Dimensions / 30.4×40.2cm
Medium / Black & white photograph on baryta paper

Taken by Manfred Montwé, this is a photograph of Listening to Music through the Mouth, one of the works featured in Nam June Paik’s first solo show Exposition of Music – Electronic Television held in Galerie Parnass in Wuppertal in March 1963. From an antique record player, a cartridge was removed and instead a phallic-shaped object was mounted. Placing a needle on the record, you would hold the phallic device and listen to the record by feeling its vibrations. Paik transformed the body part that makes sound, into the one that hears sound, with an erotic connotation added. According to Montwé’s recollections, Paik asked him to take a special picture, and in the morning when there was no visitor, Paik tried Listening to Music through the Mouth himself to photograph.