Crossroads - Krisztián Gergye: E. SCH. EROTO

The convergence of Javanese dances and expressionist visual art in an extraordinary choreography 

Archival video still from Krisztián Gergye’s E. SCH. EROTO.

A Devastating Experience

It was not entirely independent of my curiosity about the dancer that in 2008 we signed up for the Natural Disasters Collective's bus trip, 'Death Tours,' whose final stop among several urban stations led to the MU Theater. Rhyming with its title, the performance Pre-Actio can best be described as action-theater, which did not unfold so much before us, the audience, but rather happened to us, as participants. Setting aside the presentation of the performance's multifaceted philosophy for now, I would highlight only one moment. We shared the last forty minutes of a suicide bomber's life.

My original ticket to the Natural Disasters Collective’s ‘Death Tours’ performance
at the Trafó House of Contemporary Arts, November 21, 2008.

As we mill around with many others in a dimly lit room, looking at the portraits with names scattered all under our feet, and various personal items that shock with their presence as mementos of a tragic event, digital displays on the side of a podium in the center of the room count down the ruthlessly passing time. Through table-like projectors placed flush with the floor, we can monitor a man's ritual preparation, though we cannot know exactly what he is preparing for. The crowd we are part of moves around the room just like anywhere in the city's squares and streets. In this faceless surging, it is not our eyes but rather a sort of sixth sense that signals the change: our attention is drawn to a motionless figure who looks like he is just one of us, but he is not, after all, we were just watching his ritual a moment ago. Now he stands among us, carrying a backpack, as casual as any of us, only the tension radiating from him is different, as well as the fact that, just like at the moment of birth, he is stark naked. He crawls up onto the podium, and the dance of death begins. Struggling out of the grip of fear and determination, the bare human body slowly dresses in festive attire, the first step of which is strapping on the explosives. The spasms of agony transfigure into the calm of irrevocability. The man standing in the spotlight on the podium is ready for the final movement, and we are standing right near him. In the silent moment of detonation, the room is plunged into darkness, the bomber simply vanishes, and we are left there—virtually blown up. The suicide bomber was embodied by Krisztián Gergye, and anyone who was present there will never forget the concentrated depth into which he dragged us all.

Far and Yet Close

Indonesia's unique art exerts an elemental impact on almost everyone who comes into contact with it. One could list at length the names of defining theater makers, musicians, and visual artists whose life's work was decisively influenced by Indonesian music, theater, or refined craftsmanship. Antonin Artaud's thinking was completely reshaped by the experience of a Balinese theater performance, while the actors of Eugenio Barba's company, Odin Teatret, practically felt at home on the island of Bali, where they immersed themselves in the traditions of local theater. For those more versed in popular music, it may suffice to evoke the name of Mike Oldfield here; his music, including the Tubular Bells album, is permeated by the sounds of the gamelan.

A young Hungarian man fared no differently when, in 1996, he enrolled in the Indonesian dance course of dance artist Bagus Kentus Norontako, who had arrived in Budapest from the Yogyakarta Sultanate. As a result of the course, he became a member of the Norontako Javanese Dance Group, and shortly thereafter, we could see him as a regular performer, a Javanese dancer at domestic Indonesian cultural and embassy events.

After a brief interlude spent mastering classical ballet and modern dance techniques, he won the Darmasisswa scholarship in 1998 and traveled to Yogyakarta on the island of Java for a year. As a student at the Institut Seni Indonesia (Indonesian Institute of the Arts), he immersed himself in the world of traditional Javanese dances. His diligence was boundless; alongside his official studies, he attended additional private institutions through his own financing, where renowned teachers introduced him to specialized dance styles such as the refined male and female styles, or the Menak style. Thanks to his talent and preparation, he was even able to perform at the sacred events of the Yogyakarta KERATON Sultan's Palace, which is considered a privilege. This young man is none other than Krisztián Gergye, who a few years later became one of the defining figures of Hungarian contemporary dance and theater arts.

A traditional Javanese Wayang Topeng (masked dance) performer.
Photo: Tropenmuseum, part of the National Museum of World Cultures (CC BY-SA 3.0).

Javanese dances, like the dance arts of many countries around the world, can be divided into two major families: court dances and folk dances. While the latter is rather full-blooded and lively, court dance represents refinement and elegance, which is often paired with a philosophical message.

Just like the Indonesian Wayang theater (puppet shadow play), the group of masked dances, which is clearly distinguishable among the numerous types of dance, is also strongly related to the rich genre of storytelling.

Performers of topeng dance (masked dance) wear various masks to go with their ornate attire, and they perform fairy-tale or mythical stories accompanied by a gamelan orchestra. The dancers portray the forces of nature, characters from adaptions of the Indian epics—the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, which are highly popular in the region—as well as legendary kings and heroes. The most popular story, however, is the local Panji cycle originating from the 12th century, which tells the love story of Prince Panji and Princess Chandra Kirana, who are incarnations of the male and female deities of love.

The first written record of a topeng dancer wearing a gold mask dates back to the 14th century. The most developed forms of masked dances evolved on the islands of Bali and Java, but local variations can be found in every region of the Indonesian archipelago. The masks are extremely diverse, distinguishable by gender, occupation, social status, serious or humorous characters, animals, and divine figures; different, full masks were worn by silent characters, while speakers wore half-masks. In many cases, masked dances were integrated into the courtly dance-theater performances that formed part of the aristocrats' entertainment, which were called "human wayang" under the name Wayang wong or Wayang orang, distinguishing them from puppet shadow theater.

