It all began at first, as a joke, that we three Asians/Asian-wannabe (referring to Lucius, Christopher Chong, and Anthony Cacchione) should go to Nam June Paik’s “Becoming Robots” exhibit at the Asia Society to appreciate our cultural background, until we came to realize that it is not a joke, but some seriously mischievous and daring art exhibit.
There are times when we, as a group of people occupying the area called New York, tend to think ourselves progressive. The future is unknown, and therefore, it is savory. It can be anything ranging from the most delightful to the most destructive, and neither is a crime as the unknown future has all the rights in the world to be what it is. Artists sometimes function as mirrors, reflecting the past and the present. They are also the seers and clairvoyants of our age, as they bring closer to us what is not yet seen. “Becoming Robots” is an exhibit of such nature, whose charm is through sight and sound, and the enchantment is to conjure the distant future of the past: the art that Paik imagined fifty years ago tells the story of an alternative way of looking at today.
The intended accident, the bard of the ancient made into a robot, the artwork that changes depending on who is looking at it… These are the themes and geniuses that we saw at Paik’s exhibit. The robotic brain has handwritten notes in it, showing the inseparability between the sciences and the humanities. The violent colors, advanced video techniques, the hermaphrodite robot… These are the ideas that the artist imagined us to embody. He, through his ideas, conceived us of different dimension, and born is the collection of artwork which will stun and amaze the children of the coming generations.
“Becoming Robots” has an important message: before there is a robot, there is a human. There must first exist the cellist, or the mischievous artist sitting on the TV chair, or the Chinese poet in order for the technology to advance. True to this message, before there was Google and Facebook, there was art.
-Lucius, with Anthony and Christopher Chong
