Artist Sara van der Heide converted the German Library in Guangzhou, China, into a restaging of the Goethe-Institut's German Library and Information Centre of Pyongyang, which operated from 2004 to 2009. The publication features the original multilingual booklets, a documentation on the exhibition and a critical reader.
For the 1st Asia Biennial / 5th Guangzhou Triennial (from December 11, 2015, until April 10, 2016) the German Library in Guangzhou, China, became The German Library Pyongyang, a reimagining of an initiative of the Goethe-Institut that originally operated in North Korea between 2004 and 2009. This temporary intervention by Sara van der Heide is an imaginary transformation of the current geography of the German Library in Guangzhou. Van der Heide's project is a contemporary version of the Goethe-Institut's original library initiative in North Korea, devised as a vessel to discuss national cultural policy in a post-Cold War and postcolonial era that looks critically toward the parallel histories of Germany and the two Koreas. The German Library Pyongyang offers a space for critical questions, but it also functions as a context for transcending thinking that is prescribed by the lines of the nation-state, language, and geography. The several artistic, linguistic, and graphic interventions in the library merge with the continuing activities of the German learning center in Guangzhou, and all institutional printed matter in Chinese is replaced by Korean.
This publication brings together the four original exhibition booklets in German, Korean, English, and Chinese. An additional reader is included with critical reflections as well as documentation of the exhibition and the organized seminar.
Published following the 1st Asia Biennial / 5th Guangzhou Triennial, Guangzhou, from December 11, 2015, to April 10, 2016.
The practice of Sara van der Heide (born 1977 in Busan, South Korea, lives and works in Amsterdam and Brussels) consists of political and poetic interventions, drawing series, performances and films through which she proposes a more inclusive modernity. Subject of her works are reflections on the nation state, the position of people of colour in the western modern society, gender and art history itself. Her works develop and unfold over a longer period, the cycle of a year, the period of reign.
She was an artist in residence at ISCP, New York (2007), and at WIELS, Brussels (2016). She has been a (guest-) teacher at various art schools (a.o. De Ateliers, and the Rietveld Academie). From 2016 onward she is part of the Piet Zwart MFA Fine Arts tutorial team.
Contributions by Anselm Franke, Changho Choi, Chankyong Park, Chen Tong, Dongyoung Lee, Egon Hanfstingl, Gabriele Stötzer & Künstlerinnengruppe Erfurt, Hans Haacke, Janet Grau, Kyungman Kim, Liu Ding, Louwrien Wijers, Rory Pilgrim, Sora Kim.
Graphic design: Dongyoung Lee.
Published with Goethe-Institut.
published in May 2017
quadrilingual edition (English / German / Korean / Chinese)
