Today, we live in a society guided by science and rationalism. The fact that life cannot be fully explained or lived through rational thought alone, nor reduced to refined logic and numbers, is often neglected in the world of art and its academic reflections. The 13th Seoul Mediacity Biennale, titled “Séance: Technology of the Spirit,” directly exposes this condition and daringly foregrounds spiritual and mythic experiments, which remain rare within mainstream contemporary art discourse.

Set mainly in the Seoul Museum of Art, the exhibition explores what has long been considered a taboo aspect of human behavior under the hegemony of modernity, through works by artists reflecting on our instincts of wishing and imagining. The show’s subtitles such as “Of Witches and Mediums,” “Trance,” and phrases that recall spells or the presence of the dead reveal these hidden yet enduring layers of culture. The interplay of saturated color and intentional darkness of space deepens the exhibition’s sense of mystery. About one third of the participants are ‘dead,’ and not only artists but also activists, mythic collectives, and healers are called upon, expanding the boundaries of what artistic practice can summon. As a result, the museum becomes a layered vessel between visible and invisible realities. As visitors move along its vivid walls, the energetic movements on screens, and mystical images, they are drawn into a realm where past and present, technology and faith quietly overlap.

In this way, the three directors, Anton Vidokle, Hallie Ayres, and Lukas Brasiskis, do not turn away from technology but place it alongside art, revealing a basic human desire to believe and to continue. During the biennale, Korea marked its annual Thanksgiving with Confucian rituals of ancestral remembrance held in each household. Seeing both events at once, one could sense how traditions often dismissed as superstition still hold a shared need for connection. In this sense, the exhibition is not about nostalgia but about coexistence, not as a radical retreat into cultic belief, but as a gentle form of reliance and faith that art, more than any other medium, can still make visible.

hl.