Participants, venues, and publishing initiatives of 12th edition

Open to the public from September 21 to November 19, 2023 at Seoul Museum of Art (SeMA) and several additional venues in Seoul, the 12th Seoul Mediacity Biennale (SMB12) exhibition presents works by: Agustina Woodgate, Akira Ikezoe, Animali Domestici, Anna Bella Geiger, Anna Maria Maiolino, Archana Hande, Bo Wang, Chan Sook Choi, Channa Horwitz, Christine Howard Sandoval, Elena Damiani, Femke Herregraven, Francois Knoetze, Fyerool Darma, Guido Yannitto, Hyunsun Jeon, ikkibawiKrrr, Jaye Rhee, Jesse Chun, Jumana Emil Abboud, Kent Chan, Lo-Def Film Factory (Francois Knoetze and Amy Louise Wilson), Mercedes Azpilicueta, Miko Revereza, Natasha Tontey, Nolan Oswald Dennis, Raya Martin, Sanou Oumar, Sasha Litvintseva & Beny Wagner, Sasha Litvintseva & Graeme Arnfield, Shen Xin, Soyoung Chung, Steffani Jemison, Taeyoon Choi, Tenzin Phuntsog, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Torkwase Dyson, Ximena Garrido-Lecca, Your Company Name (Clara Balaguer and Cengiz Mengüç), and Yun Choi.

Along with the exhibiting artists, dozens of practitioners including artists, writers, scholars, musicians, and performers contribute to SMB12’s live programming, which commences on September 4 with events scheduled to coincide with Kiaf Seoul and Frieze Seoul and continues through November 19, 2023. Live programs exploring ideas and practices that resonate with and run parallel to this edition of the Biennale are oriented toward diverse audiences and interests through hands-on workshops, performances, talks, podcasts, tours, DJ sets, and more. The full schedule of programs will be announced over the coming months.

Expanding on Seoul Mediacity Biennale’s history of creating, nurturing, and challenging networks, THIS TOO, IS A MAP takes place across several venues throughout Seoul, each of which presents objects and concepts that respond to the Biennale and react to specific local and spatial characteristics. These sites include Seoul Museum of Art, the neighboring Seoul Museum of History, the outdoor Seoullo Media Canvas and a series of underground spaces dispersed around the city such as space mm and Sogong Space, both located in an underground shopping center, and SeMA Bunker in Yeouido. SMB12 includes numerous new commissions and performances alongside key artworks from the past several decades which are configured to examine non-territorial mapping through forms of abstraction, extraction, displacement, and networked ecosystems and social systems. Augmenting SMB12’s exhibition venues are an array of collaborating spaces and partners that offer additional opportunities to navigate the Biennale and the city.

SMB12’s publication initiatives are led by an anthology co-published by SeMA and [NAME] Publications in Miami. Composed of text and visual contributions by artists, researchers, and writers from around the world, this book contends with topics such as multi-diasporic narratives and their entanglements with global industrial networks; poetic, philosophical, and feminist readings of inhabitation; decolonial implications of translation and the colonial languages of geology and geography; revisionary mappings of infrastructures and cybernetics; and the circularity of extractivism and e-waste disposal.

Beginning in June 2023, the SMB12 postcard project adds an ephemeral facet to the Biennale, inviting artists, writers, collaborators, Biennale team members, and SeMA staff to contribute their own personal, philosophical, abstract, or affective maps through images, photography, or text. These submissions are printed and circulated around Seoul and may be collected as keepsakes or sent to friends by post, creating an unusual communal map through acts of contribution, compilation, and distribution. THIS TOO, IS A MAP will also produce and distribute a physical and online map and guidebook in conjunction with the Biennale, and the SMB12 website (re-launching in June 2023 at mediacityseoul.kr) provides information and updates about the exhibition and programs, host online mediation, and serves as a location for events and documentation.

For further information and press inquiries, please write to contact@mediacityseoul.kr