Duet Memory

Nam June Paik's video sculptures and installations pay critical homage to the Age of Technology, symbolized by more than anything else the television and, in his most recent work, the computer monitor. The self-proclaimed 'Cultural Nomad' appropriates the television as a consumerist product to question the ever increasing mechanization of human life in the technoid age of the late 20th century. In the early 1960's, Paik joined forces with Joseph Beuys and George Maciunas as one of the principle protagonists of the movement know as Fluxus. As a composer of music, a visual artist and electronic technician, Nam June Paik has continually blurred the borders not only between the various media, but also and especially between the seemingly disparate disciplines. In his large-scale video-installation 'Duet Memory' from 1995, he creates a monument to the world of music, probably referring to his friends and colleagues John Cage, Joseph Beuys and Karlheinz Stockhausen, to whom a number of other works were specifically dedicated.