Live organ
Upcoming program
December 11, 2020
Ecological and Planetary Movements
December 12, 2020
Kkureomi: UNBOXING with Sisters
January 16, 2021
Rites of Passage and Renewal 02
GB TALKS
December 11, 2020
Ecological and Planetary Movements
Marian Pastor Roces, Cian Dayrit, and Beaska Niillas
Talk
Through the mounting challenges of this pandemic, there has been greater violence, incarceration and surveillance of indigenous communities, land and water defenders, as well as agrarian resistances. In this session we invite participants to foreground their practices toward ecological justice, Indigenous leadership and the role of public culture in addressing Rights to self-determination, traditional knowledge as well as planetary toxicity.
GB13 participant, artist and activist Cian Dayrit speaks about artistic strategies of communal mapping with agrarian and indigenous communities in the Philippines within ensuing land and resource struggles. Activist and Sámi nature guardian Beaska Niillas shares his strategies of boycott, moratorium, legal cases to protect land and water resources and expanded alliances with Indigenous activists in other parts of the world. Working on institution-building against systemic violence, curator Marian Pastor Roces draws on indigenous custodianship and cultural vocabularies of oral histories, collective memory, and material inheritance.
GB TALKS
December 12, 2020
Kkureomi: UNBOXING with Sisters
Rice Brewing Sisters Club
Workshop
A box of locally-grown crops sent directly from women farmers to consumers, kkureomi materializ
GB TALKS
January 16, 2021
Rites of Passage and Renewal 02
Haaweatea Holly Bryson
Workshop
Led by Māori Healing practitioner Haaweatea Holly Bryson, this workshop will focus on the processes to mark the transition from one phase of life to another. Together we will explore the three stages of the Rite of Passage, leading to intergenerational healing. What do we want to keep (to hold dear), as we reflect on our relationship with our ancestral and family lineages and consider what we know of our patterns, pain, resilience, values, and gifts? What do we want to carry (perpetuate and share)? And what do we want to compost (transform and change)? This map will show us the “bones” or codes of how humanity transitions and transforms, our consciousness, resiliency, belonging, purpose, revelation, and renewal. The workshop is limited to 50 people on a first come first-served basis. Please emailpublicprogram@gwangjubiennale.org to register.
Live organ
Upcoming program
January 30, 2021
A Keynote by Leela Gandhi
September 19, 2020
Race to the Future? Reimagining the Default Settings of Technology & Society
October 17, 2020
Forensics of Exploitation
GB TALKS
January 30, 2021
A Keynote by Leela Gandhi
Leela Gandhi
Keynote
To be updated soon.
GB TALKS
September 19, 2020
Race to the Future? Reimagining the Default Settings of Technology & Society
Ruha Benjamin
Keynote
We are humbled to announce the launch of GB Talks | Rising to the Surface: Practicing Solidarity Futures, our public program initiative, with a keynote by Ruha Benjamin, Associate Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University. Her talk “Race to the Future? Reimagining the Default Settings of Technology & Society” explores a range of discriminatory designs that encode inequity—what she terms the “New Jim Code.” This presentation will take us into the world of biased bots, altruistic algorithms, and their many entanglements, and provides conceptual tools to decode tech promises with historically and sociologically-informed skepticism
GB TALKS
October 17, 2020
Forensics of Exploitation
Vladan Joler
Lecture
Vladan Joler, co-founder of SHARE Foundation and a professor in the Academy of Arts at the University of Novi Sad, presents two talks. Titled “Forensics of Exploitation,” the first talk explores the invisible matrix of human labor, energy consumption, and resource extraction that is hidden behind digital networks and Artificial Intelligence.
Live organ
Upcoming program
October 18, 2020
New Extractivism
October 20, 2020
Brazilian Black Feminism: Perspectives and Projects to the World
October 31, 2020
From Gwangju to Khartoum: Feminist Legacies of Uprisings
GB TALKS
October 18, 2020
New Extractivism
Vladan Joler
Lecture
Vladan Joler, co-founder of SHARE Foundation and a professor in the Academy of Arts at the University of Novi Sad, presents two talks. Titled “New Extractivism,” the second talk guides us through the maze of concepts and allegories that describe techno-capitalism.
GB TALKS
October 20, 2020
Brazilian Black Feminism: Perspectives and Projects to the World
Djamila Ribeiro
Keynote
Philosopher Djamila Ribeiro discusses the role of Brazilian Black feminism in the current political debates. In her keynote titled “Brazilian Black Feminism: Perspectives and Projects to the World,” she offers a historical reading through the works of Lelia Gonzalez and Sueli Carneiro, among others, whose contributions for an ethnic-racial perspective in the feminist movement has been made invisible due to their geopolitical position.
GB TALKS
October 31, 2020
From Gwangju to Khartoum: Feminist Legacies of Uprisings
Jeong Kyung-woon, Reem Abbas, Huiyeon Choi
Panel
We host a panel titled “From Gwangju to Khartoum: Feminist Legacies of Uprisings,” highlighting women’s and LGBTQI+ individuals’ contribution in recent social movements. Specialized in oral histories of modern and contemporary history of Korea, academic Jeong Kyung-woon reflects on the testimonies of women who participated in the Gwangju 5.18 Uprising, especially on how the memory of their struggles has unfolded. Journalist Reem Abbas discusses the pivotal role of women in civil society and the recent political reforms in Sudan, as well as her commitment to chronicle gender issues, press freedom, and human rights in her home country. Activist Huiyeon Choi offers a contemporary reading of the feminist strategies in South Korea through street broadcasting, student and labor movements, and advocacy tools for gender equality.
