Media_City Seoul. (Brand News).JEAN BAUDRILLARD is just one of the headliners participating in this year's Media_City Seoul Seoul (sā`  l, sā` l, sōl), city (1995 pop. 10,229,262), capital of South Korea, NW South Korea, on the Han River. It has special status equivalent to that of a province., the second installment of the Korean biennial biennial, plant requiring two years to complete its life cycle, as distinguished from an annual or a perennial. In the first year a biennial usually produces a rosette of leaves (e.g., the cabbage) and a fleshy root, which acts as a food reserve over the winter. During the second year the plant produces flowers and seeds and, having exhausted its food reserve, then dies. Short-lived perennials (e.g., the hollyhock) are often treated as biennials., on view at the Seoul Museum of Art through November 24. But despite achieving a kind of Baudrillardian simulacrum of the new-media biennial roster (the man himself appears as symposium speaker), the event seems so brand-name-conscious on the surface that it's difficult to detect its underlying point. Marquee figures in electronic art and music, like Nam June Paik and Bjork, have contributed work; organizers include curator Dan Cameron (of and Sara Diamond, artistic director of media and visual arts at the Banff Centre for the Arts. "The word media is a way to 'brand' this biennial from the others, giving it a distinct character," explains the event's artistic director, Wonil Rhee. (Korea hosts two other major biennials, in Kwangju Kwangju, South Korea: see Gwangju. and Pusan Pusan, South Korea: see Busan..) The first Media_City Seoul, with its broad mandate to examine how art, technology, and industry intersect, was criticized for lacking cohesion. This year's exhibition, striving for fresh commentary beyond new media's now stale novelty, is "more focused to appeal to the general public," Rhee says. But is appealing to the general public enough of a focus? If a medium-centric exhibition seems more trade show than thought-provoking survey, at least there will be engaging individual works to see--such as Korean-born Cody Choi's database paintings, which incorporate details from architectural plans taken from a digitized collection of images--that should prompt us to contemplate this art's place in the post-Internet-boom culture. |
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