Q Quotes
by Leonard Merkes
Moving Memory
Script of a radio play about the art movement ZERO
0.
At the edge of a street, in front of a gate, a driveway. A car approaches, it stops and a door opens. Someone gets out. Then a match is lit and goes out in the wind. Music, a melody, that envelops the text like smoke.
We were boys and teenagers growing up in a dark time. The whole world was dark. No light was allowed to escape out of any window. There were no streetlights and the cars — the few there were — had masks on their headlights with little slits, which let through a tiny bit of light.
Dark
Danger everywhere
This also meant the daytime sky, for the daytime sky was, after all, full of danger. The daytime sky was more of a threat than a promise of salvation and illumination.
It was just dark. And that for six years. Of the life I lived as a boy, one third was war.
And therefore there is this enormous contrast between a life in darkness and a life in a legalized brightness.
A match is lit and goes out in the wind. Then, as though from far away, there’s a crack, a crunch. Metal meets metal. A gate opens, something starts moving, digs into the melody. A voice repeats:
Projectionists please turn on projectors!
Projectionists please turn on projectors!
Projectionists please turn on projectors!
Now
0.
Steps. Someone walking up a staircase. A quiet voice counts down from ten. A countdown, a counting rhyme that, before it ends at zero, starts all over again, sometimes jumping wildly back and forth between numbers. For this scene: laughing at mistakes is allowed, silence can happen at any time, and of course the sound of steps must be repeated at the end. Different voices, saying:
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yesterday
Today
Tomorrow
Breathe
Someone takes a deep breath. Then again followed by steps.
Yes
Yes
Yes
Je suis de mon temps
Je suis de mon temps
Yesterday
Today
Tomorrow
Yes
Yes
Yes
Breathe
Again someone takes a deep breath. Then again — steps.
ZERO: we are for everything!
ZERO: we are alive!
Yesterday
Today
Tomorrow
4 2 3 1
Movement
Movement
3 4 2 1
Movement
ZERO: we are for everything!
ZERO: we are alive!
Movement
It is unstoppable
It is without physics
Dynamo dynamo dynamo
I
7/7 dynamo
The calm of unrest
The calm of unrest
4 3 2 1
Doing
No tremolo
No lamento
No ritardando
No parlando
Doing
Giggling. Somewhere in a building a heavy iron or steel door opens and then another and another and another. A short melody, the same as at the beginning, resumes, it pushes through the opened doors, which after a while, surprisingly, shut completely silently. Steps continue, leading into the next scene.
0.
An empty room. People are tiptoeing around, soft sounds come from all directions. Words echo in German, English, French, Italian, Dutch, and in languages yet to be invented.
An entirely new art has to come. No longer beautiful and ugly, no longer good and evil, but an art that is no longer art, but a given.
Not abstract. Not figurative.
Not merely as an action. Not merely as stimulus. But as seeing itself.
Anti-painting, not antagonism. But rather a new dimension.
ZERO is a community of individuals, not a party. There is no president, no leader, no secretary, no treasurer, no members. There are only human relationships.
There is no obligation to participate, nor is there any other “should” or “must.” The composition of the ZERO exhibitions changes constantly.
We occasionally work together, even as a team.
For me, the meaning of teamwork consists in the synthesis of different, individual ideas.
Voluntary integration and voluntary dissolution.
ZERO accepts things as they are.
Excluding disturbing personal feelings is a fundamental principle of ZERO.
The absence of a particular preference, the absence of a particular emphasis.
Not abstract. Not figurative.
Not merely as an action. Not merely as stimulus. But as seeing itself.
You ask: Can this project even be realized?
I say: Yes!
Yes
Yes
Yes
ZERO: we are for everything!
ZERO: we are alive!
Yesterday
Today
Tomorrow
Movement
Movement
Je suis de mon temps
Je suis de mon temps
I
7/7
I
7/7
Dynamo
Dynamo dynamo dynamo
I
7/7
I
7/7
I
Was one third war
the life I lived as a boy
Was one third war
Sudden silence. Something cracks and crackles, something warps and someone whispers:
Project proposal:
Light plantation 3 x 3 x 3 meters
Cube with 36 vertical columns
These columns are of different heights with slits 150 cm long
The slits appear as threads of light
Individual light threads are programmed as groups
The time that a group lights up is:
5 seconds
Several voices count down softly from five, while a single voice speaks the following text against the rhythm of the counting:
I want to build a new space, a space without beginning or end, where everything lives and is invited to live. Which is at the same time quiet and loud, motionless and moving. It shall be high, as high as I want it to be, and low, when I want it to be low. It should be erectable anywhere, in the smallest space or large like a city, a country, or even a thought. If you hold a mirror up to another mirror, you will find a space without end or limits, a space with unlimited possibilities, a new metaphysical space.
A match ignites and in the words that now follow, there is flickering, crackling
Zero is the silence. Zero is the beginning. Zero is round. Zero turns itself. Zero is the moon. The sun is Zero. Zero is white. The desert Zero. The sky above Zero. The night -. Zero flows. The eye Zero. Navel. Mouth. Kiss. The milk is round. The flower Zero the bird. Silently. Floating. I eat Zero, I drink Zero, I sleep Zero, I wake up Zero, I love Zero. Zero is beautiful. Dynamo dynamo dynamo. The trees in springtime, the snow, fire, water, sea. Red orange yellow green indigo blue violet. Zero Zero rainbow. 4 3 2 1 Zero. Gold and silver. Sound and smoke. Traveling circus Zero. Zero is the silence. Zero is the beginning. Zero is round. Zero is Zero.
