2023 SeMA-HANA Media Art Award recipient

Seoul Museum of Art (SeMA) announces Francois Knoetze as the recipient of the 2023 SeMA-HANA Media Art Award, presented in conjunction with the 12th Seoul Mediacity Biennale THIS TOO, IS A MAP (SMB12).

In his works of sculpture, video, and performance, Knoetze explores the life cycles of discarded objects and the historical intersections between materials and societies. Presented at SMB12, Core Dump (2018–19) comprises a series of videos set in Kinshasa, Shenzhen, New York, and Dakar—four cities intertwined in a complex web of fiber-optic cables, migratory patterns, conflicting histories, river systems, and trade routes. This four-channel video installation incorporates found footage, performance documentation, and interview transcripts that collectively portray a digital nervous system on the brink of collapse amid a collision of uncertainty and unsustainability. In Core Dump, video and audio forge a distinct sense of time and space while foregrounding notions of digital technology, cybernetics, colonialism, and the Non-Aligned Movement, thereby underlining human connection and the significance of the narrative.

The selection of the 2023 SeMA-HANA Media Art Award was decided by a five-member international jury composed of Hee-young Kim (Professor of Fine Art, Kookmin University, Korea), Alia Swastika (Director of Jogja Biennale Foundation, Indonesia), Humberto Moro (Deputy Director of Program, Dia Art Foundation, USA), Rachael Rakes (Artistic Director of SMB12), and Eunju Choi, (General Director of SeMA).

Jury members agreed that Core Dump is a powerful and complex body of work with multiple forms of media and approaches to mapping and locality that foreground the technological circuits and routes that constitute daily life, as well as their manifestations in very different ways in different places. Jury chair Hee-young Kim commented, “Knoetze’s work explores multiple layers of the historical, economic, cultural, and political backgrounds of contemporary technological infrastructures, which collectively resonate with the aesthetics of this Biennale’s non-territorial mapping.”

Eunju Cho added, “The e-waste reused in the work’s installation provokes not only the issues of extraction and advanced capitalism but also the inter-relationships and responsibilities of each entity living in this world, thereby fundamentally revealing the uncertainty of our lives. The site-specific and ‘recycled’ installation also provides a reflective notion of future art-making.”

THIS TOO, IS A MAP is on view at the SeMA Seosomun Main Branch and five additional locations until November 19, 2023. Sponsored by the Hana Financial Group since 2014 and co-organized by the Seoul Museum of Art, the SeMA-HANA Media Art Award is presented to a participant or participants of the Seoul Mediacity Biennale in recognition of their vision and artistic contribution to the Biennale. This year’s awardee receives a prize of 30 million KRW. The trophy of 2023 SeMA-HANA Media Art Award was created by Korean ceramic artists Kim Deokho and Lee Inhwa.

Past recipients of the award include Eric Baudelaire (2014), Korakrit Arunanondchai and Christine Sun Kim (2016), Kearn-Hyung Ahn (2018), and Hao Jingban and Eisa Jocson (2021). 

Francois Knoetze is a South African interdisciplinary artist whose work explores themes of waste, consumption, and material culture. Knoetze’s work has been exhibited in numerous exhibitions and festivals around the world, including the Dakar Biennale, Het Nieuwe Instituut (Rotterdam), Centre Pompidou Paris; ZKM: Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe and the Lubumbashi Biennale. He has also been the recipient of several awards and residencies, including the Digital Earth Fellowship and the Mozilla Creative Media Award.

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