Nam June Paik. In collaboration with Douglas Davis, Jud Yalkut, and Shigeko Kubota.
1975, re-edited 1977, 30:23 min, color, sound
Suite 212 is Paik's "personal New York sketchbook," an electronic collage that presents multiple perspectives of New York's media landscape as a fragmented tour of the city. Opening with the 1972 work The Selling of New York, a series of short segments designed for WNET's late-night television schedule, Paik critiques the selling of New York by multinational corporations, and the city's role as the master of the media and information industries. Russell Connor is the ubiquitous television announcer whose droning statistical information on New York is ridiculed by a series of "average" New Yorkers; a burglar steals the TV set on which we see his talking head. Intercut throughout this comic scenario are appropriated Japanese TV commercials of American products. At the core of Suite 212 is a series of short collaborative pieces that form an accelerated, vibrant romp through New York neighborhoods. Street interviews with Douglas Davis' neighbors, Jud Yalkut's rendering of a Chinatown noodle shop and a colorized walk along the bridge to Ward's Island, and Paik and Shigeko Kubota's hallucinatory tour of the Lower East Side with Allen Ginsberg are among the segments in this dizzying time capsule of New York in the 1970s.
Director: Merrily Mossman. Host: Russell Connor. Supervising Engineer/Videotape Editor: John J. Godfrey. Staff Engineer: Philip F. Falcon, Jr. Production Manager: Darlene Mastro. -- EAI
This title is available for exhibitions, screenings, and institutional use through Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), NY. Please visit the EAI Online Catalogue for further information about this artist and work. The EAI site offers extensive resources for curators, students, artists and educators, including: an in-depth guide to exhibiting, collecting, and preserving media art; A Kinetic History: The EAI Archives Online, a collection of essays, primary documents, and media charting EAI's 40-year history and the early years of the emergent video art scene; and expanded contextual and educational materials.