경기문화재단, 백남준아트센터

Goethe-Institut Korea , Dasan Art , Perrier

Wrap around the World is a project Nam June Paik completed for the 1988 Seoul Olympics. He tried to symbolize the end of the Cold War era by connecting all the regions and cultures around the world using the satellite system. Many countries including China and Russia across the East and West participated in this project, and the boundaries between genre and cultural hierarchies were dissolved. Most importantly, the project presented one, unified Earth beyond the limitations of physical distance by consolidating the physical realm of regional cultures using the satellite system. Nam June Paik Art Center’s Wrap around the Time builds on Wrap around the World, as a special exhibition planned for the 10th anniversary since Paik’s passing. The project attempts to go a step further from consolidating physical spaces, and dissolve/connect the temporal gaps between the past, present, and future. Such space-time compressions will take place through Paik, as well as the collaboration of contemporary artists. Nam June Paik Art Center selected contemporary media artists who will produce and prove various discourses across the past and the present by researching Paik’s works, building a research center comprising humanists, scientists, and aestheticians around the world. The exhibition will present their work in relation to with Paik’s works that serve as original inspirations. Though this process, we will be reminded of the fact that Paik’s art world stands firm at the foundation of various contemporary cultural phenomena and discourses. Through Wrap around the Time, various studies will be conducted about Paik, and new discourses will be generated. Also, Paik and contemporary artists will become one across the spatial and temporal gap between the 20th and the 21st centuries. Our focus is not only on re-illuminating Paik’s art, but also focusing on and verifying the infinite expandability of Paik’s artistic world.

Sora Kim | Frantic Drive of Two Points that Continuously Boo, Bunt, Disturb and Obsessively Run after Each Other | 2016 | sound installation | dimensions variable | performer: Minhee Park, Jungyeop Jeong
Sora Kim’s work is about two sounds that coexist and interfere with each other. There are hidden speakers at the two extremities of the lozenge-shaped room; one speaker emits human voice, and the other plays bass guitar. The sounds seem to be assisting each other, but then turn toward interference, shuttling between resonance and disturbance. We human beings have been steeped in the ultimate hubris of believing that the human voice out-values all other sounds, dismissing the brays of cows, the sounds of cells dividing, or the subtle acoustics of trees growing as insignificant. However, the human voice is being constantly interrupted by the sounds of different winds, street noise, or even the pulsating rhythm of his/her very own heart. The human voice is not sovereign. It is only one of the countless noises that fill the world. This work only serves to remind us of this mundane reality. This does not mean that the human voice is abrasive in its acoustics. The bass guitar would help vocalization. Nam June Paik appears to have foregone distinction between good or bad signals. To him, all signals were merely different forms of noise. Therefore, his act of using a magnet to interfere with TV signals was akin to throwing a cup of water into the vast sea of signals. Why are people making such a big deal out of his work, then? Perhaps we are trying to believe in the purity of sounds, even more so than the purity of ideology, when complete acoustic purity never really exists amidst the infinite ocean of signals into which Paik threw his cup of water. Sora Kim’s work introduces us to the uncanny phenomenon of the human voice becoming the sound of the bass guitar, and the bass guitar taking up the human voice in its sonic embodiment. That is, if we are tenacious enough to spend over an hour in that space. (written by Young-june Lee)




Joyce Hinterding | Monotone Rectilinear (VLF energy scavenging antenna) | 2016 | graphite, custom leads, mixer, headphones | dimensions variable | courtesy of Sarah Cottier Gallery
Shifting fields of electronic energy generate sound by binding with the energy arising from the viewers’ act of touching the drawing, shown in the form of a graffiti drawing installation. Viewer participation is part of the work itself, serving as the surrounding environment that materializes the electronic energy. The works of Joyce Hinterding explores physical and virtual aspects – her spiral graffiti gradually obtains a structure that resonates with energy, automatic purification, and narration. When amplified, the graffiti becomes an algorithm that generates audible sounds and manifests playable features. The spiral form exists as an invisible force of artistic patterns and circular loops, functioning as a capacity that demonstrates the “force of earth” or “the song of space”; apart from this poetic significance, this piece constantly functions by moving alongside the electromagnetic field.

Carsten Nicolai | crt mgn | 2013 | neon lights, cameras, TV, permanent magnets, pendulum system, sound system | dimensions variable | courtesy of Galeri EIGEN + ART Leipzig/Berlin and Pace Gallery
Four neon tubes are vertically installed on the wall. The light is transformed into signals through the TV screen, and recorded with a video camera. The images on the screens are deformed by the magnet attached to a pendulum, which moves above the screens in an irregular pattern, tied to an aluminum structure. The moving magnet greatest electromagnetic fields, transforming the acoustic signals in the electric circuit and generating sound. Under the magnet’s influence, the images are deformed, shaken, and mobile on the TV screen with changing colors and forms. The inspiration of this work dates back to an event held to honor Nam June Paik’s memory after his passing (2006), at the Watarium Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo, 2007. At the time, the Watarium family and Ryuichi Sakamoto invited Carsten Nicolai to perform, which inspired the artist to recreate the distorted images in Paik’s 1965 production TV Magnet. This performance was restaged by the Cartier Foundation in Paris, 2012, and became the source of crt mgn. Nicolai is a musician and an influential media artist who produces electronic music under the name of ‘Alva Note.’

