Nam June Paik’s Video and Other Media

Part of the answer seems to be through his performance art, his membership of “Fluxus”, which is where he also started experimenting with video art. Since his death early this year, art institutions in New York and Tokyo, cities where he lived extensively, have been holding retrospectives of his video work and showing his works in other media. The Japanese press has been stressing the Watari family’s large, private collection and their close connection to the artist. Located in Tokyo, the Watari Museum of Contemporary Art thus seems to be an obvious choice for displaying and examining his work, as Paik also lived and went to university in Tokyo when he was a young man.

The Watari collection is in fact quite impressive, as it covers the various media Paik worked with but is not necessarily widely known for. There are his staple installations: stacks of monitors, experimental TV shows which have the feel of educational TV emissions, recordings of his musical experimentations and performances. There are also some artifacts, collages and drawings which do not involve TV or video.

The “father of video art” looks versed in more than just video art. Still, there are large number of videos to watch. But as often happens with videos in museum spaces, it’s hard to go through too many of them, as the viewing position is too mundane and (assuming that there are DVDs or VHS of the works available) an armchair in a private home screening seems a better alternative.