T Theater

A central aspect of the ZERO artworks, which coincides with a generally understood idea of theater/performance as I introduced it at the beginning of this chapter, is their focus on movement in space, movement in different spaces of differing materiality, dynamics, and modes of initiation and control—whether these are due to human action or mechanical propulsion. Performing as a plot or action in time thus becomes an element of exhibiting. The American art historian Michael Fried vehemently criticized such “theatricality” of the arts in the case of Minimal Art (and beyond) in 1967, and described its situatedness, which included the viewer,[i] as a negative shift that compromised the understanding of the artwork.

Understood in this way, the affinity to constellations that can be described as “theatrical” begins even before what is then explicitly staged as a performance, happening, or demonstration. As Otto Piene (1928–2014) described in 1960, the space-filling movement of light as well as the movement of Kinetic Art installations both enable and require the viewer to move and thus expand their perspectives:

[i] See Michael Fried, “Art and Objecthood,” Artforum 5, no. 10 (Summer 1967), pp. 12–23.

Here something is hinted at that is continued in further developments, such as “expanded cinema,” among other things, but naturally also in Piene’s works themselves as immersive project environments: namely, that the juxtaposition of the viewer and the viewed—which exists both in the theater as a spatial arrangement of spaces for the stage and the audience, and in the museum as spatial distancing—is cancelled out. The light space, the “dancing light … in a certain ‘choreographic’ sequence”[i] as movement in space, now spreads out around the viewer.

[i] Ibid., p. 16.

This is the sense in which curator Renate Wiehager summarized the exhibition Mack, which took place in 1960 at the Galerie Diogenes in Berlin:

The activation of installations, in this case the light installation Hommage à Georges de La Tour (1960), for a specified period of time,[i] described by Mack (b. 1931) as a “demonstration,” represents a further step toward the theatrical/performative and can be understood as a performance. The artist himself has given a description of this demonstration.[ii]

[i] Ketner calls this “demonstration” a “dramatic multimedia performance” and describes it in detail. See Ketner 2018 (see note 6), p. 150. It is not entirely clear from the descriptions by Ketner and Wiehager whether this is an action within the light installation Hommage à Georges de La Tour, or whether it is an independent but thematically related demonstration.

[ii] See Heinz Mack, “Kommentar zur ‘1. Hommage à Georges de La Tour’ in der Galerie Diogenes, Berlin 1960,” in Mack: Lichtkunst,exh. cat. Kunstmuseum Ahlen (Cologne, 1994), pp. 180–81.

The Light Ballets developed by Otto Piene from 1959 onward, which already include a reference to a specific form of theater in their title, also move between the (light) kinetic installation and its temporary activation as a performance. Three forms may be distinguished: the archaic, the chromatic, and the mechanical Light Ballet.[i]In 1959, Piene first performed the archaic Light Ballet in his studio, and then at the Galerie Schmela in Düsseldorf. The chromatic Light Ballet was shown in 1960 at the Galerie Diogenes in Berlin and then at Studio F in Ulm. Apart from Piene, three to five other actors were involved in the projections, which took place in the entire gallery space and surrounded the audience. Influenced by Jean Tinguely’s (1925–1991) moving machines, Piene created the mechanical Light Ballet from 1960 onward, in which the human actors were replaced by mechanical constructions “equipped with movable gripper arms and rotors.”[ii] All three versions were performed as A Festival of Light in October 1960 at the 9th Evening Exhibition.[iii]

[i] See Chris Gerbing, “‘Mit 12 x 12 Scheinwerfern zum Mond’: Die Universalität des Raums in den Lichtballetten und Sky Events von Otto Piene,” in Klaus Gereon Beuckers, ed., ZERO-Studien: Aufsätze zur Düsseldorfer Gruppe ZERO und ihrem Umkreis (Münster, 1997), p. 85.

[ii] Gerbing 1997 (see note 14), p. 85.

[iii] Thekla Zell cites the first variant in this context as “Light Ballet with transparencies to jazz” and the third variant as “fully electronic Light Ballet.” Zell 2019 (see note 5), p. 125. Annette Urban quotes the first as “light and jazz ensemble,” and the third as “fully electric Light Ballet.” Urban 2016 (see note 6), p. 9.

The fact that the performances of the Light Ballets changed from integrating human actors to programmed machine control does not alter their character as performances or presentations. Both forms of controlling an (inter)media constellation—which theater can also be understood to be—make visible different practices of intertwining execution and performance. This connects the Light Ballets both with an updated understanding of media performance, and also with artists’ increased interest in contemporary technologies that emerged later in the nineteen-sixties.[i]

[i] See Barbara Büscher, Live Electronics und Intermedia: die 1960er Jahre. Über den Zusammenhang von Performance und zeitgenössischen Technologien, kybernetischen Modellen und minimalistischen Kunst-Strategien, Habilitation diss. (University of Leipzig, 2002), https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:bsz:14-qucosa-39497 (accessed August 22, 2023).

