Serendipity x Creativity – “Art Happening: Serendipity Days”

■ Exhibited works will be released under creative commons licenses and be made vailable for download

September 22, 2011 – Creative Commons Korea presents a culture event titled “Art Happening: Serendipity Days” from October 18 to 23, 2011.

“Art Happening: Serendipity Days” is a cultural project to experiment an interaction between art and happenstance – imagining what interesting things can happen and turning that imagination into reality: Some see their personal stories inspire the creation of music; some others find their own personalities translated to animation characters; discarded drawings are displayed in an art exhibition; and photos are waiting to be found by random visitors at public libraries.
Creative Commons Korea organizes the event sponsored by several public bodies including the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism; the Ministry of Administration and Security; Korea Association of Information and Telecommunication; Korea Copyright Commission; and Green on Paper. Art Sonje also participates in as a partner.

Art Happening consists of four programs categorized by genre: photography, animation, contemporary music, and illustration. For photography, the participating nine professional photographers each provide 10 artworks for the exhibitions to be held in 10 public libraries in Seoul and Gyeonggi province. Visitors of the libraries will be pleased with a official public photo exhibition at the library or be able to look for photos hidden between pages of books. For those who are not able to visit the libraries in person or want more information, online photo exhibition will also be available at the website from October 11 to 31.

For the animation part, Hong Hak-soon, who won the grand prize at the Indie-Anifest with “Tittilibou Mr. Manding” in 2011, will premiere his latest work “Friends of the Whole Universe: The Beauty Salon with instinct.” He raised about 2,400,000 won from 57 people for this project by using a local crowdfunding service Tumblbug and created the characters featured in the animation inspired by some of the contributors,  like their avatars. Names of all contributors are displayed on the film credit while special gifts including framed illustrations, DVD, original drawings, and T-shirts will be distributed as tokens of appreciation depending on the donation amount.

The music program is a collaboration of six composers. They asked people via social networking services to send photos capture their special memories and then the composers write music based on the photos and stories. This project is also funded through Tumblbug, which successfully raised 1,970,000 won from thirty individual sponsors.


For illustration, three illustrators presents a joint exhibition under the theme of “the Origin of its Birth” at Art Sonje center’s lounge. A number of study drawings thrown away by the artists will be open to the public, freely on the floor and walls of the lounge.


All the works produced for the festival “Art Happening: Serendipity Days” will be released under creative commons licenses selected by the authors. More details are available at its website

written by Soohyun Pae (@dreamdrawing)