Route 66
Nam June Paik
1993-1996
Nam June Paik’s installation “Route 66” from Peter Kolb’s private collection was first shown to the broad public at the “Nam June Paik: Driving Media” exhibition at the WRO Art Center. The work is part of the big “Family of Robot” series realised since 1986. A red motorbike with a slightly protruding front is ridden by a media-cyclist – a non-conformist artist with a body made of fourteen variously sized TV monitors. The sculpture seems to move as the monitors emit synchronic pulsations of TV glow. The looped sequences of synthetic, coloured and black-and-white images alternate quickly. Paik’s moving video collages combine 3D graphics, tape clippings, pieces of commercials and films, TV noise, moves, multiplications and repetitions. They are redolent of strange, archaic proto-GIFs – quasi-remnants left behind by a technological society of old and its trash pop-culture.