Installation view of
the 13th Seoul Mediacity Biennale 《Séance: Technology of
Spirit》 Photo: Hong Cheolki. ©Seoul Museum of ArtSeoul Museum of Art (SeMA) presents the 13th
Seoul Mediacity Biennale 《Séance: Technology of Spirit》
on view through November 23, at SeMA Seosomun Main Branch, AKWON SANGGA, Cinematheque Seoul Art Cinema,
and Seoul Artists' Platform_New&Young.
This biennale, directed by Anton Vidokel,
Hallie Ayres, and Lukas Brasiskis—artist, curator, and editor based in New
York—begins with a question: “What role has spiritual experience played in the
development of modern and contemporary art?” From this starting point, it
offers interpretive perspectives that reframe contemporary global phenomena and
aesthetic aspirations.
Installation view of
the 13th Seoul Mediacity Biennale 《Séance: Technology of
Spirit》 Photo: Hong Cheolki. ©Seoul Museum of ArtThe exhibition unfolds across eleven
sub-themes, tracing the history of spiritual experiments that link the
revolutionary practices of modern art to the genealogies of contemporary art.
This history is illuminated through diverse genres and media including film,
video, sound, performance, and drawing.
The 50 participating artists/teams in the
exhibition and more than 40 artists/teams featured in the program connect
liberatory practices to current movements such as decoloniality, feminism,
ecology, and anti-capitalism, challenging the idea that art can exist in any
perfectly “neutral” or “universal” space.
This approach of the biennale is grounded
in a curatorial commitment to the tradition in which the spiritual and
intangible values of artistic experience have been realized through the
immaterial supports of art. It takes shape across multiple venues through film,
performance, and sound programs.
ORTA (Alexandra
Morozova and Rustem Begenov), The New Genius Experience of The Great
Atomic Bombreflector, 2025. performance. 90 min. The 13th Seoul
Mediacity Biennale 《Séance: Technology of Spirit》,
performance, NAKWON SANGGA unit 325, 2025. Photo: Hong Cheolki. ©Seoul Museum
of ArtA weekly cinema program at
Cinematheque Seoul Art Cinema, running every Saturday throughout the Biennale,
presents a range of works that explore the capacity of the moving image to
unsettle the boundaries between image and reality and to mediate between the
living and the dead.
The Sound Room, inspired by the
local and historical context of NAKWON SANGGA, invites experimental musicians
rarely encountered in Korea. Through sound, it dissolves the distinction
between ‘self’ and ‘other,’ offering audiences a space-time in which to glimpse
possibilities of liberation.
At the Seoul Artists’
Platform_New&Young, ORTA (Alexandra Morozova and Rustem Begenov) presents a
participatory performance that foregrounds creativity as a means of
transforming ongoing historical trauma into the possibility of life. Harnessing
the unseen and ephemeral yet enduring force of memory, the performance unfolds
as an active engagement with the immaterial power of art.
Further details of the full program of the
13th Seoul Mediacity Biennale and reservation information are available on the
Biennale website (mediacityseoul.kr)
