The Artistic Directors of the 13th Seoul Mediacity Biennale—Anton Vidokle, Hallie Ayres, and Lukas Brasiskis—announce the theme of the Biennale.
The practice of séances—attempts to make contact with worlds beyond the living, through the agency of a medium—flourished during the social transformations of the early modernist period. This was symptomatic of an explosion of popular interest in spiritism, the occult, mysticism, and syncretic religion as emotional and imaginative alternatives to the stress and alienation of an increasingly mechanistic, regimented, and rationalist industrial society. These practices and ideas would come to influence the work of myriad vanguard artists.
Over the intervening century, rituals as varied as cinema screenings, psychoanalytic sessions, and experimental theater came to be referred to as séances (the word might literally be translated as “sittings”). Now—in a comparably traumatic period, characterized by the same disorientation, anxiety, and insecurity—it is not surprising that many artists are looking to make connections with other worlds. For the 13th Seoul Mediacity Biennale, the Artistic Directors will map a selection of modern and contemporary artistic practices that draw on occult, mystical, and spiritual traditions in their attempts to make sense of the present moment.
They propose an “exhibition-as-séance,” a show that underscores the entanglements between waking life and the more-than-human world. In seeking to do so, they are researching works of art at the intersection of technology and mystical traditions, with a particular emphasis on historical connections between art, society, and the spirit. The history of images and objects being ascribed magical, sacred, and mystical qualities is as long and rich as human civilization. From cave paintings to Scythian stone totems, icons and sacraments, these objects and representations aimed to channel other-than-human voices and forces. While it has become less common after modernism to read works of art in these terms, the practice—and the writings—of many artists continue to evince a deep fascination with the access they might provide to other worlds existing among and alongside our own.
In doing so, these practices seek emancipation from the structures—capitalism, imperialism, patriarchy, white supremacy—that shape our lived realities. The works to be included in the upcoming Biennale will touch on postcolonial discourse and anti-capitalism as much as feminism and climate justice. These practices are not obscurantist or reactionary; they do not dismiss scientific enquiry out of hand so much as trouble the marriage of technology and anti-rationalism. If they are united by anything, it is in their rejection of the exploitative logics of industrial capitalism, in favor of a technology of the spirit.
The Artistic Directors will present some of the foundational thinking towards the exhibition at an event at Seoul Museum of Art Seosomun, SeMA Hall on November 30. The talks will share the key ideas informing their curatorial imagination of the exhibition, and be accompanied by the screening of films by artists including Bruce Conner, Maya Deren, Jordan Belson, Shana Moulton, Shigeko Kubota, and Yin-Ju Chen.