"A light 'trip'; an evocation of the sun as kaleidoscopic father of all vision. Originally premiered as an integral single-screen section of USCO's Hubbub and We Are All One multi-media touring shows." - J.Y.
"The hot eye of diffraction, multiplicity of variables moving out toward clarity and back: 'the light force impulse,' a spurt-valve momentum, full of love's natural forms. Consider what street light, subway lights, signs look like as seen through teleidoscopes cut from diamonds. 'The progression of a trip'; shaken out of whatever you were before; how you going to get back, I mean, you won't be in that same place again, ever wish for and achieve satori, what then? So you come back to the physical, and you're a step further out up And shows what it looks like there." - Carol Bergé, Ikon Magazine.
"This sensuous sea of color, motion, light that seems to surround us completely and we swim in it almost bodily and it is like going through the most fantastic dream." - Jonas Mekas.
1965, 16mm (24fps), color/si, 10m, $30
"USCO light, Beatles sound. A visionary realization of the USCO Riverside Museum installation exhibition in New York, the show which introduced the word 'Be-In' to the English language." - J.Y.
Premiered by National Educational Television on Channel 13, WNET-TV, New York's first Wednesday Magazine program. Selection (with "Turn Turn Turn") for the Second Tokyo Underground Film Festival; Hors de Concours screenings (also with "Turn Turn Turn") at the Fourth International Experimental Film Competition in Belgium.
1966, 16mm, color/so, 3m, $20
Co-made with Nam June Paik.
CINEMA METAPHYSIQUE NO. I: Silence and sound. A video-film concerning the questions of 'scale'. On a large film projection screen, the video image is monitor life-size.
CINEMA METAPHYSIQUE NO. 2, 3 and 4: Sound 'Manodharma No. 8' by Takehisa Kosugi, and the Zen monks of 'The Way of Eihiji.' Cast: Nam June Paik and Takahisa Kosugi.
These films are based on the premise of the 'safe' area of film when transferred to video, with the majority of action taking place in the 'unsafe' area which would disappear on a video screen." - J.Y. Shown at "The Artist As Filmmaker" series at the Jewish Museum, NY. Selected for the 1972 Yale Film Festival, New Haven, CT.
1966-72, 16mm, b&w/so, 13m, $40
With Nam June Paik and Charlotte Moorman, Jean Toche, Steve Rose, and Al Hansen.
A four-screen within one frame film, shot in un-slit regular 8mm, in four sections of four performance / happening / destruction art events presented in 1967 at the Judson Gallery below Washington Square in New York City. The MANIPULATIONS series, curated by the Judson's director Jon Hendricks, was a series of evening performances of actionist art, some directly related to the international Art and Destruction movement.
SOME MANIPULATIONS captures the confrontational light pieces of Jean Toche, an avant garde musical performance by Nam June Paik and cellist Charlotte Moorman, an actionist painting event by Steve Rose, and a classic Dada lecture/performance by Al Hansen.
SOME MANIPULATIONS was premiered in December 1967 as one of the continuous loop elements in Jud Yalkut's DESTRUCT FILM environment, in which spectator/participants were obliged to walk, sit on, and dive into a floor covered with unrolled "junk" 16mm film in order to view the rotating slide and film projections. The film's inclusion represented an instance of ultimate feedback of events back into the space in which they had been presented. DESTRUCT FILM was recreated as an installation section of the "Dream Reels: VideoFilms and Environments by Jud Yalkut" film / video retrospective in November-December 2000 at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. In the words of Whitney curator Chrissie Iles: "The apparatus of cinematic illusion is broken down into its constituent parts- projector, images, film- within a single all-encompassing environment."
1967, 8mm (24fps), color/si, 3m, $20
Co-made with Nam June Paik.
"The entirety of CINEMA METAPHYSIQUE NO. 5 takes places on the four sides of the 'unsafe' TV cut-off zone." - J.Y.
"Safe Action Area: that portion of the image inside the camera aperture within which all significant action should take place for 'safe' reproduction on b&w and color home receivers." - American Cinematographer Manual.
Selected for the 1972 Ann Arbor Film Festival, and Mike Getz' touring 'Underground Cinema 12' series. Prize Winner, the University of Kansas showing of the Ann Arbor Film Festival tour.
1967, 16mm (24fps), color/si, 2m, $25
Co-made with Nam June Paik. Music by Debussy.
"In ELECTRONIC MOON NO. 2 the combination of music, videotape and film synthesize a new sensation forming a true modern day film-haiku." - David Bienstock, Late Curator of Film, The Whitney Museum of American Art.
"It's a very short, miniature film, but very beautiful." - Jonas Mekas.
"It has one of the best breasts I can recall." - Show Business Magazine.
Selected for the Informationsschau of the 1970 Mannheim Film Festival in Germany; the Whitney Museum's "New American Filmmaker Series"; "Vision and Television"; the Ann Arbor Film Festival and Tour; Award for Exceptional Merit, Philadelphia International Festival of Short Films.
1969, 16mm, color/so, 4m, $20
Co-made with Nam June Paik.
"The intellectual and visualization functions of the human mind have undergone little integration within the majority of contemporary civilized psyches. Yet realizing full humanity necessitates the complete harmonization of all psychical and physical centers. Is it possible that the formal expression of this existing dichotomy can stimulate a new synthesis?
Hypothesis: The absence of sound = enhancement of visual imagery, and vice versa. The alternation of auditory and visual stimulation are mutually enhancing.
The visual portions of ELECTRONIC FABLES are selected from the color video imagery of Nam June Paik as filmed during the period 1965-71. The soundtrack voices are: Marcel Duchamp, Marshall McLuhan, John Cage, Allen Ginsberg, Buckminster Fuller, Timothy Leary, Brion Gysin, Moondog, and Ken Kesey." - J.Y.
"Minimal, handsome and suggestive." - Roger Greenspun, The New York Times.
Selected for the Whitney museum of American Art's Videofilm program in the New American Filmmakers series.
1971, 16mm, color/so/si, 8m, $25