ZERO and now - An exploration
Reuse and revaluation, participation, multi-mediality and identity
by Antoon Meelissen
by Antoon Meelissen
When asked about the meaning of the European ZERO context, Otto Piene came up with a formulation in 1962 that could explain the international character and the current, contemporary appeal of the ideas: 'It is not a style, it is not a group. It is not a movement. "According to Piene, ZERO was 'a point of view'. Between 1957 and 1961, three issues of the artist magazine ZERO published in Düsseldorf were edited by Heinz Mack and Otto Piene; a magazine that became the cradle of this new point of view. 'ZERO' grew out of a predicate for an international group of artists and their activities, for exhibitions, publications and campaigns, also beyond the paper context of the magazine. For the artists of generation ZERO - and in the Netherlands of Nul - the war remained a mental reference point, although they focused their eyes on the horizon. On the memory of a devastating war, faith sprang in a better world and a new art, also inspired by dizzying developments in science and technology. More than an 'aesthetic ideal', ZERO was an open and inclusive field of experiment: multilingual, borderless and cross-generational - between the youngest and oldest ZERO artists lay four decades.
ZERO artists were not 'world improvers', did not call for an appeal, but they did put the seeds of an art concept that retained its urgency and value. For many contemporary artists, these elements have a new appeal: the open, inclusive nature, the felt need for a certain 'zeroing', to want to do the same, especially in a time of social, political and environmental changes and challenges. A motivated choice for dealing with other, alternative materials, the role and meaning of the public, participation, the alliance of art and reality, the meaning of multi-mediality and identity: all these elements that are so important within the contemporary arts, play an important role in connecting ZERO's ideas.
In the following paragraphs these elements are briefly anchored in historical terms, within the context of ZERO, and updated. These sketches are certainly not exhaustive: they are the first steps towards an awareness, of the topicality of historical concepts and the possibilities they can offer for contemporary exhibition practice.
1. The worthless, neglected and unnoticed
2. Out of the museum and into the world
3. Girl Kusama and sexual identity
ZERO artists were not 'world improvers', did not call for an appeal, but they did put the seeds of an art concept that retained its urgency and value. For many contemporary artists, these elements have a new appeal: the open, inclusive nature, the felt need for a certain 'zeroing', to want to do the same, especially in a time of social, political and environmental changes and challenges. A motivated choice for dealing with other, alternative materials, the role and meaning of the public, participation, the alliance of art and reality, the meaning of multi-mediality and identity: all these elements that are so important within the contemporary arts, play an important role in connecting ZERO's ideas.
In the following paragraphs these elements are briefly anchored in historical terms, within the context of ZERO, and updated. These sketches are certainly not exhaustive: they are the first steps towards an awareness, of the topicality of historical concepts and the possibilities they can offer for contemporary exhibition practice.
1. The worthless, neglected and unnoticed
2. Out of the museum and into the world
3. Girl Kusama and sexual identity