EALC 20042/30042 Busan Biennale: The Chicago Chapter Seminar
Timed to coincide with the Busan Biennale's Chicago Chapter, a series of events and exchanges with artists and organizers of the project, this interdisciplinary class will examine the context of the biennale and respond to works in the show-- giving special attention to the interplay between sound, text, and image. Using Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky's Picture at an Exhibition as inspiration, artists, musicians, and writers from South Korea and around the world were invited to respond to both the city of Busan and to each other's work. Similarly, we will likewise read, listen, and look at the work and create projects while considering our own context here in the city of Chicago. Students will be asked to complete one short writing assignment, one short creative piece, and develop a larger project. Weekly reading assignments will be discussed, drawing mainly from the Biennale reader and other artist writings that will guide our thinking about artistic practice across mediums and the nexus of artistic writing and conceptual art more broadly. What kind of artworks will emerge from this encounter with an international biennale? What is the meaning of interdisciplinarity and experimental form when conventional forms of exhibition making that have been so upended by the pandemic? These are just a few of the questions that will guide our inquiry during the seminar.