The Nam June Paik Art Center proudly announces the launch of its lecture and discussions series with The Gift of Nam June Paik 1, a seminar commemorating th closing of its inaugural festival Now Jump.

The Gift of Nam June Paik 1 gathers specialists from various fields to celebrate Nam June Paik’s creativity and expand discussions on his work. As a concluding journey of the Now Jump Festival, the seminar ambitions to sketch a landscape where neglected aspects of Paik’s practice can be considered and supported. Reactivating and actualizing the memory of the named characteristic of Paik’s life, the different speakers’ presentations and areas of expertise echo the boundless terrain of Paik’s practice suggesting that being a pioneer of video art was only a single station within a much larger journey. What topics and perspectives can be imagined within contemporary social and political contexts when departing from this extended territory for Paik’s practice?

The first two sessions of the seminar are intended to promote shifts in presumptions and activate discourses on Paik that extend beyond established presuppositions. In the morning of February 4, Bazon Brock addresses the socio-political contexts of post war Germany in relation to artistic practice, possibly situating the historical meeting of Paik and television within a larger framework. Midori Yamamura follows these arguments with a presentation on the new ontology that threaded through Japan, the United States and Europe in the period following World War II in relation to Paik and the formative Fluxus movement.

In the afternoon, Kim Suki examines the cultural context of Korea under Japanese colonization during the 1930s and 1940s and Mary Bauermeister offers testimonial of her close relationship with Paik during his stay in Germany. Further enhancing this focus on Paik’s early years, and the transgressions in his way of thinking that place him in between East and West, Kim Jin-sok delves into the philosophical frameworks of the communities and societies influential to Paik’s practice.

On February 5, the main themes are performativity and the notion of time, and nomadism. Lee Young-chul share his exhibition-making experience and the dialogue it established with Paik’s philosophy for the creation of the Now Jump Festival. Hannah Higgins discusses experience and Fluxus, while architect/poet Haam Seong-ho considers the notion of time and experience in Zen Buddhism.

The concluding sessions concentrates on nomadism and how Paik continuously jumped from place to place, both geographically and chronologically. The notion of nomadic life is examined through anthropological, socio-political and futurological references by Yi-Jinkyung and Cho Hyun-il. Their presentations aim to imagine, through Paik’s practice, the potential social structures, territories and political terrains it may inspire.

Bazon Brock
Professor of Aesthetics and Communication Design at Wupperthal University, Bazon Brock is widely known as a leading German theoretician of art. Brock participated alongside Josef Beuys, Alan Kaprow and Nam June Paik in many happenings, action teachings and performances.

Kim Suki
Kim Suki is the director of Hyunsil Munwha Publishers and lecturer at the Korea National University of Arts. Kim’s fields of research include art criticism, cultural studies and post colonial modernization. His vies on these subjects inform his activity as a cultural mediator.

Kim Jin-sok
Kim Jin-sok is professor of Humanities at Inha University. kim’s critical writings span from the political th to literary. Kim is the editor of the academic journals Literature and Society, People and Philosophy, and Social Criticism and is also the author of several books.

Hannah Higgins
Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Illinois Chicago, Hannah Higgins is the author of Fluxus Experience(University of California Press, 2002) and the forthcoming The Grid Book(MIT Press, March, 2009). Higgins is the daughter of Fluxus artists Alison Knowles and Dick Higgins.

Cho Hyun-il
Cho Hyun-il studied Architectural Design and Aesthetics at British Columbia University, Canada. Cho’s field of research centers on architectural theory and non-linear dynamics. He recently published a book titled 1000.

Midori Yamamura
A lecturer at the Museum of Modern Art and an art history PhD candidate, Midori Yamamura is currently a 2008-2009 resident fellow at the City University of New York Graduate Center, Center for the Place, Culture, and Politics. She has curated exhibitions and written critical essays in both Japanese and English.

Mary Bauermeister
Mary Bauermeister is an artist renowned for her Atelier Mary Bauemeister. Between 1960 and 1962, she hosted many performances by artists and composers associated later with Fluxus and experimental music, from John Cage, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Lamonte Young, George Brecht and David Tudor to Nam June Paik.

Lee Young-chul
Young-chul Lee is Director of the Nam June Paik Art Center and artistic director for its inaugural festival Now Jump. He has been curator or artistic director of the 1997 Gwangju Biennial, 2000 Busan Biennial, and 2005 Anyang Public Art Project, as well as Professor at the Kaywon School of Art and Design.

Haam Seong-ho
Haam Seong-ho, poet/architect, is the author of the poetry anthologies Very Beautiful Illness and Taj Mahal, Haam has also published a travelogue of Tibet titled Document of Nothingness. Currently he is focusing on his architectural practice.

Yi Jin-kyung
Yi Jin-kyung is humanities professor at Seoul National University of Technology. His field of research includes nomadism and communism with an emphasis on the practicalities and ethics of revolutionary lives. Yi Jin-kyung is the author of Nomadism, The Capital beyond Capital, and The Future of Marxism.

Jung Hun-yee
Jung Hun-yee is a professor and art historian at Hansung University. Her field of research includes Nam June Paik and various modes of artistic production. Jung’s writings include Zen Times in Nam Jun Paik’s Works, Pornography and Metaphysics, The realm of the imaginary in Art History.

Kim Nam-soo
Kim Nam-soo is performing arts and dance critic. currently he is at the Nam June Paik Art Center and is also on the editorial board of the performing arts magazine titled Pan. Kim’s field of research centers on the interdisciplinary development of theatre, dance, media and installation.

DAY 1
11:00 – 11:15 Welcome
11:20 – 11:50 Bazon Brock
11:55 – 12:25 Hannah Higgins
12:30 – 13:00 Discussion (Moderation by Jung Hun-yee)
13:00 – 14:15 Lunch Break
14:20 – 14:50 Kim Suki
14:55 – 15:25 Mary Bauermeister
15:30 – 16:00 Kim Jin-sok
16:05 – 17:00 Discussion (Moderation by Jung Hun-yee)

DAY 2
11:00 – 11:15 Welcome
11:20 – 11:50 Lee Young-chul
11:55 – 12:25 Midori Yamamura
12:30 – 13:00 Haam Seong-ho
13:00 – 14:15 Lunch Break
14:20 – 14:50 Discussion (Moderation by Kim Nam-soo)
14:55 – 15:25 Yi Jin-kyung
15:30 – 16:00 Cho Hyun-il
16:05 – 17:00 Discussion (Moderation by Kim Nam-soo)