Carved granite, Rose of Sharon, Chinese fir
11’4”L x 5’4”W x 2’H

location: APEC Naru Park, Busan, Korea

'Busan 2020' is an award podium made of honed grey granite in anticipation of the Korean coastal city of Busan's successful bid for the 2020 Summer Olympics. While the piece, the footprint of which is the five-ringed Olympic symbol, seems excessively optimistic, it befits the city's, and hemisphere's, ambitions.

Created for the 2008 Busan Biennale, the permanent installation, at APEC Naru Park, approaches the given theme of 'Avant-Garden' through the peculiar temporality of the avant garde. The podium looks towards a hypothetical, ideal moment when Busan hosts the Olympics; it is a work of art that will be completed 12 years from the present. If Busan succeeds in its bid to host the Olympics, the aesthetic value of 'Busan 2020' would transform into use value; the piece would function as an actual podium for an award ceremony for water sports in the adjacent river. If Busan fails in its bid, 'Busan 2020' would alternately become a memorial of past aspirations rather than a monument to success. Meanwhile, it is a model for the future.

Two of the five circles have saplings planted in them: a Rose of Sharon, the Korean national flower (Hibiscus syriacus), and a Chinese fir (Cunninghamia lanceolata). The 'race' between these two trees, over tens or even hundreds of years, adds a temporal register broader than the 12 years from the present to 2020. Here, the first, second, and third place of the podium acquires a Darwinist dimension, and also reminds that the most permanent artwork will succumb to nature, as the trees’ root system eventually rend the stone.