The Busan Biennale forces us to make our way through the toy city, South Korea’s second most-populated and a historical, thriving port. Through the stream, high-rise buildings and skyscrapers float on hills as round peaks emerge, the traffic gently hidden, discrete among tides. Waves hit the seawalls, but the noise of cars, cranes, ships and blacksmiths is too loud for them to be heard. Tides and concrete seem to be synchronised. Busan is liquid as the sea is liquid (as cities, in general, are liquid), their unified body a dreamland of darned clouds.
Yet the sea-city is also dust, trade, data, territory, supermarket, mine, highway, money, plastic, cave, flag, factory, pipe, warehouse, farm, dump, flame, asbestos, vacation, scrap. Water is space yet to be covered, an urbanistic element where the map of the city is to be laid upon. Busan is a threshold of dreams and trash. And the Biennale also seems to lean more towards this threshold, taking the city not only as a starting point but also as a stage, a mirror where the sea is only seen in the background, below the surface.
Overall, there is a feeling of being immersed. Not in a romantic tribute to liquidity, but rather in an environment whose problems are growingly more visible from the surface. The tone oscillates between the feeling of floating in a lyrical landscape and taking part in a critique of territory, a tension that normally comes up when one thinks of the sea. Organised around four axes - “migration”, “women and women labourers”, “the ecosystem of the city”, and “technological change and locality” -, the various exhibitions focus on the threshold of landscape and territory. Space is not conceived as a mere idea nor water as a mere element: one must see how those two dimensions clash as part of the same ecosystem.
Some works seem to encompass both forces of that tension, such as Hira Nabi’s All That Perishes at the Edge of Land (2019), a documentary about a graveyard for ships at Gadani, Pakistan. Swinging between visual lyricism and a depiction of toxicity, the half-hourlong film follows workers as they dismantle a giant Korean- built ship by a beach while a voice-over describes their laboral concerns. In a limbo of sand and scrap, hammers and saws seem to open wounds on the rusty skin of the ship, clouds of dust dancing as asbestos alights.
Historically, the sense of the unknown that western visions of the sea have attributed to it has placed it closer to an idea of a future than a past: a sort of ground yet to be covered, a vast field with new spaces to conquer. This vision, mostly masked by a sense of boldness and determination, has been shared by colonisers, companies, fishermen, even poets, and led ultimately to the notion that water is not only a resource, but a potential commodity. Nowadays, it is clear that such fascination has resulted in destruction, although oil rigs continue to sprawl and cruise ships keep dumping grey waters while tourists sunbathe in the middle of the ocean.
In the end, what comes out of the clash between idealisation and materiality is unknown. We are all aware that sea levels and temperatures are rising, yet some consequences are difficult to foresee. For instance, what kind of biota may develop in future ecosystems? What kind of political structure will be most prominent in a couple of centuries, pushed by inevitable responses? What kind of imagery should we expect? This may open the possibility of new mythologies. Mire Lee’s Landscape with Many Holes: Skins of Yeongdo Sea (2022), a huge scaffolding structure in an abandoned warehouse, might be a good example. Here, water is nothing but a trace, a form of rot. The massive body, both visceral and nameless, presents itself as a ruin under construction, growing as it decays.