Kyong Park
11 Jul 2009 - 10 Jan 2010
KYONG PARK
"The New Silk Roads"
July 11th, 2009 – January 10th, 2010
MUSAC presents Kyong Park. The New Silk Roads, the first exhibition to showcase and examine the ambitious urban research project that Park is developing throughout the cultural, social and political territories spanning and expanding along and around the old Silk Road
Exhibition title: Kyong Park. The New Silk Roads
Artist: Kyong Park (Chung-mu, South Korea,1955)
Curator: Octavio Zaya
Coordination: Helena López Camacho
Place: Hall 2
Dates: July 11th, 2009 – January 10th, 2010
MUSAC, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León, presents Kyong Park. The New Silk Roads, the first show featuring the ongoing ambitious urban research project of the urbanist, theorist and activist Kyong Park, carried out through different journeys along the intricate route between Istanbul and Tokyo. With this exhibition, and the monographic publication accompanying it, MUSAC showcases and examines the complex conditions and relations shaping the cultural, social and political territories throughout the Asian continent, Eurasia and the Middle East that this activist of Korean origin describes as The New Silk Roads.
THE NEW SILK ROADS: The project
The New Silk Roads is an ongoing research project that, through different journeys, explores the new rapidly expanding and transforming urban landscapes that are emerging in Asian cities and regions. Using the urban research method Kyong Park calls “nomadic practice” he has conducted a sequence of expeditions through the regions and cities of the intricate route between Istanbul and Tokyo, first documenting the physical evidence of the urban transitions — through photographs, videos and interviews — and combining them afterwards with data, information and analysis.
So far, Park has carried out 3 expeditions. The first one of them, which took place from July 30th to October 2nd 2007, was through Shanghai, Singapore, Seoul, Tokyo, Guangzu, Foshan, Dongguan, Shenzhen, Hong Kong, Macao and Beijing. The second one, from December 17th 2007 to January 7th 2008, was a horizontal cut through Asia, by travelling through Istanbul, Delhi and Dubai. The third one, from September 1st to 25th 2008, was made through central Asia: Bukara, Samarkand and Tashkent, in Uzbekistan, and Astana, in Kazakhstan. To date, Park and his team of collaborators have visited and researched eight countries, of the twenty it will involve by the end of the project.
The project embraces several key objectives. The first is to investigate the new cultural, economic and political relations that may be developing between East and West, with a conceptual reference to the old Silk Road as one of the first examples of globalisation. This includes the colonial and post-colonial conditions in Asia, with the political, economic and cultural transitions in the post-communist territories of the former Soviet Union, as well as the neo-socialist territories of the People’s Republic of China, including the new geo-political shifts taking place around the middle region of the historical Silk Road. The second is to represent the spatial and physical effects of globalisation, by visualising the relationships between the materialised movements of products, labour and resources and the immaterial movements of information, capital and services over the real landscapes and virtual spaces of Asia. The third is to analyse the various conflicts and the cooperation between developed and developing nations occuring within the multinational, transnational and post national cultures, as well as their economic and political dynamics on local, regional and metropolitan levels. Finally the project studies the renewed interrelation between vastly different regions of Asia itself, ranging from the economic strength of the Pacific perimeter to the emerging empire of the People’s Republic of China, the renewal of central Asia, the urban fantasies in parts of the Middle East, the political stasis in Eurasia and northern Asia, the “offices of the world” in south Asia, etc.
Considering the old Silk Roads to be the primeval structure of globalisation, The New Silk Roads construct a geographic narrative of the borders and territories of nomadic policies, economies and cultures, by using visual information to expand upon previously established knowledge of Asia.
Kyong Park initiated The New Silk Roads project with the support and collaboration of the UCSD, University of California (San Diego, USA), Division of Arts and Humanities, Department of Visual Arts and Academic Senate, the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts (Chicago, USA) & ScribeMedia Art Culture. Kyong Park.
The New Silk Roads. The exhibition
For MUSAC, and with the curator Octavio Zaya, Park will create an investigative space which will cover each and every one of the aspects of this project-in progress. The show is undertaken with a sort of studio/workspace where Park unfurls the textual, documentary and visual, graphic, statistical and geographic elements that shape the complex network it comprises and upon which the entire project-in-progress is sustained. This multi-disciplinary space will be complemented with the exhibitions of photographs, documents and projections and a detailed itinerary/timeline of the expeditions conducted throughout the territories of Eurasia, Central Asia, and the Indian subcontinent, Northern Asia, Southeast Asia and the Middle East.
The result of the show presented by MUSAC can be understoo as an attempt to outline the relationships between texts, data, graphs, photographs and visualisations, to offer a comprehensive understanding of the dynamics of the urban transformations that attend the cultural, economic and political evolution taking place on the continent. The underlying platform is the geography of territory, with data, texts, and information overlaid in a timebased format, so as to create a dynamic visualisation, a kind of motion-graphics of the evolution of Asia.
