Looks everyone has been on well-deserved holiday! Happy new year, list.

To pick this conversation up, being at FACT of course I know the Nam 
June Paik exhibition well, but not having lead on it myself I feel I 
have a bit of a distance from it also. I had my first chance to spend 
some time with the show between Christmas and New Year, and it was great 
to start the show at Tate, where you get a historical overview, and then 
move on to FACT, where you have one big work (Laser Cone) that you have 
a sense of interaction with - being able to crawl under it and watch 
lasers shoot at you from above. The show at Tate gives a sense of 
meticulous research, with a useful timeline panel of Paik's life and 
work for those new to him, and an emphasis on his influences and 
collaborators throughout the show - correspondence from people like 
George Maciunas and posters/fliers for early performances, in vitrines. 
At Tate the show is, of course, geared towards the museum object - none 
of his interactive works are recreated, so it is the original objects we 
have on display to look at and not touch. I wished that I could have 
played with the magnets on a recreated Magnet TV or run a tape head 
across Random Access to hear a sound, but I expected this and do feel 
delight in seeing 'the original'. And it makes the move to FACT's 
portion of the show make sense - where there is a greater sense of 
interaction, play, activity and legacy.

But somewhat unrelated to this, I have a question for Sook about the 
title & subtitle of the show, which is 'Nam June Paik: Video artist, 
performance artist, composer and visionary'. As I more often think of 
Nam June Paik as one of the earliest media artists, someone that used 
video and television because it was the new media at the time, I was 
surprised see that those descriptors were used over a reference to him 
as a media artist. (though when I went to the show at Tate, one of the 
introductory panels does start with "Media artist, performance artist, 
composer and visionary, Nam June Paik was..."  - an alternative 
subtitle, perhaps?)

It may seem picky but I'm sure you thought quite hard about the subtitle 
so I hope it isn't pedantic to ask if you had some debate about whether 
to refer to him a media artist or not in this instance? Or to take it 
wider, what were your thoughts while researching and curating the show, 
on framing his legacy to video art vs. media art (to put it in a 
deliberately binary way, which of course it isn't...)? He is one of the 
rare artists who can be claimed as a pioneer of so many forms - how did 
you balance these simultaneous legacies?

Best,
Heather

(p.s. Rhizome review of the show just up today might be useful: 
http://rhizome.org/editorial/3951)


On 15/12/2010 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

-- 
Heather Corcoran
Curator
FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology)
88 Wood Street
Liverpool, UK
L1 4DQ

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