2025 Seoul Mediacity Biennale Announces Artistic Directors
By Camilla Alvarez-Chow
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Artistic directors of the 13th Seoul Mediacity Biennale, from left to right: HALLIE AYRES, ANTON VIDOKLE, and LUKAS BRASISKIS. Courtesy the Seoul Museum of Art.
The Seoul Museum of Art (SeMA) has announced the appointment of artist and filmmaker Anton Vidokle, curator and art historian Hallie Ayres, and film curator Lukas Brasiskis as artistic directors of the 13th Seoul Mediacity Biennale. All three are associated with the publication e-flux, with Vidokle being its co-founder, Ayres its associate director, and Brasiskis its associate curator of film and video.
The appointments are the result of an international open call that was overseen by a committee of Korean professionals. Out of 66 submissions, the committee approved Vidokle’s, Ayres’s, and Brasiskis’s proposal to present an “exhibition-as-séance” that “move[s] away from the contemporary neoliberal conception of biennial exhibitions and toward the construction of a heightened experience in which waking life is entangled with the more-than-human world.” To do so, the trio aims to “explore and present works of art that bridge material and immaterial worlds and critically approach the present.”
Vidokle was the chief curator of the 14th Shanghai Biennale in 2023 and exhibited as an artist in the Gwangju Biennale in 2016. Ayres was also a curator for the 14th Shanghai Biennale, and has published texts and delivered lectures on topics such as the reconciliation of Indigenous and Western knowledge production through spirituality. Brasiskis holds a PhD in cinema studies and often explores the limits and potentials of moving image media to present non-anthropocentric perspectives.
Founded in 2000, the Seoul Mediacity Biennale is internationally recognized for its experimental engagement with new media arts. The 13th edition is scheduled to run from August 26 to November 30, 2025, across the capital Korean city.
Camilla Alvarez-Chow is an editorial assistant at ArtAsiaPacific.
