Nam June Paik

Known for Directing

7/20/1932

Gyeongseong, South Korea [now Seoul]

Biography

Nam June Paik was the first video artist who experimented with electronic media and made a profound impact on the art of video and television. He coined the phrase "Information Superhighway" in 1974, and has been called the "father of video art."

Known For (28 credits)

6.9

Movie

Nam June Paik: Moon Is the Oldest TV

2023

The quixotic journey of Nam June Paik, one of the most famous Asian artists of the 20th century, who revolutionized the use of technology as an artistic canvas and prophesied both the fascist tendencies and intercultural understanding that would arise from the interconnected metaverse of today's world.

Movie

Tapes

2020

The tapes in the program consist of some of Mekas’ earliest cassettes from the 1990s not long after he first began working with video as well as more recent mini-DV tapes from 2010s. The contents of the tapes have not been previously seen in their entirety. The footage provides rare insight into aspects of Mekas’ video-making practice, as well as his activities, thoughts, dreams, and concerns, especially during the later years of his life.

Movie

Kill Your TV: Jim Moir’s Weird World of Video Art

2019

Jim Moir (aka Vic Reeves) explores Video Art, revealing how different generations ‘hacked’ the tools of television to pioneer new ways of creating art that can be beautiful, bewildering and wildly experimental.

George: The Story of George Maciunas and Fluxus

7.0

Movie

George: The Story of George Maciunas and Fluxus

2018

In 1961 Lithuanian American artist and impresario George Maciunas established the avant-garde art movement Fluxus. George details the rise of Fluxus following a sensationalized tour of “concerts” in Europe in 1962, and continuing in New York for most of the 1960s and ’70s. During this time Maciunas was converting the dying industrial buildings of Soho into a network of artists’ lofts, creating one of the first official real estate co-ops of artist-owned buildings. Maciunas’s life and legacy—as recounted by artists of his generation, including Yoko Ono and Jonas Mekas—ignited debates that remain pivotal to artists working today.

Movie

Re: Maciunas and Fluxus

2011

“Drawing on his personal archives, Mekas has assembled a Fluxus vaudeville starring Yoko Ono, Joseph Beuys, and the late Nam June Paik. Most of the material is relatively recent although Ben Vautieur shows some early 1960s work to hilarious effect and Mekas channels Fluxus founder George Maciunas throughout.” – J. Hoberman, VILLAGE VOICE

Movie

Joseph Beuys - Coyote III

2008

DVD accompanying the book "Coyote III", documenting Joseph Beuys and Nam June Paik performing at the Sôgetsu Hall in Tokyo on the 2nd of June 1984. Nam June Paik sits on one side of the stage playing European classical music, improvisations and Japanese folk music. On the other side, Joseph Beuys acts out experiences from living in an enclosed space with a coyote - a free man who turns back into an animal, into a form of life that he understands as a prerequisite for this freedom

10.0

Movie

365 Day Project

2007

This exhibition focuses on Jonas Mekas’ 365 Day Project, a succession of films and videos in calendar form. Every day as of January 1st, 2007 and for an entire year, as indicated in the title, a large public (the artist's friends, as well as unknowns) were invited to view a diary of short films of various lengths (from one to twenty minutes) on the Internet. A movie was posted each day, adding to the previously posted pieces, resulting altogether in nearly thirty-eight hours of moving images.

As I Was Moving Ahead, Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty

7.6

Movie

As I Was Moving Ahead, Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty

2000

A compilation of over 30 years of private home movie footage shot by Lithuanian-American avant-garde director Jonas Mekas, assembled by Mekas "purely by chance", without concern for chronological order.

5.7

Movie

"Topless Cellist" Charlotte Moorman

1995

Nam June Paik's first single-channel videotape since 1989 is a heartfelt tribute to his long-time collaborator Charlotte Moorman. This portrait traces Moorman's career as an avant-garde performer, from her classical training to her notorious arrest as the "Topless Cellist" and subsequent talk-show celebrity. Rare documentations of Moorman's performances include Otto Piene's Sky Kiss and Jim McWilliams' Chocolate Cello. Interviews with Moorman's friends, family and collaborators, such as Yoko Ono, Christo and Jeanne Claude, Otto Piene, and Barbara Moore, among others, provide intimate recollections of the inimitable Moorman.

Movie

The Electronic Super Highway: Nam June Paik in the Nineties

1994

A portrait of Nam June Paik produced as a 'video catalog' for the exhibition 'The Electronic Super Highway', which premiered at The Museum of Art in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, with recent installations, historical background and interviews.

Movie

Back to Fucking Cambridge

1987

About a group of graduates from Cambridge University who go back to their college to visit a friend who has stayed on there. Otto Muehl founded a community of artists in Vienna in 1970 with the aim of exploring a completely free life practice. Since 1972, this society experiment at the Friedrichshof in Burgenland, 60 kilometers from Vienna, further developed. From the mid-1970s, other municipalities were founded in 30 European cities. At Friedrichshof itself lived at times up to 240 members and visitors.

He Stands in a Desert Counting the Seconds of His Life

8.2

Movie

He Stands in a Desert Counting the Seconds of His Life

1986

A film collage tracing the story of the lives, loves, and deaths within the artistic community surrounding Jonas Mekas.