2025 Gwanyang International Media Art Festival

October 22 to November 4, 2025 Korea

Interface Cultures was represented at GIMAF 2025 by students and graduates of the Interface Cultures program.

The 2025 Gwangyang International Media Art Festival (GIMAF) was held from 22 October to 4 November across several exhibition venues in Gwangyang and the surrounding region. The festival program was distributed across the Gwangyang Art Warehouse, Insori Park (Banchanggo), Yedam Warehouse, the Seoul National University Southern Practice Forest Residence, the Fisheries Distribution Center, and Gaya Art Hall. Over a fourteen-day period, the festival presented exhibitions and international exchange activities focused on contemporary media art practices.

As part of the festival’s international collaboration framework, the results of the “Grant Awarding Artist Selection Project,” co-hosted by GIMAF and Ars Electronica, were announced. The project was conducted under the “Gwangyang–Linz Exchange Grant,” a program designed to support emerging media artists from Korea and Austria.

The Austrian grant award was presented to Till Schönwetter, a student of the Art University of Linz, for a terrarium, an experimental work examining relationships between artificial intelligence and nature through generative systems. The award ceremony was scheduled to take place at the “Gwangyang–Linz Exchange” event prior to the opening of the Ars Electronica Festival on 3 November.

The Korean grant award was presented to Lee Jin for the immersive media installation Liminal Ring, which explored transitional states between digital and physical environments.

The Media Art Campus Program Exhibition was also presented during the festival. Within this program, a video documentary titled Lake Watchers was exhibited at the Seonghwang Sports Center. The project was developed by former Art University of Linz students: Hess Jeon, Sara Piñeros Cortés, Sara Koniarek, and Maria Orciuoli, together with artist Błażej Kotowski, in cooperation with Sungkyunkwan University. The project was funded by OÖ Landes-Kultur GmbH, Energie AG, Linz Kultur, and the Colombian Government’s Department of Culture.