Nam
June Paik and the Encounter Between the East and the West
BY
YOONA KANG
MFA candidate at the division of theater of the Korean National
University of the Arts.
Nam June Paik has been
debatably, after the death of John Cage and
Joseph Beuys, the most significant ‘avant-garde’ artist of
our era. He had been
an important subject in the discipline of art history and cultural
history of
the west until his recent death. Paik’s art and thoughts
have had a worldwide influence.He made
cultural change to the very idea of
traditional art objects and the academy of the art.He transformed the instruments and the means
of art making through performance and renewed music and transformed
electronic
image of film and video into new forms of creative expression. Every nation claims Nam June
Paik in a specific way.
His work was included in the German pavilion of the 1993 Venice
Biennale, his
retrospective was held at center Pompidou. The U.S, South America, Japan, Italy, the whole world has honored Paik’s
journey.
‘Terrorist from Korea’, ‘the cultural nomad’-
Nam June Paik. The story of
his career and journey as an artist is really special. Born in Seoul in 1932, he went to Japan in 1952 where he studied aesthetics and
art history.
In the late 50s he went to Germany, where he continued his study in new
music
composition and performance and participated in the avant-garde
movement
collaborating with John Cage and George Macinaus, joining Fluxus. He
visits New
York
in 1964 where he settles and works until today.
Here is a description by Stockhausen of one of Paik’s
early performances in Wuppertal, Germany, “He was sobbing softly,
then he
pressed the paper against his eyes which became wet with his tears, he
screamed
and he suddenly threw the roll of paper into the audience, he was
playing his
new type of tape recording, a collaged tape with children’s
voices, scream of
women, news from radio, tunes of classical music, electric sound etc.
And dived
completely into under water, jumped wet to the piano, and began to play
the
keyboard.”Another performance in
1975,
‘Violin with String’: Paik is dragging the violin to the
street taking the
musical instrument out of the concert hall into the performer’s
space.
It was in 1963, in Gallery Parnass in Wuppertal, Germany, where he had his first
one-artist’s show called
‘Exhibition of Music-Electronic Television’.For the first time in the history of art, he turned the
electronic
instrument television into an instrument of art making, which event
gave birth
to video art. In ‘Participation TV(1963)’, the viewer can
speak into the
microphone where the sounds transform the images on the screen, which
put the
TV out of the consumerist context, changing the subject-object relation
between
the TV and the viewer. The ‘TV clock(1963)’ and ‘the
Moon is the oldest
TV(1965)’: twelve manipulated color televisions show the moon in
every stage of
its cycle and bring in the factor of temporality into the arts, which
had been
mainly about composition until then. ‘TV Bra for living
sculpture(1970) with
Charlotte Moorman’: where the electronic instrument becomes a
piece of clothing
for the human body. In the video ‘Global Grove(1973)’, he
collages the images
of his avant-garde collaborators such as John Cage, Allen Ginsberg,
Merce
Cunningham etc in his unique way of editing. In ‘TV
garden(1974)’, the
televisions are mingled with plants and nature is joined with
technology. In
‘TV Buddha(1974)’, the Buddha is sitting in front of the
monitor reflecting on
himself. In ‘Good morning Mr. Orwell(1984)’, his first
satellite performance,
two performances in New York and Paris were broadcast live to the whole world.
The theme of
the next satellite performance ‘Bye Bye Kipling (1986)’ was
the encounter
between the east and the west, where global celebrities in different
countries
shook their hands and where marathoners in Seoul ran to the live music performance in New York.
The issues he engaged in his art: in his early
performances, he showed a new way of perceiving things in an innovative
method,
by breaking taboos and surprising the audience. The TV series in the
60s and
70s are praised for having grafted human aspects to science and for
having
humanized technology. The reinterpretation of the overpower and
stiffness of TV
has launched a dialogue between art, technology and human beings. Using
the
video camera in art-making, he predicts that ‘the TV monitor will
replace the
canvas some day’, whereupon every image in everyday life would
become a
potential source of art and through which media would become accessible
to all.
