1) The phenomenal development of computer science has changed our ways of perceiving through the creation of cyberspace. In cyberspace we can experience everything, such as magical worlds transcending the limits of time and space. It will be necessary to recall humanity's primitive experiences in order to reflect on the sense and structure of the virtual space created by the digital media. Humanity has existed intuitively, imagining transcendental worlds beside their own reality. There are various reasons humanity has needed to communicate with these transcendental worlds- for example misery, disease, desire and dreams. In this sense it is comprehensible to believe that in all kinds of culture there has existed people who have assumed the role of a medium between reality and non-reality, such as shamans and wizards. These are the persons who resolve the problems of reality for humanity, such as suffering and starvation, through the mediation of the transcendental worlds to them. When these shamanistic cultural elements were expelled from society by reasonable scientific culture, their role was passed on to poets and artists. Examples of this can be seen in works such as: Ovid's Metamorphosis, the traveler's motive in Gulliver's Travels (to travel to other worlds through imagination and to experience a utopia outside of reality), the romanticism represented by Baudelaire (in "Correspondence"), the symbolism represented by Mallarmé, and the experiences of surrealism. The romantic poets especially believe themselves to be mediums who can connect the 'ici-bas' of this world to the 'là:-haut' of the ideal world. Jean Cocteau also called himself a 'shamanist' who connected the real and the virtual, and also a medium who experimented with many different genres. The latest example of art as shamanism could be seen to be the future performance of "Printemps des Poètes," which will take place in March 2005, and has been organized by the University of Paris 8. It will be performed by a poet, a singer and a computer scientist, and will concern the resurrection of a thirteen year-old girl who died in the middle ages.
The artist has succeeded in filling the role of the shaman by constructing his own imaginary world. We can say that the universe which is invoked and mediated by the shamans, and the imaginary universe created by the artists, are all predecessors of the cyberspace which has been created by computers. If we find common elements between the different genres of art, shamanism and cyberspace, it is because of the immateriality of the movements and the mediation of different states of universe. The spiritual displacements and movements of shamanism are similar to the fluid aspects of digital aesthetics.
2) The original pioneer of video art, Nam June Paik, worked with media, arts and shamanism, thereby expressing and concreting the two's relationship. As an influential founding member of the Fluxus movement (the original meaning of the term 'Fluxus' is 'fluidity', which can be linked to the displacement of nomads), he aspires to planetary harmony and union. Nam June Paik realised the connection and unification of different cultures, and is an artist who aims for a utopia of the medias, he calls himself the shaman who connects the Orient and the Western worlds, life and death, human beings and nature. In Seoul, Nam June Paik performed as a shaman of the 'Gut' (Korean shamanism), for healing the soul of the dead Joseph Beuys. Nam Jun Paik performed this ceremony on his own birthday, and through this performance he dreamt of his friend's resurrection. Paik is influenced especially by Korean shamanism. When the Korean intellectuals were fluctuating between traditional Korean culture and Western culture, he found a form of reconciliation and harmony in Korean shamanism.
3) Finally, we will present the Media Art Exhibition organized by the Media Art Institute of Yonsei University in Seoul (May 2004), as an example of Nam June Paik's successors. This exhibition took place in the Prison of Seodaemun, an historical monument. The prison, in fact, has existed since Japanese colonial times, and within it different ideologies were confronted. In this place many people were imprisoned and killed. The media is, in a sense, the prison which constrains humanity. But this prison can also be the media that permits a reflection on the world outside the prison, the freedom that transcends constraint. The media art works installed in the prison express the flow and movement of history and consciousness by the mediation between the 'here and now' and an 'another time, another place'. Nam June PaikÕs successors aspire to the harmony and the union between traditional culture and media art. This is the reason for the exhibition title: Crash and Flow.
The cyberspace which is created by an electronic medium, enables us to reach another world, beyond time and space, thereby healing the traumas of the past. The media art exhibition is in a sense an 'inter-medium' connecting past and present, works and spectators. It permits us to experience the communication between the living and dead. Throughout the duration of the exhibition we tried to connect media art and shaman performances. Through the Korean traditional 'Gut' we invoked the souls of the people who died suffering, and then comforted and healed them. As successors of Nam June Paik, the artist-shamans, mediated past and present, life and death and freedom and constraints, through the media- which was the prison. Thus, their own bodies were transformed into the media itself.
Author Bio
Jung Huh is a Korean artist, born in 1955. Currently she is Research Professor of Institute of Media Art at Yonsei University and holds a MA in Translation & Interpretation from Hankuk University and a PhD in French Contemporary Literature from the University of Paris.