"I am human, I love death and love life."

This line was written by an Austrian painter who died very young in 1918 at the age of 28, Egon Schiele, in his poem Self-Portrait [1]. His ten-year recognized and successful—though not free from animosity and scandals—painting career, during which he became a leading figure of Viennese Expressionism, fed on the ruthless and unbiased examination and exposure of his complex personality. In the life-feeling of a decadent world drifting into war, closing the golden age of peace, faith in progress and in man's world-shaping ability falls into crisis. The understanding of change was sought through several paths, two of which are particularly characteristic of the era: one approach performed the meticulous and merciless dissection of the personality using scientific and philosophical tools (like Freud), while the other constituted a group of esoteric teachings offering the possibility of finding an ultimate unity leading out of reality and beyond reality (see Steiner). Contact with both directions can be found in Schiele's oeuvre, which can also be interpreted as one giant, continuous confession of the intention for self-knowledge and self-understanding.

Egon Schiele: Self portrait - male nude with spreaded arms (Public Domain)

The main events of Schiele's personal life path compellingly contribute to this self-examining attitude. His relationship with death and the female sex finds its explanation in the foundational experiences of his childhood. While constantly struggling with the lack of maternal love, at the age of 14 he loses his father, who represented a secure emotional anchor and who dies of syphilis with a broken mind.

Schiele constantly shatters rules and transgresses norms, so much so that while still practically a child, he even becomes entangled in the suspicion of an incestuous relationship with one of his sisters. Growing up, although he is able to appear in the wider world as a fashionable man-about-town, he continues to carry his internal problems with him, which are soon joined by financial difficulties. He enters into a domestic partnership with the 17-year-old Wally, one of Klimt's models, and during their life together, the woman becomes one of the core subjects of Schiele's painting.

In the painter's depictions, however, it is not the woman's personality that dominates, but much rather Schiele's unresolved relationship with the female sex, with emotions, and with the bodily relations of sexuality. While he also escapes into the experience of lovemaking, throwing himself into the pleasures of the flesh, in his pictures he distances women from himself, often freezing them into faceless, extreme, contorted poses, scrutinizing them closely while ignoring the taboos of body depiction, thereby simultaneously degrading the representatives of the opposite sex into sexual objects and demeaning his own desires and experiences. Yet out of the ugly, a kind of beauty is born, because the unique harmony of the paintings speaks—perhaps unintentionally—of the true, deep, and agonizing desires of the soul.

Egon Schiele's self portraits (Public Domain)

Schiele's landscapes and cityscapes all bear witness to man's sense of discomfort. He persistently searches for the key to understanding himself, making his own persona the subject of his painting career. Throughout an astonishing number of 170 self-portraits, he walks the paths of self-examination in various states of mind, and he does not shy away from putting on pathological grimaces and gestures either, for the sake of studying extremes.

He creates his most scandal-inducing series of pictures about the street children who frequent his studio, for which he is sentenced to prison, the works being interpreted as pedophilia. In the pictures, the children often look at us with aging, wrinkled bodies and indifferent gazes, so the paintings testify much rather to the ruthlessness of existence and passing away than to morbid inclinations. Schiele was not particularly shaken by the punishment; in fact, he conveyed the feelings that arose during his 24 days of confinement in his drawings with documentary fidelity.

Egon Schiele: Woman with Green Stockings (Public Domain)

His life together with Wally came to a short and abrupt end when, after a brief acquaintance, he decided to marry the middle-class, Protestant Edith Harms. Despite the protests of the girl's parents, the wedding was held on the very day that was the marriage date of Schiele's parents. Although Schiele perhaps hoped he could keep both women, Wally left him immediately and went abroad as a military nurse, where she died of scarlet fever two years later.

On the third day after his wedding, Schiele received military conscription orders. He was ordered to Prague, where his wife followed him as well. Thanks to his reputation and the recognition of his talent, he was not cut off from the possibility of creating even during his two years of military service.

Returning to Vienna, the hope of concentrating on his career and a harmonious family life finally flashed before him in 1918. His wife was expecting a child, but in the sixth month of her pregnancy, she was carried away by the Spanish flu epidemic raging in Europe, which did not spare Schiele either; he followed his wife and child three days later.

In his final and unfinished painting, which perhaps prefigured the desired state of harmony, the painter's questioning gaze is nevertheless fixed upon us, as if expecting the answer to the question of the meaning of life from us alone.

Crossroads

It has been 24 years since a solo dancer was awarded the prize for best dancer in Budapest at the 8th Alternative Theater Festival. For me, this performance becomes more and more vivid with every viewing, and beneath its successively peeling layers, newer and newer dimensions reveal themselves every single time. The dancer who dreamed up this unique phenomenon onto the stage and brought it to life is also Krisztián Gergye. The title contains a reference to Egon Schiele, and the dance unmistakably draws from the world of Javanese dances.

Archival video still from Krisztián Gergye’s E. SCH. EROTO.

