Gwangju Metropolitan City in the southwest of the peninsula has planned a new arts center, part of the city's goal to be a bridge between the process of creating new art and cultural exchanges across Asia.

The Asia Culture Center (ACC) will open on Nov. 25 as a multi-purpose arts center. It will support artists as they create new masterpieces. There will be a museum to display a variety of forms and styles of art. A library and research institute will help cross-cultural studies across Asia, and the center will act as a bridge for international networks of artists. Launched in 2004, the center has taken more than 10 years to complete. Designed as a "forest of light," based on the meaning of the city's name -- "a city of light" -- the center has now left the old provincial government building of Jeollanam-do Province (South Jeolla Province) and has built new facilities underneath it. The rooftop is designed as a park for the city's citizens.



The new facilities will help the ACC fulfill its multiple functions. There will be a studio with cutting-edge facilities that will provide artists an opportunity to use the latest technology on their work. Five R&D rooms will contribute to designing and producing art that makes use of "culture technology." Theatres and exhibition halls are also there, including a "transformative theatre" that can host various types of performances.

The center has a "Library Park" for "multi-layered cultural studies" and other educational programs. The library will collect and preserve knowledge and materials from across Asia, and the resulting stores will protect the cultural diversity of the region, re-estimate the value of it and share Asian arts and traditions with the rest of the world.



One section of the old provincial government building has been designed as a studio that can accommodate twenty teams of artists, along with exhibition halls. The ACC has designed its space to support specifically Asian artists, helping them to communicate with each other and to share their artistic worlds. The ACC will run a residency program for Asian artists as part of its support for artists.

To celebrate the grand opening of the center on Nov. 25, a variety of events are planned. On the opening day, the second Korean-Central Asian Culture Ministers' Meeting will be held. Ministers from five Central Asian countries will attend the meeting. Then from Nov. 24 to Dec. 24, the fourth Asian Arts Space Network will be held. Thirty cultural and artistic groups will join the network and discuss how to build artist networks across Asia.



There are other events prepared for non-artist visitors. On Nov. 25 and 26, eminent domestic and international scholars, including Clotaire Rapaille, a French marketing consultant and anthropologist, and Lee O-young, the former minister of culture, will give lectures about their vision of and approaches to the arts in Asia. There will be a festival focusing on new media in a post-digital era. During the four-day festival, some 70 artists will participate and visitors will be able to attend workshops, make their own synthesizer and try out some motion capture systems.

More details can be found at the ACC's website (http://www.acc.go.kr/acc.go.kr/en).

By Chang Iou-chung
Korea.net Staff Writer
Photos: Asia Culture Center
icchang@korea.kr