The presentation of the third issue of ZERO magazine, in 1961, featured Günther Uecker (b. 1930) in one of his first actions—Weisse Zone (White Zone).[i] In addition to his actions[ii] involving the nailing of everyday objects—such as furniture, in Sintflut der Nägel (Great Flood of Nails), with Bazon Brock (b. 1936), Galerie D in Frankfurt, 1963; or a piano, in Benagelung eines Klaviers (Nailing of a Piano), at Pianohaus Kohl in Gelsenkirchen, 1964—or his actions featuring nailing as rhythmic amplification—such as Telefonzeitnageln(Telephone Time Nailing), with S. D. Sauerbier (1942–2019), at Studio F in Ulm, 1966—it is the pieces he developed and realized together with S. D. Sauerbier, such as Reise-Theater (Mobile Theater), 1962/1964, and Röhrentheater (Tube Theater), of 1966, whose titles alone suggest a relevance to my topic. The concept for the Reise-Theater that was never realized, which Uecker wrote down in 1962 and planned with Sauerbier until 1964, was also published in the aforementioned issue of Theater heute as one of the artworks that jut out of the visual arts into the theater and challenge it. First of all—as the model (or the stage sculpture)[iii]also shows—it is a spatial arrangement with a turntable at its center, upon which some of the actors and spectators are located. It makes it possible to visualize the relationship between immobility and movement through projections of light and shadow, while at the same time a montage of quotes from travel brochures concretizes this relationship to travel/mobility as consumption:

[i] This title stands below a corresponding photo in Katrin Salwig, “Die Aktionen von Günther Uecker,” in Klaus Gereon Beuckers, ed., Günther Uecker: Die Aktionen (Petersberg, 2004), p. 47.

[ii] Salwig reports that Uecker continued his nailing actions in front of an audience until the nineteen-seventies, and that they often functioned as multimedia presentations. As an example, she mentions a performance at Haus Ruhnau, Essen, in 1968. See ibid., p. 53.

[iii] For illustrations and explanations, see …zum Raum wird hier die Zeit. Günther Uecker: Bühnenskulpturen und optische Partituren,exh. cat. Neues Museum (Weimar, 2001), pp. 114–21.

“The plan is to actualize the intentions of a travel group that agrees with the group attending the performance … that they should be offered something: these two cultural organizations, the tour operators and the organizers of this performance, have similar intentions, as do their victims.”[i]

[i] Günther Uecker, “Reise-Theater” (1962), in Stephan von Wiese, ed., Günther Uecker: Schriften. Gedichte, Projektbeschreibungen, Reflexionen (St. Gallen, 1979), pp. 61–63.

The critical reflection that theater is a site of consumerism also extends to viewing the concept and the plan of the performance as part of the play text. Sauerbier formulated this as one of the principles of their collaboration.[i]

The Röhrentheater, which Uecker also performed with Sauerbier in 1966 as part of the program Röhrenversammlung und Sprechtanz (Tube Assembly and Speech Dance) at the first art fair in Büdingen, Hessen, and in 1967 in Düsseldorf, set people and objects in motion.[ii]

[i] “Not only the tools, the material, and the instruments, but also the planning and the instructions should be made the subject of the artwork. We applied this principle in a number of pieces: first, the plan became the material of the speaking part.” S. D. Sauerbier, “Vom Theater. Zum Theater. Gemeinschaftsarbeiten mit/von Günther Uecker von/mit S. D. Sauerbier,” in von Wiese 1979 (see note 21), p. 23.

[ii] “[We performed] several pieces with uniform stereometric shapes, namely cylinders; sometimes actors were in a tube.… In another part of this sequence of pieces, the continuous and paralyzingly slow tube movement through the room could be observed—for the playback of equally uniform and penetrating sinusoidal tone.” Ibid., pp. 25–26.

