Korean moving image, a global tour
Korean moving image, 1930s-2009, curated by Art Center Nabi, Nam June Paik Art Center, Korean Film Archive
Artists have long harbored an aspiration for the unity of mankind, for transcendence of time and space, race, social status and cultural background. Paik Nam June in 1984 presented an impressive piece of satellite art – “Good Morning, Mr. Orwell” in which artists from all around the globe were connected through satellite. A quarter of a century has passed since then, and we are hosting a festival celebrating global communication and art without borders on the evening of August 7, 2009 in New Songdo City, Incheon.
We have prepared some magnificent pieces of media art to commemorate ‘Global Fair & Festival 2009 Incheon, Korea’ and to celebrate the launching of an Open Theatre, ‘Tomorrow City’, the symbol of New Songdo City.
We would like to introduce a public art “Come Join Us, Mr. Orwell” which will link the hearts of people from all around the world regardless of nationality or language. Media artists from Europe will show an open air digital art performance for the first time in Korea. We are also curating a moving image exhibition in cooperation with Streaming Museum and art organizations from 10 other countries including USA, UK and Australia, where moving image will be presented on Streaming Museum’s network of large urban screens in select public places. The screens will be accessible through the internet and mobiles and act as a bridge connecting the people of each country. thereby generating a creative cultural communication. The opening event, a live telematic performance, in which ‘Tomorrow City’ of Incheon and ‘Federation Square’ of Melbourne, will be connected, will present an invaluable opportunity for the people of the two cities to mingle and create a community network.
Through these media arts that open up a new horizon for the 21st century art, we expect to see the dissolution of all boundaries, the merge of the real and the imaginary, live and art, technology and art, men and women, the young and the old, the East and the West. And we hope to attain ‘Moo Bong Top’ which Paik Nam June so aspired – a seamless tower where everything is connected to everything else, hence truth – through these priceless arts.
KOREAN FILM ARCHIVES
Film and City: Seoul landscape, from Kyungsung to Seoul
City and film are one of the most fascinating inventions that have been in close relationship since the beginnings. Unlike the Western Europe, Chosun invented its city and film under an oppressed atmosphere called ‘colonization.’ There have been many Korean films with Seoul as their background, but it was rare to have Seoul as the subject matter. Seoul started to be introduced as an important set in films after the Korean War. However, it was from the colonization period that Seoul started to form itself as a city. The films from this time contain the slowly changing landscape of the modern city, Kyungsung, and the various reactions of Chosun people as the Japanese and European influence emerge in. The purpose of this exhibition is to illustrate the traces of both the fascination and resistance against the modern period portrayed in the Korean films that were produced during the 1930s to 1950s when colonization and war existed. Korean Film Archives Korean Film Archives is the only institution in Korea that nationally collects, preserves, and utilizes our valuable cultural heritage films. It was built in 1974 and became the public institution as Ministry of Culture and Tourism to provide cultural mountain and river services in 2002. Korean Film Archives is currently working hard to forever preserve our cultural heritage films under the right circumstances. They are not only doing their proper job as an archive, but also providing a film library of up-to-date multimedia, a cinematech movie screen, and Korean film museum to create a place ‘where every movie in the world exists.’ koreafilm.org
The list of films:
– The Crossroad of youth (Ahn Jong-hwa, 1934)
– Sweet Dream (Lullaby of Death) (Yang Joo-nam , 1936)
– Military Train (Seo Gwang-jae, 1938)
– Angels on the Streets (Choi In-kyu, 1941)
– Spring of Korean Peninsula (Lee Byeong-il, 1941)
– Dear Soldier (Pang Han-jun, 1941)
– Straits of Chosun (Park Ki-chae, 1943)
– The Hand of Destiny (Han Hyung-mo, 1954)
– Hyperbolae of Youth (Han Hyung-mo, 1956)
– Madame Freedom (Han Hyung-mo, 1956)
– Holiday in Seoul (Lee Yong-min, 1956)
NAM JUNE PAIK ART CENTER
Nam June Paik: Electronic Performance
Nam June Paik, the world’s most renowned video artist, was also an extremely important performance artist. The video pieces he created with the video synthesizer, a machine he invented to juxtapose and manipulate images, always included elements of performance such as featuring many important artists of his time like David Bowie, Joseph Beuys, Merce Cunningham, and Charlotte Moorman. Electronic Performance is a compilation of extracts of these exciting works.
