The theme of the Gwangju Biennale 2004,
"A Grain of Dust a Drop of Water" is a discourse of Asian
thought that captures the spirit of the new dynamic order of twenty-first-century
Asian culture and society. It suggests an Asia open to a rich discourse
on competing aspects of today's fragmented visual culture and the
cultural conflicts that bring about acceptance and change.
This Asian spirit, in an East-West relationship, signifies not the
exclusion of one system or its influence over another, but a new aesthetics
redefining one that, for a long time now, has been imposed from elsewhere
on the planet and a new and essential order, one that is more natural
and respectful of cultural values. By changing this one-way street,
where art production has been customarily driven by political and
economic power, into a two-way street, the Gwangju Biennale 2004 hopes
to become a scene for the creative aspirations of different groups
and individuals.
The Gwangju Biennale dismisses divisions of influence such as globalism
and regionalism or a central art world surrounded by satellites. In
particular, it considers the discourse on the opposition East-West
as an integral context of parity and stability. The Biennale is a
test for an Asian concept of and an Asian discourse on today's world
based on past teachings and a clear tradition of environmental respect.
Art and culture should be agents for positive social networking. Communication
on a popular level should be strong, critical, and pluralistic, giving
voice to a variety of contemporary discourses. On another level, art
is a generous and noble gift to the spectator, a reason for hope.
If it abandons its responsibility to be a positive life example, art
will become painfully boring and destroy the hope invested in it by
thespectator. This is why it thrives as a natural, aesthetic phenomenon.
The Gwangju Biennale 2004 seeks to move discussion a step beyond well-worn
Western cultural and political reactions to the decline of Modernism,
such as decentralization and deconstructionism. The context imposed
by an Asian discourse is less important from a confrontational and
dialectical standpoint over deconstructionism than from the standpoint
of an association of comprehensive ecological information. |
