Image: Mumok, Vienna
mumok in Vienna has announced Hyeji Nam’s performance ‘MANSHIN’ as part of ImPulsTanz 2026, with presentations on 2 and 4 August. According to the museum’s event listing, the work brings masks of spirits, digital avatars and futuristic shamanism onto the stage, using myths, rituals and artificial intelligence to connect past and present. The performance is described as a solo work lasting 60 minutes and presented in English.
The announcement appears within mumok’s summer programme for August, which also highlights ImPulsTanz performances, curator-led tours of the museum’s current exhibitions and a children’s and families’ holiday programme. In the same newsletter and event calendar, mumok notes that ImPulsTanz – Vienna International Dance Festival is visiting the museum for the 11th time in 2026 and that this year’s festival presence spans July and August.
For ‘MANSHIN’, the museum’s text emphasizes Nam’s interest in the Korean ‘Gut’ ceremony, in which shamans dance, sing and fall into trance accompanied by drums. Nam is quoted on the event page saying that the ceremony’s atmosphere has long fascinated her. The performance uses that frame to reflect on presence, memory, loss and belonging, while blurring the boundaries between cultural tradition and digital innovation.
mumok describes Nam as a Vienna-based Korean artist and notes that the work combines performance, music and visual art as equal artistic means. The language of the project is strongly interdisciplinary, with the institution presenting it as a “mystical investigation” into complex existence and transformation in the postdigital age. The event listing also warns that the performance contains theatrical fog, strobe effects, loud noises and loud music.
The festival’s broader 2026 programme at mumok includes eight productions, with performances taking place on Level -2 in Tolia Astakhishvili’s exhibition ‘Figure of the Child’, in the white cube of mumok kino and in the museum’s Hofstallung. In the same overview, mumok says the current edition gives particular weight to prominent Vienna-based positions and includes four world premieres and the [8:tension] Young Choreographers’ Series.
Within that line-up, Nam’s ‘MANSHIN’ is scheduled for Sunday, 2 August at 8 pm and Tuesday, 4 August at 7 pm. The page lists tickets as available through ImPulsTanz.