Artist Nam June Paik (born 1932 in Seoul, died 2007 in Miami) was one of the most important artists of the 20th century. A trained composer, he started as a performance artist and later initiated TV art, Video art, Satellite art and Laser art. Honored with the most important awards in the world, he lived most of his life in New York. Nam June Paik Art Center The Nam June Paik Art Center is located in Yongin, a city on the outskirts of Seoul. It is supported by the Gyeonggi Cultural Foundation and Gyeonggi Province. The center was discussed with Nam June Paik and is under development since 2001. The NJP Art Center opened its permanent building in April 2008. Under the current director, Young Chul Lee, it aspires to reactivate the experimental and interventionist spirit of 20th century and contemporary art practices in order to become a locus where aesthetic, political and social potentialities contribute to questioning and redefining the relationships between art, philosophy, media and life. njpartcenter.kr
The list of works:
– Nam June Paik at FLUXUS Festspiele Neuster Musik, 1962
– Marshall McLuhan in Suite 212, 1977
– Pamela Susa and Ken Armstrong in Global Groove, 1973
– Wolfgang Ramsbott films Nam June Paik, 1962
– Nam June Paik in The Medium is the Medium, 1969
– Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlowsky in Allan, n’ Allen’s Complaint, 1982
– Charlotte Moorman in A Tribute to John Cage, 1972
– Merce Cunningham in Merce by Merce by Paik, 1975
– Nam June Paik and Charlotte Moorman in Guadalcanal Requiem, 1977
– Joseph Beuys and Nam June Paik in Coyote III, Piano Duet, 1984
– David Bowie and La La La Human Steps in Wrap Around the World, 1988
– Allan Kaprow in Allan, n’ Allen’s Complaint, 1982
– Allen Ginsberg in Good Morning Mr. Orwell, 1984
ART CENTER NABI
Since its opening in 2000, Art Center Nabi has actively promoted new media arts in Korea. Exploring new possibilities of creation, education and exhibition of media arts, Art Center Nabi has been in the forefront of the convergence of art and media technologies of our time. Art Center Nabi tries to devise new and effective ways to disseminate media arts to the public at large. Balancing creativity with critical perspectives, we seek to contribute to the humanity and diversity of techno-culture today. nabi.or.kr
Director, Roh, Soh Yeong
Creative Director, Choi, Dooeun
Cradle Song – Blue Fish by Kim Joon (Korea) 2009 3D animation
Engrave the sea on your body and lie to feel it surge Sing the lullaby as a mother pats her child As the top of falling into a deep sleep, it wakes you and runs away Protect our Environment!
Expression | Text Abstract | Conversation | Men in Suit, by Hansol Huh (Korea) 2008, Typography
Someone’s name, face, facial expression, and story. Which all resemble each other. Just as my name was given before I was born I am slowly resembling my name, or maybe even chasing it. I will forever live with the first gift by my father. And now, I am preparing one, too.
aesthetica 003 by Joo Muoung Song (Korea) 2009, Motion graphic film
This work is the third work of aesthetica, which has been produced since 2003. One can feel the Mother Nature from the special sense generated by the combination of sound and movements of dots, lines, and spaces. One can also sense the softness, like a child’s skin, from the extreme digitally intense work. aesthetica 003 is a voyage of sense that each individual audience can possess. At the same time, it is a work of experimenting the limits of recognition that is created, not by the narrative and specific object, but by the most fundamental theory of formation.
from right to left by Keryoon Han (Korea) 2009, video art The good art that I have learned does not pursue superficial beauty, but is attempted to derive discourses on what one intends to say through it, and one senses its true value when it is interpreted in the context of contemporary art and conforms with the slogans of avant-garde art. This is what I have persuaded myself to believe in. There is no doubt about the fact that this is the good art. I still believe so. However, I may have forces myself too much. There emerges the desire for deviation.
It is the external beauty seductive enough to make one feel like falling into its irresistible sweetness and risk swallowing poison for it, in spite of the impropriety of its contents…
I hope I can really do that.
SPONSORS
TOUR
Cross-Korea: Come Join Us Mr. Orwell toured internationally in 2009-2011.
