Installation view of “Project Hashtag 2024” ©MMCAThe
National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA) presents the
exhibition “Project Hashtag 2024” on view through April 27 at its Seoul branch.
Started in 2019 in partnership with Hyundai Motor Company, “Project Hashtag” is
an initiative designed to discover emerging creators who will lead contemporary
Korean visual arts, while also supporting cross-disciplinary collaborations
across various fields, not limited to just art.
“Project
Hashtag 2024,” now in its fifth edition, began with an open call in March 2024.
This year’s applicants proposed both fusion-based projects using new
technologies such as generative AI meta-verses and computer games, and social
experiments addressing today’s most acute controversies.
There
was a pronounced tendency to examine from diverse perspectives social issues
such as changes in environment, human relationships and values brought by the
introduction of AI technology into daily life, and to explore communal
solidarity through interaction with others.
Installation view of “Project Hashtag 2024” ©MMCA
At
the “Project Hashtag 2024” showcase exhibition, the museum introduces projects
by ‘Wish Office’ and ‘Playing Art Method’, each of which addresses a different
a theme in its own way through the medium of computer games.
‘Wish
Office(Kim Raeo, Oh Saeol, Seo Jin Kyu, Seo John, Titaniun(Choi Joonseong))’
builds ‘Wish World’, virtual worlds made up of the wishes of all people. This
work is a social-experimental game that examines contemporary society, in which
individual effort is so easily thwarted, through the grammar of gaming.
‘Playing Art Method (Cho Hoyoun, Kim Youngju, Rhee Sei)’ creates a meaningful
discourse based on questions that arise when computer games are exhibited in a
museum as a form of artwork. In the process of exhibition, they form a loose
learning community, using workshops and publications.
Ji Yeon Lee has been working as an editor for the media art and culture channel AliceOn since 2021 and worked as an exhibition coordinator at samuso (now Space for Contemporary Art) from 2021 to 2023.
