Lawrence Lek, an artist based in London, works with video game software and CGI animation, merges real places with virtual worlds to look at how humans interact with AI and how digital images alter our experiences in the real world. He explores worldbuilding, the creative approach of crafting entire fictional worlds, as a form of collage, incorporating elements from the materials and virtual worlds to develop narratives of alternate histories and possible futures. Lek’s Grand Prix-winning work, “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. INTERVIEW
FINALIST
DOREEN CHAN
Doreen Chan, who was born in Hong Kong and now lives in Chicago, invites people to share their incomplete dreams through her platform halfdream.org. Chan then matches strangers based on the connections in their dreams, believing that something within the subconscious can help us see and remember the ways we are similar when external and political forces seem intent on manifesting division. As the sentences appear on the screen in Chan’s video artwork “HalfDream”, there is an immediate sense of recognition—dreams of rushing, losing things, being in foreign places, alienated from oneself, or simply not oneself are perhaps more universal than we acknowledge. INTERVIEW
FINALIST
SYAURA QOTRUNADHA
Indonesian artist Syaura Qotrunadha takes her early childhood relationship to water as the starting point of her artwork “Fluidity of Future Machines”, which shares the reflections of an elderly man considering his relationship to water. The narrator begins with a reminder that our bodies are more than 65 percent water, talking us through the relationships between the smallest cells in our bodies and the earth’s ocean water. The visuals of Qotrunadha’s video recall the experience of looking through a microscope, suggesting that the insights of our elders may help us see what is invisible, but right before us. Initially the images appear to be of foreign matter, outside of our bodies, but in watching “Fluidity of Future Machines”, one realizes that they are also looking, in a way, at themselves. INTERVIEW
FINALIST
PARIBARTANA MOHANTY
Paribartana Mohanty grew up in the coastal East Indian state of Odisha and now lives in Delhi, but remains driven by the ecological concerns of his home region. For his VH AWARD artwork, Mohanty traveled more than 10,000 kilometers of the Indian coast to witness and document the effects of natural disasters including cyclones and tsunamis. His artwork, “Rice Hunger Sorrow” follows two protagonists to the ocean and forest, asking continually, “who is the mightiest?” The answer, though never spoken, is perhaps best left as a reflection on our own lack of might in the face of mother nature. INTERVIEW
FINALIST
JUNGWON SEO
Jungwon Seo, based in Seoul, her artwork “We Maketh God”considers what sort of art an AI may create. Shot in black and white and slowed to stretch each moment into suspense, the artwork brings the drama of the Renaissance into the present, creating a space to contemplate the history we are living and making each day. The effect is subtle, yet powerful. Seo makes viewers aware that while we may not feel the significance of our actions—both collective and individual—they will reverberate in unpredictable ways for years, possibly centuries, to come. INTERVIEW
JURY
SOOK-KYUNG LEE
CHRISTOPHER PHILLIPS
RODERICK SCHROCK
AARON SEETO
JUNE YAP
JURY
SOOK-KYUNG LEE
Senior Curator, International Art (Hyundai Tate Research Centre: Transnational), Tate Modern
Sook Kyung-Lee works on exhibitions, acquisitions and collection displays at Tate Modern as Senior Curator, International art, and heads a major research initiative Hyundai Tate Research Centre: Transnational. She curated Nam June Paik at Tate Modern in 2019 with Rudolf Frieling, which was on tour to institutions in Europe, USA, and Asia until early 2022. She has also curated several collection exhibitions and displays at Tate Modern, including A Year in Art: Australia 1992 (2021-23), CAMP: From Gulf to Gulf to Gulf (2019-20) and Xiao Lu and Niki de Saint Phalle (2018-19). Lee was previously Exhibitions & Displays Curator at Tate Liverpool and curated a number of exhibitions and collection displays including Doug Aitken: The Source and Thresholds (2012-13, as part of Liverpool Biennial).
Lee is the Artistic Director of the 14th Gwangju Biennale, which opens in April 2023. She also served as the Commissioner and Curator of the Korean Pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale (2015). Lee has convened and participated in several international symposiums and conferences at the Tate and internationally, including From Alexandria to Tokyo: Art, Colonialism and Entangled Histories (Digital conference with Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, 2020), Axis of Solidarity: Landmarks, Platforms, Futures (Tate Modern, 2019), and Territories Disrupted: Asian Art after 1989 (National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Korea, 2017). She has also written and lectured widely on modern and contemporary art, and her publications include Nam June Paik (with Rudolf Frieling, exhibition catalogue, Tate Publishing, 2019) and MOON Kyungwon & JEON Joonho (exhibition catalogue, Korean Pavilion, Venice Biennale, 2015).
