From Nam June Paik to SLIDERS_Lab
January 12–March 10, 2019
BOZAR, Rue Ravenstein 23
Vernissage: January 11, 2019
2pm at BOZAR
7pm at Zebrastraat
Featuring: Nam June Paik, Steina en Woody Vasulka, SLIDERS_lab (M. Billon, F. Curien, J.-M. Dallet, A. Sedes), Maria Barthélémy & René Sultra, Anne-Marie Duguet, Joost Rekveld
Organisation: Liedts-Meesen Foundation
Curator: Jean-Marie Dallet
Video art appeared in the second half of the 1960s. This art form is related to the official television with which, however, it does not share the commercial side, aesthetic finality or manner of dissemination.
Under the impulse of Nam June Paik, the pioneers of video art wanted to blow up the aesthetic limits of traditional art by using technology, of which the product was more communication than an individual artwork. Video art was born from an interest in the intangible message of electronics as distinct from the static physical forms of traditional plastic arts.
The artists will mainly focus on concepts like power, mass media, television, broadcast, signal, technique. These concepts will open new intellectual horizons in which some saw the birth of a new episteme.
This idea of a changing world, which has led to a new intellectual era since the 1960s, is especially interesting because it parallels with the reflections that could be heard in the early 1990s when the computer became “personal,” i.e. accessible for everyone.
For this reason, we would like to show in the exhibition that these two moments, that of the 1960s and that of the 1990s, cannot be seen apart from each other but are connected by secret ties. To begin to draw these ties we will follow the following three axes:
1. Devices, their use and their invention by artists
2. The memory and thus the archive
3. The multiplicity of screens as the construction of a new mental universe
To explore these relationships between two worlds, one analogue and the other digital, the exhibition will present installations, video films, sculptures, photographs, generative works and archival documents. Some of the works presented are considered as milestones of contemporary art. The exhibition will be held at two sites: Zebrastraat in Ghent and BOZAR in Brussels.
After an inaugural session with the artists on the day of the opening, conferences will be held regularly every Thursday, from 8pm, for the duration of the exhibition.
To explore these themes, Jean-Marie Dallet, curator of the exhibition, and Don Foresta, former director of the US Cultural Embassy in Paris, will lead a debate in BOZAR in the presence of the artists of the exhibition: Steina and Woody Vasulka (ISL), pioneers of video art, Frédéric Curien, Anne Sedes and Marc Billon from SLIDERS_lab (FRA), Maria Barthélémy and René Sultra (FRA), Joost Rekveld (NLD) and Anne-Marie Duguet (FRA), director of the Anarchive collection. Also participating in this conversation will be Jinsuk Suh, director of the Nam June Paik Art Center, who is responsible for the loan of outstanding works by the artist Nam June Paik.
Speakers:
January 17: Don Foresta (director of the MARCEL Foundation, former director of the American Cultural Center in Paris, France) and Joost Rekveld (artist, Amsterdam, The Netherlands)
January 24: SLIDERS_Lab
January 31: Thierry Dufrêne (university professor, university of Nanterre, France)
February 2: Anne-Marie Duguet (university professor emeritus, university of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, France)
February 14: Anne Sedes and Marc Billon (SLIDERS_lab, collective of artists, Angoulême, France) and Gaby Wijers (director LIMA, Amsterdam, The Netherlands)
February 21: Patrick Nardin (maître de conférences, university of Paris 8 Vincennes, France)
February 28: Grégoire Quenault (maître de conférences, university of Paris 8 Vincennes, France).
March 7: Larisa Driansky (maître de conférences, university of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne)
On Thursday, January 17, at 9pm, a concert will be given by SPECTRA paying tribute to Paik’s Fluxus-past with i.a. a selection from George Maciunas’ Twelve Piano Compositions for Nam June Paik. Fluxus was a rather loose grouping of artists who were looking for the blending of art forms and disciplines, often using new media. The German artist Michael Beil shows in String Jack how these ideas about intermedia can be shaped today. Image and sound, past and present mingle with a surprising saturation: the daily abundance of information artfully queried. In this context, house composer Joris Blanckaert also formulates his answer in a special creation.
