Kyong Park
Kyong Park is involved in a wide range of works on Public Culture, including research, documentation, and representations focused on the urban landscapes that delineate the economic, political and cultural borders and territories of the contemporary social geography. Working in visual arts, architecture, theory and curatorial practices, Park incorporates text, photography, video, installation and new media into his works, a practice that is rooted in research, participation and activism in public spaces. For Park, art is a process of inquiry, examination and articulation of cultures, and a visual language of communication rather than a commodity of productions. His first project was the founding of StoreFront for Art and Architecture in New York, an internationally respected exhibition space that he directed from 1982-1998. He then founded International Center for Urban Ecology in Detroit, producing workshops, urban initiatives and videos, in collaboration with activists, community organizations and universities [1998-2001]. They include: “Detroit Making It Better For You,” a narrative video on a fictional conspiracy to destroy the city [2000]; and “24260: The Fugitive House,” a vacant house that ‘escaped’ Detroit to travel ten cities in Europe [2001-2008]. Since then, he has traveled and worked in various cities in Europe, developing a nomadic practice on urban investigation. The results were: “The Slide,” a proposal to build a transparent tube that people can slide through in an empty high-rise building in Halle Neustadt, and “BAR/GDR/FRG,” a 3-channel video on the three different ideological cities within Dresden, both projects in Germany [2003]. He was also a co-curator and artist for Shrinking Cities in Berlin [2002-2004], and the founding director of Centrala Foundation for Future Cities in Rotterdam in The Netherlands [2005]. There, he co-produced “Lost Highway Expedition,” an expedition through nine major cities of ex-Yugoslavia and Albania in 25 days, in which several hundred people participated [2006]. His current project is “New Silk Roads,” a series of expeditions between Istanbul and Tokyo, focusing on the relational conditions of Asian cities within the geography of globalization, which was presented in a solo exhibition at Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Castilla y León in 2009-2010, along with the publication of a monograph on this project with Actar in Barcelona expected in 2011. He was also the Artistic Director/Curator of Anyang Public Art Project 2010 in Korea, where he curated 30 projects and commissioned 23 international artists, including Suzanne Lacy, Marjetica Potrc, Rick Lowe, Raumlabor, Lot-ek, Mass Studies, Chan-Kyong Park . Kyong Park was also a Loeb Fellow at Harvard University (1996/97), a curator of Kwangju Biennale in Korea (1997), a Visiting Chair of Urbanism at the University of Detroit Mercy, School of Architecture (2000-2001), and the editor of “Urban Ecology: Detroit and Beyond,” a book on his projects, with contributions from 32 architects, artists and critics [2005].
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