Electronic Superhighway: Continental U.S., Alaska, Hawaii 1996

Nam June Paik made this artwork with video and neon. Looking at Electronic Superhighway, I think about Paik wrestling with an unwieldy stack of old TV sets. The whole thing flickers with a kind of chaotic energy, and it gives me a sense of the artist's process – a real push and pull, like he's both building and deconstructing at the same time. It’s like he’s building a kind of parallel universe, or a distorted mirror reflecting back our own obsession with screens. The neon, zinging around the edges, feels like an electric current, linking everything together in one big, buzzing network. I can imagine Paik, feeling his way through this piece, tweaking and adjusting, probably making a few mistakes, maybe even breaking a few things along the way. He was in conversation with artists like Charlotte Moorman, John Cage, and Joseph Beuys. Artists are always responding to each other, building on each other’s ideas, and pushing the boundaries of what art can be. For Paik, art was a way of embracing the unexpected, finding beauty in the everyday, and, of course, not being afraid to mess with technology.