MMCA Performing Arts 2026

​ “A schizophrenic out for a walk is a better mod - el than a neurotic lying on the analyst’s couch.” ― Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus At a time when artificial intelligence is expected to carry out computations and respond instantaneously, this project names those who observe the world over long durations—certain individuals, artists, and children—as “detectives.” Today, few remain who scrutinize someone else closely and puzzle over the traces they leave behind, apart from detectives. Such tenacious observation is not merely about the gathering of information. In fact, it carries within it a complex gaze: the belief that secrets and truths may be uncovered; the resolve to sustain a fundamental faith in humanity even while being suspicious of another human being; and the desire to foresee an approaching future through the act of tracing the past. The detectives invoked in this year’s MMCA Performing Arts: Deep Time (the literal translation of the Korean title is “Detective’s Time”) diverge slightly from classical sleuths and are entangled in two distinct currents of change, the first of which is the collapse of the detective’s “sense of privilege.” To begin, an external, privileged position is no longer possible in this field of work. So too is the belief that an individual can definitively solve complex problems, or firmly define oneself as the agent of such problem-solving. In today’s world, there is no single fixed truth—no specific perpetrator, no definitive answer—and the instability of identity, perpetually subject to fluctuation, transforms the position and perspective of the “detective” into something fundamentally different from before.