Nam June Paik — I Expose the Music

A study of the live element in Nam June Paik's art, published with the exhibition Nam June Paik: I Expose the Music at Museum Ostwall in the Dortmunder U.

Paik (1932–2006) is known above all as a pioneer of video art, yet performance and the direct involvement of an audience stayed central to his work throughout. The book opens with Paik's years as a young composer and his treatment of music as score, as idea and as event, then follows the same concern through his performances, participatory works, live television and multimedia pieces, with an extensive illustrated record of the performances.

The exhibition ran from March to August 2023 and brought together around 100 works, including the installation Sistine Chapel (1993), shown in Germany for the first time. Rudolf Frieling of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art edited the book with the museum, with texts by Hanna Hölling, Hendrik Folkerts and Kurt Wettengl among others. Samson Young, Aki Onda, Autumn Knight and Annika Kahrs each made pages for it that show how Paik's ideas carry into the present. Design by Hannes Drißner.

Spector Books, 2023. 242 pages, thread-sewn hardcover, 23 x 33 cm. In English.