Held in conjunction with the participating artists’ site visits to Gwangju, the public programs opened up the dialogues that usually remain internal to the Biennale’s production. Invited artists were paired with local interlocutors for various gatherings. During the first public program October 1–2, 2019, audiences joined a ritual drawn from Dionysian and Indian rites led by Angelo Plessas; traveled through sonic registers and shamanic figurations of the lower world with Yin-Ju Chen; interpreted engineered sculptures as spirit beings from Aztec cosmology and Nahua worldview with Fernando Palma Rodríguez; and encountered choreographed machine learning with Judy Radul. Sangdon Kim launched an inquiry into the politics of the dead and disappeared as part of the unresolved historical legacy of Gwangju. Sylbee Kim, in conversation with curator Kim Younghee, explored how the metaphysical aspects of religion connect to contemporary prospects of immortality. John Gerrard linked an intensive engagement with neural networks and deep learning to a protagonist drawn from Celtic paganism. Gala Porras-Kim queried taxonomies of living and dead objects while contesting linguistic protocols of conservation.