Across the River : Connected Parallel
Curated by Hyelim Jeon
Ideas of Exhibition format :
Advice :
Seoul Curator :
Leipzig Curator :
Installation Suport :
Thanks :
-Two physical spaces in real time, exploring the simultaneity and asynchronicity of interaction.
-A reinterpretation of the development of Korean media narratives and media cognition, drawing from Nam June Paik’s concept of “live broadcast liveness” and recontextualizing it in the contemporary media landscape.
-The exhibition will also feature the first public presentation of Nam June Paik’s previously unreleased score.
Seoul Exhibition Venue: Cheongnyeon Yesulcheong SAPY or Gallery Naeil (Naeil Newspaper Gallery)
Leipzig Exhibition Venue:
Exhibition Schedule: To be held within the period of January 19–29, 2026, coordinated to align with the schedules of both venues.
Associated Program Schedule: Three sessions in total; exact dates to be determined.
1) Exhibition Indroduction
A river mediates time and space, yet its flow is irreversible and unpredictable. In Korean, the expression 'to cross the river' can mean to leave for a distant place. A single river can divide spaces or connect them, and life across the river sometimes flows on without ever fully separating or blending.
A river is also a living presence-an organism that does not remain in the past but continually carries new water, embodying a persistent presentness that says, 'life goes on'. In this sense, the river symbolizes liveness-the state of being 'here and now' in real time.
Nam June Paik, who spent most of his life not in Korea but 'across the water' in Germany and the United States, anticipated what our media generation now calls online through his concept of liveness. Through the world's first satellite live broadcast, he used technology to connect physically distant beings, expanding the notion of the 'here and now' and visualizing the simultaneity of interaction. This revealed how technology reshapes the conditions of human perception, memory, and modes of being-each constructed in irreversible and unpredictable ways.
Nam June Paik's experiments planted in Korean society a new sensibility toward the cultural meaning of real-time connection, media convergence, and human-machine relationships. These became a crucial foundation for Korean digital media culture-especially for real-time streaming, fandom-based content, and relationships with virtual entities, contributing to the very formation of Korea's media aesthetics and sensibilities. In the media industry, these concepts were absorbed into real-time music broadcasts, chat/streaming platforms, and a culture of dispersing a single piece of content across multiple media to create an 'expanded experience' for audiences.
From a new media perspective, Paik's live broadcasts were interactive practices grounded in simultaneity. Our exhibition builds on this context, developing it into a streaming format that secures the asynchronicity of simultaneity. Two physically connected spaces will be broadcast live to each other in real time, while audiences will also have the ability to rewind the feed to past moments, enabling asynchronous forms of interaction.
On January 29, 2026, the 20th anniversary of Nam June Paik's passing, this project will connect that legacy directly to the cognitive systems we experience within media narratives today. The exhibition is an attempt to explore the structures of perception that flow along with media, and the simultaneities and asynchronicities shaped by those media conditions, re-narrativizing them in new ways.