MMCA
About the Exhibition
PROJECT HASHTAG, initiated in 2019 through a partnership between Hyundai Motor and MMCA, champions artistic innovation and interdisciplinary collaboration. Now in its fifth iteration, it remains a dynamic space for creative exploration and dialogue. The initiative seeks to foster experimental and cross-disciplinary projects among Korean creators with an annual open call for artists, producers and researchers across diverse fields.
The two finalists for PROJECT HASHTAG 2024, Wish Office and Playing Art Method, have cultivated experiences exploring the relationship between contemporary society and art through the medium of “games.” While both collectives provide insights through their own creative lens, each project speaks to the inventive and experimental nature of art as it closes the boundary of function, humanity and technology in both the future and present tense.
About Wish Office
Wish Office, comprised of Kim Raeo, Oh Saeol, Seo Jinkyu, Seo John, and Titanium (Choi Joonseong), delves into subcultures like video games, webtoons, and web novels to challenge and reinterpret contemporary societal issues. Their work combines diverse media such as sound, 3D digital art, and interactive technologies, aiming to blur the lines between art, technology, and society. This collective seeks to engage viewers directly, creating art that fosters interaction and reflects on human relationships in contemporary society.
For their PROJECT HASHTAG 2024 exhibition, Wish Office creates the metaverse environment “Wish World,” simply built to fufill every visitor’s wishes. This social experiment, titled The Wishes (2024), challenges personal and societal struggles via interactive gameplay. The virtual world’s fate hinges on these wishes, allowing participants to confront their desires, frustrations, and the quest for acknowledgment.
The Wishes (2024) project began with the question: Can we be happy in a world in which everyone’s wishes came true? Hinging on this prompt, the project adapts the Hoe-Bing-Hwan genre into a game format, posing this foundational question to participants. Upon entering “Wish World,” visitors are endowed with game mechanics that promise to fulfill their desires. However, this world is not designed for a single protagonist but for multiple players, leading to interactions and conflicts among participants’ wishes. This shared environment reveals that our real world resembles the mechanics of “Wish World,” where individual desires often clash, creating unexpected challenges.
About Playing Art Method
Playing Art Method, is a collective formed by two teams: Parade & Patchwork (Rhee Sei) and Loopntail (Kim Youngju and Cho Hoyoun). Parade & Patchwork facilitates discussions, creates promotional content, and organizes educational programs. Loopntail designs a virtual museum space within the exhibit, develops playable games, and conducts workshops to deepen engagement with the art. This collaborative approach explores new interpretative possibilities for video games as museum exhibits.
For their PROJECT HASHTAG 2024 showcase, the collective releases their namesake work, Playing Art Method (2024), inviting audiences to reevaluate how games and their creators fit into the modern art scene, highlighting the installation and experiential processes. It features interactive elements that offer dual perspectives through a single controller, enhancing visitor engagement with the underlying themes of the games.
Playing Art Method (2024) began with a conversation about how art and artists are constituted within contemporary art museums. This project analyses the ways in which game filters from artists into institutions and presents itself to the public. The collective developed four methods in response to this question. Each method follows the other in succession, titled respectively, Section 1. Methods, Section 2. Variations - Play Video Series, Section 3. The Non-existent Exhibition, and finally Section 4. Lists - Exhibition Guide. The artists explore these topics through diverse forms, including games, moving images, docent- led programs and workshops. They aim to utilize the games they create, along with the discourse surrounding them, as both tools and methodologies in fostering a learning community.
About the Program
PROJECT HASHTAG
PROJECT HASHTAG is a five-year initiative that fosters the next generation of Korean artists through an annual open call. The program provides support for the creation and presentation of experimental artworks that push boundaries. Reflecting the fluid and open nature of the hashtag symbol (#), this comprehensive program empowers emerging talents to engage in imaginative interdisciplinary collaborations that redefine artistic expression. The program embraces diverse fields, including painting, sculpture, new media, film, design, architecture, music, dance, linguistics, biology, physics, poetry, fiction, and hypertext. Annually, two creator teams are selected for a grant, an MMCA Residency Changdong studio space, and a showcase at MMCA Seoul. Launched in 2019, this program stems from MMCA and Hyundai Motor's decade-long partnership, dedicated to broadening Korean contemporary art's reach and impact.
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