Created collaboratively with experimental filmmaker Jud Yalkut, Missa of Zen shows a flickering vertical line on one side of a darkened screen—a television screen being filmed from an oblique angle. Owing to the angle at which it is filmed and its unstable flickering image, there is no way for viewers to see the content presented on the television screen. Paik therefore turns the focus of the film from the content of the televised image to the materiality of the television itself, like his other works that manipulate the display or projection device. He renders the television, an object that at first glance seems familiar, in such a way as to isolate it in the realms of the unknown, nothingness, and the uncanny. The title refers to an intersection of missa (Latin for a Christian mass) and Zen Buddhism, which reflects Paik’s interest in the transcendental possibilities of television. —LH

Image: Courtesy Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York. © 2015 Nam June Paik Estate.