11th Seoul Mediacity Biennale: “One Escape at a Time”

Airing for nine seasons from 1975 to 1984, the original CBS sitcom One Day at a Time was lauded as one of the first mainstream TV “dramedies,” which balanced difficult themes with comical situations in order to convey the complexities of contemporary society. In 2017, Netflix debuted a reimagined version of the series that used humor to disguise its engagement with contested issues such as racism, gender, class, migration, and gentrification. Although making jokes as a cover for unpleasant situations may come across as a textbook example of escapism, both iterations of One Day at a Time successfully deployed laughter as a conduit for tackling polemics of sociopolitical discourse in an incisive yet approachable manner.

The 11th Seoul Mediacity Biennale proposed a similar strategy, formulating a curatorial framework that sought to activate various notions of escapism in order to address sensitive topics in unexpected and insightful ways. “One Escape at a Time” at the Seoul Museum of Art took its lead from the influential TV series with projects by 41 artists spanning video, sound, and other electronic media. Some works selected by artistic director Yung Ma reminded viewers of the shortfalls of escapism, while others gleefully reveled in detachment from reality. Some were hopeful for the future, others bleak. The best of them introduced complex amalgamations of conceptual and aesthetic elements that engulfed the imagination, tricked the senses, and untethered consciousness from the real world.

Of the many modes of escapism examined in the exhibition, one of the most salient was music—not just passive listening but dancing along to its beat. In Pauline Boudry and Renate Lorenz’s video installation (No) Time (2020), four dancers respond to electronic music samples through a mixture of choreographic styles, manipulating perceptions of time through the variable speed of their movements and forging an alternate reality that suggests an escape from the linear trajectory of time itself. For Eisa Jocson, the karaoke video format serves as a vehicle of escapism in Superwoman: Empire of Care (2021). The newly commissioned work foregrounds the emotional plight of frontline medical workers in the Philippines with lyrics that reference exploitation and empty promises, sung by members of the all-female Filipino Superwoman Band as they dance to K-pop choreography wearing a diverse array of outfits, including hazmat suits.

Other works were more overtly activist in tone, invoking escapism as a means of interconnecting multiple sociopolitical contexts while conveying critical perspectives toward the representation of such issues in the mass media. To that end, Jinhwon Hong presented Good Afternoon, Good Evening, Good Night v2.0 (2021), a multimedia installation that both criticizes online video-sharing platforms, whose algorithms wield enormous control over the worldviews and values of their users, and offers an escape from their ever-tightening grip on the content we consume. The work presents videos uploaded to the artist’s own alternative visual subscription service, DESTROY THE CODES, which delivers content that engages with global issues and perspectives suppressed by large-scale commercial platforms like YouTube. By watching this otherwise “invisible” media, subscribers deviate from their viewing patterns, subtly disrupting and undermining YouTube’s hegemonic recommendation algorithm.

Not all works were so elaborate, however. Indeed, one of the exhibition’s most poignant and affecting contributions was perhaps its most simple: a performative video installation by Li Liao based on an act of absolute concentration, carried out in a time and place of unprecedented uncertainty. Unaware 2020 (2020) follows the artist as he balances a long wooden stick in the palm of one hand, weaving his way across abandoned public squares and deserted city streets of his hometown of Wuhan, China, during a Covid-19 lockdown. It is this simple gesture of absurdity in the midst of pandemic terror that conveys the essence of escapism as most of us may have experienced it in the past two years—single-minded, selective focus on a particular, fixed objective that forces the chaos of reality to recede into oblivion, leaving the comforting causality of intention and action as a balm for troubled times.

SUBSCRIBE NOW to receive ArtAsiaPacific’s print editions, including the current issue with this article, for only USD 100 a year or USD 185 for two years.  

ORDER the print edition of the Nov/Dec 2021 issue, in which this article is printed, for USD 21.