Page 33 - Studio International - October 1970

camera technique to give a monumental Zero was founded in 1957 by Otto Piene and collaboration was the Homage to Fontana, a
effect. In 1962, at the Salon des Comparaisons Heinz Mack, who were joined in 1958 by room at the third Documenta exhibition in
all the critics remarked on a clockwork Gunther Uecker. They took Yves Klein and Kassel in 1964, with revolving Light Mills
kinetic object in the end room which periodi- Lucio Fontana as their models. In their exhi- which were built by Mack, perforated and pro-
cally gave out a loud 'ping'. After that bitions and publications they were soon grammed by Piene and designed by Uecker.
Kramer's studio was suddenly empty: sold joined by a wider circle of like-minded artists In 1962 they demonstrated that natural
out. He stood there in some perplexity from other countries as well as Germany; to sources of energy—light and wind—can be used
anxiously twisting iron wire in his hands— and begin with, these exhibitions took place in to create an open-air spectacle, when they
suddenly there was a wire sculpture. studios or in storehouses, or took the form of created a swaying forest of mirror-bright
I have made efforts to discover photographs participation in international collective shows. metal foil in a meadow by the Rhine.
from his early period, especially as the filigree They did, however, have one-man shows at Fundamentally, however, each of the three
cages of his later career are already widely the Galerie Schmela in Dusseldorf (Mack in had his own method of articulating light.
known. The early machines have still not 1957, Piene in 1959 and Uecker in 1961). For Piene, as for Kramer, the starting-point
entirely freed themselves from their functional Mack's work was seen at the New Vision Cen- was the theatre. 'I am making an effort to give
models; but the artistic inspiration (from the tre in London in 1960, when he gave a talk the Light Ballet a self-evident quality, like
Renaissance engineer Ramelli) is more ap- at the ICA; in 1962 there was a Piene one- breathing in and out.... The most important
parent, and the slow, menacing effect is man show at McRoberts and Tunnard, and thing is the encircling occupation of space, in
more powerful than in the lightweight, ironic Uecker took part in a show at the Redfern. contradistinction to the familiar peepshow
linear structures, in which wheels and spools, McRoberts & Tunnard mounted a big Zero vision of the theatre and the cinema.' Ideally
minute pillars, balls and drums move choreo- Group show in 1964, and there are Zero space was a hemisphere, and the spectator
graphically, propelled by tiny counterweights works in the Tate Gallery. From the 1960-61 lay flat on his back while projectors filled the
and elastic bands, with sudden halts and season onwards, Zero took part in almost darkness with shifting areas of light and
surprising jerks. His paper objects, too, were every avant-garde exhibition, as well as in fragments of real images. The first Light
charming: if you pushed them they didn't the kinetic representative shows `Bewogen Ballet to be free of direct manual control was
fall off their slanting track but unaccountably Beweging' (1961), 'Licht und Bewegung' performed in 1960. This employed a simple
rolled uphill (little rollers with sand in them (1965) and 'Licht Kunst Licht' (1966). In projection scaffold, with an artistically
acted as concealed stabilizing weights). 1966 the group split up. Mack and Uecker `formless' balloon. By 1962 this had developed
These experiments have led Kramer to make provided the German contribution to the into a row of projectors, in continuous opera-
non-kinetic, brightly-coloured puzzle sculp- 1970 Venice Biennale. tion, with five spotlights and two discs per-
tures. Zero saw itself as a launching-pad (in 1961 forated according to an exact pattern, each
Far more rich in consequences for the German they published a photograph showing a paint- one metre across. Pieces of light-sensitive
avant-garde was the Zero Group. But this too tube as a rocket going up). paper were exposed to light coming through
looked first for a historical point of reference, The common concern of the three former filters. The machinery and the revolving
from which they could launch their reaction Dusseldorf Academy students was light. Otto discs were progressively improved and re-
against the prevailing tachism, and found it Piene, born 1928, the theoretician of the fined, and in the end the projections were
in the Light Modulator of Laszlo Moholy-Nagy. group, declared: 'We had lived through made onto large floating plastic balloons.
Zero's first Light Mill was misinterpreted by enough opacity and confusion, daemonicism The Light Ballet was staged in a theatre in
many critics as a reconstruction, even as a and darkness.' It was therefore their aim to 1964, as Die Feuerblume (`The Fireflower').
plagiarism. What interested Zero in the render visible the 'empty zone of white' The effect was always rather baroque and
Bauhaus was the depersonalization of the through oscillation, and to do this they em- overstated; as similar patterns tended to re-
work of art through light, sound and motion— ployed— among other things— the 'reinforce- turn periodically, it could not lastingly fulfil
the three direct, anonymous and universally ment and clarification of this motion through the ambitious idea which was attached to it:
valid tools available to the artist. the use of motors'. The high point of their `to bring about a continually changing
articulation of light, to which the alert ob-
server is receptive whether he is moving or
2
Harry Kramer sitting or lying at ease. In a condition of
Signals in Shadow, 1959
Scene from the mechanical theatre, active relaxation he can withdraw within him-
Hardwood, clockwork, electric motors self in a state of self-renunciation.' Piene
Height c. 75 cm.
turned more and more to architectural pro-
3
Zero jects. In the Hohe Strasse, the busiest shop-
Light Mill, 1964 ping street in Cologne, he designed a façade
Light projection through the perforations: Piene.
Construction of the disc: Mack; Design and nail for a draper store with revolving metal spokes
pattern: Uecker and silver balls (Lightpoints, 42 feet square) ;
Height 220 cm.
for the Stadttheater in Bonn he assembled
4
Otto Piene hundreds of lamps into moving bridges of
Light Ballet, 1960 light, which he named Milky Way or Onion
5 Blossom, according to their shape—kineticism
Heinz Mack
Light Pillars, in the German pavilion at the Biennale, reconstituted as architectural decoration.
Venice, 1970 Heinz Mack (born 1931), on the other hand,
has concentrated entirely on the reflection of
light and the resulting dematerialization of
matter. 'The Calm of Unrest', of the battle-
cries of Zero, has remained his central idea;
to him it means, first and foremost, vibration.
For 'every dynamic formal element has the
restless quality of indicating something be-
yond itself.' His first works were painted