Frieze Film partners with Seoul Mediacity Biennale

The 13th Seoul Mediacity Biennale has partnered with Frieze Film to present a special film program which explores the connection between moving image art and the spiritual realm. This program has been included as part of the overall biennial, introduced under the title Séance: Technology of the Spirit, which will delve into the metaphysical concepts that bind film, sound and performance to the psychic, ancestral and occult realms.

Selected artists for the Frieze Film show include: Amit Dutta, Angela Su, Anocha Suwichakornpong, Hsu Chia-Wei, Colectivo Los Ingrávidos, Jane Jin Kaisen, Joachim Koester, Karrabing Film Collective, Laura Huertas Millán, Sky Hopinka, Tamar Guimarães, Zheng Yuan and others. The show is composed in four chapters: Harmony, Reclaiming, Communion and Waking Dreams. Screenings will be held on the rooftop of the Seoul Museum of Art from September 1-4, 2025.

Since its inception in 2007 as part of Frieze London, Frieze Film has been an important event where short films by both emerging and established artists have been screened. Last year's edition – held in the gardens of the Ewha Womans University in collaboration with Ewha Media Art Presentation (EMAP), and curated by Joowon Park and Valentine Umansky – featured works by 20 international artists including: Ana Mendieta, Alison Nguyen, Simon Speiser, Yuyan Wang, Clemens von Wedemeyer, Zheng Bo, Zhang Xu Zhan and others.

The biennial exhibition, to be held at Seoul Museum of Art (SeMA) and other venues in the city, will display works by 49 artists and collectives from around the world who have drawn their inspiration from historical and present occult traditions, cosmologies and spiritual currents that span the gap between the physical and metaphysical realms.

The 2025 edition of Seoul Mediacity Biennale is being curated by Anton Vidokle, Hallies Ayres and Lukas Brasiskis of e-flux. The team has developed the idea of exhibition as séance, a format which conceptually runs contrary to the traditional setting of exhibitions in white cube spaces where visitors passively interact with artworks arranged in a narratively linear sequence and with a didactic message. Instead, and based on their prior experience at the 14th Shanghai Biennale, the curators have drawn on their knowledge of cinema, spiritualism, and psychoanalysis to create an altered exhibition space, where our everyday perception of the world is transfigured by contact with spatiotemporal logics that tap into the ancestral, subconscious and animistic.

By underscoring the complex intertwining that exists between the metaphysical and phenomenological worlds, the selected works for the Frieze Film presentation fit into the overall exploration of the intersection of the technological and mystical that defines this year's Seoul Mediacity Biennale. The screening of this program is intended to operate as a natural extension of the overarching theme of the biennial, which views technology not through the prism of automated machines and artificial intelligence that foster rationalizing and totalizing tendencies, but through the lens of different cosmologies which transcend and subvert them.

In continuation with its established history of questioning existing methodologies and fostering new forms, the 13th Seoul Mediacity Biennale will be held at a variety of venues throughout the Korean capital. The biennial will feature several works specially commissioned for the occasion and will include an extensive film and audio program. Visit the site for more information on programs and participants.