Culture
Duane McDiarmid on Nam June Paik and the inherently prescient nature of art
By: Emily Votaw
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ATHENS, Ohio (WOUB) – Nam June Paik is often cited as being the first “video artist.” From the early ‘60s onward, Paik was a part of the Fluxus art movement, which emphasized the process of creation over the tangible end product of an artistic process.
Tuesday, May 16 at 9 p.m. ET, WOUB-TV will broadcast “American Masters: Nam June Paik: Moon is the Oldest TV. “The documentary charts Paik’s artistic evolution and explores the prescient nature of his work.
WOUB Culture spoke to Duane McDiarmid, Professor of Sculpture and Expanded Practice in the Ohio University College of Fine Arts, about the enduring impact of Paik’s work.
Broadly speaking, what are some of the primary themes and concepts you explore in your work?
Duane McDiarmid:
My own work is sort of at a juncture between object and meeting place and is interested in various sorts of discourses of social critique. Right now I’m particularly interested in relationships between the Native First Nations people of this continent and myself. I grew up in a small town in Minnesota that has the misfortune – or I guess because it’s self-inflicted, maybe it’s not misfortune – but was the site of a mass hanging following the Lakota Wars, which are commonly known as the Sioux Uprising.
There’s sort of a shadow cast on me from this event – as the recipient of all the privileged wealth that comes from the rise of America at the expense of the Native population. I’ve just sort of felt like this is something I’ve always been trying to reconcile with. And my work is where I try to work out how I reconcile with things. As it developed, I became interested in the work also serving as a forum for other people to work out their relationships to this, the things I’m wrestling with.
Emily Votaw:
Nam June Paik is associated with the Fluxus movement. What is that and why is it important?
Duane McDiarmid:
Well, the Fluxis movement is in my view maybe the most important movement in that it shifts the emphasis of art – of visual art in particular, but not exclusively – from the consumable object to the process of making; which aligns it with a number of other practices within art that have to do with thinking about art not so much as a thing, but as an action in the world that leaves behind a thing. It really puts the emphasis on the process and the action – on art as a sort of living activity by the artist and the culture as opposed to the sort of the product or tradable good.
Emily Votaw:
So is this where we have the recognized beginning of conceptual art? Forgive me if I’m using that term wrong.
Duane McDiarmid:
Well it’s easy for me to forgive you because I’m not sure I know how to use the term “conceptual art.” It gets used in the vernacular very broadly and with a lot of prongs. I would say that art has always been conceptual. There is a niche sort of within sort of the history of art where “conceptual art” becomes a very, very narrow and very specific thing where it has no body. It’s basically just text and it’s just an idea. But that’s sort of a moment in time and space and it’s used much more broadly – to really talk about being present and thoughtful and to have some kind of rigor around the thinking process. So there’s a specific, sort of jargonistic field use of term. And then there’s this sort of more common vernacular use of the term.
Whether Nam was at the beginning – he certainly was working with people and ideas in a time where those things were ripe and active. And he was quite revolutionary in some of the ways that he approached his own work.
Emily Votaw:
What are some of the revolutionary ways he approached his work?
Duane McDiarmid:
Well, he’s attributed as being the first artist to use video. Now, I think firsts are always a bit dubious <laugh>. He’s maybe the first artist to be recognized for using video, and he certainly was a very early adapter. But I think more important than that, he sort of sits at this place where the reason he’s using video; why he’s looking at video, is that he’s understanding that art is about us. It’s about culture, it’s about people. And that video is going to be huge. So, as soon as he could get access to that technology, he started sort of playing with usurping its normal use through artistic methodology. And I guess my view is that all art is basically subversive.
