Longega Project: in between water

Longega Project: Fabian Feichter, Youlee Ku, Siyoung Kim, Nele Ka, Oliver Haussmann

Guest artists: Claudio Matthias Bertolini, Federico Delfrati, Sung Young Hong, François Huber, Ho Bin Kim, Hyesoon Kim, Jayi Kim, Kyu Nyun Kim, Micah Monique Vandendriessche, Stephanie Müller & Klaus Erika Dietl, Sool Park, Sul Park, Jehyun Shin, Seyoung Youn, Hwang Mi Young, Chosun University in Gwangju

In 2024, the Gwangju Biennale celebrates its 30th anniversary. This year marks Germany’s first participation in the Biennale with a national pavilion. Hosted by Gwangju History & Folk Museum, the German Pavilion presents in between water by Longega Project.

The artist collective Longega Project is a grassroots initiative of various Italian, South Korean and German artists, who initiated an off-space meeting place for international artists in a small village in the Dolomites in the Italian mountains in 2017.

The pavilion’s contribution to this year’s Biennale is the artistic transfer of Longega Project from its hidden place in the mountains to an international art exhibition focusing on the social and existential aspects of artistic genesis.

In an era of constant availability of material, data, and opportunities, retreating to the rugged environment of the mountains represents a conscious reduction to the fundamental conditions of life. Here, nature primarily determines the parameters for daily routines and activities. Longega is not a place in the wilderness, but rather a challenging and mystical environment that reflects more archaic aspects of mankind within its natural setting.

The collective artistic experience, encounters, and engagement in this environment create a unique stimulation, not because the surroundings make life impossible, but because they prevent life from overriding the environment. Both everyday life and artistic work are inevitably in friction with and dependent on the weather and natural rhythms.

For the past eight years, the Longega Project has invited international artists, particularly from South Korea, to share this experience through various group configurations.

The installation in the pavilion outlines the basic environment of the residency through seven distinct elements: a forest, a river, a hut, a court, a workshop, a campfire, and a search & collect area. Reducing the environment to these existential cornerstones encourages visitors, especially given the international focus of the guests, to reflect on cultural habits, traditions, myths, and peculiarities, while also examining these aspects for transcultural parallels and universal themes.

Everyday activities such as cooking, working, and material acquisition lead to mutual learning and self-reflection processes.

Shared leisure activities and competitive sports also lead to artistic reinterpretations of traditional rituals. The nights around the campfire invite participants to reinterpret narratives, perform songs, and create microcosms of collective memories.

To translate the Longega concept into the exhibition space at the Gwangju History and Folk Museum, the artists and their numerous guests, developed a series of events, workshops, and performances inviting visitors to become part of the Longega experience.

The exhibition was curated by Longega Project in cooperation with PLATFORM and Sophie-Charlotte Bombeck, a curator and art historian, who lives and works in Augsburg, Munich, and Zurich. Her work focuses on sociocultural phenomena in the art and culture sector, particularly concerning museums, exhibitions, and audience interaction. She runs the art space “super+Centercourt,” and has initiated the comprehensive exchange program between Munich and South Korea. Bombeck curated exhibitions in Germany, China, Turkey, Greece, England, and South Korea.

Organization: PLATFORM Munich is a contemporary art space in Munich that hosts a year-round exhibition program, offering traineeships in cultural management as well as studios for visual artists. It showcases contemporary art curated by regional and international curators and organizes lectures and symposia to stimulate current art discourse.

Cooperation Partner: Horanggasy Creative Studio and Residency in Yangnim-dong, runs a multidisciplinary Artist in Residence program in Gwangju and supports the German Pavilion with accommodation and network. Horanggasy Creative Studio is also partner and one of the main venues of the Gwangju Biennale since 2021.

Venue: The Gwangju History & Folk Museum provides a generous exhibition space of over 750 m² for the first German Pavilion at the Gwangju Biennale.

Funding: The German Pavilion at the 15th Gwangju Biennale is funded through the ifa – Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen with financial support from the Federal Foreign Office of Germany.