FESTIVAL IN THE PARK

In collaboration with the Korean Cultural Center in the UAE.
The city in the city: what lies beneath and within the visible urban environment? This panel unearths the hidden infrastructures – both material and social – that orchestrate urban life and social relations. Moving beyond visible architectural forms, participants consider how infrastructure operates as both geopolitical script and social choreography, examining how these systems emerge from, and reinforce, particular forms of social organisation. Conceiving the city as a layered topography of speculative, real, and imagined mediums, ranging from master plans to maintenance routines, the discussion focuses on Gulf urbanism and the cultural logic embedded in its invisible systems.

The Panel:
Minouk Lim - Artist
Wael Al Awar - Principal Architect / Founding Partner waiwai
Moderator:
Salem AlSuwaidi - Writer and curator

This discussion brings together co-curators Kyung-hwan Yeo and Maya El Khalil in conversation with participating artists Byungjun Kwon and Goen Choi. The curators will outline the conceptual questions that guided the exhibition – from initial encounters in Seoul to the development and discovery of new resonances in Abu Dhabi. The conversation will explore thematic frameworks and consider how the universal ideas of body, society, and space serve as access points into five decades of complex and innovative artistic practice. Kwon and Choi, whose works appear in the Space as Medium section, offer radically different approaches to space, perception, and infrastructure, reflecting the exhibition’s exploration of layered meaning and open circuits.

Kyung-hwan Yeo, Co-curator
Maya El Khalil, Co-curator
Byungjun Kwon, artist
Choi Goen, artist

Designers Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin, co-founders of the design studio Formafantasma, join co-curators Kyung-hwan Yeo and Maya El Khalil to discuss how exhibition design shapes the viewer’s encounter with art. Reflecting on their approach to spatial design and the aesthetic language developed for Layered Medium: We Are in Open Circuits, the conversation explores how curatorial and design decisions together influence audience perception — not only of individual works, but of the relationships and rhythms that unfold between them. Offering insights into the interdependence of artworks, space, and audience, the conversation will reveal exhibition design itself as a crucial medium of cultural translation.

Chris Dercon, Director of the Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain and former Director of Tate Modern (2011–2016), joins co-curators Kyung-hwan Yeo and Maya El Khalil to discuss his 1984 documentary film Nam June Paik. Drawing on his early collaboration with the pioneering media artist, Dercon reflects on the challenges of representing Paik’s radically experimental practice through film, and considers the broader historical context of media art during a pivotal moment in its development.

Featuring a captivating showcase of his work, this documentary profiles the career of Nam June Paik and his pioneering contributions to video art. Directed by Amanda Kim.

In collaboration with the Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence.
What if we understood the virtual and the physical as a continuum? This panel discussion explores how interfaces - from skin to canvas to screen - mediate sensory experiences and shape our relation to the world. The body, as the seat of emotion and our most primal tool for communication, is often seen as the closest link to the self whereas virtual boundaries are regarded as disembodied surfaces and sites of projection. Yet, as movements are translated into mediated forms, and digital affects are assimilated into involuntary gestures, how to we distinguish between physical and virtual? From body to image, artists have long treated surfaces as interfaces for expression and interaction. Whether through painting, performance, or pixels, they engage with questions of presence, bodily depiction, and self-representation. Bringing together diverse practitioners, this panel considers how our current era of hyperconnectivity has intensified and accelerated the porosity between these sites of encounter, destabilising the limits of the body and challenging our understanding of presence, identity and self.

In collaboration with the Korean Cultural Center in the UAE.
Objects persist across time and space, becoming focal points around which communities, identities, and histories take shape. From traditional crafts and ritual items to incidental domestic bric-a-brac, objects can anchor deeply personal or collective narratives. Though objects are perceived as immutable, static and fixed, their stories never are. When gravitating around artefacts, culture is felt in material, tangible ways, yet generations and geographies will understand the same object differently. This subjective interdependence of material, memory, and narrative means that, while objects might travel, their precise meanings do not always move with them: what is sincerely felt in one place or time does not necessarily translate.
‍
The Panel:
Rand Abdul Jabbar - Artist
Sojung Jun - Artist
Moderator:
Tina Sherwell - Co-Director of Masters of Fine Arts in Art and Media; Associate Arts Professor, New York University Abu Dhabi