Other forms of performance that abandoned the framework of a demarcated art space—whether a theater, a gallery, or a museum—found expression outdoors. The Düsseldorf ZERO artists called these “Demonstrations,” just as Mack had done indoors. The first joint action by the three ZERO artists took place in 1961 on the street in front of the Galerie Schmela in Düsseldorf, as part of Zero Edition Exposition Demonstration. Uecker painted a “white zone” on the pavement, and young people wore long robes labeled “ZERO,” or with a nought, and blew soap bubbles. A large, transparent, hot air balloon rose into the air. Various kinds of music came out of the gallery into the street.[i] These performative elements were used repeatedly in other “Demonstrations”—for example, at an exhibition opening in Arnhem in 1961,[ii] and at the Galerie Diogenes in 1963.[iii] They were expanded for the festival that took place on an evening in 1962 at the meadows by the Rhine in Düsseldorf, which was staged explicitly for the shooting of a film about ZERO.[iv] These performative activities also served to generate attention for the group in a game with the media (television and newspapers), as has been emphasized by various studies.[v]

[i] See Tiziana Caianiello, “Ein ‘Klamauk’ mit weitreichenden Folgen: Die feierliche Präsentation von ZERO 3,” in Dirk Pörschmann and Mattijs Visser, eds., ZERO 4321 (Düsseldorf, 2012), p. 514; Beuckers 2004 (see note 18), p. 47.

[ii] Caianiello, in Pörschmann and Visser 2012 (see note 27), pp. 516, 517.

[iii] See Thekla Zell, “Editionen. Expositionen. Demonstrationen 1957–1966,” in Pörschmann and Visser 2012 (see note 27), p. 459.

[iv] This was for the film 0 x 0 = Kunst. Maler ohne Farbe und Pinsel, by Gerd Winkler, which was screened on June 27, 1962, by Hesse Broadcasting (HR). See Zell, in Pörschmann and Visser 2012 (see note 27), p. 455; Gerd Winkler, “Wenn aus Avantgardisten Klassiker werden,” in Wiehager 2000 (see note 11), pp. 69–70.

[v] See Margriet Schavemaker, “Performing ZERO,” in ZERO: Countdown to Tomorrow, 1950s–1960s, exh. cat. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York, 2014), p. 47; Ulli Seegers, “Art for All: Lines of Tradition and Development of a Central Narrative of Art since ZERO,” in Caianiello and Könches 2019 (see note 7), pp. 39–52.

The move from galleries and museums to the street as an extended space for action was one of the features that became relevant in the art of the nineteen-sixties. As early as 1958, Wolf Vostell had titled an action performed in Paris Das Theater ist auf der Strasse (The Theater is on the Street). On the street, as a publicly accessible space, everyday life and artistic action could be combined and addressed to many people, including those who were unprepared for it. Somewhat later, in the second half of the nineteen-sixties, political protest actions were held on Germany’s streets. Peter Handke (b. 1942) would describe these, in 1968, as the true street theater—as opposed to all art-oriented theater.[i] Uecker’s roadblock made of nails, which he erected as a public action in Düsseldorf city center in 1968, and similar actions,[ii] can be understood as engaging with and latching onto the protests of 1968, in this sense as street theater.

In contemporary US theater and performance theory, and above all from the observation of both developments—the expansion of space and action that emerged from the visual arts, but which also came from music (John Cage, among others) and dance (Yvonne Rainer, b. 1934, Steve Paxton, b. 1939), and from the political movements of the nineteen-sixties—a far-reaching opening in the understanding of theater had emerged, which continues to exert its influence today. In 1967, Richard Schechner (b. 1934), the cofounder of performance studies at New York University, placed the following diagram at the beginning of the first axiom in his Six Axioms for Environmental Theater:

[i] Peter Handke, “Für das Strassentheater und gegen die Strassentheater” (1968), in Helmut Kreuzer, ed., Deutsche Dramaturgie der sechziger Jahre (Tübingen, 1974), pp. 127–30.

[ii] Beuckers 2004 (see note 18), pp. 57–58.

He explained: “It is because I wish to include this entire range in my definition of theater that traditional distinctions between art and life no longer apply.”[i]

[i] Richard Schechner, “Six Axioms for Environmental Theater (1967/1987),” in Richard Schechner, ed., Environmental Theater (New York 1994), p. xix.

Schavemaker summarizes, in her analysis, that “performing ZERO was always a consciously cross-, multi-, and electrical media activity—and, at some points, an antimedia one.”[i] Using the example of Otto Piene’s various projection performances, I would like to link this observation with the term “intermedia theater,” an influential historical standpoint used by Gene Youngblood (1942–2021) in his book Expanded Cinema,published in 1970.

What developed in the early nineteen-sixties in the USA as a specific form of expanded cinema was not only a deconstructive examination of the cinematic dispositif, but was also involved in contemporary experiments with computer technology, and encompassed new forms (including narrative) of performing light, image, space, and body constellations.[ii] Youngblood’s book was an eminently timely attempt to provide an overview of these phenomena against the background of contemporary developments, particularly in the USA, and to combine this with a forceful attitude toward media as a means of expanding consciousness, as formulated by media theorist Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980),[iii] among others.

