This lecture explores celebrated media artist Nam June Paik’s (1932-2006) renowned “TV Buddha” series of video art sculptures initiated in 1974. Mondloch proposes that the spectatorship conditions associated with “TV Buddha,” together with the work’s ongoing critical reception across various platforms, offer a productive model for assessing the interfaces between viewers and media technologies in the 21st century.
Bio: Kate Mondloch is Associate Professor of contemporary art and Head of the Department of the History of Art and Architecture at the University of Oregon. She is founding director of the University’s New Media and Culture Certificate. Her research interests focus on late 20th and early 21st century art, theory, and criticism, particularly as these areas of inquiry intersect with the cultural, social, and aesthetic possibilities of new technologies. Mondloch is the author of two books: Screens: Viewing Media Installation Art (University of Minnesota Press, 2010) and Eye Desire: New Media Art, Feminism, Technoculture (University of Minnesota Press, forthcoming, 2017).