Beyond Senses 2025 Forum: "Each for the Other"
September 17-26 at Leeum Museum of Art
Lectures by Kim Choyeop and Others
Leeum Museum of Art announced on September 16 that it will host the "Beyond Senses 2025 Forum: Each for the Other" from September 17 to 26.
This forum is designed to explore the intersections of thought and logic, art and sensation, through lectures, workshops, video screenings, and performances. The "Beyond Senses" forum began in 2021 as a pilot program for children with hearing impairments and marks its fifth year in 2025. Its aim is to propose new languages of encountering art by focusing on each individual's unique senses, transcending physical differences. Recent themes have included "Space" (2023) and "Language" (2024); this year, the forum will focus on "Media," seeking possibilities for a "loosely connected community."
The keynote lecture on September 17 will be delivered by science fiction writer Kim Choyeop. Drawing on imagination, she will present the bodies of people with disabilities not as objects of healing, but as sites of change and interaction. After the lecture, novelist Dol Kimin will join for a discussion on how the imagination surrounding technology, the body, sensation, and community can extend beyond literature and art into social practice.
On September 18, aesthetician Ito Asa will give a lecture focusing on unpredictable movements that lie beyond the body's efforts to control itself. Next, cultural critic Jung Jihyun will address the relationship between disabled bodies and technology, discussing dance works and ethics that use technology to supplement or differently expand sensory experiences.
On September 19, discussions will continue around disability, illness, technology, and accessibility. Researcher Ellen Samuels will introduce the concept of "slow temporality," describing the experience of living at a different pace from society due to chronic illness, and proposing this as an important perspective for envisioning the future. She will also emphasize the body not as a mere object, but as a medium that generates its own meaning. Following this, Lindsay Felt will present examples of art and technology experiments and exhibitions centered on the senses and bodies of people with disabilities, explaining how accessibility technologies such as closed captions and haptics can serve as new creative media that expand art, rather than functioning merely as auxiliary tools.
The subsequent "workshops" will focus on discovering new standards of sensation that move beyond the premise of "normalcy." On September 19, Ito Asa will explore new sensory possibilities arising from bodily misalignments through smartphone- and laptop-based sensory transformation games. On September 21, Marco Donnarumma will use sound and body technology to deconstruct the concept of normal hearing and collaboratively imagine virtual prosthetic devices for new sensory experiences. On September 24, Jung Jihyun will use AI motion generation models to subvert familiar sensory systems and experiment with the potential of new bodies and movements based on alternative senses.
On September 20, there will be a video screening and discussion session. The essay film "Nameless Syndrome" by Cha Jaemin, which addresses the medical and social exclusion experienced by women's bodies, and "Niranthea" by Marco Donnarumma, which explores deaf identity and collective sensory experience, will be screened, followed by explanations from both artists. In a discussion moderated by critic Yang Hyosil, participants will engage in conversations about illness, the body, technology, and deaf identity.
On the final day of the forum, September 26, a "roundtable" will be held to reflect on this year's Beyond Senses program. Cultural and arts planner Kwon Jungwon, artist Max Tage, artist Song Yesle, director Shin Jae, and director Lee Jinyeop will share their experiences from the 2025 Beyond Senses workshops and discuss future possibilities for expansion. The forum will conclude with a participatory performance by "Deungjang Practice Group Jjajan," an improvisational dance group including both people with developmental disabilities and non-disabled participants.
Kim Taerim, curator at the Education and Research Department of Leeum Museum of Art, stated, "Beyond Senses has always experimented with ways of encountering through sensation," adding, "In this forum, we aim to view media as an expanded language of the body and senses, and to share new possibilities that art can open up together."
After the forum concludes, records of the lectures, workshops, screenings, and discussions will be compiled and published as a book in 2026, to be released both online and offline. All programs can be reserved in advance for free through the Leeum Museum of Art website.
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