Guadalcanal requiem [videorecording] / Nam June Paik. [1977]

ArchivalResource

Paik, Nam June, 1932-2006. Guadalcanal requiem [videorecording] / Nam June Paik.

Guadalcanal requiem [videorecording] / Nam June Paik. [1977]

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/419264067

"[This piece] visits Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands, the site of a devastating battle during World War II. On one level, the video is an evocation of past horror, which is seen in fragmentary documentary footage and recalled in interviews with American and Japanese veterans and Solomon Islanders. Synthesized through Paik's postproduction mix, the manipulation of memories, fragments, visual and auditory representations, and sites of devastation, becomes, on another level, a struggle to locate and convey experiential truths"--J.G. Hanhardt, p. 22. This piece also excerpts performance works, including Joseph Beuys's Infiltration Homogen für Cello (1966), in which Charlotte Moorman crawls along the beach with the felt-covered cello Beuys created for her strapped to her back. Guadalcanal requiem's intercut mix of performance, memory fragments and documentary footage attests to the poignant task of human imagination to capture and understand war's devastation, while also situating art within history.

1 videocassette of 1 (U-Matic) (48 min.) : sd., col. ; 3/4 in. original.

Getty Research Institute