By then, Krisztián Gergye had already embarked on the path of claiming contemporary dance and shaping his own independent identity. However, for the stage formulation of the questions burning inside him, the Javanese dance culture—which he was perhaps most in possession of—was available to him, though in its original form, it was unsuited to become the vehicle for current ideas. But Gergye was brave enough to take a step by which he liberated the movements bound by tradition and, through creative reformulation, created a peculiar contemporary dance. He puts it this way in his own ars poetica:

"...through the formal language of dance, calling forth those internal, inherently instinctive deep-beings (role-personalities) that often affect our lives, whether suppressed or with excessive dominance. The awakening of these beings is the primary condition for communication with ourselves without lies, and a possibility for understanding and accepting our ever-deepening personality layers. According to traditional Javanese philosophy, dance brings to life those 'divine' characters that, by their mere presence, are capable of mediating the meaning of human existence, the ideal human state. For observers, these beings are possibilities for relation, objects of meditation, which can have a teaching, guiding significance in a person's life. While the viewer is primarily the observer of the meditation, the dancer (the meditator), losing the dominance of their personality, must be the 'vessel' of the divine being itself.

Traditional Javanese dance provides an opportunity for the manifestation of the divine ideal figure through the suppression of human, 'civilian' emotions. The formal language of contemporary Javanese dance, however, builds upon bringing to the surface the repressed desires and secret emotions residing in our deepest selves. The unique meditation of Javanese dance is the middle path itself. How well I can place myself into it perfectly reveals my human flaws.

The contemporary, on the other hand, points out my most extreme states of being. Living them out and experiencing them provides a possibility for relation to the harmony of the center." [2]

Archival video still from Krisztián Gergye’s E. SCH. EROTO.

Archival video still from Krisztián Gergye’s E. SCH. EROTO.

This shift in emphasis regarding the role of the dancer—that is, the individual—rhymes very much with Schiele's own problematics. Just as Schiele examined his own essence as a painter, Gergye turns with the same motivation toward mapping his own personality as manifested in dance. Schiele becomes simultaneously a conceptual inspiration and an animated visual reality. Although the spectacle rhymes with the paintings, the voyage of discovery takes place within the dancer himself. Again, the words of Krisztián Gergye on this:

"For me, Schiele's pictures are self-recognitions. 'Like tilted mirrors,' secret analogies of my own inner selves. Searching within myself, I create my self-portrait through his portraits. (...) Motionless beings. Dancing. Rigid, cramped, bony desires and gestures. Their honesty is not an accusation, not an attack. Only recognition and self-acceptance." [3]

The Javanese masked dance blended with contemporary dance provides an excellent opportunity for the anima and animus living within us—that is, the woman living in the man and the man living in the woman—to be present on stage almost simultaneously, or rather, to manifest in an interchanging, mutually transforming way within seconds. According to Jung, alongside the conscious, dominant half that determines our gender, it is the subordinate half existing in the unconscious that selects the partner suited to us like a precise compass. In Gergye's performance, this inside-out, upside-down game is present throughout; the fronts get swapped, the front side is not the opposite, but merely the inverse of the back side, and the body present alone on stage thus personifies the two components of being that live within it.

Archival video still from Krisztián Gergye’s E. SCH. EROTO.

The male and female souls are multifaceted in themselves, both struggling for their own fulfillment. In Gergye's contorted movements, Schiele's figures look back at us, while the frontal reversal of the Javanese mask dance lends a necessary grotesqueness to the rich spectrum that manifests at times as erotically provocative, at times as referring to primary physical desires, and at times in delicate spiritual vibrations. The body is not only the carrier and expression, but can also be the prison of the soul locked inside it; the dancer's figure, turning into a living exclamation mark from time to time, expresses this condition, which, pointing to itself as a feat involving desperate effort, attempts to dismantle or perhaps sublime the physical immutability of the bone-muscle-skin body-complex.

Archival video still from Krisztián Gergye’s E. SCH. EROTO.

The dancer is simultaneously a real being and an irrational, animated painted figure upon which the brushstrokes are still present, as if he had just stepped out of the two dimensions of the canvas into that space where a beam of light, evoking the red color of both blood and lust, leads to the point where the primary instinctuality of our body gains a culturally codable "packaging." The whorish black stockings pulled onto male legs slip under the elegant clothing, and the most ethereal femininity is conjured forth. And the gestures continuously point to the head, perhaps indicating that consciousness must grapple with all of this? How far from simple this is, is illustrated by the shattering sequence of movements in which the male and female beings stare us in the face, alternating second by second, while the body becomes akin to a worn-out toy doll, every single body part of which has already been horroristically twisted out of shape.

Although E. SCH. EROTO bows its head before Schiele, it does so in a way that focuses more sharply than anything else on the questions to which even the ruthlessly passing time has brought no answers.

Krisztián Gergye's performance is an exceptional experience reaching across time and space, in which seemingly distant worlds organicize into one, joined seamlessly by the musical fabric woven from the music of Schubert, John Cage, Ágens, and Marilyn Manson as a worthy sonic backdrop to the unparalleled spectacle.

Sources:

[1]
Translation of Egon Schiele’s poem A Self-Portrait (1910) provided by the Leopold Museum, Vienna.

