GLOBAL ENTERTAINMENT.

The Worlds of Nam June Paik 

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum 

New York, New York

February 11-April 26, 2000

The Worlds of Nam June Paik

John G. Hanhardt

New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 2000

292 pp./$40.00 (sb)

"I am a poor man from a poor country, so I have to be entertaining all the time."

Nam June Paik [1]

In this sweeping look at video artist Nam June Paik's works, from early performance pieces like Klavier Integral (1958-63) to this year's Modulations in Sync (2000), a four-part laser installation, the theme of globalism was ever-present. Such a theme is inevitably relevant not only in light of the present context of globalization as a general trend, but also because of the nexus of nationality, commercialism and technology denoted by the intersection of Paik's identity as a Korean artist and the identity of the Guggenheim Museum as a purportedly international institution. While the above quotation seemingly relegates Paik to the position of the supplicant, his appropriation of appropriated and re-appropriated imagery undermines the vertically oriented hierarchy between the northern and southern hemispheres, rich and poor, colonizer and colonized. Through the alchemic whimsy of his powers, Paik transforms the gravitas of this dichotomous struggle into a series of parodies. Yet although his exploitation throug h appropriation infuses much-needed levity into the notion of the global, it also evokes the opacity of Paik's works in the process. He is able to distance himself from the act of appropriation by using such a strategy for his own ends and immerse himself in the images that constitute the basis for such appropriation.

In the video Global Groove (1973), for example, some of the images appear to come straight from the pages of a tourist brochure. Korean mu dancers and festival performers are portrayed as signifiers of globalism, and exist only as part of a visual melange of homogeneity, a product of globalism's borderlessness in which the partitions that once preserved (if also isolated) singularity have been removed in favor of free exchange. There is no explicit indication of Paik's self-articulated identity as a Korean man, or implicitly, as a poor man, for non-whiteness is often conflated with poverty. The images in Global Groove are those that a non-Korean might use to designate the generalized, generic essence of certain "foreign" cultures. By selecting such images, Paik injects specificity into such an appropriator's original appropriation, thus subverting the tendency to homogenize. Although the mu dancers appear "Asian," Paik's particular selection of these dancers indirectly insists upon a particular Koreanness th at might otherwise be absent in an appropriator's celebratory and bland paean to globalism.

Such self-awareness, or at the very least critical examination, is reiterated in Video Buddha (1976-78) in which a sculpted Buddha figure gazes at his own live televised image. Again Paik undermines the hierarchy between televised image and audience with his use of closed-circuit video. No longer is the audience fair game for the generators of televised images; instead, Paik puts the audience and the image on equal footing. But what does it mean to contemplate oneself through a medium so entrenched in the business of generating fantasy? Has Paik truly circumvented the inherent hierarchy between audience and image? Furthermore, what does the Buddha trope represent in this process of assessment? The use of the Buddha, an already appropriated icon even in the exclusive context of Korean culture, becomes problematic when inserted into the world of globalized art, for Paik cannot be automatically considered an indifferent appropriator who extracts the Buddha image for its external qualities, nor is he using the B uddha trope as an explicit mark of national identity. On the one hand, the historical and religious significance of the Buddha figure make it an apt metaphor for contemplation, a reflection of the desire to look both away from and into the self. The counterargument against the appropriateness of this metaphor is the over-commercialization of the Buddha in neo-chinoiserie, in New Age religion and in other resurgent forms of orientalism. In the context of present society, the work becomes even more ambiguous than when Paik first introduced the series in the 1970s.

Curator John Hanhardt asserts that "that Paik is a utopian artist, looking to achieve the impossible to realize a better world for art, is undeniable." [2] Replete with works such as TV Clock (1963, 2000) and Real Fish/Live Fish (1982, 2000) in which Paik utilizes the ability of the television to attract the gaze in order to redefine the television as an object of contemplation rather than a means of temporary escape, the exhibition confirms Hanhardt's assertion for the most part. The notion of escape from the present is ubiquitous in these works, consistent with the presumption underlying the idea of utopia as a place of retreat from the present world.

