Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Nam June Paik Art Center



The Nam June Paik Art Center proudly announces the launch of its lecture and discussions series withThe Gift of Nam June Paik 1, a seminar commemorating the closing of its inaugural festival NOWJUMP

The 
Gift of Nam June Paik 1 gathers specialists from various fields of research to celebrate Nam June Paik's creativity and expand discussions on his work. As a concluding journey of the NOW JUMPFestival, the seminar ambitions to sketch a landscape where neglected aspects of Paik's practice can be considered and supported. Reactivating and actualizing the nomadic characteristics of Paik's life, the different speakers' presentations and areas of expertise echo the boundless terrain of Paik's work 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 considering Paik's role from these extended perspectives?

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, 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's delves into the philosophical frameworks of the communities and societies influential to Paik.
 

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