[i] Schavemaker 2014 (see note 31), p. 54.

[ii] See Büscher 2002 (see note 17), pp. 273–338.

[iii] Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (New York, 1964).

In Part Six of Youngblood’s book, in a section on “Intermedia Theater,” performance as a central and common starting point for theater and cinema becomes also the basis for the new synesthetic format of intermedia. In the conversations with artists and the presentation of projects that form the main part of this section, attention is paid to contemporary technological developments and the activation of the audience, alongside performance as a presentation format. In addition to discussing works by Carolee Schneemann (1939–2019), Milton Cohen, John Cage, Ronald Nameth (b. 1942), and Robert Whitman (1935–2024), the text also addresses Otto Piene’s and Aldo Tambellini’s (1930–2020) collaboration at the Black Gate Theater in New York, and Wolf Vostell’s TV De-Collages (Electronic Happening Room, 1968).[i] Almost all of these works abandon the discrete separation of performance/stage and audience space, and construct a scenography and audiography that surrounds the recipients, which, from today’s perspective, would be understood as an immersive environment.

Immaterialization through the movement of light, and the abolition of traditional spatial arrangements, enabling viewers to immerse themselves: Piene came rather close to this idea of theater with his slide performance The Proliferation of the Sun, which was performed at the Black Gate Theater in New York in early 1967:[ii]

[i] Ibid., pp. 366–86.

[ii] There is some confusion about the year the premiere took place. All the sources, including Babette Marie Werner in her text on the reconstruction of the work, state that the first performance took place in March 1967. See Babette Marie Werner, “Restaging The Proliferation of the Sun in 2014: The Digital Projections,” in Tiziana Caianiello, ed., Light On/Off: Restaging ZERO (Düsseldorf, 2018), pp. 89–100. However, in the publication by Barbara Engelbach, Piene himself says it was 1966, and this is the date that appears in her edited volume, Die Sonne kommt näher: Otto Piene, Frühwerk (Siegen, 2003).

“The 60-meter-square room was carpeted with foam rubber so that the visitors could lie down. Five carousel slide projectors were operated by 5 people who received their directions from a tape recorded by Piene. For each projector, 2 carousels with painted glass slides were arranged in such a way that the predominant colors of the slides—they showed colored dots on a luminous background that looked like planets or suns when projected—changed to the colors of the rainbow. The spoken instructions from the tape set the rhythm of the slide changes, which slowly sped up until the room was bathed in glistening white light at the end of the first sequence of images. The sequence of images then played backwards and ended with the dark room.”[i]

[i] Engelbach 2003 (see note 40), p. 28.

This description provides a considerable amount of basic information, which is supplemented in other descriptions—particularly with regard to the version shown at the Galerie Art Intermedia in Cologne in 1967. A large balloon and lengths of transparent fabric were also used as projection screens.[i]

The arrangement of the space, inviting the viewer to lie down, as well as the way that projections are distributed around the entire room, implies the viewer’s immersion in the projection performance’s flow of images. In the 1960 text quoted above, Piene states that a “large room with a hemispherical shape” would be the ideal location for the Light Ballet, in which “the experiencer … lies relaxed.”[ii]

[i] See Caianiello 2018 (see note 40), p. 97; Urban 2016 (see note 6), p. 17.

[ii] Piene 1961 (see note 9), p. 16.

An immersive environment like this, which cancels the frontal orientation of cinema and of theater as it is practiced in our latitudes, is also an essential feature of other expanded cinema experiments of the nineteen-sixties. The much-cited Movie-Drome, which the US experimental filmmaker Stan VanDerBeek (1927–1984) built inside a grain silo[i] in 1965, is just as much a part of this as Milton Cohen’s Space Theater of 1960, which is presented in Youngblood’s book. In his 1965 manifesto, VanDerBeek wrote:

[i] See Gloria Sutton, The Experience Machine: Stan VanDerBeek’s Movie-Drome and Expanded Cinema (Cambridge, MA, 2015). For information about and images of the Movie-Drome, see http://stanvanderbeek.com/_PDF/moviedrome_final.pdf (accessed August 28, 2023).

The idea of a dome-shaped projection screen, which in architecture evokes R. Buckminster Fuller’s popularization of his “geodesic” dome constructions at around this time, changed the space of the theater, of the cinema, and of performance, into a new kind of interface between images, sound, and the viewer.

