NJP x KF Wrap Around the World

To commemorate Paik’s 90th anniversary, a five-episode video series titled Wrap Around the World was curated by Nam June Paik Art Center, filmed by 57 Studio, and presented by Korea Foundation. Inspired by Paik’s 1988 live broadcast of the same title, the last one of his trilogy of satellite opera, this series took Paik’s Video Study, the online video archive of Nam June Paik Art Center, as a research platform, and contemporary artists of today created a new work drawing on his video aesthetics and messages of peace and goodwill to humanity.

Paik’s Wrap Around the World was on air on September 11, 1988, one week before the Seoul Olympic Games. Like his previous satellite broadcasts Good Morning Mr. Orwell and Bye Bye Kipling, pop singers and avant-garde artists mingled together for this show. As the Cold War was coming to an end, eleven broadcasting stations across the globe, including those from Russia and China, took part in this project. It included Kung Fu and circus from China, a salsa carnival from Brazil, a motor race from Ireland, a Brahms concert at the composer’s house, and so forth. In Korea, Samulnori, a percussion quartet, was performed in front of Paik’s The More The Better installed in the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea. Paik himself also turned up, wearing dopo and gat, a gentlemen’s robe and hat, and staging an ancestral rite, all in traditional forms.

The newly commissioned series is composed of five videos, “Wrap Around the World,” “Seoul Sonata,” “Zen for the Loner,” “VR Garden,” and “Letters from the East,” for which LEENALCHI, DJ Lee Jinwook, sound artist Jeong Jinhwa, Park Sohee of ELLETRAVAILLE, and Park Minhee of HAEPAARY joined.

NJP x KF

1. Wrap Around The World (with LEENALCHI)
2. Seoul Sonata (with DJ Lee Jinwook)
3. Zen for the Loner (with Jeong JinHwa)
4. VR Garden (with ELLETRAVAILLE Park Sohee, Jeong JinHwa)
5. Letters from the East (with HAEPAARY Park Minhee)