26'1.1499" For A String Player

Jud Yalkut 

1973, 42 min, color, sound

This tape is Jud Yalkut's video realization of Charlotte Moorman and Nam June Paik's concert performance of John Cage's composition 26'1.1499" For String Player. In this extraordinary performance, which is manipulated and synthesized by Yalkut, Paik and Moorman play Cage's score on a collection of "instruments" that include a pistol, a dish of mushrooms, balloons, a practice aerial bomb, and a telephone call to President Nixon.

Global Groove

Nam June Paik and John Godfrey 

1973, 28:30 min, color, sound

Global Groove is a seminal work in the history of video art. Paik's radical manifesto on global communications in a media-saturated world is rendered as an electronic collage, a sound and image pastiche that subverts the very language of television. With surreal visual wit and an antic neo-Dada sensibility, Paik brings together a cross-cultural melange of artworld figures and Pop iconography.

Guadalcanal Requiem

Nam June Paik with Charlotte Moorman 

1977, re-edited 1979, 28:33 min, color, sound

One of Paik's most overtly political and poignant statements, Guadalcanal Requiem is a performance/documentary collage that confronts history, time, cultural memory and mythology on the site of one of World War II's most devastating battles. Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands is the iconic...

Selected Works: Reel 4

William Wegman

1973-74, 20:33 min, b&w, sound

Reel 4 includes deadpan conceptual monologues, parodic commercials and demonstrations, and absurdist anecdotes with Man Ray, including visual one-liners in which the dog is subjected to hilarious indignities: Man Ray sleeps peacefully until startled by a loud alarm clock; poses awkwardly with his...

Selected Works: Reel 7

William Wegman

1976-77, 18:06 min, color, sound

In Selected Works: Reel 7, Wegman continues his short narratives, using Man Ray's predictability and the personification of his own body parts as comedic material. Manipulating Man Ray's behavior to humorous effect, Wegman tries to get the dog to smoke, and pretends to cry on the couch to elicit...

TV Bed, The Everson Museum of Art

1972, 1:10 min, b&w, sound

TV Cello Performance

1973, 1:42 min, b&w, silent

Waiting for Commercials

Nam June Paik and Jud Yalkut

1966-72, 1992, 6:41 min, color, sound, 16 mm film on video

Part of a restored collection of rare early works by Nam June Paik, Waiting for Commercials is a hilarious compendium of Japanese TV commercials. This early example of Paik's use of appropriated television imagery as pop cultural artifact was originally created for a performance piece of the same name, which featured Charlotte Moorman and her cello.