Exhibition Hall 2 of Nam June Paik Art Center, Korea
June 12, 2009 — October 4, 2009 (4 months)
Opening: Friday June 12, 2009, 5:00pm
Link: NAM JUNE PAIK ART CENTER
Knick-knack Roll, 2008
Content:
The EXPosition of Mythology - ELectronic Technology explores notions of technology, mythology and religion through the perspective of Nam June Paik's first solo exhibition in 1963, EXPosition of Music ELectronic Television. Nam June Paik's first solo exhibition is taken as representative of the thinking and concerns Paik would later explore in his practice and represents a bridge between Eastern and Western philosophies offering an alternative perspective into how technology, mythology and religion can be understood from a more anthropological perspective.
In this 1963 exhibition, Paik presented his first experiments with televisions, his prepared pianos and several other objects that invited audience participation. Paik’s use of the exhibition space, including hanging a dead cow’s head in the entrance and making people walk around a giant balloon to enter the rest of the exhibition, highlights his emphasis the viewer's participation and bodily experience. In addition, Paik also raised issues concerning the experience of time,media, history, and knowledge by suggesting different themes and concepts through the works created for the exhibition, the posters displayed, and the type of participation solicited to experience this show. The following were some of Paik's themes:
instrumentsforZenExercise,
ObjectsSonores,
SonolizedRoom,
KindergartenfortheOld,
Memoriesofthe20thCentury,
Howtobesatisfiedwith70%,
HommagetoRudolfAugstein,
PreparedWC,Fetishismofidea,
Quesaisje?,
Doityour...,Synchronizationasaprincipleofindeterminaterelationships,
Isthetimewithoutcontentpossible?,
AstudyofGermanidiotology, amongothers
For the upcoming exhibition the aim is to play with these themes, reflect on them, update them to current situations and even possibly parody some of them. Selected works will be presented alongside documentation related to different themes to emphasize the relevance and development of the concerns present in Paik’s exhibition in relation to historical, cultural and anthropological perspectives informed by a reading of the forty years that have passed since EXPosition of Music, Electronic Television.
Artists:
Nam June Paik, alan∂, Chang Sung Eun, Christoph Meier, Gregor Zootzky, Hong Chul Ki, Honore ∂’O, Javier Tellez, Jimmie Durham, Kevin Clarke, Kim Yun Ho, Mary Bauermeister, Marcus Coates, Roland Topor, Ryu Han Kil, Park Kyong, Park Jong Woo, Pedro Diniz Reis, Tilo Baumgartel, Ujino Muneteru, Una Szeemann, Ute Mueller, and Others.
Curated by Youngchul Lee
UJINO AND THE ROTATORS
The Hayward Project Space, London, UK
February 18, 2009 — April 24, 2009
Link:
Southbank Centre
UGLY KNITTING
SHERBET DAB SWIVEL
Ugly
Knitting, 2009
The renowned Japanese sculptor and musician Ujino Muneteru (born Tokyo, 1964) founded The Rotators in 2004, a band whose members consist of ordinary household appliances, including blenders, hairdryers and power tools. Each of these 'musicians' are connected to the Rotatorhead, a unit created from a specially adapted DJ's mixing desk that Ujino has programmed to automatically control all The Rotators' components.
Ujino has said that 'I set up the band on the table and control everything from the Rotatorhead, so it ends up looking like a cooking show on TV. The permanent members of The Rotators are: the blender, for its heavy, low frequency sounds — like a punchy kick drum; the drill, set up too for its snappy, tight snare drum sound; and the hair dryer, which is always involved with my performances because it resembles a fuzzy bass but sometimes takes the role of vocals.'
While Ujino's work recalls both the Intonarumori (noise intones) invented by the Italian Futurist artist and composer Luigi Russolo and kinetic sculpture of Jean Tinguely, it also speaks of his childhood and adolescence in 1970s and early 1980s Japan, a time when that nation was undergoing rapid economic development. Growing up surrounded by American pop culture and then-novel plastic household appliances, his passion for Punk and New Wave led him towards an interest, as he puts it, in 'art as material realism rather than the planar illusions of painting, manga and animation'. For Ujino 'rock music expression and electric technology which amplifies sound signals were at their peak in the 1980s', and this is why he prefers to make use in his work of second-hand items from this period. While Ujino and The Rotators reflects the impact of globalisation on the local, it also speaks of how even its blandest material deposits — a piece of kitchenware, or a power tool — become strange again when connected to a specific set of cultural, social and historical currents.
For this exhibition at The Hayward Project Space, Ujino is transforming the space into his workshop, continuously welcoming ‘new band members’ from London during his stay at The Southbank Centre as an artist in Residence. During the exhibition’s run, Ujino and The Rotators will give several public performances as part of Southbank Centre’s Ether 09 Festival of Art and Technology.
Sherbet Dab Swivel, 2009
Copyright ©2009 Ujino Muneteru, All rights reserved.photo: Jon Cartwright
The Rotators also feature in Ujino’s Sherbet Dab Swivel, a temporary outdoor sculpture installed on Festival Terrace until 24 April and active from 10am to 10pm every day. Taking part of its title from Cockney rhyming slang, Sherbet Dab Swivel converts a taxicab and other street apparatus into a new outdoor sculpture for London. inspired by many equestrian statues he found around the city, Ujino based its form on a figure on horseback, metamorphosed — like a Transformer toy — into a twenty-first century monument to urban transport, complete with flashing lights and intermittent sounds created by Ujino's Rotators.
