Paul Garrin (born 1957) is an interdisciplinary artist and social entrepreneur whose work explores the social impact of technology and issues of media access, free speech, public/private space, and the digital divide. Starting as his assistant in 1981, Garrin eventually emerged as one of the most important collaborators of video art superstar Nam June Paik, working closely together from 1982 to 1996.
Since the 1990s, Garrin has carried his politicized style of action art-making onto the Internet, founding companies and projects that work to free the Internet from corporate and government control. His work spans between the highest technology available and hands-on street video, all for a common political cause. The New York Times art critic Grace Glueck describes Paul Garrin as a politically active video artist.
Founded in 1996, Garrin's social enterprise Name.Space is among the earliest Internet top-level domain registries offering affordable and expressive TLDs. Manifested in the Name.Space.Charter, Name.Space champions freedom of speech, and free, self-supporting commerce as an important counterbalance to government's monopoly powers. Name.Space challenged the status-quo in an antitrust lawsuit with ICANN.
Early life and education
Garrin grew up in Camden, New Jersey. He took night classes at the Philadelphia College of Art, and worked at an offset printing shop in the day to support himself.
Garrin began working with video while studying fine arts at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York City (1977–82) where he enrolled after two years of classical art training in painting, drawing, sculpture, materials, and printmaking at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia (1977). At Cooper Union, Garrin studied with many well-known artists including Hans Haacke, Vito Acconci, Robert Breer and Martha Rosler, all of whom had a major impact on Garrin's aesthetics and critical social content in his works.
In 2001, Paul Garrin (A'82), was awarded the Cooper Union President Citation for outstanding attainments and contributions to his profession, and was inducted into the Cooper Union Alumni Hall of Fame.
Video & Media Artworks
Art Videotapes Garrin belongs to the second generation of video artists whose works mix technological innovation with social criticism. Along with Jenny Holzer, Julia Scher, Lowell Darling, Laurie Anderson, Garrin was among a group of autonomous artists creating works of art within the Web, tapping into the potential of the Web as a creative medium, thereby transcending the basic nature of the medium at the time.
From the time he was a student at Cooper Union, Paul's video works focused on single and double channel pieces. After graduation, Garrin's work was heavily influenced by the experimental works of Nam June Paik. This influence is seen emerging in such works as "A Place to Hide", 1985, and a series of pieces in collaboration with musician and composer Ryuichi Sakamoto and video artist Kit Fitzgerald sponsored by SONY Corporation, 1985–86, most notably "A Human Tube".
In 1988, Garrin created one of his most groundbreaking videos entitled "Free Society" featuring original music by downtown composer and musician Elliott Sharp. Featuring uniquely layered digital effects and hand-cutout images edited in a staccato pace that reflects the violence and brutality of the subject matter, "Free Society" went on to win numerous awards, was featured in video and film festivals around the world, and is in the permanent collection of the U.S. Library of Congress. It also contains footage from his 1988 video of the Tompkins Square Park Police Riot.
Art Videography A Place to Hide, 1985 A Human Tube, 1985–86 with Ryuichi Sakamoto Free Society, 1988 Man with a Video Camera (Fuck Vertov), 1989 Reverse Big Brother & Home(Less) is Where the Revolution is, 1990 By Any Means Necessary, 1990
Fashion Video
Between the years 1984 to 1997, Garrin was among the pioneers in the field of fashion videography. He worked with a number of popular fashion designers of the day. Highly attuned to the arts, they hired Garrin because of his background in fine arts, his experimental video works and collaborations with video artist Nam June Paik. Most notably were the designers Willi Smith, Carmelo Pomodoro and David Cameron. Some of his fashion videos are in the collection of the Fashion Institute of Technology.
Interactive Installations
Since 1989, Garrin has been working with interactive media, and developed three highly acclaimed works, "Yuppie Ghetto with Watchdog", 1989–90, "White Devil", 1992-93 and "Border Patrol" 1995–97, all of which were produced with the technical collaboration of friend and artist David Rokeby, creator of the "Very Nervous System", evolutions of which formed the basis of "Yuppie Ghetto", "White Devil", and "Border Patrol". Garrin also enlisted Don Ritter, another friend and artist working in the same realm to create the live targets in the Border Patrol installation.
Border Patrol, 1995-1997 White Devil, 1992-1993 Yuppie Ghetto with Watchdog, 1989-1990
Exhibitions, Reviews, Publications
Garrin's works have been widely exhibited and broadcast internationally including the Biennale d'art contemporain de Lyon, 1995–96, Kwangju Biennale, 1995, São Paulo Art Biennial, 1994, Holly Solomon Gallery in New York, Musee d'art contemporain de Montreal, 1997, Galleri Faurschou, Copenhagen, 1997, Offenes Kulturhaus, Linz, 1998, Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg, Germany, 1999, and has been reviewed in The New York Times, Art in America, Artforum, and others.
Garrin's works have been documented in numerous publications worldwide including "History of 20th Century Art" by Taschen.
His major works "Yuppie Ghetto with Watchdog", "White Devil" and "Border Patrol" are in the permanent collection of the Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, Germany.
