Cinema and Media: USI Students Visit "K-Now! Korean Video Art Today"

Students enrolled in the Preparing for the Future of Cinema and the Audiovisual Arts course, part of the Bachelor's degree at USI Faculty of Communication, Culture and Society, recently visited the exhibition "K-Now! Korean Video Art Today" at the Museo d'arte della Svizzera italiana (MASI) in Lugano. The visit served to supplement the course curriculum taught by Professor Kevin B. Lee and doctoral researcher Flavia Mazzarino. The module explores how emerging technologies and shifts in media ecosystems are redefining cinema and the moving image.

The exhibition, which runs at MASI until 19 July 2026, showcases the work of eight new-generation Korean artists and collectives whose artistic practice has developed within a society caught between an unresolved war and rapid transformation. Curated by Francesca Benini and Je Yun Moon (former deputy director of the Art Sonje Center in Seoul), the exhibition is designed as an immersive experience. The works address some of the most pressing questions of our globalised present: from the relationship between technology and the human body to history, memory, tradition, migration, and the increasing demands of contemporary working life. Engaging directly with these pieces provided USI students with a vivid, experiential framework for the course's central questions: what it means to imagine and prepare for the future of the moving image.