The Nam June Paik Art Center is pleased to present its special exhibition “TV Commune” from Thursday, the 29th of September in 2011 to Sunday, the 19th of February in 2012. With the termination of analog TV broadcasting ahead in 2012, a lot of changes are taking place in the current media environment in Korea. Keenly aware of this, “TV Commune” is going to look back on how TV has influenced our way of life and search for a new relation with it in the digital age. The exhibition will feature the historical works not only by Nam June Paik who investigated and experimented with television and art, and ways of communication using them in the late 1960s and the early 1970s >
such as TVTV, Dara Birmbaum and Hyun Ki Park; the exhibition will also show but also pieces by artists living and working in the present time, including Gabriel Lester (Holland), Wong Hoy Cheong (Malaysia), Gabriel Lester, Christelle Lheureux(France), Tae Bum Ha, Heungsoon Im and Yeondoo Jung (Korea).
What will be also shown in one corner of the exhibition space are works of artists who belong to ‘souvenirs from earth’ a web/cable station for film and video art in France. Inspired by Paik’s satellite projects, ‘souvenirs from earth’ serves as a platform for a new form of broadcasting which plays role of airs on its artists-only channel,reminding you of Paik’s prediction:
“Someday, everyone will have his own TV channel.”
Thursday 29 September 2011, 2pm
Lecturer: Marcus Kreiss (Founder and CEO of Souvenirs From Earth)
The title “TV Commune” is derived from Video Commune (1970), Paik’s first interactive television performance in collaboration with the public broadcasting television station WGBH. WGBH offered an srtist-in residence program and worked on many collaborative projects with artists, which was very exceptional for TV station at that time. The experimental spirit of the TV station was suitable for Paik who envisaged a video community built through television broadcasting of artistic content. Video Variations(1972), an omnibus video produced by WGBH, is composed of music video-like pieces by visual artists using the repertoire of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, such as Nam June Paik, Russell Connor, Douglas Davis, Stan VanDerBeek and others. In particular, Paik’s Electronic Opera No. 2, a mix of images a burning piano and a performance by the orchestra playing Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No.4, has become a classic in its own right for the experimental combination of sound and image which, in terms of cultural history, preceded MTV by ten years. Another omnibus video The Medium is the Medium
is a parody of Marshall McLuhan’s “The Medium is the Message” by six artists including Nam June Paik, Allan Kaprow, Otto Piene and among others. These two works, which are screened to the public for the first time in Korea, will give an opportunity to reconsider the present meaning of the works of Paik who neither merely rejected nor enthusiastically celebrated the media, but positively understood it as an element of our living environments.
“TV Commune” is an artistic report on contemporary society which unconsciously forms spatial and political communities (communes) due to the medium of television having the overwhelming capacity of reproduction. The exhibition aims to explore the interaction between television and its audiences, the interface between the media and the mass public, and an artist’s intervention in the media environment. It is expected that the exhibition will be able to provide constructive criticisms, and suggestions on the transitional situation of the transition from analog to digital broadcasting.