List of Exhibitions
The following is a list of exhibitions that showcased Garrin's art videos and interactive installations:
1985 The Kitchen, New York Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris New Video Music, EUA
1987 Artists in the Electronic Age, Davis Hall, City College of New York, New York Medienwerkstatt, Vienna Westfalisches Landesmusuem für Kunst und Kulturegeschichte, Munster, Germany Kunsthaus, Zurique American Video Festival American Film Institute, Los Angeles Folkwang 3 Video, Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany Bonn Videonale, Bonn, Alemaha US Videovisit, Video Offensive, Dortmund, Germany
1988 Hayward Gallery (with Nam June Paik), South Bank Centre, London The American Festival, American Film Institute, Los Angeles Bonn Videonale, Bonn, Germany Dallas Video Festival, Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas La Diade, Centro di Studi i Diffusione d'Arte Contemporanea, Bergamo, Italy
1989 Festival de Cinema de Berlin Strange Attractors: Signs of Chaos, New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York
1990 Featured Artist, Festival de Cinema de Berlin, Germany "Yuppie Ghetto with Watchdog" Premiere, The Clocktower Gallery, New York Amerika Haus, Berlin, Germany Videofest, Kunstler, Berlin, Germany Image World: Art and Media Culture, Whitney Museum, New York
1992 Videoforms, Clermont-Ferrand, France Monstra de Arte Galeria Otso, Helsinki, Finland
1993 Eisfabrik, Hanover, Germany Mediale, Hamburg, Germany
1994 Holly Solomon Gallery, New York 22a Bienal Internacional de São Paulo, Brazil
1995 Gwanju Biennale, Gwangju, South Korea Installation, cinema, video, informatique, 3e Biennale d'art contemporain de Lyon, France
1995–96 Installation, cinema, video, informatique, 3e Biennale d'art contemporain de Lyon, France
1997 Border Patrol, Galleri Faurschou, Copenhagen, Denmark Musee d'art contemprian de Montreal, Canada The Video Living Room
1998 Offenes Kulturhaus, Linz, Austria
1999 Lehmbruck Museum, Duisbrg, Germany
Honors and awards
Garrin was the Artist in Residence at the Berlin Videofest, 1990, and has received numerous awards for excellence including New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, 1988; Special Prize, Bonn Videonale, 1988; New York State Council on the Arts Media Grant, 1990; Prize, Video Shorts, Seattle, 1990 & 91; Prix Ars Electronica, 1997; ZKM | Karlsruhe Medienkunstpreis, 1992. In 2001, Garrin was awarded the Cooper Union President's Citation for outstanding attainments and contributions to his profession.
List of Honors, Awards & Grants
The following is a list of awards Garrin received for his artworks and accomplishments:
1988 Special Prize, Bonn Videonale, Bonn, Germany New York Foundation Arts Fellowship
1990 New York State Council on the Arts Media Grant Prize, Video Shorts, Seattle, U.S. Artist in Residence, Berlin Videofest
1991 Prize, Video Shorts, Seattle, U.S.
1992 Siemens Media Art Prize 1992, Medienkunstpreis, Karlsruhe, Germany
1993 Mediale, Hamburg, Germany
1997 Award of Distinction in Interactive Art, Prix Ars Electronica
2001 President's Citation, The Alumni Hall of Fame, Cooper Union, New York
Paul Garrin and Nam June Paik
Starting as his assistant in 1981, Garrin eventually emerged as one of Nam June Paik's most important and longtime collaborators, working closely with him from 1982 to 1996. Garrin started working for Paik on March 30, 1981, the day that Ronald Reagan was shot, and spent the day recording TV news broadcasts of the event.School of the Art Institute of Chicago. (n.d.). Paul Garrin. Video Data Bank. https://www.vdb.org/artists/paul-garrin Evident in Paik's later pieces, Garrin produced hundreds of works with his richly layered and textured tour-de-force imaging techniques, where images multiply and divide within the frame; temporal and spatial shifts proliferate, visuals and sound are juxtaposed in ironic contexts.
These were exhibited and remain in the collections of major museums worldwide including the Museum of Modern Art (MoMa), Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Centre Georges Pompidou, Museum Ludwig, and elsewhere.
One such collaboration was Garrin and Paik's Two Channel Music Tape Spring/Fall (1986) comprising two different but complementary videos playing simultaneously on monitors. The visual interplay creates a rapid visual assault. Scenes are multi-layered, fleeting and hard to register. Aesthetically pleasing and amusing footage of the news, pop-culture, and art world are altered and synthesized with the pair's signature image-processing techniques. This piece was acquired by the Long Beach Museum of Art (LBMA) by museum curator Michael Nash in 1989.
List of Exhibitions
The following is a list of exhibitions that showcased Paul Garrin and Nam June Paik's media art collaborations:
1988 Hayward Gallery (with Nam June Paik), South Bank Centre, London
1989 Reconstructed Realms: Recent Acquisitions of LBMA's Video Collection Living with the Living Theatre, Smithsonian American Art Museum
1990 Waterworks
1991 Art of Music Video: 10 Years After
Social Impact
Tompkins Square Park Riot
As an early citizen journalist, Garrin's noted video document of the Tompkins Square Park Riot (1988) became iconic in exposing the coverup of police misconduct. Shot with a home video camcorder, the tape exposed through the media the willful police violence against demonstrators and bystanders, and became known as the spark which ignited the "camcorder revolution".