Nam June Paik
Nam June Paik: Academic Transcript from the University of Cologne
Artist
Nam June Paik
Original Title
Nam June Paik: Academic Transcript from the University of Cologne
Date1975-1990
Mediummultiple - book facsimile (?)
Dimensions21 × 15 cm
ClassificationsFlux Papers
Credit LineKunsthalle Praha (Marie and Milan Knížák Fluxus Collection)
DescriptionNam June Paik was one of the foremost artists of the Fluxus movement and a pioneer of video art. His artistic practice combined art and science. His work was in many ways influenced by television, and several of his artworks were based around the effects of new electronic visuality. Paik’s unique approach combined expressivity and conceptual performance with the new technological possibilities of the moving image, through which he sought to transform the institutional context of television and video. Although he took part in numerous activities of the Fluxus movement, he always retained his own divergent ideas and a distinctive artistic style. Paik was educated as a musician and piano player; however, his first compositions are mainly defined by manipulations, fusing found sounds with elements of popular and classical music (Hommage à John Cage, 1959). Subsequently, he began creating participative installations, where listeners had to choose how to move through the space (Symphony for Twenty Rooms, 1961, unrealized). Working with musical form led him to the broader question of dealing with time (objet sonoré / sound objects). His prepared pianos (Klavier Intégral, 1958–63) sit on the boundary of an artwork and a functional musical instrument, illustrating Paik’s deconstruction of traditional modernist ideas about artistic disciplines and their striation. Paik’s early screens—such as Zen for TV (1963, MoMa, New York), which consists of a television stood on its side with a single white line showing on its screen, and Participation TV (1963), where the two microphones plugged into a television allowed viewers to generate visual patterns on the screen—were initially created as a side project while constructing a complex sonic environment and received little attention. Some sources even state that these pieces were made in secret, without anybody knowing that Paik was even working with television prior to their display. His exhibition Exposition of Music – Electronic Television (Galerie Parnass, Wuppertal, 1963) featured twelve modified television screens showing German television broadcasting, with their images distorted via magnets and direct interventions into their electronics. From 1964 onward, television monitors became Paik’s primary objects of interest, especially after he moved to New York, where he created his most famous television sculptures (Robot K-456 (1964); Magnet TV (1965); TV Chair (1968); TV Bra (1969); TV Cello (1971); TV Glasses (1971); TV Bed (1972)). Their most important artistic contribution is the transformation of the moving image into a sculpture, an object with specific characteristics—it is fundamentally physical, light-based, and information-based, and sometimes requires participation by the viewer or the performer. These objects are created by deconstructing and reconfiguring the original technological object. Paik’s use of objects saw them retain their initial utilitarian meaning while simultaneously also becoming artworks. Paik used video imagery as part of a wide range of formal configurations. It allowed him to imbue the static medium of sculpture with spatial and processual aspects, through which he expressed his deep insight into electronic technologies while also utilizing his ability to incorporate innovative elements and techniques into his art. He did not limit his approach to video technologies and television systems, but by incorporating them into his work, he positioned them as a new form of creative expression. Paik used video as a basis for developing a variety of expressive forms, which demonstrate his rich imagination and ability to understand video as an open, malleable medium offering alternative forms of expression, thus questioning the perception of television as a medium exclusively controlled by a monopoly of operators. The various video forms developed by Paik can be interpreted as the manifestation of an open medium capable of growing and flourishing through the imagination and participation of communities and individuals from around the world. In his later years, Paik also incorporated sophisticated computer technologies and digital technologies into his work, and also began making use of large-format spatial installations, making it possible to understand him as a precursor of contemporary immersive art.
During his time in Germany, Nam June Paik met the founder of Fluxus, George Maciunas, and subsequently became involved in the movement’s group performances in Europe, and later also in New York. He also became involved in Fluxus’s production of multiples. One example of such work is his fictional academic transcript from the University of Cologne (Academic Transcript from the University of Cologne, 1975–1990), published in Wiesenbad by Harlekin Art Verlag.