One of the major themes regarding his work is technology and nature
such as in
the ‘TV garden’ where technology and nature is harmonized.
The global satellite
broadcast shows are revealing his dream of bringing the east and the
west into
dialogue. The idea that coherently penetrates his art from the 60s to
his
recent works is acknowledged to be communication, a dialogue between
science/technology and human beings/nature/the arts, and between the
east and
the west.
Going through Nam June Paik’s art pieces themselves,
I came to know about the scale and profundity of his world: his
creativity as
an artist, insight as a thinker, cleverness as a strategy maker and
warmness as
a human being, upon which I did not dare to comment on his work. Again,
I felt
this reluctance to analyze and write about art, saying that I prefer
(just) to do
it or at least to appreciate it.
Screening selected art critiques on his work, both of
the west and the east(mainly of Koreans or Korea-related Asians), I was
confused. It was not the rather banal reiteration on the meaning of his
work
mentioned above, the meaning of his reinterpretation of subject-object
relation, which turned over western technology and thoughts that I
could not
understand, or with which I could not identify myself. It was also that
most of
the writers on his work were more or less agreeing on such meanings.
What
confused me was the valuation that Nam June Paik has brought the east
and the
west into dialogue, that he has realized a cultural exchange and union
of the
east and the west what was a significant subject mainly in the east.
So many cultures have become part of Paik’s work and
that is why there exists a precondition of Nam June Paik’s art:
two
heterogeneous places, the east and the west. Geographically,
politically,
culturally different cultures of the east and the west encounter and
collide in
his world. How do they encounter and how do they collide? Is it a
dialogue
between the east and the west that is happening in his art world?
Interestingly, the majority of the Korean critiques,
scholars etc. whose works I happened to read, were engaging this
subject
intensively, whereby in the U.S and Europe, it seemed to
be a less burning subject if compared to the east. Nam June Paik
himself once
mentioned in a dialogue with Allen Ginsberg that his minority complex
as an
Asian or Korean derives him to complete the very complicated
cybernetics art.
Maybe it is the same ‘complex’ that makes the former
enthusiastic about it
whereby the artistic, literary celebrities in the west can get along
with doing
it only to a necessary level.
Frequently, when trying to find a
counterpoint between the east and the
west in Paik’s work, people indicate concrete marks of it. It is
not difficult
to perceive signs of eastern cultural tradition being represented in
Nam June
Paik’s art pieces: the frequent use of Korean or Chinese letters
casually
scribbled on his pieces, the Buddha and Zen series, the juxtaposition
of
western pop stars and avant-garde artists with the national living
treasure,
Korean zither player Hwang Byung Ki and Shaman Choi Hee Ya in
‘Bye Bye
Kipling(1986)’ or Paik himself clothed as a Korean shaman in a
ritual in memory
of Joseph Beuys(1990). Additionally, the theme nature and technology in
his
work, is often referred to as suggesting a clue in finding a balance
between
the narcissistic western culture submerging into technology and the
alternative
ecological naturalism of the traditional east. ‘The TV
clock’ or ‘the Moon…TV’
are often explained as representing the eastern perception of time,
where the
moment and eternity is identical. His attachment to John Cage is
assumed to be
to a certain degree because of Cage’s infatuation in Zen
Buddhism. In such and
such a way, people connect his work to Buddhism, Shamanism or Taoism
and other
Asian, eastern cultural factors.
I do not think that discovering those visible or
invisible exotic symbols will be helpful in explaining that the union
of the
east and the west in Paik’s art has actually taken place. The
oriental motifs
might satisfy the western viewer with its exotic attraction and might
even
leave a mystified philosophical message for him or her. The consciously
or
unconsciously familiar sight of Asian items might make the eastern
viewer feel
authentic in a strange way. But after all, again, the eastern identity
will be
reduced to authenticity. Again, the colonialist separation of modern
and
traditional will take place, which I believe is the opposite of what
actually
happens in Nam June Paik’s work.
