When TV & the information superhighway were new

Nam June Paik made art with TV sets and imagined an information superhighway before the internet was invented. John Giorno organised multi-media and dial-a-poem events. Poet and New Generation Thinker Sarah Jackson joins Matthew Sweet to look at the visions of the future conjured up by these artists who were both interested in the influence of mass media and Buddhism. She's joined by artist Haroon Mirza and Tate curator Achim Borchardt-Hume. We dial a poet Vahni Capildeo and hear from Vytautus Landbergis, former Lithuanian Head of State and former comrade of Nam June Paik as a Fluxus artist.

John Giorno (December 4, 1936 – October 11, 2019) Nam June Paik (20 July 1932, Gyeongseong - Died: 29 January 2006) Tate Modern's exhibition of Nam June Paik's art runs until 9 February 2020.

Haroon Mirza's work is on show in an exhibition called Waves and Forms at the John Hansard Gallery in Southampton until January 11th 2020. Vahni Capildeo's most recent collection is called Skin Can Hold. Sarah Jackson's poety collection is called Pelt. You can hear Sarah Jackson exploring the human voice in a short feature if you look up this programme called New Generation Thinkers: Edmund Richardson and Sarah Jackson https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p05pspzx and Sarah Jackson delivers a short talk about the history of the telephone in a programme called The Essay Telephone Terrors https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07wrlf4

Or you might be interested in Matthew Sweet's Free Thinking discussion about future visions and technology in the TV series Quatermass https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000b03y or our Free Thinking the Future collection of programmes https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03zwn4d

Producer: Caitlin Benedict