EXPENDITURE: 2008 Busan Biennale
6 September – 15 November, 2008
www.busanbiennale.org

About

The Long March Project will participate in the Sea Art Festival, as part of the 2008 Busan Biennale.

The theme of the Sea Art Festival,"Voyage Without Boundaries,"symbolizes the navigation of desires moving toward unfathomable areas.The future seen from the perspective of quantum mechanics is uncertainty itself,emphasizing randomness and unpredictability.Since the future is not determined,it presents freedom and choice,with several factors and motives complementing to participate and engage.The Sea Art Festival brings to the world of reality the conditional"if," which cannot exist in history.The history that we believe is inevitable is rewritten through the distortion of time and space.New artists, who create new artistic-not historical-events,will serve as explorers navigating to find new routes.These new pioneers discover and revise new routes, based upon their intuition and judgement,to find the present address of contemporary art.

Moving within this vein of exploring new routes, new terminologies for the re-writing of history, the Long March Project has been given a unique opportunity to showcase a number of ongoing and collaborative works realized since the inception of its ongoing international journey since 2002.

Works included:

'Long March Project – A Walking Visual Display' 2002
Documentary film
Single channel: DVD (PAL), 60mins, color, sound

<See here for more info>
<See: link for exerpt>

'Long March Project – Yan'an' 2006
Documentary film
Single channel: DVD (PAL), 60mins, color, sound

<See here for more info>
<See: link for excerpt>

'Long March Project - Harlem School of New Social Realism' 2002 ongoing
Two channel video installation
DVD, (PAL), 20mins, color, sound
DVD, (PAL), 40mins, color, sound

<See here for more info>
<See: link for excerpt>

'Long March Project - Avant Garde' 2006 ongoing
Two channel: DVD, (PAL), 10mins, color, sound

<See here for more info>
<See: link for excerpt>

Xiao Xiong
‘Long March Remains’2002
Dimensions variable
79 components: iron, wood

Long March Remains is an installation composed of 79 hammers and sickles collected by Chinese artist, Xiao Xiong during ‘Long March Project – A Walking Visual Display’ which saw over 250 artists from China and abroad re-trace China’s historical Long March in 2002. Along this journey, numerous different communities were encountered and Xiao Xiong sought the tools that marked the unique qualities of the various provinces and ethnic regions, acknowledging the effect of economic and geographic factors on the style and condition of each instrument. The hammer and sickle are internationally recognized as a part of the symbolism of communist thought, referring to the industrial proletariat and the peasantry. The hammer is commonly superimposed over a sickle (as seen in the Communist Party flag of the People’s Republic of China; the Workers Party of Korea; the Fourth International and the logo of the Long March Project), indicating the unity between industry and agriculture – two prominent areas of reform in Communist China under Mao Zedong and further, under Deng Xiaoping’s economic policies of the late 1970s. In this installation, the basic tools of production are laid down as a cultural memory of human labor, of a united human undertaking in the production of a better state of survival for a developing society. Long March Remains questions what is it today that joins cross-sections of social communities together? How is the idea of material wealth defined today within a collective ideal?

Xiao Xiong
‘Enter and Exit’ 2002
45 x 90 x 50cm (installed, approx.)
1 Suitcase, 2 thermometers, 2 pieces of red cloth; 1 metal trolley; yak hair

Enter and Exit is a performance/installation Xiao Xiong undertook on his own journey for the ‘Long March Project – A Walking Visual Display.With a ceramic bust of Mao Zedong in his suitcase, Xiao Xiong left Beijing and headed to Yan’an, the final stop of this historical Long March. From here, he walked along the historical route of China’s revolutionary Long March in reverse, heading towards his comrades who were leaving from Ruijin (the first site of the march). Beginning his journey in Yan’an, Xiao Xiong asked a member of the local community what they would consider giving him in exchange for his bust of Mao, and so ensued a series of social bartering that delivered objects such as flags, hats and even a kiss from a local lady into the hands of Xiao. Each person who participated signed the suitcase that accompanied him on this journey, and a photograph was taken to mark the moment of exchange. The final objects were 2 thermometers and a red piece of cloth braided with yak’s hair. This participatory project highlights the varying values invested in material wealth and the personal meanings and stories, be they nostalgic or sentimental, which come to provide a sense of worth. By asking strangers to question their own property and what they would be willing to part with in exchange calls to mind the significant sacrifices made by many Chinese people along this historical route embraced as a form cultural ideology and also a political campaign.

Additional information:
183 artists from 34 countries will participate in the 2008 Busan Biennale.

Busan Biennale 2008
Sep.6-Nov.15,2008,
Press Opening
Sep.5.2008,Auditorium at the Busan Museum of Modern Art
Opening Ceremony
Sep.6.2008

For inquiries, contact:
Busan Biennale Organizing Committee
23rd Floor, Busan City Hall, Yeonsan 5-dong, Yeonje-gu, Busan Metropolitan City
Tel.82-51-888-6691~9/Fax 82-51-888-6693/bbiennale@paran.com
http://www.busanbiennale.org