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Paik's Interconnectedness Transcends the Art World

The Nam June Paik exhibition at SF MoMA is a revelation. Paik hovered around the edges of my much more conventional time producing visual arts docs at WNET but this show made me feel I had really missed his important groundbreaking connections between media and global interconnectedness which we now know to be the attributes of the internet. Here he is pictured with longtime collaborator Charlotte Moorman ostensibly a cellist but an entrepreneur with an audacious collective spirit just like his. The two knew no bounds when it came to live performance. Paik sat in her lap as she ‘played’ him or allowed him to repurpose her breasts as a tv outlet. They were indomitable and precursors to the live international media feeds we now take for granted. “Sex is very underdeveloped in music as opposed to literature and art” he said. Also appearing in the wild and woolly exhibition are John Cage, Merce Cunningham, George Plimpton as an MC and other luminaries. It’s eye popping and immersive.