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CHRISTOPHER PHILLIPS
Independent Curator & Critic
Christopher Phillips is an independent curator and critic based in New York City. He is a board member of Asia Art Archive in America, and a contributing editor of the magazine Art in America. He teaches courses on the history and theory of photography and media art at Tisch School of the Arts, New York University.
From 2000 to 2016 he was a curator at the International Center of Photography (ICP) in New York. He has organized many exhibitions that examine
contemporary Asian photography and media art. These exhibitions include Between (2004, co curated with Wu Hung); (2006); (2008); (with Noriko Fuku, 2008); (2011); (2016); (2018); and (2019).
JURY
RODERICK SCHROCK
Curator, Executive Director of Eyebeam
Roderick Schrock is an arts organizer and curator. As a non-profit leader, he specializes in building institutional capacity and conceives and implements programs that elevate artists’ works in society. As the executive director of Eyebeam, he guides its focus to realign societal relationships with emergent technologies. Additionally, he is the host of Informer, a podcast featuring conversations with artists, technologists, and thinkers.
He has been an active practitioner in the arts, living and working in Japan and continuing studies in the Netherlands. He has written extensively for anthologies, periodicals, and other publications. As a digital and sound artist, Schrock has been commissioned by Meet the Composer, the American Music Center, The Netherlands America Foundation, and Ostrava New Music Days, among others. He received an MFA from Mills College in Oakland.
He currently teaches in the Curatorial Practice MA Program at the School of Visual Arts and has taught at the Studio for Electro-Instrumental Music (STEIM), California College of the Arts, and New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program. He sits on the Netherlands America Foundation Cultural Committee, and was a founding board member of Art+Feminism. He regularly juries and nominates for national and international art awards.
JURY
AARON SEETO
Director, Museum MACAN
Aaron Seeto is the Director of Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Nusantara (Museum MACAN). He has experience with working to advance the goals of contemporary arts organizations and curating significant exhibitions for artists from Asia to Pacific regions.
Seeto was formerly a Curatorial Manager of Asian and Pacific Art, at Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane, Australia where he led the curatorial team at the eighth Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT8) in 2015. For eight years prior, he was the Director of Sydney’s 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art.
JURY
JUNE YAP
Director, Curatorial, Collections and programmes, Singapore Art Museum
Dr. June Yap is a Director of Curatorial, Collections and Programs at the Singapore Art Museum, where she oversees content creation and museum programming.
Her prior roles include Guggenheim UBS MAP Curator (South and Southeast Asia), Deputy Director and Curator at the Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore, and curator at the Singapore Art Museum. Amongst exhibitions she has curated are: They Do Not Understand Each Other co-curated with Yuka Uematsu from National Museum of Art, Osaka, at Tai Kwun Contemporary; No Country: Contemporary Art for South and Southeast Asia as part of the Guggenheim UBS MAP Global Art Initiative; The Cloud of Unknowing at the 54th Venice Biennale with artist Ho Tzu Nyen; The Future of Exhibition: It Feels Like I’ve Been Here Before at the Institute of Contemporary Arts(Singapore); Paradise is Elsewhere at Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen (Germany); media art exhibitions Interrupt and Twilight Tomorrow at the Singapore Art Museum. She is the author of Retrospective: A Historiographical Aesthetic in Contemporary Singapore and Malaysia (2016).
OFFICIAL SCREENINGS
MACAN
Ars Electronica
EVM
Private Viewing Event
Virtual Ceremony
Museum MACAN, 2022.09.10 – 2022.11.13
The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Nusantara (Museum MACAN) is Indonesia’s preeminent institution for modern and contemporary art.
Ars Electronica Festival 2022, 2023.09.06 – 2022. 09.10
Ars Electronica Festival is one of the world’s most important media art festivals, a “Festival for Art, Technology and Society.”. In 2022, the question focused on was “Welcome to Planet B: A different life is possible. But how?”.
The ELKTRA Virtual Museum, 2022.06.01 – 2023.06.01
The ELEKTRA Virtual Museum (EVM) opened its doors in 2022 with a major exhibition: “METAMORPHOSIS METAVERSE”. As a part of the exhibition, the artworks of the five finalists are presented at the Pavilion 2 of EVM.
Private Viewing Event, 2022.05.18
As a part of the global exhibition program, an immersive screening event of THE 4TH VH AWARD was showcased at the New Museum during Frieze New York.
THE 4TH VH AWARD Vitrual Ceremony, 2021.11.10
In celebration of its 4th edition, THE VH AWARD expanded to include all Asian artists whose works creatively portray and question the vast array of issues and trends occurring across Asia.
