Nam June Paik Biography
Nam June Paik (Seoul, July 20, 1932 – Miami, January 29, 2006) was an American artist of South Korean origin. He has worked in various artistic fields, but his name is above all linked to video art, of which he is one of the pioneers. He completed his studies in aesthetics, art and music in Tokyo where he graduated with a thesis on Arnold Schönberg. Between 1958 and 1963 he participated in the Fluxus events in Düsseldorf and was in contact with artists such as John Cage and Wolf Vostell. He takes part in an exhibition considered today the first exhibition of video art, entitled Exposition of Music – Electronic television (Wuppertal, 1963) where electronic music and electronic image mix, and in which Nam June Paik presents “Thirteen distortions for electronic televisions”. Paik studies the disturbance and learns to cause it by distorting the electronic image: his first developments were in fact televisions with modified images. Then he experiments with shooting and re-elaborating recordings with the camera. In 1965 he used Sony's first portable camera model to film the chaotic traffic on the day of Pope Paul VI's visit to New York, and to make a video work of it (Café Gogo, Bleecker Street), shown the same evening in Greenwich Village . Endowed with fervent curiosity, he created technological innovations such as the video synthesizer, developed with Shuya Abe in 1969. His "tireless nature as a traveler and experimenter" led him to "constant travels and collaborations" together with personalities such as Merce Cunningham, Joseph Beuys or Charlotte Moorman. In particular he produces video installations with modified televisions, from more minimalist works such as Moon is the Oldest TV (1965) to more monumental and phantasmagoric works such as Tadaikson (The More The Better), the tower of 1003 monitors created for the Seoul Olympic Games ( 1988). Paik's last exhibition was Moving Time: Tribute to Nam June Paik, presenting 30 International Video Artists, New York (2006).