[2]
http://tancelet.hu/tancosok-koreografusok/187-gk-impersonators-gergye-krisztan-tarsulata

[3]
https://szinhaz.hu/2002/04/19/viii_alternativ_szinhazi_szemle_278

Wanderer on the Superhighway: Paik Nam June

An insight into the visionary universe of the world’s first media artist

Nam June Paik: Electronic Superhighway: Continental U.S., Alaska, Hawaii (1995). Smithsonian American Art Museum. Photo: Steven Zucker (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) © Nam June Paik Estate

I have been planning to write about one of the most famous Koreans, Nam June Paik—the world's first media artist—for a long time. The exhibition that has opened at the Korean Cultural Center now provides a particularly good occasion for this, as it focuses on the works of the contemporary generation in a way that continuously reflects on the great predecessor in the background. Therefore, it is not useless to linger a little on the question of who Nam June Paik is and why he is so important.

The history of modern art is, in fact, nothing less than the history of a series of questions being raised, and consequently, the history of losing traditional anchors. Every element of the academic concept of art has been questioned since the inception of the avant-garde, and the answers have led to surprising results. At first, disconcerting questions were asked only within the scope of individual branches of art regarding their subject matter, form, and essential carrier materials, which were soon followed by propositions dissecting the boundaries between everyday life and art, just as by experiments with the permeability and cooperation of individual artistic branches. Art moved out into the street, the utilitarian objects of everyday life moved into museums, the viewer entered the process of creation, and the artist often created almost nothing but conceptual ideas... yet all this still within the reality of colors, forms, sounds, bodies, objects, and in real-time processes. Up until the electronic medium was born: television, followed by a technical multitude of image recording and playback devices, from videotape to the computer.

Everyone knows the history of television also in the respect that the device itself is just an object; life is breathed into it by the broadcaster, which in the beginning was a state privilege everywhere—and it is largely still so today. The well-earning citizen buys the device, pays the monthly service "tax," and in return can enjoy the centrally rationed mind alteration designed for one-way consumption. We know that Orwell had a shocking social vision regarding this—famous for the concepts of the "Two-Way Telescreen" and "Big Brother is Watching You" (George Orwell: 1984, Secker & Warburg, 1949)—but what business could art have with all this? The question was posed by Nam June Paik, and he gave a resounding answer to it.

Portrait of Nam June Paik. Photo: Unknown author,
cropped by Shizhao (CC BY-SA 3.0) via Wikimedia Commons.

How Paik, born on July 20, 1932, in Korea—historically one of the most isolated countries in the world, which moreover was precisely under annexation at the time—became the number one media artist of the globalizing world would in itself be worth a biographical novel, or perhaps more stylishly a film, an unconventional internet performance.

Nam June was born as the fifth child of a textile manufacturer. He loved music and the arts, and also studied piano in Seoul. The family fled the Korean War to Hong Kong in 1950, and soon after they moved to Japan, where the boy attended university. At the University of Tokyo, he studied art, music history, and philosophy, and then in 1956, he wrote his graduation thesis on the work of composer Arnold Schoenberg. His path led to Germany, where over the next two years he studied music history at the University of Munich and composition at the Freiburg Conservatory. During this time, he came into contact with the Fluxus group, whose name referred to the constantly fluctuating, changing nature of their activities. The members of the group, denying the boundaries between life and art in the Neo-Dadaist spirit of "Everything is art" and "Everybody is an artist" (philosophical concepts popularized by Joseph Beuys and the international Fluxus movement, c. 1960s), created their works characterized by experimentation, playfulness, and the blending of different forms; thus Paik also crossed experimental music with theatrical performance. Yoko Ono also belonged to the group, whom they had already met in Japan.

Nam June Paik: Victrola (2005). Photo by the author, taken at Tate Modern.

Among contemporary composers, Paik also worked together with Karlheinz Stockhausen, but the greatest influence was made on him by John Cage, who on one hand started him towards the electronic arts, and following whom he moved to America, to New York, in 1964—inspired by Cage's definitive philosophy: "Art is not an escape from life, but a penetration into it." (John Cage: Silence: Lectures and Writings, Wesleyan University Press, 1961).

But before that, in 1963, he made his debut in Wuppertal as part of the exhibition "Exposition of Music: Electronic Television." He placed thirteen television sets in a room, some of which were not turned on, some displayed no image, and the rest showed distorted images that Paik created using magnets placed around the TVs. In addition to music, he was also fascinated by the technical possibilities of television and video. Working together with engineer Shuya Abe, they created the first video synthesizer, with which they were able to modulate the original image and transform the image on the TV screens into abstract pictures with an external magnet.

Nam June Paik: Nixon TV (1965/2002). Photo by the author, taken at Tate Modern.

This play ran counter to the centrally controlled application of televisions described above. However, the production of "one's own show" received a huge boost in 1965 with the appearance of Sony's first video camera, as the camera offered an easily portable tool accessible to anyone for electronic image-making. And this also served the philosophical approach not foreign to Paik, which was about making image-making—and the creative process itself—democratic, destroying the rights arrogated to themselves by power monopolies.

Paik's works, on one hand, extract the television set itself as an object from the world of homes and place it in another context as part of exhibition objects. On the other hand, he detaches the devices from the ready-made broadcast stream and fills them with his own content. In doing so, he also experiments with the technical possibilities of audio and video delivery devices.

