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exhibition
19 December 2014 > 15 March 2015

The Future is now

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Monday closed
Tuesday to Sunday 11 am – 7 pm

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Sunday 24 December 11 am > 4 pm
Monday 25 December closed
Tuesday 31 December 11 am > 4 pm
Wednesday 1 January 11 am > 7 pm
Monday 6 January 11 am > 8 pm

more information

19 December 2014 – 15 March 2015
Sala Gian Ferrari and Sala Carlo Scarpa

Over forty video works and media installations tell the story of the Korean New Media Art scene, from the early works by Nam June Paik, to the experiments carried out in the 1980s, by way of the digital revolution and the cultural changes triggered by the Internet and the social networks.

THE FUTURE IS NOW! presents MMCA’s New Media Art collection with the aim of reflecting on the “futures” by analyzing New Media Art ever since it was founded in 1987 to the present day.

The title of the exhibition is derived from Paik Nam June’s definition of future. Paik Nam June is an artist whose life seems to proceed along with his work.

KIM SEJIN, Night Worker, 2009 Video HD bicanale

KIM SEJIN, Night Worker, 2009 Video HD bicanale

KIM SEJIN, Night Worker, 2009 Video HD bicanale


Exhibition organized by MMCA, Korea and coproduced with MAXXI

Pioneers of new media art in Korea

COMBINING ART AND TECHNOLOGY

INTERNET AND THE EXPANSION OF NEW MEDIA ART

CULTURAL CREATIVES IN THE DIGITAL ERA


PAIK NAMJUNE, Highway Hacker, 1994 Televisore d’epoca e armadietto, 3TV, LDP

Pioneers of new media art in Korea

The first section of the exhibition presents works by Korean pioneers of new media art, such as Duck Jun Kwak, Hyun Ki Park and Nam June Paik.

Arranged chronologically, these works illustrate the development of new media art in Korea. Video art was initially introduced to Korea in the mid 1960s through the pioneering works of Nam June Paik, such as TV Magnet, Zen for TV, and Highway Hacker.

Notably, although Paik immediately gained renown overseas, his works have only been sporadically presented in Korea at the time.

This section includes works by Paik and other Korean artists working abroad, like Kwak and early works by artists based in Korea who were seeking to develop their unique artistic vision, such as Hyun Ki Park’s.

 

COMBINING ART AND TECHNOLOGY

In the 1980s, video technology and video art began to appear on a grander scale in Korea, starting with Nam June Paik’s three satellite projects in 1984, 1986, and 1988 and the installation of Dadaikseon (The More The Better) at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea in 1988. Other MMCA events that prominently featured video art include the exhibition to celebrate the 1993 Daejeon Expo and the Whitney Biennale.

All of these events inspired Korean artists to actively embrace new media as an artistic discipline, culminating in the 1992 New Visions New Voices exhibition, where in a group of artists born in the 1960s unveiled new works that represented their intensive experiments in combining art and technology.

Those artists, including Kong Sunghoon, Yook Taejin, Kim Haemin were part of the “video generation,” who developed a new sensitivity to video, growing in conjunction with a deluge of TV programs and Hollywood movies.

INTERNET AND THE EXPANSION OF NEW MEDIA ART

With the advent of the new millennium, the digital revolution greatly expanded social access to the internet, and also transformed the modes of contemporary art. By enabling the limitless reproduction of objects, the digital revolution promoted the emergence of new concepts related to the production and reproduction of artworks.The vastly expanded connectivity and reach through cyberspace accelerated globalization going beyond existing local boundaries. Artists born in the 1970s, who launched their career in the late 1990s, created works that reflect the new status of art in a society where the internet, video, and other new media have become deeply integrated into our daily lives.

Video art, which once existed only in association with performance or installation art, has now evolved into an independent art form reflecting artists’ unique perspectives on society, and as such, has become an essential pillar of visual culture. These artistic achievements can be seen in video works by Kim Sejin, Im Heungsoon, Ham Yangah and other artists.

New media is not a foreign expressive media for the generation growing in image culture but more familiar and freer one than a pencil or a brush. It expresses various situations in a society they encounter.

LIM MINOUK, The Weights of Hands, 2006. Video monocanale

ZIN KIJONG, CNN, 2007.
Video installazione a canali

CULTURAL CREATIVES IN THE DIGITAL ERA

Korean society has experienced new cultural and social changes due to supplies of digital devices and spread of social network services. Various tries such as getting over neoliberalism through sharing, cooperation and a local community are happening.When it comes to art creation, cases to try artistic experiments integrated by many genres across art, design and engineering have gradually increased as not an individual but a collective. You will meet creators to try new artistic experiments with News from nowhere by two artists, Moon Kyung won + Jeon Joonho, who have an exclusive art world respectively through cooperation with experts in various fields such as an architect, a dancer and a designer, BANG & LEE trying to historical and artistic consideration on both danger and possibility of media and Everyware’s activities approaching a warm technology by combining analogue sensitivity with digital technology.

Sounds and performances beyond art have been comprehensively accepted and delivered through the cooperation process. Experiments to understand and accept possibilities, meaning and limits of new media through a wide cultural context have been conducted in art world rather than focusing on new media art as a new expressive media.

 

 

MOON JOON, Augmented Shadow, 2010 EVERYWARE, Memoirs, 2010