Page 35 - Studio International - October 1970

Cosmic conceptions with Piene, the shim- it, and was finally choked in it. produce an interdeterminate continuum,
mering of the sea with Mack, desert and `To make something that is indeterminate, without beginning or end, paradoxical though
snow with Uecker: the basic concept in all something whose shape cannot be accurately that may sound. The black wood relief is
Zero's work, the point which was as far back predicted' : this is how Haacke has formulated usually perforated to take the drive shafts of
as one could get, in visual terms, was Nature. his aim. The same words, almost exactly, the electric mechanisms which cause the
But, while Zero used artificial means to have been used by Gerhard von Graevenitz, neutral, sometimes matte-painted discs, plates
evoke and to transpose nature, another artist, an artist who is in many respects the anti- and aluminium angle pieces to revolve ir-
Hans Haacke, concentrated on rendering thesis of those mentioned so far, and who regularly, thus constantly changing and
visible the essence of nature. 'The simpler the is the only 'classic' kineticist in Germany. He renewing the whole structure of the work;
better, like the Gordian knot. The best thing was born in 1934, and became director of the there are also sudden jerks, moments when
is to employ non-mechanical sources of Nota gallery and its eponymous journal. He energy seems to flag, tip-ups, and inexplic-
power.' Haacke was born in 1936. He worked had his first one-man show in 1962, and emer- ably persistent square shapes in the midst of
in the States from 1961 to 1963, but found no ged at the avant-garde conference in Paris in the maelstrom. It has been calculated that an
collectors to buy his very un-museumworthy 1963 as the leader of a second German group, exact repetition of any pattern will happen
water sculptures, and had his first one-man independent of Zero. This new group had its only after forty thousand years. Around
show back in Germany, at Schmela's, in 1965 origin in Munich, and displayed clear predetermined, separate fixed points, a pro-
(his work had been seen at the New Vision constructivist leanings. In the same year he cess of variation is established, producing
Centre in London in 1964). He had links became one of the founders of 'Nouvelle configurations which can be even further
with Zero, and participated in their exhi- Tendance', and showed in all the big repre- diversified by the use of controlled variations
bitions and in those of like-minded groups sentative exhibitions of kinetic art; his first in lighting. In order to carry the education of
outside Germany, such as Nul, Gutai, and one-man show in Great Britain was at the optical consciousness even further, Grae-
Nouvelle Tendance, and he used water from Signals, in London in 1966. In international venitz has built a complex light-object in
1963 onwards. In 1964 he started to use com- terms he can most readily be classified in which little aluminium plates, turning separ-
pressed air. In freely-hanging, transparent terms of the constructivist tradition, but his ately on a vertical axis, split a beam of light
plexiglass tubes, up to 1 metre long, trapped
air bubbles or waves are set in motion and
prowl up and down like caged animals; or
else red and blue liquids of different densities
interpenetrate. Drops fall slowly through one
perforated disc on to the next, which has a
different pattern of holes. Beads of condensa-
tion run down the sides of a box. Ice on a
steel pillar melts on to the copper heating
element beneath. Obstacles are articulated as
sources of form; the slowness of motion calls
for a corresponding intensity of concentra-
tion; life today moves faster than the motion
of the elements, and this is something we
forget when we leave childhood. Then, things
were always events, not objects. 'To create
something that lives in time, that makes the
"spectator" experience time... to articulate
something natural', Haacke wrote on the
occasion of his first exhibition, and he often
cites the example of the Japanese haiku, that
most concise of all poetic forms, which dis-
creetly offers natural phenomena as symbols.
Above the stream of air from a ventilator,
goose feathers fly, balloons bob, rags twist and
turn in the air, pieces of blue sailcloth flap in use of the principle of instability sets him into reflected echoes; when they are vertical,
waves, weighted with little lumps of lead to rather apart. He began with white reliefs they completely absorb it.
stop them flying away. 'My materials are air made up of minute hemi-spherical concavities However variable mechanical movement
and a flexible substance; my tools are the laws and convexities. The resulting suggestion of may be, the repetition of similar situations
of physics.' Haacke set out to show that a non-hierarchical, internal secondary struc- causes the spectator to tire very quickly, and
natural movements in time effect the ner- ture was then given precision through the this was probably one of the principal reasons
vous system in a completely different way use of motor drive, and has now become a for the evaporation of the enthusiasm with
from mechanical movements, a distinction central case in point in any discussion of which kineticism was initially greeted. This,
which corresponds to that between the con- architecture with a social function. It is no at least, is the opinion of Günter Weseler,
templative and active lives. Haacke is now coincidence that Helmut Heissenbüttel, one born in 1930, a qualified architect whose
back in New York, and has moved to a much of the leading avant-garde writers in Ger- further training in electronics might have
broader view of the nature of kinetic art, a many, in a catalogue note for a Graevenitz seemed to typecast him in advance as a strict
view which leads him to a form of Process show in 1966, set out to parallel the rotary kineticist among artists. However, Weseler
Art. At the 'Prospect 69' show in Düsseldorf, movement of like elements towards a process was principally interested in acoustic effects,
he showed an ordinary teleprinter machine, of realization. and composed in 1964 his first piece of
churning out the news of the day (there was an There is not much to be seen : mostly white `Breath Music', entitled Hoquetus for Wind
election on at the time). The machine first discs on a black surface. The aim is to pro- Octet. At Kiel in 1968, he created for the
produced the news, was then surrounded by gramme static and aleatory elements so as to 'anti-opera' Geschichte von einem Feuer, com-