However, these experiments are not self-serving. Paik is fascinated by the concept of time in relation to human life—in general, as a philosophical question, and also in relation to the possibilities offered by the new medium. "The future is now" (Nam June Paik: Video 'n' Videology 1959–1973, Everson Museum of Art, 1974), he declares, and with this, he attributes a future-shaping effect and responsibility to all our current decisions and actions, emphasizing that the future is not an entity existing independently of us, occurring sometime just like that, hypothetically.

Nam June Paik: Three Egg (1975–1982). Photo by the author, taken at Tate Modern.

Video technology makes him reflect and prompts him to insights in which he predicts many phenomena of the reality of our current age with astonishing accuracy. He recognizes that electronic image recording and replayability are the first to be able to disrupt the linear flow of time and enable, for example, the experiencing of chronologically successive events in a reversed chronological order.

The youth of today perhaps cannot even imagine that at the dawn of image recording, putting the videotape into the device, we could only proceed linearly, but we could not jump from one part to another like on today's DVD or especially in a digital file. Paik could not know about all this, nor could he see digital television, yet he writes these:

"Video tape can be rewound, but our lives can’t. There are four buttons on the VCR: 'Fast Forward,' 'Fast Rewind,' 'Go,' and 'Stop.' But our lives have only one button: 'Go.' Today we have the Betamax, this machine that surpasses even God, since man can see the play starting at nine even before the seven o'clock news. Such a thing never happens in life. If I had known at age 25 how I would feel in New York as a 47-year-old poor artist, I would have planned my life differently. We cannot know anything in advance; our lives have no 'Fast Forward and Rewind' button. Therefore, we proceed step by step and try to correct our mistakes with further mistakes. On the other hand, we hire teachers and pay for their work, because the teacher, just like the Betamax, can also fast-forward." (Nam June Paik: Historical Context and Future of Video Art, 1980 / Reprinted in The Collected Essays of Nam June Paik, MIT Press, 2000).

But let us return to non-temporal information. Temporal and non-temporal information are distinguished from each other by the two types of storage modes. The "book" is the most ancient form of non-temporal information. Television and video tape are bad because both are temporal information systems. Man has not yet learned how to properly record and store temporal information because the phenomenon is new. No one claims that the Encyclopedia Britannica is a boring read, despite the fact that it contains a lot of information, because a lexicon can be opened at any of its pages, at the letter A or B, at C, at M, and at X as well, but when man watches video or television, he must go through the entire alphabet. Although the comparison is simple, the difference is nevertheless great. Therefore, the book will remain alive until electronic information overcomes the problem of non-temporal information.

Nam June Paik: I’m a Painter too (1993). Photo by the author, taken at Tate Modern.

He predicts technical solutions that are already a natural part of our lives:

"Painting in the next century is likely to be electronic wallpaper that can easily be programmed for simple or complex images. There will be standardized electronic canvases, so that if one wants to exhibit one's pictures in Ireland or the Republic of the Congo, one simply mails a program card, which is plugged into the machine on site, and the canvas lights up behind it. Such a system must come into being, otherwise communication among artists will cease. Photography will also be electronic, which by the way can be traced back to the same energy situation. Since film stock is becoming more and more expensive, there is no point in taking photographs. If one records a situation electronically and can make a high-quality paper print from this, one skips the chemical processes. The next step will be the development of electronic cameras. It will be possible to take photos even under poor light conditions, so nobody will have secrets. Even today we see miniature video cameras. Devices similar to Super 8 will appear, in which both the camera and the recorder will be built-in, and they will make high-quality recordings on one-hour video tape." (Nam June Paik: Historical Context and Future of Video Art, 1980 / Reprinted in The Collected Essays of Nam June Paik, MIT Press, 2000).

Nam June Paik: Untitled (Newspaper Drawing) (2003).
Photo by the author, taken at Tate Modern.

His artistic reflections also lead to thought-provoking insights regarding the problems of the present age:

"The oil and energy crisis can therefore be traced back to the problem of weight. Today there is an oil crisis because for millions of years we transported the 60-kilogram human body with the help of a 60-kilogram human body. But in the last 50 years, we transport the 60-kilogram body with a 300-kilogram car. This is the stupidest system the world has ever invented." (Nam June Paik: Selected Writings, c. 1970s). "Art's job is to think about the future. Currently, however, it is difficult to predict the future. Herman Kahn, the best-known futurologist, was wrong about two things. In 1967, he published his study about the year 2000. He spent a lot of scientific fellowships writing the book, but in 1967, Kahn did not mention ecology and environmental pollution with a single word. In 1967, the hippies were dealing with ecology. Kahn, the best-known futurologist, understood even less about things than the hippies. After this, in 1970, this same Mr. Kahn wrote a book about the seventies, and in it, he did not commemorate the energy crisis with a single word. Even today, he still makes a living being a futurologist." (Nam June Paik: The Future of Art and Technology, Lecture transcripts, 1980).

Paik foreshadowed the image of the "global world village" back when the internet did not even exist, and the creation of a concept is also credited to his name: he first used it in 1974, and much later, the title of one of his works became "Electronic Superhighway." Twenty years later, when "information superhighway" became a commonplace term, Paik jokingly said: "Bill Clinton stole my idea."

Nam June Paik: Untitled (Collage with Playing Card Motif and Drawing) (1990s).
Photo by the author, taken at Tate Modern.

