The Fourth Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

NAM JUNE PAIK Global groove 1973 Still from 28.30 min. colour videotape with stereo sound Purchased 1996 w ith a special allocation from the Queensland Government Celebrating the Queensland Art Gallery's Centenary 1895-1995 Collection: Queensland Art Gallery During the 1970s, Paik was artist-in-residence at the Television Laboratory atWNET-Channel 13, in NewYork. It was here that he produced Global groove, a work which is at the core of a body of single-channel videotapes that became extraordinarily influential. Paik was fast becoming known as the guru of video art. In demonstrating how film could engage in cultural exploration and how interdisciplinary activities such as sound, dance, visual arts and text could exist, he reached out to a breed of artists disenchanted with the hermetic and elitist tendencies of late Modernism. Importantly, Global groove set the pattern of his approach to television and the medium of video for broadcast. He turned the broadcasting studio into a performance laboratory w ith his rapid-paced segmented clips, which included films by other artists, interviews and voice overs, appropriation of commercials and use of popular music, all functioning as an hallucinatory stream-of– consciousness experience. The manipulations of the Paik-Abe video synthesiser brought these seemingly disparate elements together in what has been described as a 'postmodern vaudeville'. 6 At the close of Global groove, Paik directly acknowledges the viewer by asking that we open and close our eyes, as richly coloured, abstract electronic patterns swirl before us and encourage an active, rather than a passive engagement with television. About the same time this video work was released, Paik produced one of his most celebrated assemblages: TV Buddha 1974. In this work, a statue of Buddha is set in front of a television with a closed-circuit video camera directed at the Asian deity from the top of the monitor. Like Rodin's Thinker, the Buddha is silently contemplative . 7 Barbara London recalls that 'Paik's TV Buddha was one of the first video installations shown in "Projects", The Museum of Modern Art's exhibition series that highlights what is new in art'. 8 He had previously participated in the landmark exhibition 'TV as a Creative Medium' in 1969, at the Howard Wise Gallery in NewYork, and in 1982 would hold his first retrospective (with videotapes, video objects, installations and performances) at the Whitney Museum of American Art. TV Buddha demonstrates the artist's witty inter-cultural references and alludes to his Asian heritage with neo-Dada irony. Ill \ Top: TV Buddha 1976 Television monitor, video camera, painted wooden Buddha Dimensions variable Collection: John Kaldor, Sydney Below: The artist and TV Buddha 1976 Courtesy: John Kaldor, Sydney The same is true of Paik's cabinet work The elements 1989 (Queensland Art Gallery Collection) . Six television monitors are set into a red 'oriental ' lacquer cabinet inscribed w ith Chinese characters painted in gold. These characters translate as 'a state of ecstasy that is achieved through meditation'. Paradoxically, the video footage features early Hollywood film stars, Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, with their 'counterparts' from avant-garde performance circles, Joseph Beuys and Charlotte Moorman. In typical mode, Paik's fast-cut string of filmic images also includes famous architectural landmarks, computer-generated flowers, snails, and other aspects of the natural world. The pace is mesmerising: in sharp contrast to the gracious domestic life that the cabinet brings to our imagination. On top of the cabinet three glass beakers are poised, each containing a single artificial flower, whilst underneath are matching sets of plant roots . Again, Chinese characters painted on the beakers by Paik allude in puzzle– fashion to the title of the piece and, more particularly, to the elements 'animal', 'earth' and 'nature'.This theme has continued with a major installation (The elements) from 1997 to 2000 using mirrored chambers, lasers, prisms, motors and smoke. The abstract form of this recent installation is related to aspects of Zen Buddhism, more particularly to the symbols of the triangle, circle and square, which collectively denote the universe. While Paik may live and work chiefly in the United States and has been handsomely honoured worldwide, it is South Korea that claims the artist as its own. Th is is most evident in the spectacular video tower that Paik originally produced for the 1988 Olympic Games. Standing approximately 18 metres high and designed for over 1000 separate monitors with 'never– ending' video programs, it is now installed at the National Museum of Modern Art in Seoul. In 1997, Seoul-based authority on the artist, Kim Hong-hee, unhesitatingly proclaimed him the 'Master of This Century'. 9 As with the Musee Rodin in Paris, which similarly honoured a highly influential and innovative talent of the nineteenth century, plans are underway to build an art museum dedicated to Paik in Shingal, Korea, (Gyeonggi Province) by 2004. Anne Kirker is Head of International Art at the Queensland Art Gallery 81