Notes for a Séance: Curating the 13th Seoul Mediacity Biennale

Please join us at e-flux on February 20 at 7pm for an evening hosted by Anton Vidokle, Hallie Ayres, and Lukas Brasiskis, the artistic directors of the 13th Seoul Mediacity Biennale. Consisting of presentations and screenings, this program will introduce the team’s proposal of the “exhibition-as-séance,” mapping modern and contemporary artistic practices that relate mysticism, the occult, art, technology, and society across histories, geographies, and cultures. 

Part 1. Death, Art, and Spirituality
Anton Vidokle will speak to the centrality of death and the pursuit of immortality in mystical and spiritual practices throughout history, and the impact this has made on the development, iconography, and language of art. The presentation will focus on how the relationship between the living and the dead in mystical traditions has shaped key aspects of spiritualism and esoteric philosophies, and how these ideas, in turn, transformed the arts during modernity and into the present. 

Followed by a screening of Jane Jin Kaisen, Wreckage (2024, 12 minutes).

Part 2. Mediating the Absent: Spiritual, Cinematic, and Psychoanalytical Seances
Lukas Brasiskis will explore three different meanings of the séance—spiritual séance, cinematic séance, and psychoanalytical séance—widely practiced in the West at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries. These interpretations of the French word are unified by the critical concept of absence. In each iteration of séance, mediation plays a key role in the attempt to reach what is hidden, absent, or unintelligible, and thereby to make it visible, present, or conscious. Drawing on historical accounts, visual representations, and philosophical texts, the presentation will suggest that—whether engaging with spirits, projected images, or repressed thoughts—each form of séance relies on a distinct act of mediation that must be unpacked to understand how séances operate on the boundaries between the real and the illusory, responding to the contradictions of modernity, where technological progress—driven by capitalist rationality—not only coexists with psychic fragmentation but also intensifies the compulsion to engage with the absent.

Followed by a screening of Maya Deren, Ritual in Transfigured Time (1946, 16mm transferred to digital, 15 minutes), courtesy of Re:Voir; and Jordan Belson, Samadhi (1967, 5 minutes), courtesy of Center for Visual Music, Los Angeles.

Part 3. Contemporary Techno-Mysticism and its Discontents
Hallie Ayres will examine the relationship between contemporary technology, spirituality, and the automation of the mind. Analyzing how post-Fordist capitalism has shifted from the automation of the body to the automation of the mind and spirit, Ayres illuminates how this transition marks a significant change in how technology shapes not only labor but also consciousness, spirituality, and cultural relativism. By highlighting practices that seek to mitigate the Western impulse toward compartmentalizing natural phenomena into discrete taxonomic dichotomies, the presentation will offer cursory proposals for a technology of the spirit that takes as its foundation the fundamental premise of interconnectedness across the veils between the known and the unknown, the seen and the unseen, the explainable universe and its penchant for defying rationality.

Followed by a screening of Shana Moulton, MindPlace ThoughtStream (2014, 12 minutes).

This program is part of the 13th Seoul Mediacity Biennale’s pre-biennale program, organized by Seoul Museum of Art and first presented in Seoul on November 30, 2024.

For more information, please contact program [​at​] e-flux.com.

Accessibility
– Two flights of stairs lead up to the building’s front entrance at 172 Classon Avenue.
– For elevator access, please RSVP to program@e-flux.com. The building has a freight elevator which leads into the e-flux office space. Entrance to the elevator is nearest to 180 Classon Ave (a garage door). We have a ramp for the steps within the space.
– e-flux has an ADA-compliant bathroom. There are no steps between the Screening Room and this bathroom.