The Effekt Gruppe: socialist utopias through participation, ephemera and play

Abstract

Abstract

This article examines the connections between the Munich-based art collective the Effekt Gruppe (1965–68) and New Tendencies, a major international avant-garde movement based in Zagreb, which is recognised for its early application of computers and the intersections between art, technology and science. Despite Effekt’s contributions to major polemics during the 1960s on the social and political potential of art, as well as their relationships to important vanguard movements and artistic networks, no sustained study of the group exists. This article sheds light on how artists in these distinct political contexts responded to the global upheavals of the era, including Cold War tensions, emerging countercultural movements and local struggles for democratic freedom. By examining their distinct yet interconnected approaches, this article expresses how art served as a vehicle for political activism and cross-border dialogue during a critical period of post-war European history.

Introduction

In 1965 the Munich-based art collective Effekt Gruppe – composed of the artists Dieter Hacker (b.1942), Karl Reinhartz (b.1932), Helge Sommerrock (b.1942) and Walter Zehringer (1940–2020) – exhibited their interactive installation Kugelkabinett (Sphere Cabinet) FIG. 1 FIG. 2 at Nova Tendencija 3, the third international New Tendencies exhibition in Zagreb. Viewers of Effekt’s ‘cabinet’ entered a dark room filled with glowing spheres, hanging from the ceiling on transparent strings. The spheres seemed to float in the space and a fan in the corner of the room caused them to swing subtly, creating a mesmerising visual effect. Oscillating ultraviolet lights enticed spectators to tap and manipulate the polystyrene orbs. The immersive installation exemplifies the Effekt group’s playful practice, yet their design also had more serious ambitions. Driven by socialist and anti-authoritarian ideals like many vanguard collectives of the 1960s, Effekt positioned serialised, tactile, kinetic and playful art as a means of sociopolitical transformation.

This article situates the Effekt group’s collectivist practice within the politicised cultural contexts of the West German, trans-European and Yugoslavian avant-gardes. It concentrates on Effekt’s association with New Tendencies, a major international avant-garde movement based in Zagreb, which is recognised for its early application of computers and the intersections between art, technology and science.¹ Despite Effekt’s contributions to major polemics during the 1960s on the social and political potential of art, as well as their relationships to important vanguard movements and artistic networks, this article is the first sustained examination of the group.² Such a study sheds light on how artists in these distinct political contexts responded to the global upheavals of the era, including Cold War tensions, emerging countercultural movements and local struggles for democratic freedom. By examining their distinct yet interconnected approaches, this article expresses how art served as a vehicle for political activism and cross-border dialogue during a critical period of post-war European history.

Supported by interviews with the members of Effekt and extensive archival research, this article explores how the group challenged traditional power structures by advocating for democratic art spaces that actively engaged spectators. Using spectator agency as a metaphor for democratic participation, Effekt asserted that art could be used to empower people to act on matters of cultural, economic and social governance.³ Mirroring the complex post-war political and economic climate in West Germany, the four members of Effekt diverged in terms of their individual party politics. However, as a collective, they united over two parallel goals that spoke to the main aims of the student revolutionaries in Munich and coincided with the Leftist orientation of many artists in the New Tendencies network. Firstly, Effekt renounced artistic hierarchies through serial arrangements as a model of a socialist order. Rather than using a system that placed artists as superior and viewers as inferior, they created a more egalitarian approach infused with an anti-authoritarian spirit that aimed to combat elitism in the art world. Secondly, as supported by their manifesto, ‘Über einen neuen Ausstellungstyp’ (‘On a New Exhibition Type’; 1965), the group sought to create a type of art experience that could activate passive spectators and liberate them from the perceived dominance of entrenched capitalist systems.⁴