Jungki Baek | Redhouse | 2016 | plant, fish bowl, fish, candle, thermoelement, cultivation lamp, wood, glass, mixed media | 300x494x294cm
Jungki Beak has been telling stories of water, energy flows, and the concept of circulation through practical and logical works using scientific processes. In Redhouse, Beak goes a step further from juxtaposing and fusing natural objects (trees, soil, and fish) with representative technologies from the twentieth century, as Nam June Paik did in his works TV Garden and TV Fish. Beak ecologically connects Nature and machines through photosynthesis, and the movement of oxygen and energy. This piece consists of a plant cultivation lamp, a plant, a fish bowl containing gold fish, a lit candle, and a device that transforms the heat from the candle into electric energy, all encased in a sealed greenhouse. Every component is organically interconnected; the removal of any component would disrupt the energy cycle, resulting in the collective death of all life forms in the greenhouse. Beak shows how Nature, humans (the candle), and technology (the cultivation lamp) are all interdependent within the sealed environment we call contemporary society, while also attesting to our anthropocentric attitude of viewing Nature as an object to be conquered, showing its inherent limitation.

Isabella Fürnkäs | Vice Versa | 2015 | 2 channel video, sound, mattress | 22min
Two TV monitors are obliquely stationed on a white mattress, like pillows on a bed. The viewers can see fragments of images passing through the monitor, and hear the sound of a woman conversing in a low voice, mainly asking about her counterpart’s mental state or bringing up gender-specific topics. The images, projected along with dialogues such as “hi,” “how are you,” or “I can’t see,” do not appear to be relevant. An androgynous-looking figure, appearing to be asleep on the bed, exhibits the ‘powerful sense of solitude’ nestled within an individual living in our own time, back turned toward the TV monitor. The artist focuses on reflecting on the fragmented order of time in our era, and narrating this topic in a language that exists somewhere in between compressed expressions and the description of a fragile figure. The viewers are offered an opportunity to ponder on the various possibilities that are brought forth through familiarity and new concepts about communities.

Zhang Peili | A Standard, Uplifting, and Distinctive Circle along with Its Sound System | 2015 | electric motor, metal rotating device, 25 watt cylindrical horn speaker, old-style Made-in-China transistor radios | dimensions variable | courtesy of Boers-Li Gallery
Eight Chinese transistor radios that appear to be from the ‘70s or the ‘80s are stationed in a circular arrangement, emitting low sounds. The electronic device constantly rotates, amplifying the radio signals and articulating the sounds coming from each of the radios. Zhang Peili, who studied painting, is known to be the ‘father of Chinese video art,’ having lead the Avant-grade art movement in Hangzhou in the ‘80s. His works always illuminate socio-political topics that pertain to controlling mechanisms.

A.Typist (Taeyoung Kim, Hankil Ryu, lo wie) | Intersectant Parallax | 2016 | single channel video, sound, nipkow disk | 30min, dimensions variable
A.Typist is a project group comprising musician Hankil Ryu, novelist lo wie, and Taeyoung Kim. Formed in 2011, A.Typist has been presenting multi-valent attempts through the act of writing, the resultant yet unpredictable music, and the sentences that are generated in the process of musical composition. Intersectant Parallax is produced based on an updated version of a text novelist Yujoo Han wrote, which is about the parallax arising from information transmission between satellites and the Earth, and the temporal distance from the present to the time when Name June Paik launched his satellite projects Bye Bye Kipling and Wrap Around the World. Also, this piece is a linguistic, acoustic, optical, musical, and (a looped) visual record of several parallaxes coming into contact, colliding, and passing by each other across genres such as literature, music, and visual art. The artists structure the text, produce an image score, and play it with three prepared typewriters connected to acoustic and light control devices. The process of the performance is recorded and exhibited through the Nipkow Disc, which can be seen as the first-ever television technology.

Raphaela Vogel | Mogst mi du ned, mog i di | 2014 | chromed metal rods, flamingo(plastics, metal), Nesquik can, plastic foil, 2 loudspeakers, video projector, Mac mini, audio and video cables, plinth, video: color, sound | 6min 25sec(loop), dimensions variable | courtesy of BQ, Berlin
he title of this work means, in an Australian dialect, “if you don’t love me, I will love you.” A succinct description of Raphaela Vogel’s art world would go as follows: ‘the ceaseless recording and replay of contemporary image forms.” Vogel’s video installations expand our preconceived notions by showing scenes from the artist’s own performances, jump scenes, technical accidents and errors, or footages that she regularly uses in her work, in a rather confusing array of montages. Her work speaks of how fragile and unstable technologies can be, by approaching the topic through a very private yet familiar way, despite the contemporary effects and openness such technologies exhibit. As shown in her installation methods, the artist uses the projector as if engaging in physical workouts – for instance, she removes the exterior of the projector, hangs it in unexpected methods, or proves the fragility of the equipment in other ways. In her work, space, objects, technologies, and machines are simply in the realm of various movements that occur in the process of self-reflective remedies.

Daisuke Yamashiro | Human Emotions | 2015 | multi channel video, sound, object | 28min, dimensions variable
This installation was produced to induce various emotional experiences in different environments for three children of disparate age groups. The clock-like robot asks the children to use, touch, and play with the given objects. The children show differing responses; they even quarrel with each other. The video in the work is a documentary about human-machine communication. Yamashiro Daisuke, who is also an educator, is a rising media artist who is currently most active in Japan.