Three different artworks bear the title Good Morning Mr. Orwell. The first is the recording of the television broadcast designed by Nam June Paik and produced during the first hour of 1984 in a split transmission between New York, Los Angeles, and Paris. The 'French' and 'American' versions, so-called, are montages of selected sequences of the programme, separating content developed in Paris from that developed in the United States. The artist manipulated the images in video editing, adding connecting graphics. This last, reworked tape is the one presented in the collection of the Musée National d'Art Moderne in Paris.

In 1983 Nam June Paik conceived this project as an homage to the famous dystopian novel 1984 (published in 1949) and its English author George Orwell (1903-1950). The programming mixed avant-garde and pop culture, with shows and performances taking place in the WNET studio and at the Centre George Pompidou. The most significant participants were, from France: Ben Vautier, Joseph Beuys, the Studio Berçot, Robert Combas, Pierre-Alain Hubert, Yves Montand, Astor Piazzolla, Sapho, and the Urban Sax group; and from the US: Laurie Anderson, John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Peter Gabriel, Allen Ginsberg, Philip Glass, the Thompson Twins, Mauricio Kapel, and Charlotte Moorman.

The broadcast alternates between the two sides of the Atlantic or brings them together in split screen. The present instant of conversations and plays of communication (manipulation of objects, New Year's greetings, clinking glasses …) simulates unity of place and sometimes physical proximity, while performances and spoken words manifest, in their succession, differences of culture and mind. The transmission is constructed according to a process dear to the artist: collage, created by the contraction of space and time onscreen through the use of video and satellite.

The French version of the reworked broadcast is a selection of sequences, fragmented and mixed in a different order from that of the initial programme. The object of the broadcast is put in the background, but Nam June Paik inserted traces of the satellite transmission. The relationship to time is presented by the transatlantic time difference, indicated by the periodic display of recording time codes. Merce Cunningham dances in the US television studio and his image, transmitted to France, returns in feedback and replaces the studio setting. The unsynchronised movements of the two images measure the space the image has travelled: 148 055 kilometres between New York and Paris via satellite.

Artists' performances are outnumbered in this version by pop music sequences. A brief shot presents Joseph Beuys and his holey jeans (this performance was extracted for a tape entitled The Orwell Leg). John Cage appears, stroking with a feather a supple installation of threads and objects connected to an electronic sound system. Nam June Paik does not appear. Charlotte Moorman explains how Nam June Paik constructed TV Cello. The sequence accorded the longest duration is a marvellous collage: Merce Cunningham dances, superimposed on an excerpt from a film about Salvador Dalí. The painter sits aristocratically in a décor dominated by the portrait of Mao Zedong.

Nam June Paik's principal manipulations are upon the variety sequences. Sapho provides a dance interpretation of the song written in homage to George Orwell. She appears in a pink and yellow heart, then solarised and fragmented. The Studio Berçot fashion show is transposed to a fragmented space, slowed down, and colourised. Yves Montand appears against a kitschy background: a series of female silhouettes behind a screen of red hearts and black lozenges. Connecting images are added, either as sequences (an abstract landscape in greens and blues with a Philip Glass score) or superimposed: on a moving image (cubes turning above a shot of a ver) or a still (rings fluttering in the sky on a snapshot of New York). Rotating cubes frame images from commercial television. Nam June Paik began working with computers in 1984. Unlike the images created by video technology, the artist's connecting images give a slower rhythm to the programme sequence and are stripped of detail. They distance themselves from rock 'n' roll, entering a more delicate and fantastic register.

On the tape, the broadcast is transfigured by an editing scheme much like that of variety shows and by saturated colours, the addition of moving lines, or old-fashioned symbols, mocking television by means of its own processes. In addition, the reduction of Joseph Beuys's performance to the very brief, incongruous apparition of the artist underneath a piano evokes the spirit of Fluxus.

Thérèse Beyler
Translated by Phoebe Green