Our life is half natural and half technological. Half-and-half is good. You cannot deny that high-tech is progress. We need it for jobs. Yet if you make only high-tech, you make war. So we must have a strong human element to keep modesty and natural life.
– Nam June Paik
As I entered the first room of this exhibition I immediately felt that this exhibition had a very different atmosphere compared to others I have been to. The electrical buzzing sound, the flashing colours and the Buddha statue sitting in front of a TV watching himself all made it very clear right at the start that Nam June Paik (1931-2006) was not an artist who followed the mainstream.
The South Korean artist, who lived and worked in Japan, Germany and the United States mainly focused on cultural differences, traditions of both Eastern and Western cultures, especially through the lens of our increasingly connected world. The exhibition at Tate Modern showcases the artist’s work through five decades.
One of my favourite work regarding the use of sound and vision was the ‘Oil Drums’. Paik made this work as a memorial to Charlotte Moorman following her death in 1991. The ‘topless cellist’ worked together with Paik for almost thirty years. They shared a common interest in avant-garde music and staging energetic live performances and believed that sexuality was unjustly excluded from classical music.
The exhibition piece is two metal barrels that were used during Moorman’s performances of Variations on a Theme by Saint-Saens. Moorman suddenly stopped in the middle of the performance, climbed a ladder and submerged herself in the drum on top, which was filled with water. After the dip, she climbed back out and finished playing the sentimental tune while dripping wet.
Placing the three TVs on top of the two barrels makes the observer feel like they are watching the whole performance in real-time. The echoes of the drum and the water blurred the border of reality in my head as I watched the screen. Looking at the screen from below also made me feel like I was right there while Moorman performed. With this piece Paik was playing with the idea of borders, the literal border of the surface of the water, inside and outside and also on an abstract level, the idea of past and present, existence and non-existence, life and the afterlife.
Turning the television in the middle upside down was also interesting. As Moorman submerged herself in the water she was getting closer to herself on the screen on top, but simultaneously moving away from herself in the bottom screen.
Num June Paik’s significant role in finding the bridge between art and technology is unquestionable. He was exploring the border between the two and experimenting with the TV and the screen. He used the screen as a canvas like nobody before him. The Korean American artist’s work is at Tate Modern, London, until 9 February 2020.
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