Piazza Duomo, Milan
Cocor MediaChannel, Bucharest, Romania
The National Museum of Contemporary Art (EMST), Athens, Greece
Antarctica, Scientific Base of Argentina. Photo by Marcelo Mammana
Tomorrow City, Incheon, Korea
Art Center Nabi, Seoul, Korea
PRESS RELEASE
Streaming Museum exhibits "Cross-Korea"
Korean moving image from 1930s - 2009,
at launch of Tomorrow City, Asia's First Digital City,
Song-do, Incheon, Korea
New York, NY--Streaming Museum, a new hybrid museum that exhibits the arts in cyberspace and pubic spaces on 7 continents, is commemorating the launch of Tomorrow City, Incheon, Korea, Asia's first digital city, with the exhibition "Cross-Korea: Come Join Us, Mr. Orwell". The exhibition, which will be on view August 7 - October 25 in Tomorrow City's Open Theater and viewed internationally, presents a collection of Korean moving image from the 1930s to 2009 curated by Art Center Nabi, the Nam June Paik Art Center and the Korean Film Archive. Dooeun Choi, curator of Art Center Nabi, explains, "Streaming Museum takes the exhibition 'Crossing-Korea' on a trans-continental journey. The hope is that through creative communication and culture exchanges between ten different countries in seven continents, through the open window - Tomorrow City's Open Theater electric sign - we'll discover and meet the worldwide community in our future city."
Korean Film Archives
Korean Film Archives is the only institution in Korea that nationally collects, preserves, and utilizes valuable cultural heritage films. Opened in 1974, Korean Film Archives is currently working to preserve cultural heritage films. establish a film library of up-to-date multimedia, a cinematech movie screen, and Korean film museum to create a place ‘where every movie in the world exists.' The Archives has curated for "Cross-Korea" a collection of work entitled "Film and City: Seoul landscape, from Kyungsung to Seoul" that illustrates both the fascination and resistance against the modern period portrayed in the Korean films that were produced during the 1930s to 1950s when colonization and war existed. For information on the flimmakers and film titles exhibited go to streamingmuseum.org
Nam June Paik Art Center
Nam June Paik (born 1932 in Seoul, died 2007 in Miami) was one of the most important artists of the 20th century. A trained composer, Paik was first a performance artist and later initiated TV art, Video art, Satellite art and Laser art. The Nam June Paik Art Center, in Yongin, a city on the outskirts of Seoul, is supported by the Gyeonggi Cultural Foundation and Gyeonggi Province. The Center opened its permanent building in April 2008. Under the current director, Young Chul Lee, it aspires to reactivate the experimental and interventionist spirit of 20th century and contemporary art practices in order to become a locus where aesthetic, political and social potentialities contribute to questioning and redefining the relationships between art, philosophy, media and life. The Center has curated for "Cross-Korea", "Nam June Paik: Electronic Performance" - a compilation of excerpts from videos he created with the video synthesizer, a machine he invented to juxtapose and manipulate images, always including elements of performance and featuring important artists of his time such as David Bowie, Joseph Beuys, Merce Cunningham, and Charlotte Moorman.
Art Center Nabi Since its opening in 2000, Art Center Nabi has actively promoted new media arts in Korea. Exploring new possibilities of creation, education and exhibition of media arts. Art Center Nabi has been in the forefront of the convergence of art and media technologies of our time, developing new and effective ways to disseminate media arts to the public at large. Balancing creativity with critical perspectives, the Center seeks to contribute to the humanity and diversity of techno-culture today. Art Center Nabi has curated for "Cross Korea," "Digilog(ue) - a selection of work created in the past year by exceptional Korean media artists, Kim Joon, Hansol Huh. Joo Myoung Song, and Keryoon Han.
Go to streamingmuseum.org to view the exhibition and for information on the artists and location schedules.
Tomorrow City Open Theater, Song-do, Incheon, Korea
Contact:
Nina Colosi
Founder / Creative Director, Streaming Museum
nina@streamingmuseum.org
Streaming Museum (streamingmuseum.org) is a new hybrid museum that presents multi-media exhibitions in cyberspace and public spaces on 7 continents. Launched January 29, 2008 by Nina Colosi, the museum is produced and broadcast in NYC, with exhibitions generated in collaboration with international cultural, educational, and public centers; artists curators and visionary creators. The museum was inspired by Nam June Paik who in the 1970s envisioned the Internet, predicting an "information superhighway" as an open and free medium for imagination and exchange of cultures. Sponsors are FJC Foundation - A Foundation of Philanthropic Funds, and ONSSI. The museum is a member of the International Urban Screens Association.