I am also skeptical about such kind of attempt
because it distracts the viewer. Suddenly, one cannot concentrate on
the
magnificence of Nam June Paik’s art but comes to sense the
political,
economical, social layers on which such discourses are taking place.
The east
eagerly tries to claim that Paik himself and his work can be placed in
an eastern
genealogy spiritually, culturally and artistically. At the same time,
the west
never ceases to call him the ‘Korean-BORN’ artist,
emphasizing that the
majority of his life and art had to do with ‘their’
avant-garde and their Art
with capital A. Whether it is the east or the west, as soon as one
engages in
this kind of debate, one preconditions that it is important to be
related to
Nam June Paik. Why? Of course because of the grandeur of his art but
also,
along with his art itself, because of the fact that he survived the
imperialistic power structure of the art market in the west. I should
feel
guilty if I would be too eager to claim that he is Korean, when there
are so
many Korean artists actually ‘living’ in the east who do
not even get the chance
to exhibit their work in Seoul. More than that, when it comes to the
dialogue
between the east and the west, this kind of discourse will only deepen
the
cast, which is the opposite of what actually happens in Nam June
Paik’s art.
Then what actually happens in Paik’s world? Do the
east and the west indeed meet and communicate? Nam June Paik’s
way of mediating
and uniting different cultures is similar to that of a shaman (being
different
from the exotic, mystified image of shamanism). Nam June Paik himself
mentioned
several times that he was deeply influenced by the shamanistic rituals
he
experienced in his childhood, where the shaman crosses over, mediates
and
connects this world and that world, the visible world and the invisible
world,
reality and fantasy. The shaman communicates with the world of spirits
at the
boundary between nature and art and technological art form like media
or video
art are proper for such tasks. It is because such media expand the
functions of
the human body and senses, which makes it possible to connect to a
space and
time beyond reality. Similarly, shaman Nam June Paik connects two or
more
distant places through network art, whereupon a third space is created,
where
the center and periphery of culture eliminates and where an artistic
exodus
happens, outside the orbit of politics and hegemony. Nam June Paik is
trying
not to divide or separate the east and the west dualistically. He is
looking
for a ubiquity of human kind.
Personally, I have turned into an enthusiastic fan of
Nam June Paik while studying him. After ‘experiencing’ him
and his work, I am
uncertain if I am entitled to make any easy interpretations on his work
after
this short-term research. I also am very careful using the metaphor of
‘shaman’
not daring to say that it really suffices to embrace his world. I
believe that
not the eastern motifs, not the fact that he is Korean but his vision
and
hopeful and affectionate gaze on human beings in his work makes me feel
at home
and invited. That is mainly what I have tried to convey in this
presentation.
Nevertheless, ending this article, after all the
admiring of his work and the experiencing of the encounter between the
east and
the west in his art, what concerns me is the world outside of the
performance
space and the academia. Can I expect that what many literary and
artistic
celebrities in the west and me having taken a glimpse at
‘their’ way of
appreciating art feel about the world of Nam June Paik is also valid
for many
other people back at home? Isn’t my experience of unity between
east and west
in Paik’s art, a more ‘westernized’ one, I myself
being a cultural nomad?What does it mean
that he suggests a vision
of uniting the east and the west in his work if the majority of the
people in
the east do not really know him or know him only by his name mainly
because the
west acknowledges him or are not used to the Art(again with capital A)
itself?
What does it mean for me to study the art of Nam June Paik away from
home?
I would like to end my article by quoting a note by Guillermo
Gomez-Pena.
“Dialog
has
never existed between the First and Third Worlds. We must not confuse
dialog
with neocolonialism, paternalism, vampirism, tokenism or
appropriation….but if
we engage truly in dialogue, we can develop models of coexistence and
cooperation. Only through an ongoing public dialogue in the form of
publications, conferences and collaborative intercultural art and media
projects can the wound effectively heal.”(Guillermo
Gomez-Pena)
