Nam June Paik, 1981
Artist Nam June Paik recaptured the communicative power of the medium by denying the television to act as a window into other worlds. He did so by throwing out the narrative in favor of pure information.
He began as a musician, studying mostly western compositions at the university of Tokyo. He later moved to Germany to continue his musical education…where he met John Cage.
Cage explored the Zen Buddhist ideas of absolute emptiness and indeterminacy as a platform for his work, which caused Paik a bit of Occidental hesitation. Upon first hearing Cage’s composition 4’33″, Paik stated a 1975 interview with art critic Calvin Tomkins that he went there with a bit of cynical mindset to see what “Americans would do with Oriental Heritage”, and went on to say “In the middle of the concert slowly, slowly I got turned on. By the end I was a completely different man.”
Paik began his musical career with an exploration of the western tradition, but after experiencing John Cage, he set out to destroy it.
That was the soft version of his “destructive artist” days, most of them were as described by John Cage in the Video Time- Video Space catalogue as leaving everyone paralyzed with fear and “utterly silent for what seemed an eternity…I determined I would think twice before attending another performance by Nam June Paik.”
Action with a Violin String, 1963
His pinnacle expression of post-modernist theory was during his 1963 performance at the Exposition of Music and Electronic Television held his performance at the Exposition of Music. In this piece, he dragged the violin or music of the past behind him as he walked towards a doorway. The violin was part of Paik’s personal iconography regarding the traditional western music that he devoted the first half of his life developing and practicing. By attaching it to himself, then dragging it along as he walks through the door, it is an acknowledgment that he can never fully break from the art of the past. Just as post-modernism is defined through by what it follows, his rejection and destruction of the traditional music structure is always tied to that which it rejects.
