Nam June Paik’s City: from New York to Seoul

Nam June Paik’s City: from New York to Seoul, co-organized by Seoul Metropolitan Government and Nam June Paik Art Center, presents Suite 212(1975/1977). This exhibition screens Paik’s videos at SEOULLO MEDIA CANVAS located in Malli-dong Plaza from September 21 to December 19, 2019. Suite 212(1975/1977) comprising 30 short videos, features New York in the 1970’s in forms of electronic collage. Selected 13 units of video held by Nam June Paik Art Center Video Archives shall be screened from 18:00 to 23:00 every evening. Suite 212 where Paik captured New York’s buildings, people, culture, scenery, and history in electronic collage shall be screened in the center of Seoul at 40-year intervals and juxtapose two metropolitan cities. We hope that this exhibition provides viewers with spatial as well as temporal experience by recognizing differences of fragmented views on two metropolitan cities, in the video on SEOULLO MEDIA CANVAS and the real-time daily environment, respectively.

Nam June Paik Suite 212 (1975/1977)
Suite 212 is Paik’s single-channel video work produced at TV LAB, which was an experimental video workshop hosted by WNET/Channel 13, New York. It is a series of video works titled after the area code of New York City, 212. Each video, from 3 minutes to 8 minutes duration, was broadcast in every night in the month of April 1975 via WNET/Channel 13. In this work, Paik shows snapshots of New York in his unique pleasant view. Short video works which titled after their topics as a subtitle, symbolizes New York in the 1970’s. Each video work is manipulated the forms and colors using video synthesizer. Images in the video is repeated and overlapped. Classical musics, jazz, or daily noises are inserted as background sound. Nam June Paik collaborated with his colleagues including John Godfrey, Douglas Davis, Jud Yalkut, Fred Barzyk, David Atwood and among other, in order to create this work.