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at the 13th Seoul Mediacity Biennale
THE 13TH SEOUL MEDIACITY BIENNALE
SÉANCE: TECHNOLOGY OF THE SPIRIT
SOUND ROOM AND PERFORMANCE CURATOR
Sanna Almajedi
ARTISTIC DIRECTORS
Anton Vidokle
Hallie Ayres
Lukas Brasiskis
SEOUL MUSEUM OF ART (MAIN EXHIBITON)
NAKWON SANGGA (SOUND ROOM)
August 26 - November 23, 2026
PARTICIPATING ARTISTS
MAIN EXHIBITION: Aki Onda, Amit Dutta, Angela Su, Annie Besant and C.W. Leadbeater, Anocha Suwichakornpong, Anri Sala, Byungjun Kwon, Colectivo Los Ingrávidos, Corita Kent, Emma Kunz, Ernest A. Bryant III, Georgiana Houghton, Guadalupe Maravilla, Haroon Mirza, Hilma af Klint, Hiwa K, Hsu Chia-Wei, Hyung-Min Yoon, I Ching Systems and Artworks, Jane Jin Kaisen, Joachim Koester, Johanna Hedva, Jordan Belson, Joseph Beuys, Kara Ditte Hansen, Karrabing Film Collective, Kivu Ruhorahoza and Christian Nyampeta, Kray Chen, Laura Huertas Millán, Lucile Olympe Haute, Manuel Mathieu, Maya Deren, Mike Kelley, Minjeong An, Mohamed Gaber, Nam June Paik, Onisaburō Deguchi, ORTA (Alexandra Morozova and Rustem Begenov), Park Chan-kyong, Rafael Queneditt Morales, Rudolf Steiner, Seung-taek Lee, Shana Moulton, Sky Hopinka, Suzanne Treister, Tamar Guimarães and Kasper Akhøj, Violette e a, Wing Po So, Yin-Ju Chen, Zai Nomura
SOUND ROOM: Areum Lee, Aki Onda, Annea Lockwood and Ruth Anderson, Antonina Nowacka, Breyer P-Orridge, Carl Michael Von Hausswolff, Jerry Hunt, Jocy de Oliviera, Jung Hee Choi, La Monte Young, Laurie Spiegel, Li Chin Sung (Dickson Dee), Matana Roberts, Meredith Young-Sowers, Walter Smetak, Yara Mekawei
13th Seoul Mediacity Biennale Séance: Technology of the Spirit begins with a question: what role has spiritual experience played in the development of modern and contemporary art?
Over the past decade, it has been impossible to ignore the number of artists turning for inspiration to alternative forms of knowledge. The mystic, visionary, or arcane—often as enshrined in suppressed cultural traditions—has come to occupy a central place in the artistic discourse. This renewed interest in spiritual practice seems to us to respond to a broader crisis in how we make sense of the world.
Seoul—a city shaped as much by its rich spiritual traditions as modernity—offers the ideal platform for an investigation into the social, political, and historic contexts for this cultural shift. Not only to showcase the relevant works being made today, but to situate them within a tradition dating back to the nineteenth century.
To that end, we start with the explosion of popular interest in spiritual practice that played a formative role in the birth of modern art, and that links those unsettled times to our own. One expression of that spiritual revolution was the proliferation of séances, literally “sittings” in which mediums connected their audience to the spirit realm.
In the following decades, rituals as varied as cinema screenings, psychoanalytic sessions, and experimental theatrical performances also came to be referred to by this term. And so we adopted the séance as metaphor and model for the exhibition: a mediated experience by which to access worlds beyond the everyday.
Music, too, has long been a conduit for communion with gods and spirits.
This relationship has evolved with technology. At the turn of the twentieth century, spiritualists were captivated by self-playing instruments: musical séances spotlighted pianos with keys pressed down by invisible hands as well as accordions and trumpets floating as if guided by spectral forces. The radio inaugurated a new era in which sounds could travel freely, detached from the bodies and instruments that produced them. Technologies including the handheld recorder were appropriated for spirit communication, while others (like Electronic Voice Phenomena devices) were developed specifically for this purpose.
Curated by Sanna Almajedi, the SOUND ROOM gathers together the work of sound artists and experimental musicians whose practices explore the potential of new acoustic and audio technologies to connect us with worlds beyond our own. In this section of the exhibition, the audio works are played in a continuous loop, and we invite visitors not to look, but to listen.
Sound is ephemeral, yet it lingers. It is a force that slips between worlds, a medium for longing, memory, and the pursuit of eternity. Can listening attune us to what is absent?
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