The artwork titled “Electronic Superhighway: Continental U.S., Alaska, Hawaii" was created using 336 television sets, 50 DVD players, and 575 feet (170 meters) of neon light. The massive, 40 by 15-foot (12x4 meters) neon-video sculpture shapes the map of the United States, and on the TVs of each individual state, a broadcast characteristic of it can be seen—for example, in the territory of Kansas, a clip from the movie The Wizard of Oz, or in the territory of Alabama, footage taken of Martin Luther King. The artwork is thus also defined by how much Paik himself understood America and its cultural phenomena.

Orwell's vision did not let Paik rest either. Of course, he was aware of all the dangers of the watching eyes of "Big Brother" penetrating individual living spaces. With no small amount of irony, the year 1984 was launched on January 1st by Paik's project, which was the first "satellite installation." However, disputing the dangers, he placed the emphasis on the advantages offered by technology, with which it can serve communication and cultural understanding between different countries and peoples—conceptualized in his famous satellite broadcast project titled "Good Morning, Mr. Orwell" (Nam June Paik: Good Morning, Mr. Orwell, WNET/Thirteen, Center for New Art Activities, 1984). The program was broadcast across America by national television, in Paris by the Pompidou Center, as well as by several stations in Germany and South Korea, to a total of about 25 million viewers 

[Vintage TV] Good Morning Mr. Orwell; Pilobolus: What Grows in Huygen's Window, Oneiric,
Sally In The Garden (Arts & Entertainment Network Cable 1984) (Video via Internet Archive)

Paik was preoccupied with Zen Buddhism throughout his life; we encounter its imprint at every turn in his works. He never smoked, never drank alcohol, and never drove a car. Yet, to the question of whether he was a Buddhist, he answered, "No, I am an artist." At the same time, the essential thoughts of Zen are inherent in his works—in the broadcast-replacing candle placed inside the TV box just as in "Zen for Film." In the latter, the projector in the empty room projects a film on which nothing can be seen. And Zen says to understand life intuitively, without thoughts or language. Look inside yourself to discover the truth, clear your mind, and simply be, rather than do something; think instead of speaking. In a chaotic and noisy world, this is the possibility of achieving peace and tranquility.

Of course, the creation also raises a question of art theory, namely whether the projection of an imageless light frame is film, similarly to how Cage also played with the possibility of music without sound consisting purely of a pause in 4'33"—echoing Cage's definitive Zen-inspired principle: "There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear." (John Cage: Silence: Lectures and Writings, Wesleyan University Press, 1961).

Paik also hands out playful jabs in bringing together Western technology and Eastern spirituality. The Buddha of the TV Buddha series contemplating his own projected image speaks equally about the question of "who is watching whom?", the self-complacency of the situation, the intrusive and mesmerizing nature of the television media into the private sphere, as well as the Buddhist belief in reincarnation with the endless cycle of "I watch the one who watches me."

Nam June Paik: TV Buddha (1974). Video installation with bronze sculpture and monitor.

Photo by "gregoryg" on Flickr / Creative Commons.

Paik confoundingly united the world created by man with the natural one in his works. He professed that these two must be in balance because man cannot exist without either.

Nam June Paik: TV Garden (1974/2000). Video installation with live plants and monitors.
Photo courtesy of the Smithsonian American Art Museum / via Flickr.

Paik's oeuvre cannot be presented even in outline within the scope of an article like this. But the pieces of perhaps the most playful series, which he built with immense creativity, cannot be left out. The sculptures shaping three generations of family members and other famous people mostly came together from discarded, old TV and radio sets into individual pieces, full of character and recognizable by their namesake. Originally based on the idea of remote-controlled toys, the robots capable of walking and talking were made, which later became static; only their screens remained in motion, making them alive.

The first remote-controlled robot, K-456 (1964), met a sad end. In 1982, Paik took it out to the street from the exhibition of the Whitney Museum of American Art and directed it onto the roadway, where a car hit it. All this formed part of a documented performance, with which Paik wished to express the "catastrophe of twentieth-century technology" and stated: "We must learn to live with it." (Nam June Paik: "The First Accident of the Twenty-First Century" Performance, 1982 / Archived in Whitney Museum of American Art Records, 1982).

Nam June Paik: Bakelite Robot (2002).

Photo by the author, taken at Tate Modern.

One of Paik's biggest projects was connected to the Olympics held in Seoul in 1988 and bore the title "Wrap Around the World." Measured by the standards of the time, it was a global event, because although there were no such developed connections between continents as today, ten countries participated in the live event and it had over 50 million viewers. Everyone shaped their own message, which mainly concentrated on entertainment; thus images of kung fu and pop music arrived from China, salsa from Rio de Janeiro, a rainy motorcycle race from Ireland, a concert held in the parking lot of Brahms's birthplace from Hamburg, and the Die Toten Hosen performance in front of Beethoven's birthplace from Bonn, to which New York contributed with footage of the Earth taken from space. A lot of pop musicians and other stars of the art world participated in the project from David Bowie to Merce Cunningham.

Nam June Paik: The More the Better (1988) at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul. Photo by perspective (CC BY-SA 4.0) via Wikimedia Commons.

