Sex, Zen and Videotapes:
Nam June Paik’s Dream of a
Humane Technology
Nam June Paik
set standards for the production and perception of video art with his
television projects, installations, performances, collaborations, and the
development of new artistic tools. Even if his fame is primarily based on
his video creations, Paik’s work would have been unthinkable without his
intense involvement in 20th-century European music. Oliver Koerner von
Gustorf on Paik’s progress through avant-garde music and Fluxus
performance art to his early video works, which called for a more humane
and creative approach to technology.
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Magnet TV, video installation, 1965
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Empty Roads
”March 1963.
While I was devoting myself to research on video, I lost my interest in
action music to a certain extent. After twelve performances of
Karl Heinz Stockhausen’s
Originale I started a new life from November 1961. By starting a new
life I mean that I stocked my whole library except those on TV technique
into storage and locked it up. I read and practised only on electronics.
In other words, I went back to the Spartan days of my pre-college days …
Only in physics and electronics…” Breaking with the habitual, calling
traditions, teachings, and schools into question was something that would
carry throughout all of Paik’s artistic career.
At the same time, Paik’s questioning always signified a reshuffling and served
to transport what he’d learned into new contexts. Paik the boy genius, the
video terrorist, the philosopher, the enfant terrible, the media star. At
first glance, these roles seem as incompatible as the diverse
manifestations of his artistic activity.
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Nam June Paik:TV Buddha, 1974 Closed
Circuit –
video
installation. ©Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
In TV Buddha (1974), probably his most well-known work, the stone
Buddha meditating contemplatively before his video likeness on the monitor
facing him presents an opposing pole to the hectic performance images
showing Paik injuring himself or the cellist
Charlotte Moorman being arrested (following the striptease performance of
Paik’s Opera Sexotronique in the mid-sixties, both Moorman
and the artist were taken into custody). Paik’s simple gesture of taking
the reduced white line on the screen of a defective TV set, turning it 90
degrees, and calling it
Zen for TV seems worlds apart from the gigantic opulence of the video
tower The More The Better, which he installed for the 1988
Olympics in Seoul and which was comprised of 1,003 monitors. Paik once
said: ”Actually, I have no principles. I go where the empty roads are.” In
this sense, his works unite a baffling pragmatism capable of forging new
paths with the concern for an art th at can express itself beyond the
boundaries of doctrine, one that doesn’t rely upon words or text to serve
the direct experience of self-revelation.
The More the Better, 1988 Three-Channel
video installation with 1003 monitors, steel construction,
height: 56 ft. Installied for the opening of the Olympic Games,
Seoul, 1988, National Museum of Modern Art, Seoul, 1988
©Photo: Yong-woo
Lee
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