The Nam June Paik Art Center will open the Nam June Paik Media Art Festival on July 16, a festival that activates Nam June Paik's artistic vision in the present tense.
 
The Nam June Paik Media Art Festival, conceived in the spirit of Nam June Paik as a festival, feast, and gut (Korean shamanic ritual), connects art and technology, humanity and nature, the local and the global, while exploring the possibilities of future culture.
 
Launched in 2026 to mark the 20th anniversary of Nam June Paik’s passing, it is the first global media art festival to be held in his name. Centered at the Nam June Paik Art Center and presented annually, the festival serves as an open platform where Paik’s artistic legacy encounters contemporary art, generating new questions and new forms of practice.
 
The inaugural Nam June Paik Media Art Festival, titled 《Waiting for U.F.O.》, brings into the present the interconnected world that Paik envisioned through stars, planets, satellites, and media networks.
 
Beginning with the simultaneous opening of the exhibitions 《Stars, Trigrams》 and 《Moons: The Bright Rainbow Dots》, the opening week continues through July 20 with a diverse program of performances and events spanning sound, movement, theatre, and ritual.

Exhibition
 
First, 《Stars, Trigrams》, presented in Gallery 1 of the Nam June Paik Art Center, explores Nam June Paik’s conception of the world. For Nam June Paik, the world was an open circuit in which different beings and signals continually form relationships and transform one another.
 
In 《Stars, Trigrams》, “stars” represent his cosmic vision extending beyond humanity and Earth, while “trigrams” evoke an Eastern way of understanding the world through shifting relationships and change. Where these two perspectives meet, the exhibition unfolds Paik’s artistic universe of new connections between humans and technology, nature and the cosmos.
 
Second, 《Moons: The Bright Rainbow Dots》, presented in Gallery 2 of the center, connects the many perspectives that emerge when we contemplate the moon as a “plural being,” from both inside and outside Earth, with Nam June Paik’s “planetary thinking,” and reopens The Moon is the Oldest TV (1965/2000), Neptune (1991), and Turtle (1993) to fresh interpretation.
 
Through the works of contemporary artists who resonate with Paik’s thought, it then proposes a new vision of the cosmos as Paik saw it.
 
The exhibition space, which begins from the vantage point of Neptune rather than Earth, moves beyond a geocentric view; it becomes a device that honors the artistic worlds of ten artists, Paik among them, and draws them into connection.

Performance
 
The Nam June Paik Art Center will present a diverse program of performances as part of the inaugural Nam June Paik Media Art Festival.
 
Bringing together music, dance, live coding, laser performance, theatre, and ritual, the program explores the intersections of body and technology, sound and light, ritual and media.
 
The performance program will take place from the festival’s opening day, the 16th, through the 20th. Detailed schedules, venues, and registration information are available on the Nam June Paik Art Center website.
 
Participating Artists: Limyongju Future Sound Lab, Chae-Eul aka In-Jung Jun, Dahee Park, Glanz, ummeeeonn, Bang Ji Won & Gut Ensemble

Special Lecture
 
Special lecture programs have also been organized, offering new perspectives on Nam June Paik’s artistic legacy.
 
The first lecture, “Curating Nam June Paik: John G. Hanhardt & Sook-Kyung Lee in Conversation,” will be held on the 17th at 1:00 p.m. in the Random Access Hall at the Nam June Paik Art Center.
 
Presented by the distinguished art historian and curator John G. Hanhardt, who closely witnessed Paik’s artistic career in the United States, the lecture explores the artist’s practice and the cultural landscape of his time.
 
Hanhardt has played a significant role in introducing Paik’s artistic vision to international audiences through the organization of major exhibitions in the United States, including the landmark retrospective 《Nam June Paik》 at the Whitney Museum of American Art and 《The Worlds of Nam June Paik》 at the Guggenheim Museum during the artist’s lifetime, as well as the posthumous exhibition 《Nam June Paik: Global Visionary》 at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
 
The talk will be moderated by Sook-Kyung Lee, Director of the Whitworth and curator of 《The Future Is Now》, the first international touring exhibition devoted to Nam June Paik.
 
Together with Lee, who organized the exhibition as it traveled from Tate Modern to major museums around the world, the discussion will examine the contemporary significance and future legacy of Paik’s art.

This will be followed, in the same venue, by “As Long as It Springs Forth, It Is Always Spring: Reading the East Asian Philosophical Thought in Nam June Paik’s Works,” presented by Hyang-joon Lee, Research Professor at the Center for Philosophy Research and Education, Chonnam National University.
 
In Nam June Paik’s works, stars, planets, satellites, and televisions are far more than recurring motifs. They function as devices that connect distant entities, reconfigure the order of time and space, and attune us to a world in constant transformation.
 
This lecture examines these characteristics through the lens of East Asian philosophy, particularly the I Ching's hexagrams, the principles of yin and yang, and concepts of change and cyclical transformation.
 
Rather than interpreting Paik’s works as direct expressions of specific philosophical doctrines, the lecture explores the ways in which language and images, objects and signals, and human actions enter into relationships that generate meaning. In doing so, it highlights the structural resonances between Paik’s artistic practice and Eastern modes of thought.
 
Through this perspective, Paik’s work can be understood not simply as technological experimentation or media-based form-making, but as a distinctive mode of thinking that reads a changing world and forges connections among disparate forms of existence.
 
In addition, the festival will feature a range of programs, including presentations on the restoration of major works from the Nam June Paik Art Center collection, as well as technical demonstrations that recreate the operating principles of Nam June Paik’s early experimental television works, reconstructed in the 1990s. A variety of public participation programs will also be offered.
 
Further information about the festival, including program details and participation guidelines, is available on the Nam June Paik Art Center’s website and social media channels.

References

• 백남준아트센터, 백남준미디어아트페스티벌 (Nam June Paik Art Center, Nam June Paik Media Art Festival)