Good Morning, Mr. Orwell
January 1, 1984
“Good Morning, Mr. Orwell” was the first of three international satellite “installations” by Nam June Park. Broadcast January 1, 1984 the show linked NYC Public Broadcasting station WNET and the Center Pompidou in Paris live via satellite, as well as hooking up with broadcasters in Germany and South Korea. It aired nationwide in the US on public television, and reached an audience of over 25 million viewers worldwide
Unlike today, getting access to video equipment in the 1980s was a very big deal. If you’ve never known a world where you couldn’t edit cat videos on your iPhone you might have trouble picturing this, but video editing suites required thousands of square feet of floor space and cost millions of dollars to build and operate. Getting access to a satellite? Unthinkable. But that was Nam June.
Nam June commissioned “This Is The Picture” (which would later be released as “Excellent Birds”) for Good Morning, Mr. Orwell. The show was also the broadcast premier of “ACT III” and “Video Wallpaper.”