Nam June Paik Art Center chose Trevor Paglen as the winner of the 2018 Nam June Paik Art Center Prize.
Kim Hong-hee, who was one of the judges for the prize, evaluated, “Trevor Paglen as an artists who uses multiple mediums, such as photos, videos, sculptures, and installations, to implicitly reveal the nature of secretive surveillance devices used by the military and intelligence agencies and he creates his own style of combining politics and aesthetics by visualizing the results of his thorough investigations and research through formative explorations in abstract colors.”

Machine Visions, Paglen’s first solo exhibition in Korea, is an exhibition that encapsulates the art world of the artist who has expanded his artworks by using various media. The exhibition title Machine Visions expresses the idea that machines have moved beyond creating images for people and now create images to operate other machines. Artificial intelligence turns imaging data into objects, senses, and people that we would recognize normally, and combines them together reformulating new shapes. They sometimes look weird, gross, or terrifying as if they were a monster or some outlandish ghoul. When faced with the results, we might ask ourselves whether technology is making the world a place we want and what it is we are really looking at.

He photographs surveillance and telecom systems scattered around the world, hubs of Internet networks (Frankfurt, Amsterdam, and London), and intelligence agency buildings built for classified military information. He notes that such power has been made possible based on infrastructure and looks directly into the system of power that secretly exists all inside the infrastructure.

Paglen hopes that his Nonfunctional Satellites remind us of how we imagine the universe. Paglen, who has turned the launch of the satellite into a pure artwork, asks us questions through his process so that we can become interested in and newly recognize the mysterious universe. He describes it as “Impossible Objects.” Satellites represented by Paglen do not perform commercial or military functions. Instead, they become artificial stars for a moment, purely for pleasure and wonder.

Calling his work “a map of the digital world’s hidden landscapes and forbidden places,” Paglen is filming distant space and the landscapes of the abyss by using high-performance optical telephoto lenses and he has been scuba diving 100 feet down into darkness of the ocean. Capturing hidden places like secret military bases and prisons, or things such as artificial intelligence, cables, and spy satellites where the data of the digital world—a repository of knowledge—have accumulated, he re-edits his own version of a political map for places not visible, or which do not appear on typical maps.

Nam June Paik Art Center Prize
The Nam June Paik Art Center Prize, which was created in 2009, is awarded by the Gyeonggi Governor to discover artists who have opened new horizons in art, who constantly experiment, and produce innovative works like Nam June Paik did. The prize has been awarded to artists and art theorists who have exemplified the spirit of Nam June Paik, combining technology and art, exploring new methods of communication, interacting with audiences, and integrating elements from various domains, across music, performance, and visual art. The 1st prize was jointly awarded to four artists (Lee Seung-taek, Ahn Eun-mi, Ceal Floyer, and Robert Adrian X). The 2nd prize in 2010 went to Bruno Latour, a French philosopher and sociologist. The prize was awarded to Doug Aitken in 2012, Haroon Mirza in 2014, and Blast Theory in 2016.

Artist Introduction Trevor Paglen was born in the US in 1974, majored in art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and earned his PhD in geography from the University of California, Berkeley. His artwork was displayed in Van Abbemuseum (Netherlands), Frankfurter Kunstverein (Germany), the Metropolitan Museum of Art (US), the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (US), the Tate Modern Museum (UK), the Smithsonian American Art Museum (US), the Louisiana Museum (Denmark), and the Israel Museum (Jerusalem). He participated in the Berlin Biennale (2016), the Gwangju Biennale (2018), and Manifesta 11 (2016).
He is also an author who has written five books under the topic of geography, classified national information, photography, and visual art. He won the Pioneer Award from the Electronic Frontier Foundation in 2014, the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in the US in 2015, an award from the Börse Photography Foundation in Germany in 2016, and the MacArthur Fellowship in 2017. ※ The artist’s official website:
http://www.paglen.com/

Gyeonggi Cultural Foundation Nam June Paik Art Center is launching the second project of 2019 Random Access, 《Cherry-Go-Round》by Eobchae and Ryu Seong-sil from October 1. Eobchae is an audio-visual production trio comprised of Kim Na-hee, Oh Cheon-seok, and Hwang Hwi-ro. The trio produces artworks that reflect a critical perspective of social phenomena by utilizing and applying the accelerated sight and hearing media of the contemporary era such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube in the post-Internet Era. Artist Ryu Seong-sil traces patterns of consumption in the present day, and delivers dark-humor narratives created based on this through the means of installation, performance, and video art. In this Random Access Project at Nam June Paik Art Center, a new artwork 《Cherry-Go-Round》which was created through the collaboration between Eobchae of Oh Cheon-seok and Hwang Hwi, and Ryu Seong-sil is introduced.
A video artwork, 《Cherry-Go-Round》, is divided into three tenses including the past, present and future in fiction. The video is a collection of vlogs and videos taken from the second person perspective by ‘Cherry Jang’ and ‘Balhaein1’. Through a series of ‘fiction’, the artwork reflects the contemporary individuals and society suffering from chronic accumulation of fatigue who merely try, or do not have a choice but, to mitigate symptoms of social problems instead of solving the root cause.
In addition, the artwork utilizes various forms of screens that we are familiar with. That is, fragmented information floating around the timeline, and a screen containing private fragments of unspecified masses including you and me that are shared in real-time through single-person media. Through the artwork, the artist captures the point where the online influences are creating action and reaction in our contemporary life where the distinction between what is virtual and real is hard to define. At the same time, it focuses on ‘the desire to be recognized’ at the individual or social levels that are consumed in the media.
Through 《Cherry-Go-Round》, the artist makes us reflect on today’s media and the process of image creation and consumption. During this process, the artist sheds light on present society where people are plagued by a feeling of helplessness like they are captured in a merry-go-round that looks like they are going somewhere better, but ends up in the same spot only with a lingering sense of speed.

