| Exhibition | Gentle Disturbance - Talking Paik |
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| Period | 2013-01-29 ~ 2013-06-30 |
| Venue | Nam June Paik Art Center, 1st Floor |
| Planning | |
| With increasing polarization between the old and new generations, political movements opposed to the existing social order ceaselessly occurred in Europe and America in the 60s and 70s. This was also the case in the sectors of art and culture. Such artists as Nam June Paik in their attempts to change the world employed video as a medium that could be shared with a larger audience. Video was an important tool for artists to challenge social absurdities. The exhibition Gentle Disturbance – Talking Paik begins with Guadalcanal Requiem, considered Paik’s most politically conscious work. The site of one of the most devastating battles in World War II, Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands, provides the material for Guadalcanal Requiem in which Paik not only comments on the destructive war but also challenges social taboos. Guadalcanal Requiem was premiered as part of the concert From Jail to Jungle at Carnegie Hall, New York in 1977. The jail here refers to the incident where Charlotte Moorman was arrested for the performance Opera Sextronique in 1967 in which she played the cello unclothed. Paik questioned social conventions by bringing issues of sexuality to the foreground in music and criticizing classical music which was too often treated in a serious and sacred manner. Calling attention to the memory and trauma experienced by war victors and victims, Paik caused gentle disturbance by his ways of working with video transcending time and space in Guadalcanal Requiem. This exhibition presents the works and materials of Paik’s ‘gentle disturbance,’ including Guadalcanal Requiem and Opera Sextronique, which raise questions about the meaning of political art and the nature of social participation. |
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| Summary | |
| I. Two Great Teachings: Marx and Schoenberg Nam June Paik’s radical stance was formed in his youth, intellectually influenced by Karl Marx and Arnold Schoenberg. Liberated from Japanese rule in 1945, Korea was flooded with new thoughts alongside aspirations for new societies. What Paik particularly took in among these were Schoenberg’s compositional methods doing away with the traditional system of musical notes, and the philosophical and political blueprint of Marx’s socialism for a classless society not subordinate to capital. A son of a wealthy businessman, Paik was fascinated for some time by Marxism in his schooldays dreaming of a utopian society. He was also absorbed in avant-garde art reading about Schoenberg and contemporary music. As a student of music composition in the mid-1940s, Paik used Sowol Kim’s poems as material for his compositions that resembled aspects of traditional Korean folk music; however, with the influence of Schoenberg, Paik began to compose atonal music. Furthermore, in his writings of the early 1990s such as “Pensées at 59” and “Charlotte Moorman: Chance and Necessity,” Paik remarked that intellectuals who espoused Marxism were so naïve to commit a folly failing in facing up to reality. II. Music and Sexuality Influenced by Arnold Schoenberg, Nam June Paik moved to Germany in 1954 to study music, where he wanted to become an artist who could detect and alert social changes to come. However, unlike Schoenberg, his preoccupation did not consist in renewing the form of music itself, but in obtaining variability of experience without losing its intensity. His compositions drawing on themes of sex were all an act of giving shock to social orders and the status quo of the art world. Challenging the fact that sex was a predominant parameter in art and literature but it was underdeveloped, even prohibited, in music, Paik deployed sexuality as a tactical device to disturb canons and traditions. Paik moved to the U.S.A in 1964, after which he met Charlotte Moorman and expanded music performance that dealt with sex as a subject matter. III. From Jail to Jungle, 1967-1977 In Nam June Paik’s work Opera Sextronique, Charlotte Moorman played the cello wearing a light bikini. Moorman was to remove articles of clothing and perform a bomb nude in the last movement. Halfway through the concert, her performance was interrupted by the police who arrested Moorman. The incident caused much controversy in American society, and Paik was even called a cultural terrorist. In commemoration of the 10th anniversary of Opera Sextronique Paik staged an event From Jail to Jungle in New York’s Carnegie Hall in 1977, which consisted of a restaged performance of Opera Sextronique, a re-enactment of courtroom proceedings, and a preview of Guadalcanal Requiem. The jail in From Jail to Jungle refers to the incident in which Moorman was arrested during Opera Sextronique, and the jungle to Guadalcanal Requiem, which was shot in Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands, a devastating battlefield in World War II. IV. Gentle Ruptures: Inside and Outside the Institution After Opera Sextronique, Nam June Paik’s art practice took a major change in direction, as he ventured outside the institutions of art and expanded into broadcasting. Keeping an eye on Paik’s TV art, WGBH, a Boston’s public broadcasting station, commissioned Paik and other video artists to produce work for a TV program. Their omnibus video The Medium is the Medium was the first TV program of video art which was indeed aired on the WGBH’s channel in 1969. The success of this program paved the way for consolidating the WGBH’s projects funded by the Rockefeller Foundation to support artists working in collaboration with the broadcasting station. Paik envisioned a ‘video common market’ which would enable global communication across countries without language barriers, different from existing TV programs as a unilateral information provider. Recalling this period of time, Paik noted that considerable frustration he underwent in working with broadcasting stations were actually important for him as a socially influential experience. |
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