Tunes of Comradeship: Paik and Mekas

International symposium: “Gift of Nam June Paik 14—Tunes of Comradeship: Paik and Mekas”
In commemoration of Nam June Paik’s 90th anniversary, Nam June Paik Art Center presents a series of exhibitions and events, including the exhibition Nam June Paik, Super Baroque that begins on July 20, Paik’s birthday. This year also marks Jonas Mekas’s centenary, and Nam June Paik Art Center organizes the 14th edition of its symposium series Gift of Nam June Paik, in collaboration with Lithuanian Culture Institute and Dong-Eui Univ’s Cinema & Transmedia Institute. Centered around Fluxus movements from the late 1960s in New York, Paik and Mekas, truly avant-garde artists of the time, were one of the closest friends to each other. They did together a “political fluxus performance” reading The Charter of the United Nations respectively in Korean and in Luthuanian in 1968; Paik staged a series of performances such as Fluxus Sonata at Mekas’s Anthology Film Archives; and they organized a roundtable “On Liberation, Arts and Cultural Imperialism: A conversation between Susan Sontag, Vytautas Landsbergis, Nam June Paik, and Jonas Mekas” in 1994, to name but a few examples of their working together. With a title, Tunes of Comradeship: Paik and Mekas this symposium aims to address the themes that are related to their artistic activities as avant-garde artists. The contributors participating in this program will connect the two artists from their own individual viewpoints.

Screening
11am–1pm
Jonas Mekas, Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania (1972, 82 minutes)
Nam June Paik and Jud Yalkut, Cinema Metaphysique No. 2, 3, 4 (1967-72, 8:39 minutes)

Symposium
1–1:20pm
What It Means To Recollect
Kim Seong Eun (director, Nam June Paik Art Center) 

1:20–1:30pm
Remembering Paik and Mekas
Vytautas Landsbergis (politician, musicologist) *pre-recorded video

1:30–2pm
Jonas Mekas’s Performing Citations
Lee Nara (senior researcher, DEU Cinema & Transmedia Institute)

2–2:30pm
Between Scintillation in Accidental Moments and Interference–Impulse
Kim Eunhee (curator)

2:30–2:40pm
Break

2:40–3:10pm
Moving Images, Moving Bodies
Inesa Brašiškė (art historian, curator)

3:10–3:40pm
Spector, Contingency and Cinema: Nam June Paik’s Zen for Film and Avant-garde
Lee Hanbum (art critic) *pre-recorded video

3:40–4:20pm
Roundtable

4:20–4:30pm
Break

Performance
4:30–5pm
e^ix, it’s necessary (2019, ZKM | Hertz-Lab commission)
poetic canon (2022, Nam June Paik Art Center commission)
GRAYCODE, jiiiiin (electronic music composers, sound-media artists)

*This event was supported by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2020S1A5B8102066)

Co-organized by Nam June Paik Art Center, Lithuanian Culture Institute, DEU Cinema & Transmedia Institute.