Curator: Mami Kataoka
Exhion bitiassistant: Chelsea Fitzgerald
Exhibition interns: Louisa Adam and Fatima Hellberg
Exhion bitiassistant: Chelsea Fitzgerald
Exhibition interns: Louisa Adam and Fatima Hellberg
Ujino Muneteru is a Southbank
Centre Artist in Residence
supported by
Paul Hamlyn Foundation. The exhibition is also supported by Japan
— UK 150 Fund and Tokyo Wonder Site.
TOKYO STORIES Vol. 1
Studio Depp, Tokyo, Japan
November 23, 2008 — November 24, 2008
The Ballad of Backyard, 2008
Copyright ©2008 Ujino Muneteru, All rights reserved.PLATFORM SEOUL 2008
One and J Gallery, Seoul, Korea
October 25, 2008 — November 23, 2008
Link:
PLATFORM SEOUL
ONE AND J GALLERY
ATSROK: The Rotators in Daewoo TICO
Astrok, 2008
Copyright ©2008 Ujino
Muneteru, All rights reserved.
Ujino Muneteru reveals a
part of
society through his use of popular culture, answering to the pop music
of ’70s in his oeuvre. He uses a homogeneous mish-mash of materials
that are commonplace—electrical sockets, junk, used vinyl discs, and
actuators—to recreate new musical instruments or installations. His new
project, Astrok (2008), is a collection of second-hand materials found
in Seoul that are arranged around a torn, dilapidated car. Endlessly
rotating, shedding all pretenses of meaning, and wildly and noisily
gyrating, this piece represents ironically our society of
consumption and the dream of modernity
accompanied by a progressive amnesia. In our era of new technology, the brilliant metamorphose of everyday objects into music would bring people to ecstasy.
accompanied by a progressive amnesia. In our era of new technology, the brilliant metamorphose of everyday objects into music would bring people to ecstasy.
UJINO MUNETERU
CROSSBAND
PSM, Berlin, Germany
September 4, 2008 — October 4, 2008
Link:
PSM
ART iT
Hobnox
Channels, Web TV
アート遊覧
PICKLE-UP: The Rotators w. GDR
Vehicles
PLYWOOD CITY: The Rotators f. FRG
Pickle-up, 2008
Copyright ©2008 Ujino
Muneteru, All rights reserved.
Courtesy of PSM
Plywood City, 2008
Copyright ©2008
Ujino
Muneteru, All rights reserved.
Courtesy of PSM
'A crossband repeater
allows two
radio stations to communicate that ordinarily would not be able to do
so because of the distance or terrain between them.’
Ujino Muneteru transforms mechanical sounds into complex rhythms. Bored by the technical limits of his instruments, the guitarist and bassist experiments with new sounds. Different sounding bodies widen the spectrum of resonance; simple mechanical motors produce new tones. In particular domestic appliances, tools, and large machinery from the fifties to the seventies play a significant role here because of their mechanical simplicity and haptic palpability. Points of reference to the Japanese “Noise Music”, a type of sound movement from the eighties rooted in John Cage and the Fluxus, can also be seen.
In his first solo presentation in Europe Ujino Muneteru deals with the cultural and historic integration of the East and West using sounds. Muneteru, growing up in the consumer society of Tokyo, sees himself confronted with the historic industrial space of the GDR at PSM. PSM is located in a freight garage of the former transport establishment of the Central Committee of the SED. In Crossband Muneteru does not wish to teach, he wishes to investigate and record a playful catenation between history and the future of spaces.
Crossband speaks about the concurrence, the intersection of sound waves, of information from language or sounds. Two installations are in the forefront of this communication cross-link - Pickle-up and Plywood City.
Pickle-up consists of two old GDR motor cars, which have lost color and shape since the collapse of the GDR and have succumbed to the elements, like a pickle in its brine.
Plywood City refers to a part of Tokyo, in the vernacular, built from wood. Inspired by it, Muneteru constructs a model city, which is animated by kinetic objects and sound. The basis of the city is formed by art transport crates, whose misappropriation cites socialist flagstone buildings with irony.
Pickle-up and Plywood City also function as interfaces between the past and future of the space of PSM - the former GDR freight garage and the future gallery.
Ujino Muneteru transforms mechanical sounds into complex rhythms. Bored by the technical limits of his instruments, the guitarist and bassist experiments with new sounds. Different sounding bodies widen the spectrum of resonance; simple mechanical motors produce new tones. In particular domestic appliances, tools, and large machinery from the fifties to the seventies play a significant role here because of their mechanical simplicity and haptic palpability. Points of reference to the Japanese “Noise Music”, a type of sound movement from the eighties rooted in John Cage and the Fluxus, can also be seen.
In his first solo presentation in Europe Ujino Muneteru deals with the cultural and historic integration of the East and West using sounds. Muneteru, growing up in the consumer society of Tokyo, sees himself confronted with the historic industrial space of the GDR at PSM. PSM is located in a freight garage of the former transport establishment of the Central Committee of the SED. In Crossband Muneteru does not wish to teach, he wishes to investigate and record a playful catenation between history and the future of spaces.
Crossband speaks about the concurrence, the intersection of sound waves, of information from language or sounds. Two installations are in the forefront of this communication cross-link - Pickle-up and Plywood City.
Pickle-up consists of two old GDR motor cars, which have lost color and shape since the collapse of the GDR and have succumbed to the elements, like a pickle in its brine.
Plywood City refers to a part of Tokyo, in the vernacular, built from wood. Inspired by it, Muneteru constructs a model city, which is animated by kinetic objects and sound. The basis of the city is formed by art transport crates, whose misappropriation cites socialist flagstone buildings with irony.
Pickle-up and Plywood City also function as interfaces between the past and future of the space of PSM - the former GDR freight garage and the future gallery.