LOS ANGELES.- The Korean Cultural Center, Los Angeles (KCCLA) presents a memorial tribute to the life and career of composer and video and performance artist Nam June Paik at the LACMA’s Bing Theater on June 1 at 7:30. Video art pioneer Nam June Paik died of natural causes at his home in Miami, Florida, on January 29, 2006; he was seventy-three. Memorial services for Paik have been held worldwide and this tribute will recognize his contribution to the culture of Los Angeles. The early seventies brought video art to Southern California, notably at the Long Beach Museum of Art where David A. Ross organized an exhibition of Nam June Paik’s work in 1974, and California Institute of the Arts School of Film and Video where Nam June Paik taught, and personally introduced the Paik-Abe video synthesizer in 1970. Today, Paik’s influence resonates in the acceptance of video art as a collectible art form, with his work in the collections of many museums in California, including LACMA.

Byung Hyo Choi, the Korean Consul General, Michael Govan, LACMA’s new CEO, and Wallis Annenberg Director, will begin the evening with an introduction to the program, which includes a variety of experts and devotees, such as speaker Mary Livingstone Beebe, Director of the Stuart Collection at the University of California, San Diego; David A. Ross, President of the Artist Pension Trust and former Director of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the first curator to organize a museum exhibition of Paik’s work in the United States; renowned video artist Bill Viola; and Kathy Rae Huffman, Director of Visual Arts at Cornerhouse, Manchester, England, who was Curator at the Long Beach Museum of Art, and director of its regional media art center. Ms. Huffman will be presenting rare archival footage of Picturephone, Paik’s interactive satellite performance between Los Angeles and New York.

Other highlights include the presentation of Paik’s Zen for Film (1964-65) by independent producer and curator Julie Lazar, who organized the last large-scale composition/exhibition by John Cage, Rolywholyover A Circus, which included Zen for Film. Additionally, Los Angeles visual and sound artist Steve Roden will perform an early work, Primitive Music, and seminal dancer and choreographer Simone Forti will present a new performance based on her diary entry about Paik from her Handbook in Motion? An Account of an Ongoing Personal Discourse and its Manifestations in Dance (1974, the Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design). Archival video and rare footage, courtesy of Electronic Arts Intermix, New York, will also be screened. Technical support is provided by The Society for the Activation of Social Space through Art and Sound (SASSAS), a group that serves as a catalyst for the creation, presentation, and recognition of experimental art and sound practices in the Greater Los Angeles area.