyupi-Kyupi, Simone Aaberg Kaern, Soo Kyung Lee, Zwelethu Mthethwa, Aydan Murtezaoglu, Myung-Eun Shin, Myung-Seop Hong, Veronica Nicholson, Dan Perjovschi, Planet Art , Steven Rand, Sam Samore, Bülent Sangar, Anne Seagrave, Ene-Liis Semper, Shi Yong, Shon Jeung-Eun, Santiago Sierra, Ross Sinclair, So-Mi Lee, Nedko Solakov, Soon-Myung Hong, Grazia Toderi, Wee-Young Heo, Yong-Kook Park, Maria Zarraga, Zheng Guo-Gu, Zhou Tiehai, Ebru Özsecen