Super-spreader: media virus
16 July–4 October 2015
Nam June Paik Art Center
10 Paiknamjune-ro, Giheung-gu,
Yongin-si, Gyeonggi-do,
446-905 Korea
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Nam June Paik Art Center will be presenting Super-spreader: media virus in a special exhibition. With 11 artists, the show will examine the role and influence of media, currently undergoing a change as various forms of media are distributed to a greater population. The exhibition also investigates issues that emerge from the rapid dissemination and spread of communication. The subjects of focus in the current exhibition are the establishment of media as a powerful authority—and how this changes the lives of individuals in the current period. In the past, media was mainly used as a means to maintain authority or sustain a system through surveillance, control or blockage of information. In the 21st century, however, different forms of media influence each other through sharing, participation and diffusion. It is now changing into a strategic tool for individuals or minority groups. The current change confirms the prediction made by Nam June Paik, who observed that even televisions would cease to function as a means of one-way communication and become a participatory, interactive medium. A new generation of artists recognizes media as a living organism: when they work together, they can disseminate information or opinions on certain events of the society in a terrifying pace, overthrowing existing systems and networks of information or proposing new ways of interpretation.
The participating artists of the current exhibition are those that were born between the 1960s and 1980s, a period in which media started dominating households and the lives of individuals. Living through such a period, they have experienced diverse media, ranging from television, film and video to the internet, moving images and social networking services. They are a generation accustomed to such phenomena both in their lives and works; at the same time, they are artists that take a critical view on a society dominated by media. While the artists use the media they are most accustomed to, they simultaneously deconstruct and connect the existing concepts—taste, language, knowledge, communication, agency, technology, community and family—through their own unique interpretations. In the meantime, they also reinterpret diverse information and its fragments displayed on different flat screens. Presenting their reinterpretation in intriguing ways, they raise questions for the contemporaries living in the media-friendly age on how to establish relationship with media.
List of artists: Nathaniel Mellors, Natalie Bookchin, Roh Jae Oon, Mioon, Sean Snyder, Albert Merino, Yangachi, Ann-Sofi Sidén, Euclid (Masahiko Sato+Takashi Kiriyama), Insane Park, Cha Ji-ryang
Director: Suh Jin Suk
Curators: Hyunjeung Kim, Jihee Kim