Brief biography of the artist
Born in Korea in1955, Kyong Park is currently associate professor of Public Culture and Urbanism in the Visual Arts Department of the University of California at San Diego, the institution whose contribution is, to a large extent, making this exhibition possible. As an artist, urban theorist, curator and activist, Kyong Park is interested in interdisciplinary projects that alter the borders between the different disciplines and their practices. He was founder/director of StoreFront for Art and Architecture in New York, founding member of the International Center for Urban Ecology in Detroit and founding director of the Centrala Stichting voor Toekomstige Steden of Rotterdam.
Publication
The exhibition is accompanied by a publication that reviews the territories and themes of this extensive project that Kyong Park will continue to develop. The book, edited by MUSAC, is published by ACTAR Barcelona/New York, and designed by Reingard Steger, ACTAR PRO. In addition to an introduction by Octavio Zaya and an essay by Kyong Park himself, the publication is divided into different chapters that address the conditions and situations of the different cities visited by the artist-theorist through conversations and exchanges with different academic personalities, urban analysts, theorists, architects, activists and artists living in or native to the regions comprising these new silk roads. In addition to these texts, the publication is rounded off by an extensive selection of the artist’s panoramic photographs, as well as maps, graphs and referential publications and visualisations.
Symposium
During the month of October MUSAC will host a symposium around The New Silk Roads, in which Kyong Park and Octavio Zaya, together with architects and specialists in the matter will discuss and analyze the conditions and urban policies, together with the political, economic and cultural transitions in the post-communist territories of the former Soviet Union, as well as the neo-socialist territories of the People’s Republic of China, including the new geo-political shifts taking place around the middle region of the historical Silk Road.
Eduactional Activity. Workshop by Lara Almarcegui
MUSAC’s Department of Cultural Action & Education organizes in relation to the exhibition Kyong Park. The New Silk Roads, a workshop with artist Lara Almarcegui (Zaragoza, 1972).The work of Almarcegui stems from her research on buildings that are derelict or else in the process of being revamped, vacant lots, vegetable patches and other unoccupied spaces that, although they form part of the urban landscape, are usually regarded as being foreign to it. Using these spaces as her starting point, she engages in a project that generates an action, a direct, physical intervention on the spot being studied, which yields graphic documentation about the undertaking. Refurbishing a marketplace slated for demolition, doing research on vegetable patches within the city, and publishing a guide to vacant lots are some examples of projects that are directly bound up with fieldwork that, in the majority of cases, is carried out over a long period of time. The concept of architecture as an organisational element of space takes primacy over the usual consideration of architecture fitting in with its surroundings, bringing to the fore such external factors as the different power plays developed in relation to the building up and shaping of the cityscape.
"The New Silk Roads"
July 11th, 2009 – January 10th, 2010
MUSAC presents Kyong Park. The New Silk Roads, the first exhibition to showcase and examine the ambitious urban research project that Park is developing throughout the cultural, social and political territories spanning and expanding along and around the old Silk Road
Exhibition title: Kyong Park. The New Silk Roads
Artist: Kyong Park (Chung-mu, South Korea,1955)
Curator: Octavio Zaya
Coordination: Helena López Camacho
Place: Hall 2
Dates: July 11th, 2009 – January 10th, 2010
MUSAC, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León, presents Kyong Park. The New Silk Roads, the first show featuring the ongoing ambitious urban research project of the urbanist, theorist and activist Kyong Park, carried out through different journeys along the intricate route between Istanbul and Tokyo. With this exhibition, and the monographic publication accompanying it, MUSAC showcases and examines the complex conditions and relations shaping the cultural, social and political territories throughout the Asian continent, Eurasia and the Middle East that this activist of Korean origin describes as The New Silk Roads.
THE NEW SILK ROADS: The project
The New Silk Roads is an ongoing research project that, through different journeys, explores the new rapidly expanding and transforming urban landscapes that are emerging in Asian cities and regions. Using the urban research method Kyong Park calls “nomadic practice” he has conducted a sequence of expeditions through the regions and cities of the intricate route between Istanbul and Tokyo, first documenting the physical evidence of the urban transitions — through photographs, videos and interviews — and combining them afterwards with data, information and analysis.
So far, Park has carried out 3 expeditions. The first one of them, which took place from July 30th to October 2nd 2007, was through Shanghai, Singapore, Seoul, Tokyo, Guangzu, Foshan, Dongguan, Shenzhen, Hong Kong, Macao and Beijing. The second one, from December 17th 2007 to January 7th 2008, was a horizontal cut through Asia, by travelling through Istanbul, Delhi and Dubai. The third one, from September 1st to 25th 2008, was made through central Asia: Bukara, Samarkand and Tashkent, in Uzbekistan, and Astana, in Kazakhstan. To date, Park and his team of collaborators have visited and researched eight countries, of the twenty it will involve by the end of the project.