Live organ
Upcoming program
November 20, 2020
From Istanbul to Gwangju: Archiving The Unarchivable in Uprisings
November 25, 2020
Rites of Passage and Renewal 01
November 28, 2020
From Tibet to Indonesia: Rupture and Continuum
GB TALKS
November 20, 2020
From Istanbul to Gwangju: Archiving The Unarchivable in Uprisings
Kwon Do Gyun, Begüm Özden Fırat, and Zeyno Pekünlü
Panel
What are the strategies of remembrance for social uprisings from the 1980s onward? How do iconic images from these uprisings represent the masses and what remains unrepresentable? This panel explores these questions with case studies from Turkey and South Korea. In his presentation titled “How Has May 18 Archives Changed and Influenced the World,” researcher Kwon Do Gyun introduces The May 18 Democratic Movement Records as part of UNESCO World Heritage Records. In her presentation titled “Archiving for Future Strategies,” artist Zeyno Pekünlü discusses the ‘unrepresentable’ in the massive visual data related to recent uprisings in Turkey. In her presentation titled “Drones and Streets: Iconic Images of the Tahrir and Gezi Occupations,” sociologist Begüm Fırat Özden speaks about how the crowds reemerge in contemporary politics. This event is co-hosted by the Gwangju Biennale Foundation and 5·18 Archives in Gwangju.
GB TALKS
November 25, 2020
Rites of Passage and Renewal 01
Haaweatea Holly Bryson
Workshop
Led by Māori Healing practitioner Haaweatea Holly Bryson, this workshop will focus on the processes to mark the transition from one phase of life to another. Together we will explore the three stages of the Rite of Passage, leading to intergenerational healing. What do we want to keep (to hold dear), as we reflect on our relationship with our ancestral and family lineages and consider what we know of our patterns, pain, resilience, values, and gifts? What do we want to carry (perpetuate and share)? And what do we want to compost (transform and change)? This map will show us the “bones” or codes of how humanity transitions and transforms, our consciousness, resiliency, belonging, purpose, revelation, and renewal. The workshop is limited to 50 people on a first come first-served basis. Please emailpublicprogram@gwangjubiennale.org to register.
GB TALKS
November 28, 2020
From Tibet to Indonesia: Rupture and Continuum
Kartika Pratiwi and Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam, with Inza Lim
Talk
This conversation brings forth artistic and cinematic strategies dedicated to sites of collective memory, and the persistence of trauma under authoritarian rule and occupation. Kartika Pratiwi will discuss the potential of digital storytelling and alternative educational platforms to create space for witness accounts and survivors’ stories from the mass killings of 1965–66 in Indonesia, which started as an anti-communist purge following a coup d'état attempt in Indonesia. Known for their films emerging from the Tibetan struggle and Himalayan geography, filmmakers Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam will introduce their long-term project featuring the personal archive of Lhamo Tsering—Sonam’s father who was one of the leaders of the CIA-backed guerrilla resistance against Communist China’s military operation in occupied Tibet. Inza Lim will act as respondent and share reflections from her theatre making and activism around the Gwangju democratization process.
Rising to the Surface
Rising to the Surface: Practicing Solidarity examines the tidal currents of people’s movements, the recurring spectre of oppressive regimes, and the inventive tools of current citizen protests. This forum brings together scholars, artists, activists, and civil society actors from around the world to address grassroots struggles in a discussion of shared vocabularies on strategies of public dissent, civic advocacy, healing public trauma, indigenous solidarity, and environmental activism. Online and on-site sessions will focus on algorithmic violence and digital surveillance; struggles to protect land and waters from extractive infrastructures; and the feminist legacy of democratization movements from the 1980s onward.
Nadège, ‘Pulsating Infrastructure: Imaginaries, Stories & Bugs’
Opening Forum
The Opening Forum interweaves the biennale’s generative topics, examining the spectrum of the extended mind and challenging the structural divisions imposed upon corporeal, technological, and spiritual intelligence. This program invites scientists, philosophers, system thinkers, and researchers to discuss cosmotechnics, neuroscience and data technology, healing practices, and shamanism. Multiple choreographies test the contours of resistance and resilience and begin with a procession scored in collaboration with participating artists that navigates various theoretical, scientific, physical, sonic, and spiritual vocabularies of communality. Embracing a fluid grammar through energy mobilization activities and motivations, these inclusive choreographies are primarily inspired by techniques originating across Asia.
Artist Research Visits
Minds Rising, Spirits Tuning intends to consider critically questions of scale, sustainability, and value intimacy to ensure that the conversations and shared learning generated by the collective labor of biennale production can be accessed by wider audiences. Several of the artists and team members conducting site visits and research in Gwangju and nearby Jeju experienced recent political upheaval and people’s movements in their own regions. The site visits in Gwangju included meetings at the 5.18 Archive, May Mothers House, and Gwangju Trauma Centre, among others. While artistic works will not directly connect with these sites, it is important to us that the research process includes the experience of crucial local sites of mourning, dissent, care, and recovery.