东亚录像艺术的兴起|参展艺术家：白南准

白南准  

Nam June Paik

1932-2006

韩国，首尔

Seoul, South Korea

图片致谢白南准

Image courtesy  Nam June Paik Estate

白南准，1932年生于韩国首尔，在首尔和香港度过了他的中学时代，在日本镰仓度过高中时光。他就读于东京大学美学专业，其毕业论文研究阿诺尔德·勋伯格（Arnold Schoenberg）。1956年，白南准移居德国，学习欧洲哲学和现代音乐，并积极展开了与当代前卫艺术家的合作。通过进行完全不同于当时的艺术规范和传统的激进现场表演，白南准塑造了其自身的艺术家身份。后来他又以新媒体为手段，走上一条新的艺术创作道路。他的媒体艺术成为其首次个展“对音乐的说明——电子电视”（Exposition of Music--Electronic Television）的核心，在其中，他将内部电路经过修改和操控的电视机作为艺术作品呈现出来。

白南准是一位极具开拓性的媒体艺术家，他以富有创造性和实验性的方式来处理各种技术。他认为艺术家背负着思考未来的使命，并通过艺术寻求更好的全球交流方式。他被誉为“同时是科学家、哲学家和工程师的新一代艺术家的先驱者之一”、“一个极其特殊的、具有真正的天才和远见卓识的未来学家”。今天，白南准仍然作为“最当代的艺术家”与我们同在。

Nam June Paik was born in Seoul, South Korea in 1932 and spent his middle school days in Seoul and Hong Kong, and his high-school days in Kamakura, Japan. He studied aesthetics in the University of Tokyo, with a graduation thesis on Arnold Schoenberg. Moving to Germany in 1956 and studying European philosophy and modern music, he came to work actively with contemporary avant-garde artists and began to carve out his artist-identity by doing radical performances which were completely different from artistic canons and conventions back then. Afterwards he pursued a novel path of art making by means of new media. His media art gained momentum by his first solo show Exposition of Music-Electronic Television in which he presented televisions with inner circuits modified and manipulated, as a work of art.

Paik is a pioneering media artist working with various technologies in creative and experimental ways. He saw the artist’s role as consisting in thinking about the future and sought for better ways of global communication through art. Regarded as “one of the forerunners of a new breed of artists who are scientists, philosophers and engineers at the same time” and as “a very special and genuine genius and futurologist with foresight” Paik still lives on with us right here as “the most contemporary artist” today.

展出作品

白南准，《扣子偶发事件》，1965，单通道录像，图片由纽约电子艺术联盟提供

Button Happening

1965

single-channel vidieo

image courtesy of Electronic Arts Intermix (EAL)(New York,USA)

《扣子偶发事件》是白南准现存最早的——也极可能是其第一部录像作品。这段录像创作于1965年的某天，在这天，白南准刚刚拿到自己的第一部索尼Portapak摄像机。此作品虽然在拍摄技术上不慎成熟，内容上也只是简单记录了一个重复性动作——艺术家将夹克扣上再解开，但却体现了白南准在录像艺术领域的早期探索性实践，同时也包含着激浪派的幽默观念。

Button Happening is Nam June Paik's earliest extant videotape, and possibly his first tape ever. Recorded in 1965 on the day he acquired his first Sony Portapak camera, this previously unknown work has been rediscovered and restored. Recorded on computer tape, this technically fragile piece documents a single performance action — Paik buttoning and unbuttoning his jacket. A spirit of conceptual Fluxus humor underlies this seminal recording.