Dear CRUMB list,

This week sees the opening of the Nam June Paik exhibitions at Tate  
Liverpool and FACT (http://www.fact.co.uk/about/exhibitions/2010/nam- 
june-paik) and we've decided to host an impromtu discussion on the  
curatorial considerations behind this joint venture. We've invited  
both Laura Sillars, outgoing programmes director at FACT, and Sook- 
Kyung Lee, Curator at Tate, to lead the discussion. Do chime in with  
your thoughts and hope to see you at the opening on Thursday!

* About the show:

It is the first major UK retrospective of the work of Nam June Paik  
curated by Sook-Kyung Lee and Susanne Rennert, and is accompanied by  
a fully illustrated catalogue. The exhibition is initiated and  
developed by Tate Liverpool and museum kunst palast, Düsseldorf who  
presented the exhibition from 11 September – 21 November 2010.

Tate Liverpool is providing "a definitive look at Paik’s body of  
work, from the scores of early music performances and TV works, to  
robot sculptures and large-scale video installations" while FACT is  
showing Laser Cone and a number of single-channel video works in an  
archive provided by EAI. The press release states that "FACT’s  
display concludes the retrospective both in terms of its chronology  
and its conceptual genealogy."

In addition, FACT is also producing a new work with a local artist  
and over 15 young people called 'The Television will be  
Revolutionised' which sees them create a CCTV driven installation, as  
well as presenting Peter Appleton's laser link which connects FACT  
and Tate Liverpool with a laser beam across the city, and supporting  
a series of young producers to make work that responds to Nam June  
Paik in the Kazimir night club.

* Questions for this discussion:

It seems to us on CRUMB that this pairing between a large collecting  
museum and a smaller commissioning gallery raises a few curatorial  
questions which we invite you all to comment on:

1. Innovation versus Institutionalization or, "Museums: where good  
artists go to die"?
It is suggested that Tate brings the historical rigor, research and  
museum standards which give this exhibition weight and substance. The  
vibrancy and creative currency of Paik's legacy is then brought to  
life through the exhibition at FACT which both completes the  
retrospective but also teases out the utopian ideas of connectivity,  
communication and copy-left thinking that have so inspired  
contemporary artists working today. It could be argued that FACT is  
actually a living legacy to Nam June Paik as it tries, through its  
programming year-round, to embody some of his aspirations around  
participation TV (such as their Tenantspin programme) and  
interactivity with media. So, perhaps this is a question of legacies?

2. Completion versus creative communities.
In a sense, the function of a museum is to collect and present  
material that has a broad cultural value, but the risk is that  
through that presentation format emerges a drive for the generic. A  
smaller venue which is actively engaged in making art as well as  
presenting has the possibility to create alternative exhibition  
formats but at the risk of losing the message around the importance  
of its activities over the long term. So, this might also be a  
question of how histories are made and who makes them?

So, in the interests of impartiality, is this a curatorial match made  
in heaven for media art (it was Tate Liverpool who in 1989 hosted the  
first Videopositive festival which later turned into what FACT is  
now)? Does this exhibition represent an instance of 'modularity' in  
curating (the Liverpool biennial model where venues all are a part of  
a single city-wide exhibition?) or is it 'distributed curatorial  
practice' in the sharing of roles (collecting/scholarship/ 
commissioning) between the two venues?

----
best,
Sarah

www.crumbweb.org