Pansori: “A Marriage Between Sound and Space”

Interview with the Biennale Artistic Director

The current biannual iteration of the Gwangju Biennale runs from September 7 to December 1 for its 15th edition. The artistic director for this year’s Biennale is Nicolas Bourriaud, a French curator and art critic, who has curated numerous exhibitions and biennials across the globe. Despite his busy schedule preparing for the upcoming three-month-long exhibition – which will manifest itself not only at the Biennale Main Exhibition Hall but also at an additional 30 “pavilions,” or art projects, throughout the city – our People in the Arts columnist, Jennis Kang, was able to recently connect with the artistic director at the Biennale’s opening ceremony for this interview for the Gwangju News.  — Ed.

Jennis Kang: To begin with, Director Bourriaud, did you choose pansori – which is thought more of as being narrative song and music than art – as the theme for the 2024 Gwangju Biennale? What message do you want to convey through pansori?

Nicolas Bourriaud: As a musical genre, pansori belongs to the same family as the Western opera. It is only more minimalistic, a voice and a drum. What interested me is that when it appeared at the end the 17th century, it was accompanying shamanistic rituals. I see pansori as a local translation of this marriage between sound and space: it is very much linked to a territory, to the region of Gwangju, and it is a form that is both musical and narrative. It also belongs to both popular culture and magic.

Jennis: What was the most important element when setting the theme of the Biennale – “Pansori, a Soundscape of the 21st Century” – and how did you connect it with contemporary art?

Nicolas Bourriaud: The main issue that the exhibition intends to address is the historical period we live in, which is marked by climate change. And I wanted to address this topic through a very wide angle, which is space. The question is today, how do artists represent the world we live in? How do they see the space around us, or the planet, or the political aspects of space? How are cities divided: which invisible or visible lines are crossing our cities? All wars start because of border problems, because of conflicts about the delimitation of space. Art is about representation – about forms – and the way people see space is influenced by representations, either from TV, cinema, or artworks.

Jennis: What is your curatorial philosophy, and how did you realize it in this Gwangju Biennale?

Nicolas Bourriaud: For me, an exhibition is like an opera: You have the music, hear the voices of the artists, and you also have a text, a narrative, a kind of subtitle that holds them together and links their works to each other. I structured “Pansori” in different sequences, in five floors that all have a distinct atmosphere, and the visitors will pass from a very saturated, very urban space to a very desertic feeling. It is like a journey.

Jennis: What was the most challenging part of preparing this Biennale? How did you overcome that challenge?

Nicolas Bourriaud: Every exhibition brings its challenges. Here, we have a lot of newly produced works, big and ambitious projects, which took a lot of time to coordinate. Fortunately, I gathered a team of curators following each one of them, and the exhibition team of the Biennale also made a tremendous work. For the 30th anniversary of the Biennale, we had to propose something different. That is why the opening ceremony will end with a performance of contemporary pansori, whose text has been written by Han Kang, and performed by many musicians and artists from the Biennale. Also, the Madang Food Lab will open its doors within the Biennale Hall, proposing a different take on Korean food.

Jennis: What is your perspective on the fusion of traditional Korean art and contemporary art? What influence do you think it will have on the art world in the future.

Nicolas Bourriaud: I originally wanted the exhibition to end on a traditional painting from the 15th century, “Dream Journey into the Peach Blossom Land,” by Ahn Gyeon. Unfortunately, the Japanese museum which owns it would not allow us to borrow it. But it is a very important image for me, which helped me to conceive the exhibition. It might be the first-ever dream painting, and it also is a landscape. I don’t see any difference between today’s art and yesterday’s art; the stakes are the same since prehistoric times. The art of the future will certainly take into account its memory.

Jennis: This might be a difficult question but, if I had time to visit only one or two of the pavilions across the city, where would you recommend?

Nicolas Bourriaud: I did not see them all yet, except the Japanese pavilion, and the German one, which both are very interesting. The Swedish pavilion seems to be ambitious also, as is the Indonesian one.

Jennis: I think the boundaries of art are becoming blurred. How can we differentiate between the works of professional artists and those of amateurs, such as between a professional photographer and a hobbyist? (Are such distinctions necessary?)

Nicolas Bourriaud: It is very simple: A great artwork has an intensity that mediocre ones don’t have. By “intensity,” I mean the capacity of an artwork to prolongate the discussion, to have multiple layers of meaning – its complexity. It is the same with people, no? When someone bores you after one hour, he or she certainly won’t become a friend… That is where beauty is also important: not a shallow type of beauty, not cuteness, but an aesthetic intensity. Important artworks are the ones that develop this intensity in time. It is like life: When you meet someone, it is not only about physical features, but about the relationship between the mind and the body. Art functions the same way.

Jennis: “The relationship between the mind and the body” – food for thought. Thank you, Director Bourriaud, for a look into the 15th Gwangju Biennale before we view it.