ACC Asia Culture Week Set to Kick Off Under Slogan, Asia Going Together: Accompaniment

 – Asia Culture Center set to run 21 programs including performances, exhibitions, and experiential activities
– Creating an “Asian community” in the Asia Culture Center area from September 15 (Fri.) to 24 (Sun.)

An Asian festival where visitors can experience the diverse cultures and passions of Asia will be held at the Asia Culture Center in Gwangju, Korea.

The Asia Culture Center (ACC, President Lee Kang-hyun) under the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism of the Republic of Korea will host the 2023 Asia Culture Week for ten days from September 15 to 24 at the ACC under the slogan, “Asia Going Together: Accompaniment.”

During Asia Culture Week, the ACC will present cultural events and a wide range of experience programs for cultural exchanges among Asians. The performances, exhibitions, international conferences, and forums are expected to provide a glimpse into the lives of Asians and allow visitors to experience Asian cities and the cultural scenes within them.

There will be around fifty experience booths related to thirteen Asian countries around the Asia Plaza, as well as booths related to Youth Week. The Asian Art Market, operating on a larger scale compared to last year, will offer a variety of experience programs and traditional performances to better engage visitors.

Artists Yang Kura and Han Seok-kyung will conduct experiential events under the theme of Asian cities and environments, and craftsmen and sellers from Chiang Mai, Thailand, will be invited to recreate a Thai market. Kyrgyz yurts, which are traditional portable tents, will be introduced in collaboration with the Embassy of the Kyrgyz Republic, and there will be experiential activities such as tasting chai tea from India and Thai coffee to allow visitors to explore Asian cultures.

There will also be a stage for exotic performances that will captivate the audience’s eyes and ears. To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Korea and Indonesia, All Day Indonesia will be held on the 17th. At night, the Asian Traditional Orchestra, composed of traditional musicians from Korea and 10 ASEAN countries, will perform for visitors. “Bali: Beats of Paradise,” a documentary showcasing a collaboration between a master of gamelan, a style of traditional Indonesian music, and Grammy Award-winning artist, Judith Hill will also be screened on the outdoor stage of the ACC Theater to promote the music and dance of Bali.

During the festival period, the Asia Dance Community will host screenings of “Asian Screendance”, as well as a Bangladeshi folk dance performance and a symposium. “Asian Screendance”, a video showing rarely seen Southeast Asian and South Asian dances, will be screened on the Media Wall and at Theater 3 from September 22 to 24.

From September 23 to 24, “A Wharf with No Husband,” a production jointly produced and staged with the ACC, will be presented at Theater 1. Organized by the ACC in collaboration with the Korea Association of Performing Arts Producers and the Vietnam National Theater, the performance is based on the Vietnamese novel of the same name (“Bến không chồng”), which depicts the human will to move forward toward a better life amid the post-war pain and suffering. The production, which has garnered considerable attention both in Vietnam and Korea, uses water from the Dinh River, which is the backdrop of the performance, and presents ethereal images and colors to capture the natural environment of Vietnam. The production will also feature live performances of Korean jeongga and traditional dance, piano and cello, violin and gayageum, and Vietnamese cheo.

To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the formation of diplomatic ties, artists from India and Indonesia have been invited to create “Asian Panorama,” a 60-meter mural in a bamboo garden that highlights the characteristics of each country’s work through a collaboration among the artists. New works by the participating artists, Hwang In-suk (South Korea), B. Ajay (India), and Indiguerilla (Indonesia), will be on display during Asian Culture Week. There will also be a special program taking place in Theater 3 featuring Bangladeshi folk dance performances and Indian dance performances.

There will be an outdoor exhibition called, “Hanui Landscapes,” exploring aesthetic practices in an era of environmental destruction and climate crisis. In Exhibition Hall 6 of the ACC Creation, the exhibition, “Daily Perfection,” will focus on some of the greatest Korean and West Asian artists of the 20th century under the theme of everyday scenery, and in the lobby of the ACC Theater, the ACC competition exhibition, “When the Gap Speaks to Me,” will present different perspectives and interpretations of the ACC’s public spaces under the theme of gaps.

There will also be opportunities to check out Asian literature. First, the 2023 Asian Literature Forum will be held on September 16 at the International Conference Center. The forum, which aims to help citizens interested in literature better grasp Asian literature and promote participation and interest, will bring together writers and translators, as well as people in the publish industry, from Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, Japan, and China under the theme of “Encountering Asian Cities, Literature, and Young Writers,” to demonstrate the joys of literature.

On September 18, the 2023 Asian Traditional Music Committee Meeting will be held behind closed doors. Government officials and experts from 10 ASEAN countries and Korea will gather together to discuss methods for sustainable exchanges and the current status of collaborative projects under the theme of Asian traditional music and discover potential collaborative projects for the future.

The event will be followed by the Asia Dance Community Symposium on the 19th. At the academic event, there will be a discourse on talchum (a traditional mask dance of Korea), Thai khon, and other forms of mask dance from Nepal and Bangladesh. Based on the inscription of talchum on the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage List last year, the symposium will explore the value and significance of the dance as a unique practice common to Asia.

From September 19 to 22, the ACC will host 25 officials from the cultural ministries of Kyrgyzstan and Laos for a capacity-building workshop on the utilization of the digital cultural resource management system, which the ACC is helping to build through an aid project. The ACC assists museums, art galleries, and libraries in Asia in digitally archiving their tangible and intangible cultural resources in analog form and developing cultural content based on digital resources.

ACC President Lee Kang-hyun said, “For this year’s Asia Culture Week organized under the slogan, ‘Asia Going Together: Accompaniment,’ we have prepared a variety of programs that will allow visitors to experience and become attuned to the diverse cultures and arts of Asia and everyday life in Asian cities. […] I hope you will check out the schedule for each program and enjoy the events taking place all over the ACC to take part in creating a united Asian community.”