Oulu Music Video Festival's theme is Hyper Reality

The 32nd Oulu Music Video Festival will take place on August 21–24, 2025. This year's festival theme is Hyper Reality.

The modern music video was born into a world where media no longer just depicted reality but began to produce it. French philosopher Jean Baudrillard called this phenomenon hyperreality: visual imagery replicates itself to the point where the original reality disappears. In the 1980s, the power of simulation was especially evident in the United States, where advertising, television, and consumer culture turned products into symbols of identity. The golden age of music television reflected this transformation. Today, AI, VR and deepfake technologies, video games, reality TV, and social media platforms have made hyperreality a part of everyday life—alongside which physical reality, as we understand it, appears like an illusion, a pale imitation.

“Music videos are part of hyperreality, but they can also dismantle it—return the experience to the body, to time and space. I’ve curated screenings for the festival that mix 'traditional' music videos with experimental short films. OMVF wants to ask how music video might be freed again as an art form, reaching back to its avant-garde roots of the 1920s. A music video can be so much more than just a product to market music,” says artistic director Joel Karppanen.

The festival’s new visual identity and the Pumpeli Awards for the best music videos have been designed by video artist and illustrator Irene Suosalo. Based in Helsinki, Suosalo works primarily with animation loops and video installations, blending analog and digital techniques. She textures and compresses her animations using video synthesizers, in a way reminiscent of creating electronic music. Suosalo’s retro aesthetic often references experimental animation, abstract art, and techno culture. Internationally, she is known for illustrations published in outlets such as The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Bloomberg. 

The first program announcements for the festival will be made later this spring. 

Submissions are currently open for the first-ever international music video competition in OMVF’s history, the OMVF Nordic Music Video Competition.

Photo: Adele Hyry