Exhibition Information

1975(1999)

1991

2025

2025

			What sort of transcendent experience of space and time does video create in an era of "video immersion"?

The modern city is suffused with light that emanates from screens day and night. It exists as something like a vast interface with unending flows of image and sound information. The light we encounter every day does not simply stimulate our physical senses—it also exists as a converted form of electric signals that transmit and process video images and sounds. The volumes of information that light can contain have increased enormously, along with the speed of their transmission. Millions of video images stream across the city and appear before us, replayed with light. This is more than just a new kind of experience—transcending the bounds of human cognition, it is a phenomenon that alters the way we remember and perceive the world. Such transformations in the urban media environment conjure associations with Nam June Paik's "videory*": his prediction that human events would one day be recorded in video rather than told or written language. As Paik foresaw, history today is documented in image and video form. This shows that in a spatial and temporal setting where millions of video images overlap—containing the information, events, and stories of humankind—we are no longer beings who simply "perceive" video. We live in a time and place of layers of human history recorded and formed by video.

Taking as its starting point Nam June Paik's essential explorations of the time and space that video creates, this exhibition spotlights contemporary artists who are living in the multilayered video environments that today's cutting-edge technology creates and transforming this experience into art. In their work, they review a history of extinction and annihilation on Earth to pose questions about human sustainability; they envision the existence of others in new ways through imaginary climate crisis scenarios; they explore changes in human cognition through the origins of immersive technology; and they experiment with the boundaries of the real and virtual through landscapes blending nature with machinery. Based on events that are simultaneous and non-causally connected in a world redefined by video, the artists encourage us to reflect on our current moment through new eyes and realize how deeply interconnected we are. ■ NAM JUNE PAIK ART CENTER

* The word "history" came into being, because our events were told and written down thereafter. Now history is being recorded in images or video. Therefore from now on there is no more "History", but only "Imagery" or "Videory". Nam June Paik, Binghamton Letter(1972)

- This exhibition is presented as part of YONGIN SPECIAL CITY 2025 Smart Tourism City Project. It will remain on view from October 20 to December 31 at the outdoor Media Wall of Nam June Paik Art Center, and will continue at the outdoor venue of Yongin Poeun Art Hall.