This extraordinary occasion led Paik back to his homeland, with which his connections had been severed for twenty years. Korea also bowed its head before the prodigal son who had achieved world fame, and the huge birthday cake of the Olympic project, which Paik built from 1,003 televisions, went to the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Seoul under the title "The More the Better" (1988). Self-irony towards himself, and a small question mark next to the aspirations of Korea wishing to catch up with the world's leading economic powers. Around the huge tower of Babel consisting of TVs sat Korean drummers, and Paik, who had started from his homeland as a composer, now put on the hanbok, and while they served a real birthday cake that served as the model for the installation, Paik's words were repeated: "Keep music going."

Paik suffered a stroke in 1996, which paralyzed one side of his body. Although he could walk with assistance, he spent the last decade of his life mainly in a wheelchair, but worked actively even like this. He died in Miami, Florida, in 2006, leaving behind a huge oeuvre inspiring generations. As the father of video art, he made a deep impression on successors such as one of the greatest today, Bill Viola.

Sources:

Nam June Paik Studios

www.paikstudios.com

An exhibition at two venues, Tate Liverpool and FACT

http://www.tate.org.uk/download/file/fid/6393

Nam June Paik Made Video Into a Modern Art Form

http://learningenglish.voanews.com/content/nam-june-paik-made-video-into-a-modern-art-form-122065029/114436.html

Nam June Paik: Nem-időbeli információ

Fordította: Lugosi Lugo László

Forrás: http://www.intermedia.c3.hu/mszovgy1/paik.htm

Nam June Paik Wrap around the world

http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/wrap-around-the-world/images/9/

Mr. Plankton: A Silk-Smooth Genre Cocktail of Existential Drifters

A heartbreaking variation on finding one’s purpose in the grip of borrowed time and terminal illness

You can find the original article in Hungarian here →

(Author’s screenshot from Mr. Plankton.)

Mr. Plankton (Mr. 플랑크톤)
Netflix | 2024 | 10 episodes
Genres: Dramedy
Written by Jo Yong (조용)
Directed by Hong Jong-chan (홍종찬)

.  .  .

Just as I was reflecting on how deeply this series enchanted me, I stumbled upon a few viewer reviews expressing disappointment. While one can never expect a unanimous reception for any work of art, these comments momentarily dampened my enthusiasm—only to compel me to think more deeply about what exactly captivated me so much.

True to my habit, I didn't check the creators' credits beforehand, relying solely on what I saw and the impressions their impact left on me. As the story progressed, I became increasingly fascinated by its complexity. We encountered peculiar characters whose confused emotional worlds led to muddled decisions, evoking equally mixed feelings in the audience. They were far from perfect, and they made no effort to appear so. Their story unfolded in a genre mixture more eclectic than ever before, yet these elements merged into a silk-smooth, dense, and homogeneous cocktail.

Classified by many as a "romantic comedy"—one wonders if they saw the end of the drama at all. I would rather call it a romantic dramedy, where bitter tragedy is dissolved by a series of humorous and comic situations. From the intimate fields of romantic struggle, we occasionally wander into the territory of gangster films for some action, all while rodeoing on the winding highway of coming-of-age. What is truly extraordinary is how the frames of a contemporary and a historical drama alternate before our eyes—a brilliant invention we owe to the chaebol family. We glimpse into their lives exactly when a tradition-honoring event is taking place; the entire clan is dressed in hanbok from head to toe, and their meetings strictly follow the seating and behavioral codes of historical period dramas (sageuk).

(Author's screenshot from Mr. Plankton.)

Three peculiar figures stand at the heart of this story, but before we delve into them, what about this strange title: Mr. Plankton? One must wait quite some time before the drama provides an explanation—one that, despite the humor suggested by the sound of the word, is far more frail and poetic. Plankton is the protagonist's self-definition and his ideal. Let’s keep the latter as the secret of the series and look only at the frailty: plankton is the lowest element of the food chain, a helpless prey vulnerable to everything above it. For various reasons, all three protagonists feel this way, especially the young man at the center of the story, Hae-jo (Woo Do-hwan), whose idyllic childhood vanished in an instant. His conception was the result of a hospital error, and when this came to light years later, he lost not only his parents but his entire identity. He ended up on the streets, where a lady in her late teens operating a gambling den, Bong-sook (Lee El), took him in—leaving it to the future to decide whether she had found an adopted child or a lover. Hae-jo discarded his name and sustained himself through shady dealings alongside his street-smart but loyal assistant, Gi-ho (Kim Min-seok). Later, through flashbacks, we learn that Hae-jo was in a romantic relationship with Jae-mi (Lee Yoo-mi). Having grown up in an orphanage, Jae-mi – much like Hae-jo – felt wretched and unlucky; despite their deep love, they didn’t want to force their ill fate upon each other. Consequently, Hae-jo pushed the girl away, whom we later see as the fiancée of the heir to a wealthy family. The groom is an older, somewhat simple-minded but very warm-hearted man, Eo Heung (Oh Jung-se), who, in a belated act of rebellion for his love, defies the will of his mother, Ho-ja (Kim Hae-sook), who rules his life with tyrannical strictness.

Woo Do-hwan (Author’s screenshot from Mr. Plankton.)

Lee Yoo-mi (Author’s screenshot from Mr. Plankton.)

Oh Jung-se (Author’s screenshot from Mr. Plankton.)

