Traditional Arts Festival to Meet Online During Seol Holiday Draws Attention

Online Traditional Arts Festival 'Onttong Festival'... Until February 10

Deoksugung Project 2021 Imaginary Garden Garden Carpet.

[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Heeyoon] During the Lunar New Year holiday, as people spend time at home to avoid travel, a new online traditional arts festival aimed at reflecting on the unique meaning of the holiday is gaining attention.

According to the Traditional Performing Arts Promotion Foundation on the 29th, the online traditional arts festival "Onttong Festival," filled with diverse traditional arts video content, is being held on the foundation's official YouTube channel until February 10.

In a situation where non-face-to-face interactions have become the norm, the Traditional Performing Arts Promotion Foundation is moving performance stages online to ensure that artists' performance opportunities do not disappear, supporting sustainable artistic activities for traditional artists. Fifty-two videos born from fresh projects that fuse various fields and experiments by artists pioneering a new stage online are being unveiled through the 'Onttong Festival.'

The characteristic of the 'Onttong Festival' lies in continuing unique encounters between various genres of culture and arts. Visitors can enjoy videos that combine traditional arts with contemporary art, architecture, art history, literature, and the 'Fairy Tale Concert' videos where fairy tale animation meets traditional music.

'Traditional X Contemporary Art' features three works from the 'Deoksugung Project 2021: Garden of Imagination,' held by the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art with contemporary artists at Deoksugung Palace: Kim A-yeon's 'Garden Carpet,' Yoon Seok-nam's 'Tears Like Rain, Like Light: One Spring Day in 1930,' and Kim Myung-beom's 'ONE.' It also includes a music video created through the collaboration of Jambinai's Kim Bomi and Shim Eun-yong. Kim Bomi and Shim Eun-yong interpreted the contemporary art in Deoksugung's garden through music and reinterpreted it again as a music video. It conveys not only the depth of art but also the vividness akin to entertainment music videos.

'Traditional X Architecture' brings together architect Yu Hyun-joon and traditional artists at Museum SAN, a representative building by Tadao Ando. Visitors can enjoy the 'Architecture Commentary Tour Video,' which offers professional commentary by Yu Hyun-joon on the architectural details shown by Tadao Ando, a music video capturing the sensibilities of traditional music and jazz, and the performance video 'Space Created by Space.'

'Traditional X Humanities' presents a new encounter between traditional creative dance and Western art history. Through an arts documentary-style story of Western art history featuring Rembrandt's 'The Return of the Prodigal Son' and Picasso's 'Guernica,' and a workshop inspired by these works, viewers can watch dance films. Popular for their deep and entertaining Western art commentary, Professor Yang Jeong-mu of Korea National University of Arts and Professor Lee Im-soo of Hongik University provide commentary while five dancers, including choreographer Byun Jae-beom, creatively explore the lives depicted in Picasso's and Rembrandt's works through the piece 'Drop.'

For children spending extended time at home, two new works from the Traditional Performing Arts Promotion Foundation's representative repertoire, 'Fairy Tale Concert,' have been prepared. The 'Traditional X Fairy Tale' videos in this festival feature fairy tales by authors who have won the Bologna Ragazzi Award, known as the Nobel Prize in children's literature. The animation of 'The Child Who Chews Stones,' illustrated by French artist Serge Bloch, a Bologna Ragazzi Award winner and Time magazine cover artist, with text by author Song Mi-kyung, and 'Iparapanyamunyam' by Lee Ji-eun, winner of the 2021 Bologna Ragazzi Award in the picture book category for young children, can be enjoyed along with performances of traditional creative music. The music director for this fairy tale concert is Park Da-ul, who showed a powerful presence with the geomungo on JTBC's program 'Superband 2,' painting a warm world of childhood innocence with traditional instruments.

In 'Cultural Space X Tradition,' which supports the overall process of video production combining cultural spaces and mid-career artists, geomungo player Heo Yoon-jung, who travels the world with Black String, and gayageum player Park Soon-a, noted for her 25-string gayageum performances, created video works that capture the profound musical worlds of mid-career artists. Geomungo player Heo Yoon-jung presents an in-depth work on the 'relationship between space and music,' starting from personal spaces important in her musical journey. Gayageum player Park Soon-a created a new piece themed 'Universe' at the Jo Gyeong-cheol Observatory, one of the observatories where you can look into the cosmos, set against the backdrop of Korea's terrain. Both artists offer not only music videos but also interview videos that reveal their exploration of space and the thoughtful process behind their work, expected to provide challenges and inspiration to contemporary artists.

Kim Sam-jin, chairman of the Traditional Performing Arts Promotion Foundation, said, "Artists have met a new stage online and experimented with and pioneered new possibilities," adding, "As the slogan of Onttong Festival says, 'The moment when tradition and you meet and become art,' we expect this to be a time when artists and audiences connect through art."