Video Art’s Past and Present ‘Future Tense’: The Case of Nam June Paik’s Satellite Works

In 1989, Paik reflected on his recent trio of satellite broadcast works: Good Morning, Mr. Orwell (1984), Bye Bye Kipling (1986), and Wrap Around the World (1988), saying: “You are born only once. You die only once....From this fear and yearning born of the fragility of life, our philosophy of the ‘eternal return’ emerges.” As real-time performances, the satellite works were unrepeatable events of another sort, offering a dizzying compendium of art, music, dance, and sport from multiple nations, all augmented by Paik’s video effects. In an era characterized by Cold War conflict and the threat of nuclear annihilation, Paik’s satellite pieces offered sincere if fleeting moments of international communion.

Yet even as the satellite pieces faded from TV screens, they would experience a series of “eternal returns.” How the satellite pieces became the élan vital of many of Paik’s later artworks, and how those artworks pose challenges to the reception and preservation of video art, constitutes the core of this paper. The satellite works provided the artist with self-recyclable material, first as edited single-channel video versions that could be distributed in the art world or as home video; secondly, appearing in his increasingly large video walls; and finally, as online viewing. Each of these returns was not merely a recurrence, but rather, a metempsychosis, an ongoing remix that Paik dubbed his “video compost.” The “eternal returns” of the satellite pieces constitute a body of work that continues to take on new life, even in the present day.