“Random Access Information:” Experimental Media Art after Nam June Paik in Postwar South Korea and Taiwan
Session will present: On locationTaking the global legacy of Nam June Paik as a point of departure, this panel offers a critical survey of experimental media art and its postmedial condition in East Asia from the postwar period to the present. Since the late 1960s, Paik’s practice has occupied a critical juncture between technological and aesthetic experimentation. While most of his works were produced in the Euro-American art scene, his influence preceded his physical presence in East Asia. His artistic mediation on television and video became the paradigm of media art for many postwar artists. In Korea, while news of Paik’s activities appeared in the 1960s, his video art gained broader attention only after the broadcast of Good Morning, Mr. Orwell (1984). In Taiwan, even though his works were never exhibited locally, artists nonetheless adopted this new artistic strategy, in contrast to dominant state-sponsored visual culture.
Spanning Paik’s canonic video work to its regional aftermath, this panel addresses how media art practices in South Korea and Taiwan are shaped and contextualized. It offers three case studies examining how media art is locally invented, engaged with, or transformed through specific interventions. With a comparison of Paik’s TV Fish and Park Hyunki’s TV Fishbowl, a revisit to the transgressive strategies of Taiwanese avant-garde filmmakers under authoritarian regime, and an analysis of plasticity and animation in Liu Yu's video installation, this panel addresses themes of environmental art, fascism in Asia, and indigenous art—to speculate new political possibilities from “random access information.”
Keywords:
Geographic Area: East Asia
Time Period: Twentieth Century
Medium: Video (history and studio)
Medium: Intermedia
Topics: Technology
Chair:
Pei-chun Hsieh
Discussant:
Nam Hee Park
Abstract Submissions Closed