Once again, Nam June Paik proposes the idea of a global television, but this time, unlike in Global Groove, he places it in the context of the Cold War. The videotape begins with the following question: “What would happen if the people of New York and Moscow had a kind of citizen band television, could see and talk with each other via satellite?” This query presupposes a two-way communication that is inherent in the title of the work, Media Shuttle. We are still firmly within Paik's exploration of new media and its developments. The tape does not simulate this utopia, but slips into a narrative not far from the historical reality and consequences of such a system. The criticism of the American lifestyle and television consumption is followed by images of daily life and scientific research in Russia, and by traces of American hegemony in the USSR despite the Iron Curtain.

The tape is composed of video excerpts: Nam June Paik's The Selling of New York (1972), and a video shot during a trip to the USSR by Dimitri Devyatkin in 1973-1974.

New York is presented as a business district specialised in international services, 25% of which are activities in the cultural industry or new media. The space taken up in the city by buildings that have emerged as a result of this important position, the daily population flow and the consumption and behaviour of the American middle class, are quantified. Charlotte Moorman underscores the message with low-pitched cello notes. Views of American glass architecture slide in segments across the screen. A series of visual sequences present the population's dependence on television (various people are shown watching television in their bath, in bed, at the hairdresser's or in a museum). The artist interprets this connection psychologically by equating sexual impulse and television attraction, and visually by a long take of a television set placed at the height of a young woman's vagina.

The aesthetics of American consumption and television appear in videos of yé-yé singers and Asian commercials (one for Pepsi-Cola and one that parodies a TV series). On the one hand, Nam June Paik uses these commercial and televisual languages for editing, solarisation, saturation and images of women; on the other, he takes a critical approach to imagery, such as in the transformation and constant restlessness of the presenter's face, whose visual impact ends up being stronger than his words.

Dimitri Devyatkin's USSR documentary opposes the middle class and American individualism with the working class and popular celebrations. The people's suffering is briefly addressed (a woman talks about her dead son and shows a photograph in which he is wearing fatigues, while a sentence on-screen emphasises he was only eighteen years old).

A Labour Day march, nature activities and research into paediatrics are touched upon. Then festivals and performances show the American influence: the roller coaster at Gorky Park has an American name (Jet Star), a scene at the Tankha theatre shows an actress imitating a stripteaser, and lastly, a Siberian resident reproduces the sounds of the Henry Mancini orchestra using only his mouth. Siberia, which epitomises hostility to human life, here becomes a symbol of the penetration of American culture by mass media.

Portraits of Soviet and American politicians during the Cold War appear in succession and overlap, then combine through a video distortion created by Nam June Paik – as if the artist were questioning the limits of their power.

The soundtrack links Moscow and New York by continuing to play the Russian song over the New York sequences, representing a kind of mass media-created proximity between these two peoples.

Thérèse Beyler
Translated by Anna Knight