A key element of Busan Biennale 2012 is to stage collaborations between artists and audiences. To become successful by creating lasting emotional relationships among the participants, these collaborations need to start well in advance of the official opening of the exhibition. Like the production of artworks they have to be an integral element of the preparation of the show.

Today more than ever, people need to have access not just to objects but to the poetical logic that drives the creative process. For various reasons, be it education or just enjoyment, people want to be part of the intellectual dreamwork but also of the little (and not so little) crises that accompany the realization of every true piece of art.

Of course, not each artist is willing or gifted to let people participate in artistic production, and some elements of artistic decision-making will always be autonomous and intimate, even unconscious. This is, after all, part of art’s fascination: that something ? some thing ? escapes our control without mercy.
But artists also gain a lot from being given a chance to debate and negotiate their proposals with a sensitive public. They want more than just presenting their work and also want to see it having a long and lasting effect on the community.

'Garden of Learning', this is the idea, will be structured along the vivid and often adventurous encounters between contemporary artists and audiences.
Some learning councils will be set up in Busan, each of which consisting of citizens.
In other words, the learning council' is the basic unit of production for the Busan Biennale - a small-scale laboratory that starts its activities long before the exhibition officially opens. The learning councils will act as a go-between by mediating between the general audience with its questions and queries and the individual artists who gets a privileged access to the urban, historical and psychic resources of Busan.
This way, a structural deficit of most Biennials can be cured: that there is only a vague, a decorative or superficial link between the art piece and the site.

By following closely the artistic process from beginning to end, the learning council-members will over time become experts of 'their' piece. They will own it on the level of ideas and provide it with a strong sense of belonging. A highly personal understanding of the artistic process and its outcome, accompanied by a personal attachment and individual expertise is a major asset when it comes to art education.
This method of democratic art education helps to lower the threshold between art and its audiences substantially. Meaning is no longer communicated hierarchically by professional experts but by people who have invented their own language to communicate on the same eye-level with other people.

A further advantage of this approach is to reach specific target groups, like people in certain areas of the city, people willing to engage in cross-generational encounters (kids and grandparents) or teenagers. Learning Councils could be designed easily to fit the agenda of teenagers by bringing up questions of identity, politics, ecology, gender and authority?issues that are also raised in many artist’s work.

We would like to base Busan Biennale 2012 on the idea of a broad and inclusive democratic learning process that is structured by the magic and mystery and riddles of art. The central aim of the exhibition is to form organic links between the artwork and the community, links which can evolve over time.