Manfred Montwé, took a photograph of Kuba TV, one of the works featured in Nam June Paik’s first solo show, Exposition of Music ― Electronic Television held at Galerie Parnass, Wuppertal, in March 1963. In this exhibition, Paik presented thirteen experimental televisions; among them was Kuba TV, a television connected to a tape recorder showing different images depending on the inflowing music frequency. The title implies the Cuban missile crisis, a week of extreme tension between the Soviet Union and the US, caused by John F. Kennedy’s military command to blockade the route to transport Soviet weapons to Cuba. This was a reaction of the Kennedy administration to the Soviet Union’s support for Cuba’s construction of nuclear facilities. Nikita Khrushchev eventually scrapped the Cuban plan seeking reconciliation. Alluding to the political affairs that took place only a few months before his exhibition, Paik created a television whose light waves were in sync with a recorder’s sound waves. A framed news article of Bild Zeitung dated April 16th, 1961, with the headline, “War Against Fidel Castro, Invasion Has Begun,” was placed in another part of the exhibition. Raoul Ubac’s slate relief sculptures that the gallery owner Rolf Jährling had initially displayed were hung above Kuba TV.
