Village View – Week of May 31
Presence of Patience & Love Retreat led by Aziza Scott & Yaqin Aubert is now online!
Sufi Message Class led by Yaqin | Thursday, June 4 | 7:00 PM EDT
We pray you are well, healthy, and happy! The Inayati Center at the Abode will be Zooming it’s Thursday classes for the foreseeable future. Please join us on line for inspiration, meditation and social sharing! All are welcome.
Be sure to follow us on Facebook for links to our Sufi Classes!
In honor of Asian and Pacific Islander American Heritage Month, the Abode will be sharing quotes and messages from Asian and Pacific Islander Americans of varying faith backgrounds. This week we share work from Paik Nam June. Born in Seoul in 1932, Paik and his family fled to Hong Kong and then later Japan during the Korean War. As an adult Paik traveled to West Germany where he joined the Fluxus art movement. He moved to NYC in 1964.
From Studio International, “He was an artist, a classically trained musician, an inventor, a technophile and, above all, a visionary.
“…In his experiments in technology and participation, Paik was interested in
democratising his medium while, at the same time, making the viewer more aware of the physical aspects of the technology at play. This, and his lifelong exploration of Zen Buddhism, led to works such as Zen for Film (1964), a 20-minute long, blank film to be watched as any other film while becoming increasingly conscious of the projector, the screen, the dust and the scratches on the film and the shadow of ourselves and other viewers.”
A Phaidon interview with artist Barbara London recounts how in 1966 Paik “[described] how he wanted to create a seven-channel video signal mixer whose ‘electro-magnetic vibration of [the] head might lead [the] way to electronic Zen.'”
Nam June Paik, TV Buddha, 1974 Closed-circuit video installation, with eighteenth-century Buddha statue. As reproduced in Video/Art: The First Fifty Years