Film Video Works @ Nam June Paik & Jud Yalkut. 1966-69
FILM VIDEO WORKS,1966-1969
by Nam June Paik and Jud Yalkut
1966-69, 5:36 min, b&w and color, sound
Missa of Zen 1966-69, 2:28 min, b&w and color
Electronic Moon 1966-69, 3:08 min, b&w and color, sound
These two historical collaborations between Nam June Paik and Yalkut, originally documented on 16mm film and now available on video, reveal some of Paik's earliest experiments with television and electronic imagery. In Electronic Moon, colorized images of the moon are accompanied by Glenn Miller's Moonlight Serenade. In Missa of Zen, a TV screen, filmed from an extremely oblique angle, appears as a ghostly, flickering sliver at the side of a darkened frame. The images playing across its surface are rendered abstract by the perspective: we witness the transmission of information, but at a great distance. Isolated in silence and darkness, the television set slips into the realm of the unheimlich -- an uncanny object, at once familiar and unfamiliar. Situating mediated America at the crossroads of missa -- Latin for the Christian mass -- and Zen Buddhism, Paik highlights the connections between mass culture and the transcendental.
by Nam June Paik and Jud Yalkut
1966-69, 5:36 min, b&w and color, sound
Missa of Zen 1966-69, 2:28 min, b&w and color
Electronic Moon 1966-69, 3:08 min, b&w and color, sound
These two historical collaborations between Nam June Paik and Yalkut, originally documented on 16mm film and now available on video, reveal some of Paik's earliest experiments with television and electronic imagery. In Electronic Moon, colorized images of the moon are accompanied by Glenn Miller's Moonlight Serenade. In Missa of Zen, a TV screen, filmed from an extremely oblique angle, appears as a ghostly, flickering sliver at the side of a darkened frame. The images playing across its surface are rendered abstract by the perspective: we witness the transmission of information, but at a great distance. Isolated in silence and darkness, the television set slips into the realm of the unheimlich -- an uncanny object, at once familiar and unfamiliar. Situating mediated America at the crossroads of missa -- Latin for the Christian mass -- and Zen Buddhism, Paik highlights the connections between mass culture and the transcendental.