Video Synthesizer and "TV Cello" Collectibles

Jud Yalkut and Nam June Paik
1965-71, 23:25 min, color, silent, 16 mm film on video
1965-68, 5:18 min, color, silent
 
1970-92, 8:36 min, color, silent
 
1971, 7:25 min, color, silent
 

This restored collection of rare early collaborative works by Nam June Paik and Jud Yalkut is historically significant as well as remarkably prescient. Recorded between 1965 and 1971, these "video-films" reveal insights into the evolution of Paik's work in video, performance and installation, and are among the earliest explorations of the interfacing of film and video. They are marked by a playful, irreverent sense of improvisation and experimentation. Richly inventive and ironic, if at times technically crude, these experiments form a link between Paik's performance and sculptural works of the 1950s and early 1960s and the celebrated videotapes and installations of recent years.

These seminal pieces are informed by Paik's early experiments with image manipulation and synthesis, particularly in relation to performance and installation.

Video Commune is Jud Yalkut's free-form documentation of Paik's first interactive television "performance" in a studio at the public television station WGBH in Boston. This piece also marks the broadcast debut of the Paik/Abe Video Synthesizer, on August 1, 1970.

Subtitled "Beatles from Beginning to End," Paik's freewheeling collage was aired live on WGBX, Channel 44, WGBH's second channel. The images were generated directly from the Paik/Abe Synthesizer and mixed with prerecorded Japanese television commercials; the Beatles music was played chronologically ("from beginning to end") from 1/4" audio tape, with live vocal inserts.

TV Cello Premiere is a silent film documentation of Charlotte Moorman in her first performance on Paik's eponymous "TV Cello" at the Bonino Gallery in New York in 1971.

 
 

PLEASE NOTE: Allow extra lead-in time if you are planning a public screening or exhibition of Nam June Paik's single screen video works. All such orders must be forwarded by EAI to the Paik Studio for their agreement before any event can be confirmed.

This is a video transfer of a work initially shot on film. This is best shown as a projection, to reflect the original medium.
Projection Installation Checklist & Guidelines