The life and work of artist Nam June Paik involved crossing many artistic and national borders. This panel discussion features contemporary artists and curators as they reflect on Paik’s continuing influence on art and culture today.
Contributors include the American-Belgian artist Cécile B. Evans, the British artist Haroon Mirza, and the American sound and visual artist Stephen Vitiello, who worked with Paik in the 1990s. The discussion is chaired by Sook-Kyung Lee, Senior Curator of International Art at Tate.
Audio recordings of this event are available upon request. Please email htrc.transnational@tate.org.uk for further details.
Research supported by Hyundai Tate Research Centre: Transnational in partnership with Hyundai Motor.
Biography
Cécile B. Evans
Cécile B. Evans (born 1983) is an American-Belgian artist living and working in London. Evans’ work examines the value of emotion and its rebellion as it comes into contact with ideological and technological structures. Recent selected solo exhibitions include Museum Abteiberg (DE), Chateau Shatto (US), Museo Madre (IT), Tramway (UK), mumok Vienna (AT), Castello di Rivoli (IT), Galerie Emanuel Layr, Vienna (AT), Tate Liverpool (UK), Kunsthalle Aarhus (DK), M Museum Leuven (BE), De Hallen Haarlem (NL), and Serpentine Galleries (UK). Public collections include The Museum of Modern Art, New York (US), The Rubell Family Collection, Miami (US), Whitney Museum of American Art (US), De Haallen (NL), Castello di Rivoli, Turin (IT), Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Copenhagen (DK), and FRAC Auvergne (FR).
Haroon Mirza
Haroon Mirza creates installations that test the interplay and friction between sound and electromagnetic waves. He devises sculptures, performances and immersive installations. An advocate of interference such as electro-acoustic or radio disruption, he creates situations that purposefully cross wires. He describes his role as a composer, manipulating electricity, a live, invisible and volatile phenomenon, bringing together instruments such as household electronics, turntables, LEDs, furniture, video footage and existing artworks to behave differently. Processes are left exposed and sounds occupy space in an unruly way, testing codes of conduct and charging the atmosphere. Mirza asks us to reconsider the perceptual distinctions between noise, sound and music, and draws into question the categorisation of cultural forms and their reception. Dipping into various disciplines wide ranging as design, music, architecture, particle physics, neuroscience and theology, Mirza questions the boundaries of human experience.
Stephen Vitiello
Stephen Vitiello is a sound and visual artist whose works are in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Whitney Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Lyon. Exhibitions include a site-specific work for NYC’s High Line; Soundings, at the Museum of Modern Art; the Whitney Biennial; and the Biennial of Sydney. Vitiello has collaborated with such artists and musicians as Pauline Oliveros, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Taylor Deupree, Joan Jonas and Julie Mehretu. Originally from New York, Vitiello is now based in Richmond, Virginia, where he is a Professor of Kinetic Imaging at Virginia Commonwealth University.
