Sunday, February 19, 2006

Sunday Inspiration: Nam June Paik

Well, this weeks installment is in remembrance of the 'Father of Video Art'...Nam June Paik (1932-2006). Here is a short bio of his artistic career from his Guggenheim retrospective back in 2000. Paik is a progenitor of new media and was a constant figure in the world of avant-gard music. Art and technology was a permeable surface in which he blurred and mixed into a new hybrid medium. He explored this new found form to question our accepted notions of television and it's influence on this 'information superhighway' of pop culture.
I meant Geoffrey Hendricks on Saturday (who has an exhibition at the AGW). He is a fellow Fluxus artist and a nice guy who put up with my naivete. He remarked on just how much of an impact that Paik has had on video artists from Bill Viola to the recent grad coming out of school. Nam June Paik was doing that stuff 30 years ago!! Obviously, there are most of us that are atoms that need the stimulous of other atoms to move and get inspired but then there are people like Nam June Paik that out of sheer will power agitate and vibrate on there own...and in his case, point the videocam and press record.

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