When TV & the information superhighway were new
Arts & Ideas
BBC
4.2 • 598 Ratings
🗓️ 3 December 2019
⏱️ 45 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Nam June Paik made art with TV sets and imagined an information superhighway before the internet was invented. John Giorno organised multi-media and dial-a-poem events. Poet and New Generation Thinker Sarah Jackson joins Matthew Sweet to look at the visions of the future conjured up by these artists who were both interested in the influence of mass media and Buddhism. She's joined by artist Haroon Mirza and Tate curator Achim Borchardt-Hume. We dial a poet Vahni Capildeo and hear from Vytautus Landbergis, former Lithuanian Head of State and former comrade of Nam June Paik as a Fluxus artist.
John Giorno (December 4, 1936 – October 11, 2019) Nam June Paik (20 July 1932, Gyeongseong - Died: 29 January 2006) Tate Modern's exhibition of Nam June Paik's art runs until 9 February 2020.
Haroon Mirza's work is on show in an exhibition called Waves and Forms at the John Hansard Gallery in Southampton until January 11th 2020. Vahni Capildeo's most recent collection is called Skin Can Hold. Sarah Jackson's poety collection is called Pelt. You can hear Sarah Jackson exploring the human voice in a short feature if you look up this programme called New Generation Thinkers: Edmund Richardson and Sarah Jackson https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p05pspzx and Sarah Jackson delivers a short talk about the history of the telephone in a programme called The Essay Telephone Terrors https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07wrlf4
Or you might be interested in Matthew Sweet's Free Thinking discussion about future visions and technology in the TV series Quatermass https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000b03y or our Free Thinking the Future collection of programmes https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03zwn4d
Producer: Caitlin Benedict
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps |
| 0:21.2 | it. It's a long time ago, right? It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream |
| 0:26.1 | van plays music when it's out of ice cream. Listen to evil genius on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:33.3 | BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. This is the Arts and Ideas podcast. |
| 0:39.3 | In a moment, we're going to be talking about the Korean video artist, Nam June Pake. |
| 0:44.3 | But would you just hold the line first for a bit? |
| 0:47.2 | Hi, I'm Alistair Suk, and I want to tell you about the way I see it, |
| 0:51.6 | a brand new podcast from BBC Radio 3. |
| 0:56.6 | It's a 30-part series in which we're throwing open the collection at MoMA, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, to some of the sharpest |
| 1:02.2 | creative minds of our time. We'll be speaking to comedian Steve Martin, writer Roxanne Gay, musician |
| 1:09.7 | Steve Reich, and many, many more. |
| 1:12.2 | I'll be your guide throughout the series, so join me as I explore one of the greatest |
| 1:16.9 | collections of modern art in the world. |
| 1:19.8 | If you'd like to hear more, just search for The Way I See It on BBC Sounds. |
| 1:25.4 | Hello, sorry to put you on speaker. |
| 1:31.7 | It's just easier that way, because I've got to add everybody else into the same call. |
| 1:37.2 | You're listening to Freethinking, and the buzzwords for the next 45 minutes will be Korea, |
| 1:47.0 | Germany, Lithuania, the Cold War, the Electronic Super Highway, and Nam June Peck, especially Nam June Peck. Peck was an artist, born in Korea in 1932, died in Germany in 2006, worked all over the world. |
| 1:55.0 | On this programme, we're going to goggle at his art. We might get square eyes doing that. |
| 2:00.0 | We're also going to listen to its crackle |
| 2:02.9 | and its buzz, and I suspect we're going to recognise him as a profit. So let me add in our first |
| 2:09.4 | contributor. |
... |
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