TRIBUTE: Nam June Paik, Part II

A key figure in the international avant-garde Fluxus movement, Nam June Paik is renowned for his large-scale sculptural installations featuring television monitors. He foresaw the rise of global telecommunications networks, a foresight that has led scholars to regard him as a visionary. His pioneering work with the then-nascent medium of video has also earned him the distinguished title of “father of video art” (Part I).

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Nam June Paik Art Center Archive

The Nam June Paik Art Center in Korea is currently hosting two major exhibitions dedicated to the pioneering video artist: “The City of Nam June Paik: The Sea Fused with The Sun”, curated by Kwonjin Cho, which opens today, and “Play It Again, Paik”, curated by Lee Soo Young and Lee Sangah. Together, these exhibitions explore Paik’s revolutionary ideas and enduring influence on contemporary media art, offering both retrospective insights and forward-looking interpretations of his legacy. The exhibition “The City of Nam June Paik: The Sea Fused with The Sun” probes a pressing question in our era of “video immersion”: What kind of transcendent experiences of space and time does video create? The contemporary city is awash in light—glowing screens saturate our environments day and night, turning urban life into a vast interface of ceaseless image and sound. This illumination, however, is more than sensory stimulation; it’s the visual embodiment of electric signals that carry volumes of digital information. In this ever-accelerating torrent of data, video no longer merely represents reality—it actively reshapes how we perceive, remember, and exist in the world. Nam June Paik foresaw this transformation in what he called “videory”: the idea that future histories would be recorded in images and moving pictures rather than spoken or written word. Today, that vision has become reality. We are immersed in a world where history is layered, fragmented, and encoded in video—where we do not just perceive media, but live within it. Building on Paik’s foundational investigations into the temporal and spatial dimensions of video, “The City of Nam June Paik: The Sea Fused with The Sun” brings together a group of contemporary artists navigating this new terrain. Their works engage with themes of environmental collapse, the evolution of cognition through immersive media, speculative climate futures, and the convergence of organic and mechanical landscapes. Through simultaneous, non-linear narratives, these artists question the boundaries of time, space, and human experience, inviting viewers to confront the multilayered video environments of the 21st century and recognize our deep entanglement with media as a form of lived history.

Participating Artists: Nam June Paik, Yiyun Kang, Gijeong Goo, Hyewon Kwon, Inhwa Yeom

While “The City of Nam June Paik” looks forward, “Play It Again, Paik” takes us back—to see, hear, and think through the world as Paik did. Drawing from the Art Center’s vast archive of over 2,200 video materials, this exhibition presents a curated selection of interviews with the artist, originally broadcast in Korea, the U.S., Japan, and Germany. These interviews, shown alongside seminal artworks, allow visitors to witness Paik in action—explaining, demonstrating, and philosophizing about the possibilities of video and technology. At the heart of this exhibition is Paik’s profound fascination with time—not merely as chronology, but as something abstract, flexible, and visible. One of the standout works, “Moon is the Oldest TV”, spans 13 monitors and captures the moon’s phases from crescent to full, transforming celestial time into a video loop. In a 1970s interview with WNET, Paik described his desire to “make time visible” and to spatialize it through media: “Time you can sense, but you cannot see… Each section of time and put on space. That is our dream.” The exhibition includes ten key experimental works that showcase Paik’s trailblazing spirit. These include: “Candle TV”, “Magnet TV”, “Participation TV”, “Paik-Abe Video Synthesizer” and “TV Garden”.  In a documentary by Japan’s NHK, Paik delves into the conceptual and technical underpinnings of works like “Participation TV”, “Magnet TV”, and “Candle TV”, while a short film by Jean-Paul Fargier titled “Play It Again, Nam!” includes a dramatic presentation of “Magnet TV”, now featured in the exhibition. Additionally, in a revealing interview with Germany’s ARD, Paik emphasizes the need to engage directly with the internet and new media—further evidence of his prescience. Other major highlights include several of Paik’s video sculptures, such as: “Video Chandelier No.1”, which imagines a dialogue between ancient and modern technology. “Uranus”, an immersive, cosmic-scale piece composed of 24 monitors and vibrant neon light, exhibited for the first time since 2006, “TV Piano”, which merges his deep musical roots with nonlinear video rhythms. In a special addition to the show, the Nam June Paik Art Center presents seven newly acquired photographs by Peter Moore, renowned for capturing avant-garde performance art. These images offer intimate glimpses of Paik in the creative act—experimenting with television or collaborating with cellist Charlotte Moorman on works such as “TV Cello”—and bring audiences closer to his vibrant artistic presence.. Together, “The City of Nam June Paik: The Sea Fused with The Sun” and “Play It Again, Paik” offer a powerful dual perspective: one that situates Paik as a visionary artist whose ideas continue to shape contemporary culture, and another that invites us to revisit his world with renewed appreciation. Whether through prophetic meditations on video and history, or playful experiments with media and time, both exhibitions affirm that Paik’s legacy remains not only relevant—but essential.

Photo: Yiyun Kang, Vanishing, 2022, Courtesy Nam June Paik Art Center

Info: Curators: Kwonjin Cho (The City of Nam June Paik: The Sea Fused with The Sun) and Lee Soo Young with Lee Sangah (Play It Again, Paik), Nam June Paik Art Center, 10 Paiknamjune-ro, Giheung-gu, Yongin-si, Gyeonggi-do, Korea, Duration: 7/8-19/10/2025 (The City of Nam June Paik: The Sea Fused with The Sun) & 10/4/2025-22/2/2026 (Play It Again, Paik), Days & Hours: Tue-Sun 10:00-18:00, https://njpart.ggcf.kr/