Good Morning Mr. Orwell 2014
17 July–16 November 2014
Opening: July 17, 5pm
Opening performance:
Exonemo, DesktopBAM
Taiyun Kim& Ji Hyun Yoon, Hello, World!
Pauline Oliveros, Rock Piece, King Kong Sing Along Simultaneously
Nam June Paik Art Center
10 Paiknamjune-ro Giheung-gu
Yongin-si Gyeonggi-do
446-905 Korea
www.njpartcenter.kr
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Nam June Paik Art Center is pleased to present a special exhibition Good Morning Mr. Orwell 2014, in celebration of the 30th anniversary of Nam June Paik’s monumental satellite project of the same title. In 1949, George Orwell published the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty Four, depicting a dark future in which surveillance and control through the tele-screen become a routine, and made a pessimistic prediction that humans will be controlled by manipulations of mass media in 1984.
As a refutation of Orwell’s prediction, Nam June Paik said, “He was only half-right” and directed the satellite TV show Good Morning, Mr. Orwell to show the positive utilization of mass media by means of art. On January 1, 1984, Paik linked New York and Paris live via satellite in collaboration with around 30 teams, 100 artists and four broadcasters and aired music, fine arts, performances, fashion show and comedy that cross the borderline between popular and avant-garde art in real time. Above all, these various genres of arts were edited and displayed on one TV screen. This show was broadcast live in New York, Paris, Berlin, LA, Seoul, etc. and is estimated to have been watched by over 25 million TV viewers.
The pictures of Lorenzo Bianda, who was an official photographer of the New York studio of Good Morning Mr. Orwell, give witness to this encounter of the century. Now, the year 2014, is the time to look into the eyes of ourselves seeing this positive festival in commemoration of the 30th anniversary of Good Morning, Mr. Orwell. Today’s global networking systems using the internet make both stronger controls and broadened freedom possible. This exhibition aims to ask about the possibility of making a new node and link to change this network as well as to pose a question of control/freedom that becomes more complicated and secret day by day.
In this perspective, this exhibition offers a selective overview of the works of present-day media artists, who make their position remarkable regarding tele-communication and network system. First of all, the artists deal with the network of surveillance and control, which George Orwell predicted as a character of dystopian future. Among others are Sompot Chidgasornpongse’s Disease and a Hundred Year Period, and Okin Collective’s Seoul Decadence, Mona Hatoum’s So Much I Want to Say that call into question the freedom of expression. Lee Boorok and Finger Pointing Worker are accusing the institutionalized tragic such as war and nuclear power. The videos of Paul Garrin, one of the Paik’s staunchest colleagues, mark the beginning of so-called ‘viral video,’ recording the irrationality of the society. But it is remarkable that most of the artists are trying to face up to the reality as squarely as possible, by seeing through the ambivalence of telecommunication and networking. William Kentridge and Sanghee Song reveal a so called “heterotopian” perspective in the Foucaldian sense and Exonemo’s Supernatural brings into museum space a split presence as it is. Liz Magic Laser and Bjørn Melhus are accentuating the characteristics of mass media. A new possibility to use the CCTV Camera in a very artistic way can appear in Jill Magid’s Evidence Locker and Harun Farocki’s Counter-Music.
Artists
Lorenzo Bianda, Sompot Chidgasornpongse, Exonemo, Harun Farocki, Finger Pointing Worker, Paul Garrin, Mona Hatoum, William Kentridge, Taiyun Kim& Ji Hyun Yoon, Lee Boorok, Liz Magic Laser, Jill Magid, Bjørn Melhus, Okin Collective, Nam June Paik, Remove Architecture, Sanghee Song
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Curated by Sohyun Ahn and Sooyoung Lee
For press enquiries, contact: press [at] njpartcenter.kr / T +82 31 201 8559 / F +82 31 201 8530
