Nam June Paik was a South Korean artist who grew up mainly study music and sound. Paik became famous as a member of the fluxus society of artists before moving to New York in 1964 to work on a wider range of collaborative sound based art projects. During his early years of living in New York Paik worked with cellist Charlotte Moorman writing her music for her which gave him the financial means to start working on his own art projects. ,The technology of television and the movement of information became the primary subject of Paik’s art'. Paik had a lot of faith in technology as is quoted as saying ‘technology would enable people to communicate immediately’ even before the internet was a thing. Most of his art is video based and he would later go onto marry another video artist Shigeko Kubota.
Zen for TV, 1963/1981
Paik was one of the first artists to work with what was then the new technology of the TV. He did loads of research into the construction of TVs and then used his knowledge to dismantle TVs in his art. Zen for TV almost became a franchise for Paik as he did a number of different pieces around this idea within the 20 year period. The piece below is an early piece the simply consists of a TV on its side and the screen has been collapsed into a single line.
TV Buddha,1974/2002
Paiks renowned 1974 installation TV Buddha features an 18th century Buddha sculpture doing the Mudra hand gesture which symbolises tranquil meditation. He then has a camera on top of a screen in front of him which is capturing the Buddhas face creating this never ending cycle. I found this piece particularly interesting as like what I am trying to do as one part of my project Paik uses old (sculpture) and new (TV) items to show how things will always to continue to go around in circles no matter how things many new things get added to that circle. One of Paiks intentions was to show the then futuristic elements vs the historical ones and I interpret this piece as Paik thinking TV would almost become a new culture but no mater how much new culture there was there will still always be religious and more traditional cultures and beliefs. This is similar to how I wanted my piece to be as I wanted to use old TVs in the centre of the room to contrast with the new technology of the projectors that wold be projecting the world problems onto the walls. The reference I wanted to make was that mental health issues have always been there they have just been shoved in the cupboard to be forgotten about and maybe some things have changed (represented by the projections) but the old problems still remain and finally people are starting to take those issues out the cupboard dust them off and take more notice of them.
Paik had already seen that screens were starting to take over and so this piece also represents the grip he thought technology would have over people in the future which he correctly predicted. The piece also shows Paiks thoughts on how self absorbed society was becoming as you have Buddah contemplating yet still absorbed in his own image with use of the camera. The use of the camera also implies he blamed the media and technology for this increase in self abortion which is something that has now gone further than that with people actually not being able to leave the house without looking perfect because other selfish people have made money by posting perfect edited photos of themselves online. It has now become a marketing ploy to people feel as bad as they can for how they look to make them buy products and it is something I personally struggle with. One of the themes of my piece will also be manipulation because essentially as an artists of any sort it's what we do, we manipulate objects and things to to make people feel a certain way however where the media manipulate people to make money as artists I feel it is our duty to manipulate people in a way that is almost like being a journalist be shedding light on issues that others might want to be swept under the carpet for example Mental health. The government would love to forget mental health problems exist and the keep cutting funding to treatment centres and so the more awareness people like myself and other artists can create through are work the less able to government will be to just forget these issues exist. "Paik ensured that the transmission is ambiguous such that different interpretations and cultural inferences can be translated to shape a better understanding of society then and now." (Public delivery, 2019).
Electronic Superhighway, 1971/1974
Nam June Paik's Electronic Superhighway is a fascinating explosion of the senses. It consists of 3750 feet of cable, 50 DVD players, 575 feet of multi coloured tubing and 336 TVs and this all comes together to map out the states of America. Paik wanted the piece to show how peoples understanding of different places and country around the world were becoming determined by how we saw they place portrayed by the media. Paik does this by using different coloured tube lights for each state and inside is a number of TVs showing clips that were hand selected by Paik of what he thought peoples stereotypical thoughts were when you mentioned that state for example Mississippi is represented by clips from the civil rights movement. As well as the mis representation of America Paik also wanted to get across his beliefs that in the future technology would leave humans boundary-less and of course with the internet his beliefs have become a reality and he was predicting this in the 70s. Although I do not have the budget to create something as big and as in your face as this I can still create a piece that has meaning and makes a viewer feel overwhelmed. I also like the fact that Paik was using TVs back then to represent the future where as in my piece I will be using the same sort of TVs he used for this piece to represent the past.
References-
Nam June Paik 1932-2006 | Tate (2020). Available at: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/nam-june-paik-6380 (Accessed: 23 March 2020).
Nam June Paik's TV Buddhas - His best-known work (2019). Available at: https://publicdelivery.org/nam-june-paik-tv-buddha/ (Accessed: 23 March 2020).
Nam June Paik. Zen for TV. 1963/1981 | MoMA (2020). Available at: https://www.moma.org/collection/works/163792 (Accessed: 23 March 2020).
Nam June Paik, Electronic Superhighway: Continental U.S., Alaska, Hawaii (article) | Khan Academy (2020). Available at: https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/ap-art-history/global-contemporary/a/paik-electronic-superhighway (Accessed: 28 March 2020).
Nam June Paik's legendary Electronic Superhighway (2018). Available at: https://publicdelivery.org/nam-june-paik-electronic-superhighway/ (Accessed: 28 March 2020).
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