THURSDAY JUNE 1, 7:30 pm
TRIBUTE TO THE LIFE AND ART OF NAM JUNE PAIK AT LACMA
Please join us as Los Angeles Filmforum co-presents a Tribute to the Life and Art of Nam June Paik at LACMA. This will be a very special event as we honor and celebrate the renowned artist.
An evening of remembrances, performances, projected video works, and rarely seen clips
Tickets are free; see below for details.
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) presents a memorial tribute to the life and career of composer and video and performance artist Nam June Paik at the museum’s Bing Theater on Thursday, June 1 at 7:30 pm. Video art pioneer Nam June Paik died of natural causes at his home in Miami, Florida, on January 29, 2006; he was seventy-three. Memorial services for Paik have been held worldwide and this tribute will recognize his contribution to the culture of Los Angeles. The early seventies brought video art to Southern California, notably at the Long Beach Museum of Art where David A. Ross organized an exhibition of Nam June Paik’s work in 1974, and California Institute of the Arts School of Film and Video where Nam June Paik taught, and personally introduced the Paik-Abe video synthesizer in 1970. Today, Paik’s influence resonates in the acceptance of video art as a collectible art form, with his work in the collections of many museums in California, including LACMA.
Michael Govan, LACMA’s new CEO and Wallis Annenberg Director, and Byung Hyo Choi, the Korean Consul General, will begin the evening with an introduction to the program, which includes a variety of experts and devotees, such as speaker Mary Livingstone Beebe, Director of the Stuart Collection at the University of California, San Diego; David A. Ross, President of the Artist Pension Trust and former Director of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the first curator to organize a museum exhibition of Paik’s work in the United States; renowned video artist Bill Viola; and Kathy Rae Huffman, Director of Visual Arts at Cornerhouse, Manchester, England, who was Curator at the Long Beach Museum of Art, and director of its regional media art center. Ms. Huffman will be presenting rare archival footage of Picturephone, Paik’s interactive satellite performance between Los Angeles and New York.
Other highlights include the presentation of Paik’s Zen for Film (1964–65) by independent producer and curator Julie Lazar, who organized the last large-scale composition/exhibition by John Cage, Rolywholyover A Circus, which included Zen for Film. Additionally, Los Angeles visual and sound artist Steve Roden will perform an early work, Primitive Music, and seminal dancer and choreographer Simone Forti will present a new performance based on her diary entry about Paik from her Handbook in Motion—An Account of an Ongoing Personal Discourse and its Manifestations in Dance (1974, the Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design). Archival video and rare footage, courtesy of Electronic Arts Intermix, New York, will also be screened. Technical support is provided by The Society for the Activation of Social Space through Art and Sound (SASSAS), a group that serves as a catalyst for the creation, presentation, and recognition of experimental art and sound practices in the Greater Los Angeles area.
A Tribute to Nam June Paik is organized by Carole Ann Klonarides and presented by the Film and Contemporary Art departments of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, in association with Los Angeles Filmforum, and the Korean Cultural Center, Los Angeles.
Admission is free but tickets are required and may be picked up at the box office starting at noon on the day of the event. Tickets must be presented at the door of the Bing Theater by 7:20 pm, after which time entrance to the theater is on a first come, first serve basis.
About LACMA: In April 2006, Michael Govan became CEO and Wallis Annenberg Director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). He is the seventh person to hold the position of Director in the museum’s 41-year history. Established as an independent institution in 1965, LACMA has assembled a permanent collection that includes approximately 100,000 works of art spanning the history of art from ancient times to the present, making it the premier encyclopedic visual arts museum in the western United States. Located in the heart of one of the most culturally diverse cities in the world, the museum uses its collection and resources to provide a variety of educational and cultural experiences for the people who live in, work in, and visit Los Angeles. LACMA offers an outstanding schedule of special exhibitions, as well as lectures, classes, family activities, film programs and world-class musical events.
About the Korean Cultural Center, Los Angeles: The Korean Cultural Center, Los Angeles works under the Ministry of Culture and Tourism to promote mutual cultural understanding between the United States and Korea. For more information about the Cultural Center and its programs, please visit www.kccla.org .
LACMA is located at 5905 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles CA, 90036. For more information about LACMA and its programming, log on to www.lacma.org
Museum Hours: Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday, noon–8 pm; Friday, noon–9 pm; Saturday and Sunday, 11 am–8 pm; closed Wednesday, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. Call 323 857-6000, or www.lacma.org for more information.
General LACMA Admission: Adults $9; students 18+ with ID and senior citizens 62+ $5. Admission (except to specially ticketed exhibitions) is free every evening after 5 pm, the second Tuesday of every month, and for children 17 and under.
