Dear CRUMB list
I am back from Liverpool and recovered from the long night opening of
the Nam June Paik show - it is very good and I recommend anyone in
the UK between now and March to detour to see it. Peter Appleton's
laser beam between FACT and Tate is especially impressive in the
sparkly cold night air.
Below I have pasted a few notes from the breakfast with the curators
session on Friday morning. I hope that Sook and Susanne will forgive
any errors in my hasty transcription of their answers, and feel free
to add their notes.
----
Question from Laura Sillars: how is this show different from other
shows of Paik's work, in what way is it retrospective?
Susanne's answer: the exhibitions in Liverpool and Dusseldorf are
quite different (from one another). In Dusseldorf we put the early
phase in strict choronological order. We had more space. I like the
show here, it is more collage, more like Paik's way of thinking.
There you could see how things led from one to another. We found lots
of sources which were never shown before from sites such as the Rene
Block archive. We tried to put together the US and European research.
We didn't have as much time to focus on Korean research - the
philosophical aspect of Paik's work (research centre in seoul) which
could be a lead for another future exhibition.
Sook: Fact is a commissioning agency, who can work with younger
artists, and thus gives the exhibition a living legacy....
Question from the floor: How was curatorial practice affected by
absence of the artist?
Susanne: In the future we will have problems when those who worked
with Paik - the technical assistants - who worked with us, when they
are dead we have to discuss again. We had the help of a lot of people
who knew him well. We are art historians we could not have done it
alone.
Sook: Paik said, "without electricity there is no art." That is the
case. In Tate Liverpool we had to install more power to make it work.
The amount of leads, transformers, sockets, plugs -- that will all be
staying there for other media art shows. Without the artist sometimes
we have more freedom, without fear of upsetting the artist. But
having people who knew how works were intended, or originally
presented, was important. A great thing was meeting people who were
very fond of him. Everyone thought they were his best friend. We
looked back and respected his spirit and worked in that sense.
----
A few other observations from me which I would invite any comments on:
A few artists I spoke with found it strange that the work Zen for
Film from 1964 was presented as a video, 8mins (see http://
www.eai.org/title.htm?id=14206). Has there ever been a film re-
creation of this work, and if not, why not? After all, many people
have recreated John Cage's 4:33 (sadly it didn't win this year's
Christmas single here in the UK), on which this work was based.
For all the concern about the ongoing maintenance of the technology
driving the works, when I visited the exhibition the morning after
the opening what I witnessed were the Tate's technical staff and
curatorial staff measuring the candles to ensure their burning times
for replacement, and fishing a dead fish from the tanks used in
'Video Fish' from 1975, and counting the ones left to ensure the
right number in each tank. So, a nice lesson for us in the
variability of media yet again.
best from the freezing fog in Newcastle,
Sarah
On 15 Dec 2010, at 10:35, Sarah Cook wrote:
> 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
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