Paik Nam June is a pioneering media artist working with various technologies in creative and experimental ways. He saw the artist’s role as consisting in thinking about the future and sought for better ways of global communication through art. Regarded as “one of the forerunners of a new breed of artists who are scientists, philosophers and engineers at the same time” and as “a very special and genuine genius and futurologist with foresight” Paik still lives on with us right here as “the most contemporary artist” today.

He was born in 1932 Seoul and spent time in Hong Kong, Japan. Moving to Germany in 1956 and studying European philosophy and modern music, he came to work actively with contemporary avant-garde artists and began to carve out his artist-identity by doing radical performances which were completely different from artistic canons and conventions back then. Afterwards he pursued a novel path of art making by means of new media. His media art gained momentum by his first solo show Exposition of Music . Electronic Television in which he presented televisions with inner circuits modified and manipulated, as a work of art.

His incessant exploration about music and the body was also a key factor in constructing a distinct territory of his art. From the 1980s Paik realized a series of global projects, such as Good Morning Mr. Orwell, to tear down barriers between Avantgarde art and popular culture by satellite TV technology. He won the Golden Lion of the 1993 Venice Biennale for his work on the theme of artist as nomad in the German Pavilion.