Curated by Lucio Cabutti, Denis Curti and Marisa Vescovo, a well orchestrated exhibition was dedicated to the work of Nam June Paik at Palazzo Cavour in Turin from September, 14 to November, 17, 2002.

The Korean artist is in primis well-known for K 456: a robot assembled in 1964 in conformity with an architecture very distant from the models described in science fiction at that time, and equipped by a frail structure. The first appearance of K 456 was in New York Park at Washington Square. Its characteristics are a metaphor valid even today to reflect on our bond with technology.

Paik has the great merit to have contributed to redefine the figure of the artist, connecting communication, interaction and flux in an unusual way. A synergy that today may seem banal; but half a century ago it resulted less unacceptable to the general public, than to the academics.
Nevertheless, in a certain way Nam June Paik re-actualises the authentic making of art: «To follow roads and uncertain paths, to gather discordance and dissonance. To stress differences, declare an identity, add diversity and recover spaces for comparison» (pp. 15-16). We cannot forget the game that, as Mario Perniola states (L'estetica del Novecento, Bologna 1997), has characterised a great part of XX century experimentation: it isn't a chance that Paik often dialogues with John Cage, met in 1958 in Germany - a mother country of musical avant-garde.

Nam June Paik is often mentioned for the 'invention' of video-art - for «the introduction (...) of moving electronic images in the art world» (p. 46. We cannot forget Wolf Vostell's experiments inaugurated in 1959 with TV-dé/collage). As video-artist, Nam June Paik makes his first appearance in 1963 with an installation untitled Music-Electronic Television, staged at the Parnass Gallery in Wuppertal: «Thirteen randomly placed video monitors that filled the space with still images interacting with the spectators» (ibid.).
An effective turning point happens the following year thanks to the meeting - mediated by Cage and Joseph Beuys - with the Lituanian George Maciunas, founder of Fluxus.
In Paik's definition, Fluxus is "perfection that becomes error, and that transforms itself into error, getting to the end and having to start from the beginning again" (p. 32). The group-movement finds in Paik a partial refutation of the intrinsic negativity of mass media; otherwise, the Korean artist is confronted with the essential elements of New York art: predominance of the artistic process on the work, interdisciplinarety and a kind of Duchampian 'cult' for provoking performance (see Zen for Film (1962-64), 30' of transparent slide, analogous to the much celebrated 4' 33'' (of complete silence) by John Cage and the white canvas of Robert Rauschenberg, in their shared heterodox reference to Oriental culture).

In 1964, Charlotte Moorman too joins Fluxus: she will seal a thirty years long sodality with Nam June Paik.
Violoncellist in the American Symphony Orchestra directed by renowned Stokowski, she had just founded New York Avant-Garde Festival. The couplet signs collaborations such as Opera Sextronique (1967), desecrant reflection on the role of sexuality in media, and TV Garden (1974), in which a complex relationship between nature and technique is shown.

During the Seventies and Eighties, Nam June Paik distinguishes himself by his strenuous engagement - among others, next to Cage, Moorman, Beuys, Laurie Anderson and Merce Cunningham - in evidencing the possibilities of an alternative use of TV: «Paik concentrates on the transformation of television images, and in particular on their distortion or deformation, as the way through which it is possible to overcome the uncontrolled influence of media» (p. 99).
From this point of view, Good Morning Mr. Orwell (1984) is particularly relevant: first time a satellitar technology is used for non-military scope, and a television programme is diffused on the entire planet (New York, Paris, Koln, Locarno and Seoul are cited as places of production), «contradicting Orwell's piece on the [intrinsic] negativity of the technological means» (p. 50). A group of artists takes part in this enterprise: from Allen Ginsberg to Philip Glass, from Yves Montand to Salvador Dalí.

The link between art and technology is emphasised by Nam June Paik with pioneering genius: with Cage, Fuller, McLuhan, Rauschenberg and Billy Kluver, the Korean artist takes part in the groups Experiments in Art and Technology (cf. see Stephen Wilson, Information Arts, Cambridge (MA)-London 2002, pp. 388 and 681 and links http://www.swif.uniba.it/lei/recensioni/crono/2002-12/index.html). «Using a dizzying play of metaphors, synaesthesias, extrapolations, interactions, experiences and inventions, he experimented with aesthetics and looked at new audiovisual technologies and irreplaceable and overwhelming factors of innovation for the development of art and the fruition of culture» (p. 98).

Paik's original ideas don't show any fascination for the post-human aesthetics dominant in avant-garde art. «He does not think the 'body' is an anachronistic residue incapable of living in our artificial environment» (p. 53); to the contrary, «the electronic aesthetic (...) is the value added to the relaunch of corporeity catalysed by mass communication» (p. 106): «The entire twentieth century has been marked by this great competition between media technology and art. And artists have been the priests, victims and antennae of this challenge all at once» (p. 95).

Certainly we can agree with those critics who recognised a certain humanism implied by the acts of Nam June Paik. However, they all still value a work in which «video is the most versatile, rapid, and involving language that freely expresses both scientific intelligence and aesthetic imagination translated into knowledge and conscience» (p. 123).

In conclusion, a right approbation has to be addressed to the editors of AIAM (International Academy of Art and Media, Turin) archive: taking advantage of DIVA (Digital Integrated Video Archive) system, interfaced by a tactile screen, they have made possible an intuitive and real time fruition of the whole Paik production.
Certainly such a tool will become fundamental to everyone wishing to deepen the study of video-art, and we foretell that this example will be followed by many museums of contemporary art prematurely monumentalised.

Summary

Nam June Paik: video is boring (Henry Martin)
Nam June Paik (Denis Curti)
Nam June Paik, Charlotte Moorman Broadcast on all Channels (Marisa Vescovo)
The Magmatic Television Camera of Video-Alchimist Nam June Paik (Lucio Cabutti)
Works in the Exhibition
Video' Specifications (Lucio Cabutti and Giuliana Centini)
Biography
Solo Exhibitions and Catalogues
Group Exhibitions and Catalogues
[A Reader of the Wall Street Journal (from a conversation between Nam June Paik and Antonina Zaru, New York, August 1992)]

Biography

Nam June Paik (Seoul 1932), graduates in Composition and History of Art at the University of Tokyo. Aesthetics Ph.D in Germany, then he moves to New York and joins Fluxus. Before this exhibition, the last great solo exhibition was at Guggenheim of New York in 2001.

Links

Hopefulmonster Publisher (Turin) http://www.hopefulmonster.net