Art Basel 2018: The Future Is in the Past — Video Art Collections of Videotage and Nam June Paik Art Center

31/03/2018

The Future Is in the Past revisits the video art collections initiated by Videotage and Nam June Paik Art Center. The selected videos consider the pioneers in the field of video art of the past few decades. They call for an understanding of different generations of video art in the context in which they were made. By assembling a variety of regional, temporal and artistic perspectives, this screening program will re-reinterpret the experience of the here and now, delve into potentially excluded narratives and make visible the fragments of realities corresponding to video art’s own set of conventions and history.

Part 1

Imagined Future —
The Legacy of Nam June Paik and Early Hong Kong Video Art

Curator: Isaac Leung & Sang Ae Park
Assistant Curator: David Chan

As one of the most important figures in late 20th-century art, Nam June Paik brought a new liberty to the experimental spirit of the avant-garde. His legacy not only prefigures the artistic possibility through technology that occupies many artists today, but his visions also laid a conceptual groundwork that goes far beyond aesthetics. His prediction of future technology as a means of achieving widespread connectivity resonates here and now in the information age – a subversive imagination capable of taking aesthetics out of the galleries and integrating them into everyday life.

Paik’s revolutionary approach of identifying video as a viable art form created tremendous inspiration among early generation video artists in Hong Kong. Experiments first devised by Paik, such as manipulated television imagery, infinite loop, video collage, and combination of video technology with installation art, have been widely adapted by many Hong Kong artists as a way to problematize the language, content and function of television. His democratization of art and culture through technology also inspired veteran Hong Kong artists Ellen Pau and May Fung to found Videotage in 1986. Their organization became one of the first nonprofits to support artists working with new media in the region. Paik’s influence can be felt throughout the early days of video art history and still in the current generation of media artists in Hong Kong.

Selected from the Videotage Media Art Collection (VMAC) and the Nam June Paik Art Center Video Archives, Imagined Future encourages a wider interest in this important chapter of video art history in Hong Kong. By showcasing Nam June Paik’s work and early Hong Kong video works influenced by Paik, the screening will re-engage audiences with new immersive experiences concerning the history of moving image. As is a first-of-a-kind collaboration between Hong Kong and Korea, Imagined Future seeks to revisit existing narratives and elucidate new perspectives on video art in the region.

Part I : Imagined Future — The Legacy of Nam June Paik and Early Hong Kong Video Art
Nam June Paik (白南準) and John Godfrey, Global Groove (1973)
Ellen Pau(鮑藹倫), Yau Ching (游靜), Wong Chi Fai (黃志輝) Here’s Looking At You Kid! 《卡拉（超住你地）OK》 (1990)
May Fung (馮美華) and Danny Yung (榮念曾) Image of a City 《城市影像》 (1990)
Cheng Chi Hung (鄭智雄) and Mak Chi Hang (麥志恆) East is Red 《東方紅》 (1993)

Part 2

Imaginaries Beyond the Past —
A New Generation Envisioning the (Moving) Image of the Future

Curator: Isaac Leung
Assistant Curator: David Chan

China’s impressive rise against the backdrop of new world order and globalization has attracted widespread attention. This exponential change has brought about major impacts not only in the lives of ordinary Chinese, but also in new generations of Chinese artists. This phenomenon is characterized by perspectives evident in the diverse voices of young talent, a major shift in artistic discourse as well as a fundamental rethinking of prevailing views of China.

One of the prominent outcomes of China’s rise is the shifting perceptions between the young artists born after the 1980s and their forebears of the 85 New Wave. The new generation of artists were raised in a different China. They are tech-savvy, outward-looking, and accustomed to material benefits and intellectual exposure that previous generations had not experienced. Encountering new modes of interaction unleashed by various disruptive technologies, these artists live in an era of breakneck change where tastes are mediated by the rapid growth of information and communication has expanded beyond social ties and geographic boundaries. They contribute to the development of a wider network of cultural influence. These artists are becoming more proactive with the technologies at hand – venturing into journeys beyond the classic brick-and-mortar art world and confronting the most glaring issues in our current time.

Selected from the Videotage Media Art Collection (VMAC), Imaginaries Beyond the Past presents a new generation of young mainland and Hong Kong Chinese artists who have come to prominence in the recent world of video art. Stepping forward from the preexisting discourses of Chinese contemporary art defined by the last artistic generation, the works in this program are often considered bizarre and sublime, a significant interplay between the narratives of China’s past, its present-day prosperity, and its unwritten future. Serving as the second part of this screening program, Imaginaries Beyond the Past also aims to provide an interpretive opportunity for audiences to juxtapose extraordinary cultural currency offered by the new generation of video artists with those of the past.

This program revisits the video art collections initiated by Videotage and Nam June Paik Art Center. The selected videos consider the pioneers in the field of video art of the past few decades. They call for an understanding of different generations of video art in the context in which they were made. By assembling a variety of regional, temporal and artistic perspectives, this screening program will re-reinterpret the experience of the here and now, delve into potentially excluded narratives and make visible the fragments of realities corresponding to video art’s own set of conventions and history.

Part II : Imaginaries Beyond the Past — A New Generation Envisioning the (Moving) Image of the Future
第二部分：破舊想像—尋索（流動）影像未來的新一代
Wong Ping (黃炳) Stop Peeping 《太陽照住我》 (2014)
Lu Yang (陸揚) Electromagnetic Brainology 《電磁腦神教》 (2017)
Chen Tianzhou (陳天灼) Picnic 《野餐》 (2014)
Cheng Ran (程然) & Item Idem Joss (2013)
Enoch Cheng (鄭得恩) All this happened, more or less: Olympiades (2015)