Nam June Paik (1932, Soul – 2006, Miami) was an influential Korean-American experimental artist. His approach to art was shaped by a deep interest in the philosophies and traditions of both the East and the West. His time spent in Tokyo, where he studied music, art history, and aesthetics, had a momentous influence on his future artistic trajectory. Paik wrote his thesis on the work of Austrian-American composer Arnold Schönberg. In 1956, he began studying music in Germany. He initially studied at Munich University’s Institute of Musicology under Thrasybulos Georgiades, a Greek musicologist specializing in historical music; subsequently, from 1957 to 1958, he studied at the Hochschule für Musik in Freiburg under Wolfgang Fortner, a composer and one of the teachers affiliated with the Darmstadt International Summer Courses for New Music. His greatest influences were the works John Cage (who was not yet particularly well-known at the time) and Karlheinz Stockhausen, whom he met at the Darmstadt International Summer Course for New Music. Paik also drew inspiration from the work of Joseph Beuys and Wolf Vostell, his generational peers with whom he would collaborate on activities linked to the Fluxus movement, such as the 1962 Fluxus Internationale Festspiele Neuester Musik music festival in Wiesbaden. In 1964, Paik moved to New York. In the same year, he wrote the text Postmusic, in which he formulated his concept of postmusic and musical objects. He took part in early group exhibitions related to the nascent field of electronic art (Festival of Lights, New York, 1967; Light/Motion/Space, Minneapolis, 1967; Television As A Creative Medium, Howard Wise Gallery, New York, 1969) as well as the first computer exhibition Cybernetic Serendipity (1968). An important moment in Paik’s career was his participation in the experimental television broadcasts produced by WGBH-TV, titled The Medium is the Medium (1969). From 1979 to 1996, Paik taught at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. His first major retrospective took place in 1982 at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. At the Venice Biennale in 1993, Paik presented his project titled Sistine Chapel, which thematized the geographical links between Europe and Asia as described by Marco Polo, and for which he received the biennale’s Golden Lion award. Between 2019 and 2022, his major retrospective exhibition The Future is Now showed at the Tate Modern in London, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco, and the National Gallery in Singapore. Paik was the laureate of numerous awards, including the Guggenheim Prize and a Rockefeller Foundation grant. His wife Sheigo Kubota was also a member of Fluxus.
During his time in Germany, Nam June Paik met the founder of Fluxus, George Maciunas, and subsequently became involved in the movement’s group performances in Europe, and later also in New York. He also became involved in Fluxus’s production of multiples. One example of such work is his fictional academic transcript from the University of Cologne (Academic Transcript from the University of Cologne, 1975–1990), published in Wiesenbad by Harlekin Art Verlag.
Nam June Paik (1932, Soul – 2006, Miami) was an influential Korean-American experimental artist. His approach to art was shaped by a deep interest in the philosophies and traditions of both the East and the West. His time spent in Tokyo, where he studied music, art history, and aesthetics, had a momentous influence on his future artistic trajectory. Paik wrote his thesis on the work of Austrian-American composer Arnold Schönberg. In 1956, he began studying music in Germany. He initially studied at Munich University’s Institute of Musicology under Thrasybulos Georgiades, a Greek musicologist specializing in historical music; subsequently, from 1957 to 1958, he studied at the Hochschule für Musik in Freiburg under Wolfgang Fortner, a composer and one of the teachers affiliated with the Darmstadt International Summer Courses for New Music. His greatest influences were the works John Cage (who was not yet particularly well-known at the time) and Karlheinz Stockhausen, whom he met at the Darmstadt International Summer Course for New Music. Paik also drew inspiration from the work of Joseph Beuys and Wolf Vostell, his generational peers with whom he would collaborate on activities linked to the Fluxus movement, such as the 1962 Fluxus Internationale Festspiele Neuester Musik music festival in Wiesbaden. In 1964, Paik moved to New York. In the same year, he wrote the text Postmusic, in which he formulated his concept of postmusic and musical objects. He took part in early group exhibitions related to the nascent field of electronic art (Festival of Lights, New York, 1967; Light/Motion/Space, Minneapolis, 1967; Television As A Creative Medium, Howard Wise Gallery, New York, 1969) as well as the first computer exhibition Cybernetic Serendipity (1968). An important moment in Paik’s career was his participation in the experimental television broadcasts produced by WGBH-TV, titled The Medium is the Medium (1969). From 1979 to 1996, Paik taught at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. His first major retrospective took place in 1982 at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. At the Venice Biennale in 1993, Paik presented his project titled Sistine Chapel, which thematized the geographical links between Europe and Asia as described by Marco Polo, and for which he received the biennale’s Golden Lion award. Between 2019 and 2022, his major retrospective exhibition The Future is Now showed at the Tate Modern in London, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco, and the National Gallery in Singapore. Paik was the laureate of numerous awards, including the Guggenheim Prize and a Rockefeller Foundation grant. His wife Sheigo Kubota was also a member of Fluxus.
