GYEONGGI-DO.- The Nam June Paik Art Center’s home city of Yongin is on the opposite side of the world from the location of Pinacoteca de São Paulo, and the two cities are separated by a time difference of exactly twelve hours. Thanks to today’s telecommunications technology, however, these two distant locales are able to link up with each other in real time.

Beginning in 1984, Nam June Paik staged three satellite projects to connect different cities around the world, including Paris, New York, Seoul, and Tokyo. Those projects were about more than simply overcoming physical distance through technology—they offered settings for people from different times and cultural backgrounds to meet and form new relationships and possibilities. Going beyond a world uniting art and technology, his endeavors relate to the concept of the “translocal”: the idea of two regions exchanging influence while retaining their own unique cultures and identities. Translocality signifies relationships where regions connect in ways that preserve their uniqueness. From this standpoint, the satellite projects can be seen as early forms of practice toward linking cities into translocal relationships. Today’s advancements in satellite and internet technology have made such connections part of our daily lives. We can experience in real time the lives and culture of people on the other side of the planet, gaining a closer perspective than ever before on how people live in environments that are similar yet completely different. That process of forging connections between different spaces—and of forming new possibilities in those relationships—encourages us to turn our contemporary perspective once again on the significance of the connections in Nam June Paik’s satellite projects.

Drawing inspiration from Paik’s ideas, the exhibition organizes encounters between four contemporary artists based in different cities to explore the potential for new relationships and connections to form where regional and cultural differences intersect. Jane Jin Kaisen connects people living in different regions and cultures, separated like distant islands, into a single world using the moon as a medium; Christine Sun Kim explores the essence and complexity of communication through deaf experience; Vivian Caccuri investigates the unseen structures that sustain contemporary society on the relationships among sounds, technology, power, and everyday infrastructure; and biarritzzz disrupts Western systems of knowledge and order through images and language in digital spaces that, like memes, resist fixed forms.

As an artist born in Korea, Nam June Paik envisioned global communication that involved connecting with distant countries like Brazil. As we reflect on his message in today’s hyper-connected society, we encounter new questions: What forms of disconnectedness do we still face? What boundaries has technology not yet broken down? What new barriers have arisen? The four artists in this exhibition offer their own answers, bringing to the gallery their artistic practices toward encountering and communicating with others and the world. Their work both reveals the unseen ruptures and boundaries that exist in societies today and imagines new possibilities for overcoming them. As this potential turns the chance meetings that Nam June Paik envisioned into new forms of connection, they travel out into the world like rippling waves across the sky.

Artists: biarritzzz, Vivian Caccuri, Jane Jin Kaisen, Christine Sun Kim

Curators: Yoonseo Kim, Kwonjin Cho, Ana Maria Maia, Ana Paula Lopes