Established by Hyundai Motor Group in 2016, the VH AWARD has become a key platform for fostering emerging media artists who engage with the context of Asia. Now in its sixth edition, the award continues to support bold artistic practices that blur boundaries between disciplines and geographies. The 2025 Ars Electronica Festival presents the five newly commissioned works of the 6th VH AWARD, selected for their experimental and transcultural approaches. From mythology and ecology to machine consciousness and speculative histories, these works explore the complexities of contemporary society, triggering new perspectives on how we understand ourselves and one another in relation to the past, present, and future.
The 6th VH AWARD Part II / Dream of Walnut Palaces / Wendi Yan - Photo: Wendi Yan
Screening
The 6th VH AWARD Part II
Inhwa Yeom (KR), Lêna Bùi (VN), Wendi Yan (CN)
Language //
EN
Ticket //
Ars Electronica Center Ticket, ONE DAY PASS, FESTIVALPASS, FESTIVALPASS+
Info //
Registration required / Registrierung notwendig Warning of Strobe light/intense lighting/loud noise. // Dieses Programm enthält stroboskopische Effekte/intensive Lichteffekte/laute Geräusche.
dream(machine, human)
Lêna Bùi (VN)
dream(machine, human) by Lêna Bùi presents a non-linear narrative on humans and machines, read as machine-salvaged fragments of human memories or a mythology of human demise and metamorphosis.
War Dance
Inhwa Yeom (KR)
War Dance by Inhwa Yeom reflects on Asian women’s entanglement between production and reproduction, love and care, drawing on the Korean myth and the natural phenomena of sundog and moondog.
Dream of Walnut Palaces
Wendi Yan (CN)
Dream of Walnut Palaces by Wendi Yan, Grand Prix recipient of the 6th VH AWARD, is a CGI film reimagining 18th-century knowledge exchange between Asia and Europe. It explores the psyche of a fictional Daoist in a Paris lab, addressing the East–West encounter of epistemic visuality and proposing an alternative to techno-Orientalism.
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THE VH AWARD
The VH AWARD supports emerging media artists who engage with the context of Asia through an online residency program and exhibitions of commissioned works across various global platforms. Initiated in 2016, the VH AWARD has been discovering and cultivating promising artists to share their artistic experiments and amplify their voices on diverse issues. The award encourages artists who push the boundaries of audiovisual artworks to reflect on how we understand ourselves and one another in relation to the past, present and future. The VH AWARD is hosted by Hyundai Motor Group as a part of its commitment to supporting cross-cultural innovation and development.
