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| Home > Exhibition > The Viewer-Participants |
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| It's unhealthy, when it comes
to balancing art production and consumption, to continue
forever to put the spectator in the position of passively
appreciating art. The evaluation and aesthetic values
of art are not the private hunting grounds of experts
and professionals. The goal of artistic production is to be actively consumed by the spectator or, rather, to incite the participation of the spectator. It's an important decision, then, and an extreme experiment of great value for the 2004 Gwangju Biennale to have the spectator become the pivotal player in the organization of its exhibition and, thus, to create a bold opening in the customary framework built principally around the professional. The 2004 Gwangju Biennale deconstructs the hierarchical view that situates the spectator on the level of passive or, optimally, educated appreciator and, by inviting him or her to participate as the primary producer of the exhibition, tries to present exhibition culture from different and new perspectives. |
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| To establish the system of the viewer-participant,
the Gwangju Biennale created a task force team to conduct
research into the spectator. Based on its findings, the task force selected 60 viewer-participants from 42 different countries and arranged them into three categories: general spectators, professional producers of culture, and cultural activists. Among the general spectators there is a farmer, a skilled laborer, an office worker, a homemaker, a student, a soldier, and so on. Among the professional producers of culture, but excluding visual artists, there are viewer-participants from the human sciences, humanities, and sciences. And among the cultural activists there are those whose jobs are to alert us and react to some of the most important problems of our times. Beginning with a workshop held in Gwangju from the 12th to the 14th of January, the viewer-participants have, for the past six months, proposed the direction and organization of the exhibition in discussions with their artist-partners. They have also, in their participation in the creation of the artworks, fulfilled the aesthetic expectations and reached the aesthetic consciousness of spectators of differing cultural backgrounds. As for the artists, instead of defending their historical creative independence, they have also become participants in a complex experimental process of creating art through dialogue with the viewer-participants. The viewer-participant system has produced three types of outcomes: 1) harmonious collaborations between the artist producer and the consumer; 2) essentially formal, tentative participations; and 3) struggles, including separations and reconciliations through active discussions and other plot twists. The Biennale has stood by as a possible mediator, ready to help the duos in their collaboration, but it has never participated actively. The Gwangju Biennale has tried to underline possible collaborative models, to ask out loud whether a fruitful collaboration can happen between artistic producer and consumer or whether there can be success through dialogue. It has also tried to suggest that there are unlimited possibilities for art to become the means for social networking. |
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| Art and culture should be a vehicle for effective social networking. It should create a strong connection between people and communications and a window onto today's discourses and issues. The Gwangju Biennale 2004 seeks to create an event that redefines the conventional relationship between artists and curators as art producers, and spectators as art consumers. This should lead us to a tentative response to a complete rethinking of the common problems of the national and international biennale. |
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