SEOUL.- The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA; director Kim Sunghee) announced the opening of the exhibition for PROJECT HASHTAG 2024, an open call initiative aimed at discovering promising creators and supporting interdisciplinary collaboration in the visual arts. The exhibition will take place from November 15, 2024 to April 27, 2025 at MMCA Seoul.

In partnership with Hyundai Motor Company, PROJECT HASHTAG was launched in 2019 and is now in its fifth year. The project has successfully established itself as a new platform for artistic creation, fostering collaboration among artists, curators, researchers, and other cultural practitioners. This year two teams, Wish Office and Playing Art Method, were selected from among 148 applicants representing diverse fields. Both teams have been working on their projects with the support of KRW 30 million and access to studio space at MMCA Residency Changdong.

Wish Office (Kim Raeo, Seo John, Seo Jin kyu, Oh Saeol, and Titanium (Choi Joon Seong)) presents a project called Wish World—a metaverse environment where everyone’s wishes can be fulfilled. This project takes the form of a social experiment, reflecting on the often challenging realities of personal struggles in contemporary society through a game-like experience. Visitors to the exhibition have the option to submit their wishes to be processed through an AI classification system and delivered into the Wish World. The fate of this virtual world—whether it thrives or withers—depends on these submitted wishes. The project explores themes of frustration, desire, and hope, reflecting on the feelings of helplessness, powerlessness, and need for recognition experienced by many people. It incorporates popular cultural concepts such as time travel, reincarnation, and transmigration, recently trending in webcomics and online novels. The project simulates what might happen if these “lucky breaks,” known as hoebinghwan (an amalgamation of the words hoegwi [regression], bingui [transmigration], and hwansaeng [reincarnation]), once reserved exclusively for protagonists, were extended to everyone, allowing participants to see the outcomes of these second chances.

Playing Art Method (Cho Hoyoun, Kim Youngju, and Sei Rhee) is a collaboration between Parade & Patchwork, an exhibition planning group led by Rhee Sei, and Loopntale, a media art-based game production team consisting of Cho Hoyoun and Kim Youngju. Playing Art Method proposes a project under the same name to explore the questions that arise when “Video games” are exhibited in an art museum. Through exhibitions, workshops, and animated posters, they aim to generate meaningful discourse on these topics. This project reconsiders the position of games and game developers within the contemporary art ecosystem, establishing branding strategies for these creators. Learning materials that help visitors interpret the meanings within the games are displayed alongside the games themselves, and experts from a range of fields—including poets, game researchers, and art critics—provide insights into the project from various perspectives. These experts act as docents while also showcasing their current or long-term interests, interacting directly with visitors in the exhibition space.

This year’s program also includes a variety of related programs including live game streaming sessions, talks, docent programs, and game walk through workshops in collaboration with experts from different fields. To celebrate the fifth anniversary of the project, a special event featuring past PROJECT HASHTAG participants will also be held, offering a retrospective look at the significance of interdisciplinary collaboration over the past five years.

Kim Sunghee, director of the MMCA, notes, “Just as hashtags connect different subjects and people in our contemporary digital culture, PROJECT HASHTAG 2024 aims to bring together creators from diverse backgrounds to create new artistic synergies and expand the potential of contemporary art.”