There are two precursors to Piene’s work, which are referred to in the literature as “performance” and “multimedia theater.”[i] Last but not least, his collaboration with Aldo Tambellini on Black Gate Colognefollowed in 1968, a cooperation with WDR (West German Broadcasting), and at the same time a highly interesting form of intermedia theater, which took place as a live performance in front of a studio audience in the new Electronic Studio of WDR, and was also recorded.[ii]

[i] Stephan von Wiese and Susanne Rennert, eds., Otto Piene: Retrospektive, 1952–1996, exh. cat. Kunstpalast (Düsseldorf and Cologne, 1996), p. 185; Ketner 2018 (see note 6), pp. 164–65.

[ii] “Black Gate Cologne is considered to be the first television show realized by visual artists. In a WDR studio (at the invitation of Werner Höfer and Wibke von Bonin), several cameras are used to record a live event with audience participation. The image and sound material is electronically condensed, with a 23-minute version broadcast on WDR on January 26, 1969.” Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst, Video Archive, https://videoarchiv-ludwigforum.de/in-context/ja/otto-piene-and-aldo-tambellini-black-gate-cologne-cologne/ (accessed August 23, 2023).

Otto Piene’s first collaboration with institutionalized theater took place in 1968. For the premiere of the opera Die Geschichte von einem Feuer (The Story of a Fire) (composition: Dieter Schönbach; libretto: Elisabeth Borchers) during the Kiel Regatta Week, he created part of the scenography, which included four light sculptures: Titelsäule (Title Pillar), Sleepwalker, Osramsatellite, and Schwarzer Stern (Black Star).[i] “The projections of their Light Ballet move into a dramatic conjunction with the pneumatic objects and actions and the sound collage,” stated the program booklet.[ii] In 1969, this so-called multimedia opera was shown in a revised form in Münster. However, Piene was unable to carry out his idea of placing the light sculptures among the audience and in this way bridging the discrete spaces of stage and auditorium.[iii] Engelbach refers to a text by Piene in the Münster program booklet that is very reminiscent of the text that appeared in 1968 under the title “Pneumatic Theater,” in the volume Bühne und bildende Kunst im 20. Jahrhundert.[iv]Piene’s critique of institutionalized theater is sweeping and focuses on how it organizes space, stating, among other things: “One way to create new conditions for theater is to build new theaters.” And:

“Another goal is the stationary theater, which is completely variable and adaptable in its entirety, inside and out.… The mobile theater, which moves around and at the same time changes its form, will be a further step.… What’s all this for? In this case, for movement within theater.”[v]

[i] Engelbach 2003 (see note 40), p. 48.

[ii] Amongst other things, the online archive of Der Spiegel features a review titled “Licht und Lärm” (“Light and Noise”), dated June 23, 1968. See https://www.spiegel.de/kultur/licht-und-laerm-a-03ae5e43-0002-0001-0000-000046020924 (accessed August 25, 2023).

[iii] Engelbach 2003 (see note 40), p. 26.

[iv] See Henning Rischbieter, ed., Bühne und bildende Kunst im XX. Jahrhundert: Maler und Bildhauer arbeiten für das Theater(Velber, 1968).

[v] Otto Piene, “Pneumatisches Theater” (1967), in Rischbieter 1968 (see note 51), p. 259.

The connection with the ideas and projects of Essen architect Werner Ruhnau (1922–2015), who worked with Yves Klein (1928–1962), among others, is striking,[i] as is the fundamental importance that the spatial arrangement has for the changeover to a new theater.

For the 1968–69 season, the Deutsche Oper am Rhein (German Opera on the Rhine) in Düsseldorf requested the three ZERO artists to create a ballet evening together with the choreographer Erich Walter (1927–1983). Such offers to collaborate were certainly in part influenced by Merce Cunnigham’s (1919–2009) and John Cage’s collaborations with contemporary artists[ii]—in 1964, it was already possible to become acquainted with their work in performance through the Company’s world tour.

[i] See Barbara Büscher, “Mobile Spielräume,” in Barbara Büscher, Verena E. Eitel, and Beatrix von Pilgrim, eds., Raumverschiebung: Black Box—White Cube (Hildesheim, 2014), pp. 43–60; Claudia Blümle and Jan Lazardzig, eds., Ruinierte Öffentlichkeit: Zur Politik von Theater, Architektur und Kunst in den 1950er Jahren (Zürich, 2012).

[ii] See Barbara Büscher, “Gegenseitige Durchdringung und Nicht-Behinderung: Über das Verhältnis zweier Performance-Systeme,” MAP—Media | Archive | Performance 3 (2012), https://perfomap.de/ map/3/kapitel1/Gegenseitige%20Durchdringung (accessed August 28, 2023).