Eobchae is an audio-visual production trio comprised of Kim Na-hee, Oh Cheon-seok, and Hwang Hwi-ro. The trio produces artworks that reflect a critical perspective of social phenomena by utilizing and applying the accelerated sight and hearing media of the contemporary era such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube in the post-Internet Era. Artist Ryu Seong-sil traces patterns of consumption in the present day, and delivers dark-humor narratives created based on this through the means of installation, performance, and video art. The artist introduced a series with the main character ‘Cherry Jang’. Currently, she is preparing for an artwork that involves a virtual tourist agency called ‘Daewang Travel’. In this Random Access Project at Nam June Paik Art Center, a new artwork 《Cherry-Go-Round》which was created through the collaboration between Oh Cheon-seok and Hwang Hwi, and Ryu Seong-sil of Eobchae is introduced.

In order to respect the wish of late Nam June Paik who wanted Nam June Paik Art Center to be a space for young artists, we are launching the Random Access Project which is designed to introduce up-and-coming artists who share the experimental spirit of Nam June Paik and explores the latest trends in the contemporary media art. We have reorganized the project structure from the group exhibition format that the 2015 project was based on. The upcoming project will involve various new formats that allow us to connect with young artists throughout the art center including the connecting space and the mezzanine.

Nam June Paik Art Center and the Seoul city government are jointly introducing a special collaboration exhibition, 《The City of Nam June Paik: From New York to Seoul》. The special exhibition will take place from September 21 to December 19, 2019, at Seoullo Media Canvas located in front of Manri-dong Square. <Suite 212> (1975/1977), which will be presented at the exhibition, is a video series comprised of 30 episodes. It is an electronic collage of New York in the 1970s, and a representative work of Nam June Paik. The exhibition will screen 13 episodes of <Suite 212> stored in the video archive at Nam June Paik Art Center every day from 6 p.m. to 11.00 p.m. The screening will start at five minutes past each hour and continue for 30 minutes. By screening an artwork inspired by a metropolitan city, New York, in another metropolitan city, Seoul, New York in the 1970s and Seoul in 2019 will be situated side by side with a 40-years gap between them. In this exhibition, the images of city projected by moving images of the artwork and the images of city that can be experienced in the actual space where the artwork is located create interstices, offering a new spatial experience. This special collaboration exhibition screens video artworks by the world-famous video artist Nam June Paik in a large outdoor screen, offering an opportunity to experience an artwork that has become a part of the city landscape.

Park Sang-ae (Arts and Science Researcher at Nam June Paik Art Center)

Nam June Paik

<Suite 212> (1975/1977)
※ Please refer to the screening list for detailed episodes

The Seoul city government and Nam June Paik Art Center

The first project of 2019 Random Access, 《Neurospace》 by Park Seung-sun will be held from July 18. Countless sounds and scenes that we encounter everyday are never the same at any moment, and they are also interpreted according to individuals’ memories and experiences. How do you listen to a scene, and how do you draw a sound? The exhibition 《Neurospace》 captures the relationship between sound and recognition, differences in the way individuals recognize, and listen to, a scene, and the mechanisms that allow humans and computers to recognize sounds and scenes in their own way. Through the exhibition, the artist tries to suggest a scene as ‘a neurospace’ where the interaction between senses and recognition takes place.
About artist: Park Seung-sun has been exploring how humans can interact with nature or the universe through the medium of music/sound, creating artworks based on this. The artist utilizes deep-learning algorithms to capture the relationship with auditory sense and recognition, and errors that can be created from Artificial Intelligence. In addition to this, he introduces various works that dive into the mechanisms that allow humans and computers to recognize sounds and scenes in their own way.
2019 Random Access Project: In order to respect the wish of late Nam June Paik who wanted Nam June Paik Art Center to be a space for young artists, we are launching Random Access Project which is designed to introduce up-and-coming artists who share the experimental spirit of Nam June Paik and explores the latest trends in the contemporary media art. We have reorganized the project structure from the group exhibition format that the 2015 project was based on. The upcoming project will involve various new formats that allow us to connect with young artists throughout the art center including the connecting space and the mezzanine.