Paik's Virtual Archive: Time, Change, and Materiality in Media Art

Abstract

In a memorable opening to Paik’s Virtual Archive: Time, Change, and Materiality in Media Art, conservator and scholar Hanna Hölling recounts how she received the devastating news that Canopus, a laserdisc video work by Nam June Paik, had crashed down from a wall at her then-workplace. Disastrously, not only had all six of its monitors’ cathode ray tubes imploded, but its central chrome hubcap, replete with the artist’s signature, had been crushed beyond repair.