Lake Placid '80

1980, 3:49 min, color, sound

Paik produced this exuberant, high-speed collage as a commission for the National Fine Arts Committee of the 1980 Olympic Winter Games. In a fractured explosion of densely layered movement and action, images of Olympic sports events are mixed with Paik's recurring visual and audio motifs: the dancers from Global Groove, Allen Ginsberg, the song Devil With a Blue Dress On. Ski jumpers, skaters and hockey players are re-edited, fragmented, colorized, accelerated and transformed, colliding on the screen in a frenzy of synthesized energy. Movements, time-frames and images shift in seemingly random, often ironic juxtapositions. The hyperbolic pace and rhythm of this energetic "music video" ends with Paik's computer-graphic version of the Olympic logo superimposed over a chanting Allen Ginsberg.

Computer Graphics: Judson Rosebush, Dan Sandin, Phil Morton, Tom DeFanti. Commissioned by the National Fine Arts Committee of the 1980 Olympic Winter Games.

 
 

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.