ACC CREATORS 2026: Speculative Communities

ACC CREATORS 2026: CROSSLUCID, Ding Shiwei, Kim Jaeik, Keith Lam, Jin Lee, Nima Navab, Paperback Sketch, Valentin Ranger

The National Asian Culture Center (ACC) is pleased to present Speculative Communities, the ACC CREATORS 2026 Residency Exhibition. Through speculative imagination and technological experimentation, the exhibition asks how the meaning and conditions of community are shifting, and what forms of coexistence might take shape beyond the human.

Each of the eight projects considers community beyond the human, tracing the conditions under which relations form among human and nonhuman beings. At the same time, the works bring into view the power and control exercised by the systems that organize those relations. Attending to entanglement and interdependence among different forms of existence, they look for modes of coexistence that exceed existing notions of community.

Working with artificial intelligence and autonomous agents, data analysis and visualization, algorithm-based control systems, kinetic devices, spatial sound, and interactive audio, the artists render familiar relationships strange and open onto new forms of experience and interaction. Technology here is not simply a means of imagining other possibilities; it becomes a medium through which to examine how relations are organized, and how they act on our experience, perception, and behavior.

Speculative Communities is the outcome of the ACC CREATORS 2026 Residency. Initiated in 2015, the residency supports experimental, future-oriented projects by practitioners working across art and technology, and has developed into an international platform for convergent creation. This year’s participants were selected through an international open call in April under the theme “Speculative Communities.” Since moving into the residency in July, they have been developing their projects, from concepts and research to technical studies and production methods, which will culminate in this exhibition.

The exhibition is accompanied by a series of public programs that unveil the process behind the works. These include tours led by the artists; performances that extend the projects; tech talks on technical approaches and production methods, held in the studios and alongside the works on view; and workshops in which participants take part in the production of the works.

All programs are free and open to the public. Tech talks and workshops require advance registration at www.acc.go.kr, where further details are available.