During 1960-70s in Europe and America, there was endlessly protest happend agains existing social order, according to a conflict between old and young generation reaching an extreme. Some artists including Nam June Paik tried to change the world using a video, a medium which can communicate with most of audience. The video became the important material to the artists who defy the unreasonable world.

The new exhibition 'Gentle Disturbance - Talking Nam June Paik' starts from his video work 'Guadalcanal Requiem', the most political one among his works. He showed protest against social taboos including destructive factor of a war. 'Guadalcanal Requiem' showed at the Carnegie hall in New York in 1977, as a part of performance 'From a jail to the jungle', and a jail here means the art work 'Opera Sextronique', naked Charlotte Moorman performing with her cello in 1967. He resisted a social norm, the classic music must be holy.

Through 'Guadalcanal Requiem', he reminded us of memories and trauma for the war making both winner and loser hurt, and promoted gentle disturbance using the video work beyond space and time. In this exhibition, many works and documents, which show what the political art is and what social participation means to him, will be displayed.

*image (left)
Guadalcanal Requiem (video still), 1977
© Nam Jun PAIK and Nam June Paik Art Center