The VH AWARD Archive Exhibition introduces the trace of the VH AWARD, a platform dedicated to supporting emerging media artists who push the boundaries of audiovisual art. The VH AWARD was initiated in 2016 as an award for the artists based in South Korea and expanded to the artists engaged with the context of Asia. The VH AWARD encourages artists to reflect on how we understand ourselves and others in relation to the past, present, and future, fostering artistic experimentation on diverse contemporary issues. To amplify and share their voices with broader communities, the artworks commissioned by the VH AWARD have been exhibited in partnership with various art institutions and platforms, including the Vision Hall of Hyundai Motor Group in Yongin, South Korea; the Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, Austria; the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Nusantara in Jakarta, Indonesia; the National Arts Council in Singapore; the House of Electronic Arts in Basel, Switzerland; and the Elektra Virtual Museum.

The exhibition presents seven artworks by five Grand Prix recipients and two Chinese finalists from the 5th VH AWARD, further enhancing the thematic context and resonating with Hyundai Motorstudio Beijing's continued commitment to engaging with local artists and communities.

Dongjoo Seo

A Thousand Horizons features constantly unfolding horizontal landscapes created by the repetitive action of turning pages in books. By employing paper books—the central communication medium throughout human history—as its primary subject, this work explores the ever-changing horizons of human consciousness, emotions, senses, and collective narratives. It combines the temporal, spatial, and material properties of the vanishing analog medium with today’s digital audiovisual technology, inviting viewers to an immersive journey that questions the boundaries between nature and culture and the actual and virtual.

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Other Spring critically investigates the societal implications of computational mediation, automation, and artificial intelligence (AI). The project explores the potential of “heretic computing” (Alexander R. Galloway, 2020) to challenge the monolithic idea of efficiency and precision that characterizes our contemporary information society. Set in a speculative future where an all-seeing, algorithm-driven network UNO (Universal Network Observer) dominates, Other Spring reflects on the urgency of privacy, agency, and individuality in our increasingly interconnected world, encouraging dialogue for a more humane relationship with technology.

JE BAAK

A JOURNEY invites viewers to travel around a surrealistic world filled with symbols that are like innocent children’s inquiries. The artist transforms the virtual reality in RPG games into the place of contemplation and allows the viewers to experience the world full of symbolic elements and situations in the perspective of a traveler. By doing so, he poetically expresses the various questions that the viewers encounter during their training in a journey called “life.”

Hyungkyu Kim

Hear the Wind_Across the Border presents a 360-degree view that transforms the viewer’s role from a passive recipient to a neutral onlooker, or even an active observer. Viewers are presented with a 360-degree view of landscapes viewed from the perspectives of Imjingak, Yeonmijeong in Ganghwado, and the Yongsan redevelopment area. The artist poses an underlying question to the viewers who become independent observers of the visually opposed South and North, across generations, and among individuals and groups.

Zike HE

Random Access refers to an erasable mode of reading and writing datum where any arbitrary address can be accessed and modified in equal time, regardless of its location. It also reflects on how we process memory, in an era deeply intertwined with digital technology. The film’s background is set in Guiyang, a mountainous and misty city in Southwest China that also hosts Cloud infrastructures. The story unfolds on the second day after the city's central data center unexpectedly crashes and reboots.

In Collaboration with CineVoyage

Lawrence Lek

Black Cloud revolves around a conversation between an urban AI system designed to surveil a city that has been abandoned and their built-in therapist, seemingly the product of their own mind. By setting the dialogue within the ruins of the fictional smart city of SimBeijing, the video continues Lek’s exploration of the psychological impact of technological landscapes.

Subash Thebe Limbu

Ladhamba Tayem; Future Continuous imagines futures where Indigenous people’s actions and existence are in the space-time continuum. Through the conversation between two indigenous people—a Yakthung warrior from the 18th century and an indigenous astronaut or time traveler from the distant future—the film asks the viewer to investigate their own potential role in searching for the possible futures to strive for. The work plays with the idea of time as not something rigid but ductile or weavable, which in turn paves the way for questions like how we might want to weave the future.