Nam June Paik Festival: Now Jump
NOW JUMP, the festival’s title, originates in an Aesop punchline: ‘Hic Rhodus, hic saltus!’ ‘NOW JUMP’ is an appeal to exceed past achievements: NOW is always the time to act. An invitation or call to action, this festival also represents the ambition of the Nam June Paik Art Center to leap into the future through the NJP Festival.
NOW JUMP is organized according to the concept of ‘Stations’, simultaneously encompassing a state of stillness and of motion or anticipation of motion. In our everyday experience these can be places where trains or buses regularly stop; broadcasting stations; power
stations; research institutes; studios; local headquarters; habitats; social status or postures.
Station 1
Station_1 is a point of a departure gathering Nam June Paik archival material and works and combining it with that of his friends, colleagues and references. Aiming to recontextualize the artist’s work within the history of his own practice, that of Fluxus and other trends of the 1960s, it is an attempt to highlight the complexities of creativity and its social and political significance. Ultimately the goal is to renegotiate the influence Nam June Paik within the practice of new generations of artists.
Station 2
Station_2 is a state of anticipation – reintroducing the notion of potentiality into the actualized exhibition space and implanting an openness that the exhibition loses when it comes into being. Different forms of performance are given a platform from which they can be regarded and from which they can also look at each other. By producing their own space, time and durational place these works expose the circuits into which they are inserted and begin to expand into the realm of lived experience.
Station 3
Station_3 is a journey that has already begun. Unlike Stations 1 and 2 which are mainly presented in the Art Center building, Station 3 intersperses artworks into a brand new private gallery and an existing high school gymnasium. The specific characteristics of these buildings create shifts in mood and tone. Whereas before the works were in dialogue with the past and the contemporary present, here the dialogue ranges from domestic and introspective to imposing and controlled, reminiscent of being in urban space. In this context, the practices presented dwell on creativity as an ability to open lines of flight from apparent reductive definitions and restrictions.