The fates of these former lovers intertwine again in a hospital, where both receive terrifying diagnoses. Hae-jo learns that, likely as a genetic legacy, tumors have formed in his brain; he is in a terminal state, with three months to live. Meanwhile, Jae-mi—who could only tie her life to her fiancé by faking a pregnancy—faces the reality of premature menopause, making it impossible for her to have children. As a consequence, Hae-jo—as if fulfilling a final, time-sensitive homework assignment—wants to find his biological father, but to do so, he drags along Jae-mi, whom he abducts from her wedding. From here, the story continues through tangled threads. Due to a previous action, a gangster mob pursues Hae-jo, taking Gi-ho hostage. Meanwhile, the lovestruck groom sets out to find his bride while fleeing from his mother, who has set the family bodyguards on him. Yet, despite these adventurous, comedic situations, the result is not an action-comedy but a deep relational drama, part of a love triangle. This is possible because behind the bickering relationship of Hae-jo and Jae-mi lie unresolved, unspoken emotional ties. They attract and repel each other, while the girl is bound by a less elemental yet deep affection for Eo Heung, who fights persistently for her and promises a better fate. While chasing each other through improbable places, they inevitably grow closer. Thus, for Eo Heung, who practices traditional Eastern medicine, Hae-jo’s illness—which the boy hides from everyone—becomes apparent first. Though each is driven by individual interests, their numerous interactions eventually refine this "quintet" (including Gi-ho and Bong-sook), to whom even Eo Heung’s mother is strangely linked. But by then, they have traveled a long road, during which facing themselves was unavoidable for each of them. Naturally, they reached different results, but the clarification of initial chaotic feelings, the understanding of the other, the acceptance of themselves, and the intention to become better people apply to all of them.

(Author's screenshot from Mr. Plankton.)

While all three protagonists of the drama struggle with the notion of being unfit for life, Hae-jo is understandably in the most desperate situation, as his time is unfairly cut short. Mr. Plankton actually represents a type of drama that is not too common even in the world of Korean series, which often line up various physical and mental agonies. However, it is frequent enough for the most talented young actors to regularly attempt it: portraying the tragedy of facing a fatal disease attacking a young life. This is a challenge in every respect, as the difficulty of authentically showing physical suffering might even pale in comparison to living through the psychological processes—which, as we see here, lead from disbelief through anger and despair to acceptance. This process is as if someone were gathering all the life experiences in an accelerated manner for which others have decades at their disposal. We have seen various precursors: in Midas, No Min-woo struggled with a fatal disease as a supporting actor; Kim Woo-bin appeared as the protagonist in the desperate situation of Uncontrollably Fond; and among them is the more fortunately concluded Devilish Joy, where Choi Jin-hyuk showed the pains of the main character's decline embedded in a sunnier story. Woo Do-hwan’s performance is entirely on par with his famous predecessors, while maintaining its unique characteristics. Hae-jo’s physical condition continuously deteriorates; the symptoms of every stage appear before us unvarnished, hiding neither his terror nor his suffering. Yet all this "remains in the background" next to the portrayal of mental agony, which Woo Do-hwan makes painful for us too—often using self-irony and sometimes cynicism—but his performance is devoid of any exaggeration. Still, it is infinitely moving when he asks his final questions accusing his fate, reaching the lowest point from which he must arrive at another interpretation of "plankton-existence," or more precisely, the interpretation applied to himself.

Kim Hae-sook (Author's screenshot from Mr. Plankton.)

Woo Do-hwan and Lee El (Author's screenshot from Mr. Plankton.)

Alex Landi and Oh Jung-se (Author's screenshot from Mr. Plankton.)

Lee Yoo-mi as Jae-mi heroically holds her ground amidst the waves of Hae-jo’s emotional fluctuations; she can be both childishly lost and a furious soul, but the most beautiful part of her performance is how she begins to understand and accept the boy’s agitated world, which leads her somewhat to accepting herself. However, she must achieve this in the force field of two excellent actors whom no one would find easy to measure up to: alongside Woo Do-hwan, the groom struggling with adult-aged adolescent conflicts is played by Oh Jung-se, a supreme master of portraying wounded characters. Only later did I realize that this trio somewhat reminded me of the protagonists of It’s Okay to Not Be Okay, which is no coincidence, as both stories were written by the same Jo Yong. The complexity mentioned at the beginning is perhaps her merit; alongside the countless ways the main characters interact, she organically integrates the supporting characters into the plot, endowing them with strongly developed traits. It is the greatness of the actors that makes these characters even more alive through their non-verbal expressions, as seen from Lee El and Kim Hae-sook. Furthermore, humor is not far from the writer’s reach; the integration of the character played by the rarely-speaking Alex Landi into the cast is truly entertaining.

It is worth noting the ingenuity with which the creators play with the Mr. Plankton (Mr. 플랑크톤) title card; beyond adjusting it to the mood of each episode, they display it in the most unexpected places.

(Author's screenshot from Mr. Plankton.)

(Author's screenshot from Mr. Plankton.)

Director Hong Jong-chan is an old hand who has held his ground in several genres—to mention only those I’ve seen: Her Private Life, Juvenile Justice, Life. Here too, he guides the story with a steady hand; there are no dead spots, his frames are tasteful, and he has a sense for expressing intimacy just as much as for grandiose perspectives capable of showing primal passions or questioning the ultimate questions of fate. Thanks to the two great creators and the excellent actors, the drama does not echo the notes of tragedy in us, but those of reconciliation.