Nam June Paik's 1984 Global Broadcast Good Morning, Mr. Orwell Revisited Amid Tate Modern Retrospective

On January 1, 1984, the television program Good Morning, Mr. Orwell, created by Nam June Paik, captivated 25 million viewers through a satellite connection linking PBS in New York with the Centre Pompidou in Paris, with additional airings in Germany and Korea. The broadcast included performances by musicians Laurie Anderson and Peter Gabriel, along with contributions from artists Salvador Dalí, Joseph Beuys, and John Cage. Paik, who passed away in 2006, was a pioneer in the realm of television as an art form and developed a video synthesizer in the late 1960s. His works can be found on platforms like YouTube and UbuWeb, yet the full potential of television for mass art distribution remains largely untapped. A retrospective of his work is on display at Tate Modern until February 9, 2020, as highlighted by Juliet Jacques in the Autumn 2019 edition of ArtReview Asia.