It’s meant to rupture normalcy either by reminding us of the past, bringing us into the future, or knitting those two things together. It’s fundamentally about breaking the ordinary and shifting it towards the extraordinary. I think the work of Paik’s that really stands out to me – although it’s maybe not as visually impressive or as flashy – are some of his early works where he would place magnets on the side of a television and essentially interrupt the signal and create forms that on one hand were there in the physics and on the other hand, were invisible. This speaks to the idea of broadcast and signal and voice and the kind of filtering that we have through preference. (Editor’s note: find information on Paik’s “Magnet TV” at this link to the Whitney Museum of American Art)
He was looking at how these mediums, how these technologies, open things up behind the veneer of their consumptive use as entertainment and economy and those sort of notions.
“…[M]y view is that all art is basically subversive. It’s meant to rupture normalcy either by reminding us of the past, bringing us into the future, or knitting those two things together. It’s fundamentally about breaking the ordinary and shifting it towards the extraordinary.” – Duane McDiarmid
Emily Votaw:
Wow. Magnets. Do we know anything about how he came upon that process? That’s so interesting.
Duane McDiarmid:
I don’t know if we know! <laugh>. I think art is fundamentally based in observation. I think if you start examining, truly observing, observing deeply, anything – what you have to do is you have to turn it around. You have to look at it from this side and that side. You have to look at it through unconventional lenses. You have to gain an understanding of what your subject matter does and how it works. And so it seems to me a natural exploration would be to discover that there is a relationship between magnetism and television screens of the day, and indeed to most of our technology to this day, which is why we keep our laptops away from big magnets <laugh>. This idea of disrupting the signal is fundamentally what Paik’s career was all about. And the fact that when he disrupted the signal; the voice of state, the voice of commerce, he found these beautiful abstract patterns that were in the matrix underneath in the structure, unpredictable, uncontrollable, he couldn’t get the same thing twice. But he knew he would get something and it would always be something other than the mass message.
This idea of disrupting the signal is fundamentally what Paik’s career was all about. And the fact that when he disrupted the signal; the voice of state, the voice of commerce, he found these beautiful abstract patterns that were sort of in the matrix underneath in the structure, unpredictable, uncontrollable, he couldn’t get the same thing twice. But he knew he would get something and it would always be something other than the mass message. – Duane McDiarmid
Emily Votaw:
Paik’s work is often cited as really accurately predicting how telecommunications would develop. How do you think he was able to have that kind of insight – or how can we see that insight manifesting in the present?
Duane McDiarmid:
Well, I think if you’re a human being and you’re really thinking about things – and this is the privilege, the pleasure of being an artist, to be able to indulge yourself in an examination, right? He’s watching changes happen in his world, as we all do, as an artist. He’s attentive to what he’s seeing, both in the visual realm, and also in the realm of cultural meaning. I don’t think it’s a terrible leap in a certain way. I think he got there early to say: what is actually happening here? You know, we are increasing audience. But we are flattening message. We have this dazzling visual tool that is directed almost exclusively by commerce, technology, economy. They all march forward. You know, where are we now?
What are the relationships that I’m seeing? And how do those things play out in a kind of future dream? My guess is that Paik dreamed, envisioned in his studio while he was working, and saw the future – quite literally in his mind’s eye, that these forms of communication, these forms of images, would be attractive, powerful, manipulated – and that they would grow and that this would become the visual culture of humanity, and that as such, it would have importance, and that he wanted to be working in that stew. Art has, for most of history, been at the sort of tip of the spear of technology. If we go back to the caves, in some ways artists were some of the first technicians.
We now live in a highly technological society where artists are not at the tip of the spear so much anymore, but they’re still engaged with where that tip is pointing and what it’s touching. So you have artists like Eduardo Kac with his bioluminescent bunny – working with gene splicing and putting glowing genes from octopi into a rabbit and really talking about our potential to sculpt with DNA and what that will mean. And I can’t recall the date of that work, but it’s a decade or more past now. So far as where we are in the discourse about gene splicing, genetic engineering, CRISPR, AI, all of these sort of notions – artists are thinking about those things early.