Origins of Video Art: A tangent

I'll allow myself once this semester to go on a great tangent that gently touches on the reading, but that is extremely important for me: that is the intersection between the west and east art scenes, particularly during the 20th century.

Increasingly throughout the 20th century, I have been witnessing through readings in this class and many others as well as through my own art explorations, the numerous relationships that rose as a result of increased contact between the East and West. For lack of a background in Asian arts and crafts history, I rely on crude comparisons that best describe western art to draw links between the Asian and Western aesthetics.

So far, I have been able to distinguish two forms of interaction between the two worlds: Asian inspired modern and contemporary western art, and Asian art reshaped after a western experience. Nam June Paik falls in the second category, for example, while John Cage may very well fall in the first one.

Both of them, I think, represent the intersection between both worlds in different ways. Paik, as stated in the reading, was trained in Europe under the avant-garde and the influence of John Cage. As one art critique said in the reading, he wanted to be famous, or at least be a famous Asian. His work reflects Cage's obvious influence as well as his desire to make his work famous, if not popular through the use of cultural icons and images if the elites. The fact that he is South Korean does however bring forth the "Asian spirit" in his work. The randomness, spontaneity and participatory characteristics of his work are yes, modern but with Asian origins.

There is a great discourse among art intellectuals of the extent of the impact that Asian beliefs and traditions, such as Zen Buddism, sumi-e calligraphy and illustration, Japanese architecture, and other thousand-year old Asian traditions had on western modern art and architecture expressions. The simplicity, the relation to nature, the sense of order and peace as well as expression over pure form are all shared elements of modern art and the much older Asian tradition.

Joh Cage, (one among thousands of modern western artists) through his study of Asian culture and art, morphed, interpreted and reinvented the niche where he worked: music and performance. He was very much aware of the eastern influences he used to create an entire new philosophy of music.

I agree with the many art historians that see the Asian component of modern western art as a quintessential aspect of the movement. As someone that has studied modern and asian architecture, I find it impossible to not find relationships between the Japanese landscaped Pagoda and a Frank Lloyd Wright Praire House.

My video is a performance of "Dream," one of John Cages many compositions, but one that I think embodies an "eastern" aesthetic and philosophy. The piano that is being payed is clearly a western expression, but the melody and the spiritual echo of the composition are undoubtedly influenced by Asian music.