Biennale (Gwangju is neat)

Hi Readers,

Yes, that was a mighty long break from blogging. We’re first-time bloggers here, though. I don’t even like the word, or the infinitive, ’to blog’, but we won’t harp on this. You want to know how we’re doing, what we’ve been up to, and that makes us feel good, that’s for certain (also it makes us feel guilty for not writing on this thing, but many of you are literally family so there’s a certain small amount of built-in guilt the way we figure things, especially on the keeping in touch front).

It’s Sunday night, 9pm, and we just got back from a night and day in Gwangju, a city one hour north east of our home in Mokpo. (One quick language side note: because there aren’t always precise English translations of Hangeul, the Korean language, you’ll see alternate spellings for the same word, like how Gwangju is sometimes spelled Kwangju. It’s because the sound one makes to say this name is a cross between ’g’ and ’k’.) Gwangju is punk, and, if you don’t know KM and I, then I’ll let you know that I mean that as a compliment. At the very least, Gwangju is more punk than Mokpo. One thing that makes Gwangju punk and beautiful is that it supports the arts in a big way. They hold countless art festivals and work hard to make them accessible to the community.

Recently, the city held it’s yearly Biennale from September 1 to November 11. We saw posters for it on our first trip to Gwangju, and then our boss told us we should go, so we were definitely planning on making a trip up to see the festival. One day in mid-October, I went to the New York Times website and above the fold on the homepage was an editorial about opera by their opera/classical critic Alex Ross. I checked out the editorial, which was a spirited defense of federal funding for opera. Ross was writing this because recently musicians like David Byrne have been calling for more funding for music education in public school and perhaps less for subsidizing opera.

Anyway, the story had a link to Byrne’s blog, which I hadn’t checked out in awhile. Byrne, former singer of the Talking Heads, solo artist, arts booster, city re-design and biking enthusiast, has a fascinating blog you should check out sometime. I clicked over there, and, scrolling through a few posts, I saw that David had recently been to Gwangju and Jeju Island, South Korea! He traveled to Gwangju specifically to take in the Biennale. We were really excited at this point, so we went one weekend a few weeks back and checked it out.

Byrne does a good job describing the show at the Biennale, a fascinating mix of performance, video, photography, painting, drawing, collage, and more. To make it better, we just happened to go during the opening weekend of the Kimchi Festival, which was held in the park connecting Biennale Hall, the Korean Folk Museum, and the Gwangju Museum of Art. Tons of kimchi booths, offering free samples, various delicious food vendors. Despite the recent months’ news of the abysmal cabbage crop, kimchi culture seems to be thriving in Jeollanam-do province.

I’m beat, so check back soon for more. I’ll try to get a bloody regular bloggin’ schedule.