0.
A radio is heard. It jumps back and forth between different radio stations. News reports, news, from yesterday today and tomorrow. A babble of voices, then a newsreel:
… Then we went to Gallery d, where Europe’s artistic avant-garde gives a foretaste of what will one day inspire our grandchildren as much as Rembrandt and Raphael have long inspired us. A little apprehensively, we felt our way through the thicket of opinions:
“I don’t know if you can call this art; there are a lot of things here that are very amusing and formally very wittily solved.”
“To tell it to you straight, this is quite pointless nonsense.”
“It has very little to do with art. It looks more like technical equipment, and if it’s supposed to be art, I’d say it borders on charlatanism.”
“I think it’s quite imaginative.”
“The composition is quite good, too.”
“Can you explain the line thing?”
Abrupt end, as if someone has pulled the plug. Only a single tone remains, as an acoustic line, so to speak. It is neither pleasant nor unpleasant. It lasts until the next scene begins.
0.
A light switch is turned on, a cigarette is lit, a window is opened. Breathing in and breathing out. While someone is talking, you think you hear a plane taking off, its jet engines getting louder and louder, more and more booming, affecting your voice as well. Just when you think that the plane must now take off, there is a sudden silence.
In 1944, I saw a jet fighter for the first time. It rolled to the start of the runway before take off. During the preparations, I noticed that the pilot made a strangely nervous, perhaps neurotic impression. The airplane seemed strange and thrilling.
Despite this stimulating observation, I was completely surprised by what then occurred: the engines were started. Immediately, the air around the plane, especially behind the wings, began to tremble, vibrate, and dance. Stronger than the flickering over a cornfield in summer more obvious, more urgent. Seen through this pulsating air, everything seemed like an articulation of power.
After the noise, into the silence, quietly but firmly:
Yes,
I wish for a wider world.
Should I wish for a narrower one?
0.
A car door is slammed. You hear an engine start, then voices from a car radio. Again and again you hear the sound of radio stations being changed.
At the end of the war, I was demobilized in Schleswig-Holstein. I had never seen the sea, so I decided not to go south and home immediately, but to go west to the coast.
You have heard about the exhibition ZERO on Sea …unbelievably tomorrow I will be there with Piene and discuss everything in more detail. If everything is true: What do you think?
…between movement and motionlessness there is this imperceptible moment …at which what is moving already stands still …at which the end begins with the beginning.
Because of the war, I had been evacuated and I landed up in the middle of the countryside.
Rapidly, we pass a forest. Here, static objects shift in front of one another and behind one another.
I remember as a child trying to push my head between the bars of a railing and not getting it out again.
Freeway bridge. Railing. Two vertical rows of steel shift in front of one another. They vibrate like the plucked strings of an instrument.
Through a combination of adverse circumstances, it took me days, actually a week, to get to Glücksstadt, where, although not the coast, at least the Elbe is.
Maybe we can color the sea and the beach.
We can certainly get spotlights for the light columns at night. What do you think?
Because of the war, I had been evacuated and landed up in the middle of the countryside.
I remember…
There’s no such thing as a standstill.
I remember…
You ought to be able to walk on the sea, on a skin of silver. That would be something for you. What do you think?
I remember…
It would be good to have a NATO missile there and modify it, humanize it. A good idea to paint a tank pink, a better one is a Stalin “Katyusha“ and maneuvers with war machines. What can be done to make it clear here that it will be a celebration of life?
I remember …
The islands move, or the Earth moves and the islands stand, stand in the rotation. You can do that with acoustics. What do you think?
Fire rafts. Glasses for the sun, not against it. What do you think?
I remember…
How do you think?
This text has been translated from German into English by Gloria Custance.
Bibliography:
ZERO aus Deutschland 1957 bis 1966. Und heute (ZERO out of Germany 1957 to 1966. And Today), ed. by Renate Wiehager, exh. cat., Villa Merkel (Esslingen and Ostfildern, 2000).
Otto Piene and Heinz Mack, “Dynamo,” Nota. Studentische Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst und Dichtung, no. 4, pp. 3–4.
Heinz Mack, ed. by Heike van den Valentyn, exh. cat., Kunstpalast Düsseldorf (Cologne 2021).
Otto Piene, 10 Texte (Munich, 1961).
ZERO. Die internationale Kunstbewegung der 50er und 60er Jahre (ZERO: The International Art Movement of the 1950s and 1960s), ed. by Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, ZERO foundation, Düsseldorf, exh. cat. Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin (Cologne 2015).
Günther Uecker, “From a Letter to Mack 1965”, in Günther Uecker, ed. by Wieland Schmied, exh. cat. Kestner-Gesellschaft, Hannover (St. Gallen, 1972), pp. 40-41.
Project description KunstLichtKunst, archive of the ZERO foundation, estate of Otto Piene, inv.no. mkp.ZERO.2.I.V.140_4.