The project embraces several key objectives. The first is to investigate the new cultural, economic and political relations that may be developing between East and West, with a conceptual reference to the old Silk Road as one of the first examples of globalisation. This includes the colonial and post-colonial conditions in Asia, with the political, economic and cultural transitions in the post-communist territories of the former Soviet Union, as well as the neo-socialist territories of the People’s Republic of China, including the new geo-political shifts taking place around the middle region of the historical Silk Road. The second is to represent the spatial and physical effects of globalisation, by visualising the relationships between the materialised movements of products, labour and resources and the immaterial movements of information, capital and services over the real landscapes and virtual spaces of Asia. The third is to analyse the various conflicts and the cooperation between developed and developing nations occuring within the multinational, transnational and post national cultures, as well as their economic and political dynamics on local, regional and metropolitan levels. Finally the project studies the renewed interrelation between vastly different regions of Asia itself, ranging from the economic strength of the Pacific perimeter to the emerging empire of the People’s Republic of China, the renewal of central Asia, the urban fantasies in parts of the Middle East, the political stasis in Eurasia and northern Asia, the “offices of the world” in south Asia, etc.
Considering the old Silk Roads to be the primeval structure of globalisation, The New Silk Roads construct a geographic narrative of the borders and territories of nomadic policies, economies and cultures, by using visual information to expand upon previously established knowledge of Asia.
Kyong Park initiated The New Silk Roads project with the support and collaboration of the UCSD, University of California (San Diego, USA), Division of Arts and Humanities, Department of Visual Arts and Academic Senate, the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts (Chicago, USA) & ScribeMedia Art Culture. Kyong Park.
The New Silk Roads. The exhibition
For MUSAC, and with the curator Octavio Zaya, Park will create an investigative space which will cover each and every one of the aspects of this project-in progress. The show is undertaken with a sort of studio/workspace where Park unfurls the textual, documentary and visual, graphic, statistical and geographic elements that shape the complex network it comprises and upon which the entire project-in-progress is sustained. This multi-disciplinary space will be complemented with the exhibitions of photographs, documents and projections and a detailed itinerary/timeline of the expeditions conducted throughout the territories of Eurasia, Central Asia, and the Indian subcontinent, Northern Asia, Southeast Asia and the Middle East.
The result of the show presented by MUSAC can be understoo as an attempt to outline the relationships between texts, data, graphs, photographs and visualisations, to offer a comprehensive understanding of the dynamics of the urban transformations that attend the cultural, economic and political evolution taking place on the continent. The underlying platform is the geography of territory, with data, texts, and information overlaid in a timebased format, so as to create a dynamic visualisation, a kind of motion-graphics of the evolution of Asia.
Brief biography of the artist
Born in Korea in1955, Kyong Park is currently associate professor of Public Culture and Urbanism in the Visual Arts Department of the University of California at San Diego, the institution whose contribution is, to a large extent, making this exhibition possible. As an artist, urban theorist, curator and activist, Kyong Park is interested in interdisciplinary projects that alter the borders between the different disciplines and their practices. He was founder/director of StoreFront for Art and Architecture in New York, founding member of the International Center for Urban Ecology in Detroit and founding director of the Centrala Stichting voor Toekomstige Steden of Rotterdam.
Publication
The exhibition is accompanied by a publication that reviews the territories and themes of this extensive project that Kyong Park will continue to develop. The book, edited by MUSAC, is published by ACTAR Barcelona/New York, and designed by Reingard Steger, ACTAR PRO. In addition to an introduction by Octavio Zaya and an essay by Kyong Park himself, the publication is divided into different chapters that address the conditions and situations of the different cities visited by the artist-theorist through conversations and exchanges with different academic personalities, urban analysts, theorists, architects, activists and artists living in or native to the regions comprising these new silk roads. In addition to these texts, the publication is rounded off by an extensive selection of the artist’s panoramic photographs, as well as maps, graphs and referential publications and visualisations.
Symposium
During the month of October MUSAC will host a symposium around The New Silk Roads, in which Kyong Park and Octavio Zaya, together with architects and specialists in the matter will discuss and analyze the conditions and urban policies, together with the political, economic and cultural transitions in the post-communist territories of the former Soviet Union, as well as the neo-socialist territories of the People’s Republic of China, including the new geo-political shifts taking place around the middle region of the historical Silk Road.
Eduactional Activity. Workshop by Lara Almarcegui
MUSAC’s Department of Cultural Action & Education organizes in relation to the exhibition Kyong Park. The New Silk Roads, a workshop with artist Lara Almarcegui (Zaragoza, 1972).The work of Almarcegui stems from her research on buildings that are derelict or else in the process of being revamped, vacant lots, vegetable patches and other unoccupied spaces that, although they form part of the urban landscape, are usually regarded as being foreign to it. Using these spaces as her starting point, she engages in a project that generates an action, a direct, physical intervention on the spot being studied, which yields graphic documentation about the undertaking. Refurbishing a marketplace slated for demolition, doing research on vegetable patches within the city, and publishing a guide to vacant lots are some examples of projects that are directly bound up with fieldwork that, in the majority of cases, is carried out over a long period of time. The concept of architecture as an organisational element of space takes primacy over the usual consideration of architecture fitting in with its surroundings, bringing to the fore such external factors as the different power plays developed in relation to the building up and shaping of the cityscape.