Through the Gates: The Procession, 13. Gwangju Biennale 2021, photo: Sang Tae Kim
Corona-bedingt verspätet eröffnete jetzt endlich die 13. Gwangju Biennale. Ursprüngliches Datum war 4. September bis 29. November 2020, verschoben auf 26.2. – 9.5. 2021 und als finale Daten 1.4.-9.5. Eine Einreise nach Südkorea bedingt eine 14tägige Quarantäne, weswegen hier leider nur eine unkommentierte Bildstrecke mit Pressefotos gezeigt werden kann.
zum Konzept (Pressetext): „Minds Rising, Spirits Tuning sets out to examine the spectrum of the extended mind through artistic and theoretical means. Directed by Defne Ayas and Natasha Ginwala, the 13. Gwangju Biennale will feature a dynamic program (…) bringing together artists, theoretical scientists, and systems thinkers. The Biennale argues for the primacy of plurality, positing that points of origin and influence ought to be accessed not only through the dominant technological systems and machinic vocabularies traceable to the West but also relate to heterodox ancestries.
Artistic Directors Natasha Ginwala and Defne Ayas. Photo: Victoria Tomaschko
In challenging the structural divisions imposed upon corporeal, technological, and spiritual intelligence, Minds Rising, Spirits Tuning will delve into a broad set of cosmologies, activating planetary life-systems, queer technologies, and modes of communal survival. By investigating how such diverse practices transact with multitudinous forms of life, the 13. Gwangju Biennale will examine how they contend with the future horizon of cognitive capitalism and planetary imperialisms, as well as the present dimension of neural networks and other techno-spiritual emergences that populate our computational biosphere. We feel convinced—living as we are through a traumatic interregnum—that the present co-evolution with electronic intelligence and algorithmic regimes needs to be addressed from a planetary perspective. How then can we interpret the incomputable nature of this transition?“
Courtesy: Minds Rising, Spirits Tuning, The 13th Gwangju Biennale, Photo: Sang Tae Kim
Courtesy: Minds Rising, Spirits Tuning, The 13th Gwangju Biennale, Photo: Sang Tae Kim
Courtesy: Minds Rising, Spirits Tuning, The 13th Gwangju Biennale, Photo: Sang Tae Kim
Courtesy: Minds Rising, Spirits Tuning, The 13th Gwangju Biennale, Photo: Sang Tae Kim
Minds Rising, Spirits Tuning, exhibition view 13th Gwangju Biennale, 2021, works by Min Joung-Ki, Outi Pieski, John Gerrard, and relics from the The Museum of Shamanism, photo: Sang tae Kim
Minds Rising, Spirits Tuning, exhibition view 13th Gwangju Biennale, 2021, works by Pacita Abad, photo: Sang tae Kim
Sangdon Kim, Cart, 2021, exhibition view 13th Gwangju Biennale, 2021, photo: Sang tae Kim
Minds Rising, Spirits Tuning, exhibition view 13th Gwangju Biennale, 2021, works by Pacita Abad (detail), Seyni Camara, and Jumaadi, photo: Sang tae Kim
Sahej Rahal, Missing Pages series, 2018–ongoing, exhibition view 13th Gwangju Biennale, Horanggasy Artpolygon, 2021, photo: Sang tae Kim
Emo de Medeiros, Vodunaut (Hyperdiver), 2021, exhibition view 13th Gwangju Biennale, 2021, photo: Sang tae Kim
Femke Herregraven, Twenty Birds Inside Her Chest, 2021, exhibition view 13th Gwangju Biennale, 2021, photo: Sang tae Kim
Lynn Hershman Leeson, Twisted Gravity, 2021, exhibition view 13th Gwangju Biennale, 2021, photo: Sang tae Kim
Vivian Lynn, Caryatid, 1986; Spin: Versor Versari, 1995–97, exhibition view 13th Gwangju Biennale, 2021, photo: Sang tae Kim
Minds Rising, Spirits Tuning, exhibition view 13th Gwangju Biennale, 2021, works by Alexandra Sukhareva, photo: Sang tae Kim
Kangseung Lee, Untitled (QueerArch), 2018–21, exhibition view 13th Gwangju Biennale, 2021, photo: Sang tae Kim
Outi Pieski, Máttaráhku ládjogahpir – Foremother’s Hat of Pride, 2017–ongoing, exhibition view 13th Gwangju Biennale, 2021, photo: Sang tae Kim
Minds Rising, Spirits Tuning, exhibition view 13th Gwangju Biennale, 2021, works by Kyungwon Moon and Gap-Chul Lee, photo: Sang tae Kim
Sabine B. Vogel: The impact of Covid19 has shifted many biennials – are serious changes necessary?
Defne Ayas and Natasha Ginwala: With massive numbers of lives lost globally, we feel that it has become more vital to sustain public culture amidst drastic pulls between isolation and mass movements as well as human and planetary asymmetries. Now more than ever, the hierarchy of knowledge is being shaken as planetary forces compel a rethinking toward the ‘communal mind.’ We are concerned with what sort of civic models and practices of care will emerge in the aftermath of COVID-19.
It remains crucial for us to learn directly from artistic experiences at this time—to observe with them how vulnerability, loneliness, narrative building and imaginative leaps are reshaping our present lives in confinement and grief.We are working with artists and thinkers with mind-expanding practices that act beyond the binary framings of insider and outsider, legal and illegal, masculine and feminine. Each invested in traversing ancestral knowledge, augmented intelligence, and healing systems while honoring the foundational role of the undead in shaping registers of “the real”across worlds of the living.