| Exhibition | More than 30 minutes |
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| Period | 2018-02-15 ~ 2018-09-26 |
| Venue | Nam June Paik Art Center Gallery 1 |
| Planning | |
| More than 30 minutes is an exhibition that sheds new light on Nam June Paik's video art in the context of the Counterculture that swept America and Europe in the 1960s. Nam June Paik's work was also influenced by such a cultural background of American society in the '60s, a decade in which reflections on the Western civilization gradually grew into a movement against the established values. Behind Nam June Paik's progressive video art exists a new vision of communication sought in the midst of the Countercultural upheaval. It was also Paik's urgent solution for contemporary people who just entered the age of commodicfication and automation. The title 'More than 30 minutes' came from the text “Afterlude to the Exsposition of Experimental Television”(1963) written by Paik, in which he encouraged viewers to watch his television more than 30 minutes. The exhibition interpreted the meaning of 30 minutes as a requisite for a sympathy with others as well as a journey of communication. According to Paik, video art is not only a passage of 'harmonious chaos' to escape from now and here, but also a starting point of imagination to move into there and beyond. We hope that his video art will melt our heart overwhelmed by the flood of information into a strong bond of sympathy. |
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| Summary | |
| Ⅰ. Flower Children The American postwar generation who grew up in a relatively liberal environment conflicted with each other over the issues of political oppression and ideological battle in the circumstances of the Cold War led by the older generation. The Hippie Movement begun by the American Beat Generation in the 1950s gradually spread out among the youth, students and intellectuals and contributed to establishing the age of the most liberal and extreme imagination in world history, while leading the Counterculture Movement in the 1960s. Nam June Paik expressed his respect to their passion for freedom and life by creating video works on the poet Allen Ginsberg(1926∼1997), an theatre company The Living Theatre and an composer John Cage(1912∼1992) who got involved in the Counterculture movement. Ⅱ. Psychedelic + Cybernetics = ?? Art historian David Joselit interpreted the meaning of dancing patterns used in Paik's Participation TV as a 'psychedelic experience' and pointed out that Paik adopted a psychedelic effect attempted by the Hippie Movement of the time through the LSD. This point is similar to the acid effect by drugs. In the text “Video Synthesizer Plus”(1970) that he wrote, Paik stated that his Participation TV was a way of transplanting the ontology of drug to a safer and authentic medium. He aimed to erase the trace of goods and generate vibrations or noises by distorting video signals and diffusing these images. Nam June Paik provided the viewers with an imaginative experience of moving into another place beyond the screen by disturbing the system of TV, a new substitute for spirituality in the age of commercial capitalism. Ⅲ. Turn on, tune in, drop out The interest in the human brain (neural networks) and mind was a theme that connected Cybernetics with Counterculture closely. Many scholars in those days believed that drug experiments served to eliminate a distinction between mind and substance and recover the spirituality of humans lost during the course of modernization by offering an experience of the feedback effect of the flash and body. Nam June Paik considered that video and TV would replace the effect of drugs in everyday life as they could provide an experience of transcending time and space. Paik saw both the body and TV as a medium in which information was exchanged and believed that a new meaning was created during the process of information exchange. Ⅳ. Video Telepathy Nam June Paik focused on the fact that TV delivered information from a distance immediately and video saved and manipulated the information. This new medium on the basis of the light beyond the physical exchange of information realized the phenomenon that psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung(1875∼1961) defined as synchronicity in the ordinary space. An experience of synchronicity in which the events that are distant and seemingly with no causal relationship take place by a medium of meaning, helps appear the remote objects in the spatiotemporal aspect in front of myself led by my spirit (or mind). In this sense, it is also linked to creativity. Nam June Paik stated that his video art was like a seed within the overlap of art and communication because he thought the mind created in the process of communication was a source of creativity that could help go beyond here and now. |
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