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Nam June Paik «Zen for Film»
Nam June Paik, «Zen for Film», 1964
Photography | Photograph: Brad Iverson | © Nam June Paik
 


 Nam June Paik
«Zen for Film»

In an endless loop, unexposed film runs through the projector. The resulting projected image shows a surface illuminated by a bright light, occasionally altered by the appearance of scratches and dust particles in the surface of the damaged film material. As an analogy to John Cage, who included silence as a non-sound in his music, Paik uses the emptiness of the image for his art. This a film which depicts only itself and its own material qualities, and which, as an «anti-film,» is meant to encourage viewers to oppose the flood of images from outside with one’s own interior images.

 

Heike Helfert