Yet context plays a significant if unspoken role in the reassessment of Paik's work and detracts from the notion of Paik as a signifier or harbinger of utopian idealism. The hyper-commercialized environment of globalized society that served as the contemporaneous backdrop for this re-display of Paik's hallmark work diffuses its contemplative aspect. Even the lush TV Garden (1974, 2000), an escape in and of itself in which television monitors of all sizes play hide-and-seek amidst a large arrangement of broad leafy foliage, was difficult to appreciate apart from the particularities of its installation. While Paik deliberately created the work so that people would look around the monitors and thus "liberate" their eyes from the fixed gaze assumed in watching television, [3] the circular ramp that the work rested on repeatedly brought the viewer back to the setting and the context in which the work was situated. The ramp, a hallmark of the Guggenheim, served as a metaphor for the forces of globalization that ar e almost as significant as the works themselves. No longer sheltered in the obscure exhibition spaces offered by the earliest venues of Paik's work, the works were now ensconced in the public and global arena epitomized by the Guggenheim. To some degree, it is this arena that makes Paik's original quotation especially timely. In an art world fueled by unprecedented economic growth, there is increased pressure to leverage fame, difference or any kind of asset that might serve as a comparative advantage.

This pressure is implied in many of Paik's works, particularly in those that capitalize upon the spectacular. Jacob's Ladder (2000), a seven-story waterfall interwoven with delicate skein-like laser beams is a mesmerizing feat of art and technology. Yet as staples of amusement parks and action films, the laser beams also evoke a whiff of nostalgia and even kitsch as they have become conventional, even old-fashioned in the public conception. Despite the apparently inadvertent kitschiness, the lasers entertained a rapt audience, and it is with these works that Paik best fulfills his role as entertainer. Comprised of three separate mirrored chambers in the shapes of a triangle, a circle and a square, Three Elements (1997-2000) is a series of laser sculptures that lent a dazzling, if slightly outdated gloss to the exhibition. Its placement in the museum's High Gallery near the first floor of the rotunda (and thus closest to mass access) attests to the emphasis on the potential of the laser works to entertain the public.

Despite the apparent function of the laser installations, however, there is a deliberate opacity that rejects adherence to any fixed position. Assuming Marshall McLuhan's conception of television as a "cold medium," i.e.,a medium in which the receptor/viewer is not overloaded with data, but must actively participate in the dialogue, [4] television is an eminently appropriate vehicle for such opacity. Paik does not impose a certain, pre-defined way of thinking on his audience but rather, embraces, multiple, and often opposing perspectives although he never relaxes his mastery over his chosen medium. The images may be frenetic in quantity and diverse in form, and although Paik never insists upon one ideology or interpretation over another, he is also not engaged in producing a work that is a product of pure chance. As in Global Groove, where some of the images are stereotypical ones, Paik maintains careful control over the images he selects.

It can be argued that this dual ability to encompass sometimes radically different perspectives yet maintain a consistently methodological approach in execution stems from Paik's background. He is, to some extent, a product of his Cold War socialization--indeed, his quotation can be re-read as a film treatment: a poor man from a country produced by the conflict between the first and second worlds makes a living entertaining the first world. Caught between the crossfire of ideology, technology and society, Paik's optimism is made all the more poignant, although this background is only implied by the introductory text that accompanies the exhibition. Hanhardt's accompanying catalog-cum-tribute succinctly captures this intertwining of influences and he wisely chooses to deliver his paean through lavish illustrations and an informed examination of Paik's background and artistic development The catalog is less a honed analysis than it is a well researched and helpful introduction to Paik's work.

The constant contradictions that are patently present in Paik's work, whether it be the melding of nature and artifice in TV Garden or of reality and its virtual counterpart in Video Fish (1975, 2000), attest to the very reality of life that Paik attempts to replace with his vision of "what should be." The "entertainment" that Paik refers to stems not from a conventional postcolonial view of the oppressed catering to the oppressor. Rather, it originates from self-parody recast as a strategy of transversing the many worlds with which Paik is inextricably linked, both as inhabitant and creator. [5]

JOAN KEE is a freelance critic and will be a fellow at New York University's International Center for Advanced Studies in 2000-2001.

NOTES

(1.) John Hanhardt notes in The Worlds of Nam June Paik (New York: Guggenheim Museum, 2000), p. 108, that Paik frequently made this comment.

(2.) Ibid, p.231.

(3.) Nam June Paik, quoted in Nicholas Zurbrugg, "Nam June Paik: An Interview," Visible Language Vol. 21, no.2 (1995), p. 128.

(4.) Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (New York, Toronto and London: McGraw-Hill, 1964), pp. 22-23.

(5.) My sincere appreciation to Doryun Chong for his comments and suggestions.

[Editor's note: Electronic Arts Intermix is collaborating with the Guggenheim Museum to present a joint Web site highlighting Paik's collaborative video heritage. The site can be viewed through a link at www.e-flux.com.]