Dimensions / 20.3×25.4cm (8x10inch)
Medium / B&W Photograph

‘Walking, running, looking at passersby, pondering, and smiling.’ Nam June Paik asked Manfred Leve to take photographs of those seemingly meaningless actions. The venue was Galerie 22 where used to be the gallery where Paik’s Hommage à John Cage was first shown. At that time, the twenty-five-year-old Paik was unsuccessfully striving to take the opportunity to premiere his first composition at the International Summer Course for New Music in Darmstadt. It was Jean-Pierre Wilhelm, the owner of Galerie 22, who stretched the hand of help to this disappointed young artist. Since then, Wilhelm became a powerful patron for Fluxus artists including Paik. After ten years had passed since Wilhelm died, Paik memorialized him with the most common everyday behaviors. In the moment when the media of life and of art were unified as one, Paik himself became the most meaningful intermedia.