** Hand numbered edition of 250 ** There is a profound resonance between the practices of Nam June Paik and Park Jiha - separated by generations yet united by a shared impulse to dissolve boundaries between Korean tradition and contemporary expression. Paik, the pioneer of video art, wove shamanic ritual and Buddhist philosophy into the fabric of technological media; Park Jiha channels ancient instrumental voices through the sensibility of experimental minimalism. Both artists inhabit a liminal space where past and future become indistinguishable.
Sounds Heard from the Moon Part 2 was originally commissioned as a sound installation for "Rabbit Inhabits the Moon. The Art of Nam June Paik in the Mirror of Time" - the major exhibition presented at MAO Museo d'Arte Orientale in Turin from October 2024 to March 2025. The show revolves around Paik's 1996 installation of the same name: a wooden rabbit sculpture gazing at a lunar image on a television screen, embodying the Far Eastern legend of the rabbit on the moon.
Central to the exhibition project is the sonic, musical and performative element - present in diverse forms both in Paik's works, particularly those connected to his participation in the Fluxus movement and his enduring collaboration with cellist Charlotte Moorman, and in the reinterpretations proposed by contemporary artists. Park Jiha's composition, specifically commissioned by MAO for the exhibition, responds to this legacy with her own vocabulary: traditional Korean instruments including the piri (double-reed bamboo flute), saenghwang (bamboo mouth organ), and yanggeum (hammered dulcimer), deployed through a minimalist approach characterized by repetition, variation, and processual unfolding.
This vinyl edition is the third chapter in a series conceived as proper audio catalogues for MAO's temporary exhibitions, curated by Chiara Lee, Freddie Murphy, and Davide Quadrio. More than documentation, these releases function as autonomous sonic extensions of each show - translating curatorial vision into vinyl, rendering the ephemeral permanent.
Park Jiha's acclaimed albums - Communion (2018), Philos (2019), The Gleam (2022), and the recent All Living Things (2025, Glitterbeat) - have earned international recognition for their stark clarity and hypnotic depth. Pitchfork noted her gift for "exploiting the edges of her instruments, yet not at the expense of tangible, straightforward melodies." The title itself carries genealogy: "Sounds Heard From The Moon" first appeared on Communion, a piece the artist described as inspired by the contemplative atmospheres of Nils Frahm. This "Part 2" extends that lunar meditation into new territory, shaped by Paik's techno-shamanism and the specific resonance of the MAO exhibition spaces.
Like Paik's cathode-ray moon, Park Jiha's sound installation exists at the threshold between the material and the immaterial - traditional instruments rendered strange, familiar melodies dissolved into drone and breath. The result is music that functions as perceptual technology: a tool for altering consciousness, for inducing states of contemplation that mirror the exhibition's own game of reflections and reinterpretations. A fragment of lunar light captured in the grooves.
