After looking at legacy video this week, I was inspired to look into one of Nam June Paiks signature art installations – TV Garden, which now lives in the Guggenheim Museum, New York.
On the link below there is a picture of the installation that Guggenheim have put up, however there are many more photos to be found on Google.
Who is the practitioner (what is their name?) and when were they practicing?
Nam June Paik. He rose to prominence in the early 1960s, but remained so until the 90s as he produced a great number of works. He’s widely considered to be the father of TV art, or at the very least a highly influential pioneer of it.
With the photo or video you are examining when was it produced (date)?
It was originally produced in 1974, before being moved or recreated many times around the world.
How was the photo or video authored and published?
TV Garden is an arrangement of live plants with video monitors of all different sizes scattered throughout. Every TV is playing Paik’s Global Groove (1973) on repeat. Global Groove features montages of performers dancing to musically funky and visually eye-catching mix. The installation allows viewers to immerse themselves in the piece by walking around and alongside the plants and TV screens. The original was featured at Documenta 6, an art exhibition in Kassel, Germany.
How was the photo or video distributed?
While the instalment was originally published to the public at an art exhibition in Germany, it has been shown and recreated at many different museums and galleries around the world since. Each of these times Paik’s estate would have received royalties from those showcasing the piece and would have required in the past either himself (he is now deceased so he is no longer able to) or a representative to ensure the recreation was in line with his original vision. For example, Tate Modern Museum in London is already advertising their exhibition in October 2019 that will feature TV Garden (see here). Interestingly, the photo shown on the advertising page is of TV garden when it was featured in a museum in Dusseldorf, Germany in 2002. TV Garden sure has bounced around.
I like the installation because of its ambiguity, and whether it’s commenting on how nature and technology are now forming some sort of symbiosis, or whether technology is as chaotic and structureless as ‘the jungle’ or nature can be.
See you next week!