Effekt’s activated spectatorship resembles that of other global avant-garde movements, from Brazil’s Neo-Concrete artists to Japan’s Gutai group and the Happenings in the United States and Europe. Effekt’s unique approach to the engaged spectator posited that a person’s participation in a mutable work of art – as opposed to passive spectatorship in front of a fixed, conventional one – could be a model for direct democratic political processes and reconfigure traditional artist and audience relationships.⁵ Hacker explained that by inviting touch, as demonstrated by Effekt’s Sphere Cabinet and other ‘kinetic rooms’, such as Soap bubble room (1965) and Balloon room (1965), the group reconfigured the typical relationship between artist, art object and spectator by elevating the latter’s role in determining the work’s visual outcome. Speaking about the relationship between artists and their audience, he said:

Effekt sought a reduction in the prestige of the artist, or a convergence of both [artist and audience], that the genius is not the one who knows everything and does everything and can do everything and the other is the idiot who comes here and is then allowed to admire and applaud, but you bring the two groups closer together. It’s like in politics, let’s say direct democracy that many people have a say in not just a few experts. That was the idea.⁶

By decentring artistic authorship, Effekt offered a model for an equitable social relationship between artist and audience, mediated through the work of art.⁷ This authorship shifted the balance of artistic authority: rather than the artist dictating the visual qualities of a work, in an Effekt art space spectators were equally important in determining the outcome. The group’s collective practice further diffused artistic authority. Effekt believed that if a spectator could comprehend this paradigmatic shift, they could use this experience and new subject position to model a de-hierarchised social structure. Instead of relying on those in positions of power to determine their political lives, the spectator would be encouraged to engage in a democratic process and work towards social and political change.

The Effekt Gruppe and the New Tendencies network

Effekt aimed to emancipate spectators through play and socialisation while de-commodifying their practice for more ideal methods of creation, exhibition and distribution. Similarly, many artists in the New Tendencies network sought ways to engage in socially conscious art. Only in the last twenty years have scholars credited New Tendencies as one of the first European art movements to promote this type of experimentation and break the dominance of contending trends of Abstract Expressionism, supported by the United States art market, and the codified collectivity of Soviet Socialist Realism.⁸

New Tendencies has been described as both an international artistic network and a modernist artistic movement that advocated for science-based, programmed, kinetic and participatory art practices.⁹ From its foundation in 1961 to 1978, New Tendencies organised five major international exhibitions.¹⁰ The idea for a new and innovative art group developed through a relationship established by the Croatian art critics Matko Meštrović and Božo Bek, who was also the Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb, and the Brazilian–German painter Almir Mavignier (1925–2018), then working in Ulm.¹¹ Many well-known avant-garde collectives exhibited at these shows, including Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visuel (GRAV), Gruppo T, Gruppo N, Equipo 57 and Anonima Group.¹² Artists in these groups formed collectives in order to champion collaborative practice, rejecting the myth of the lone genius artist.¹³ Art, created by collectives in which artists shared tools, ideas and credit, could act as a model for cooperation and dismantling hierarchical structures in economic systems such as capitalism. Yet, because each of these groups operated in specific political contexts – Zagreb, Paris, Milan and Munich – their individual goals differed and often reflected elements of specific political movements. For example, the Paris-based group GRAV aligned primarily with French Marxism by way of the writings of György Lukács and the political organisation Situationist International.¹⁴ Gruppo N of Italy, also broadly Marxist, associated themselves with the Operaisti (workerists), with such members as Antonio Negri.¹⁵ Effekt was active in Munich during the emergence and dissolution of the Socialist German Student Union (SDS), the primary Leftist student organisation in West Germany from 1962 to 1970, with Sommerrock and Zehringer adhering to a Maoist interpretation of Marxism–Leninism.¹⁶

The development of the New Tendencies exhibitions – particularly the first one in 1961 – occurred alongside the rise of the Non-Aligned Movement, a global coalition of developing nations with Yugoslavia as one of its founding members. However, this does not imply that the exhibitions were officially tied to state politics. On the contrary, the artists and organisers strongly believed in international collaboration, driven by progressive political ideas and the use of new technologies, while upholding the ethical integrity of all participants. Notably, Nova Tendencija 3, held in Yugoslavia in 1965, featured artists from both the Soviet Union (Moscow’s Dvizheniye group) and the United States (Cleveland’s Anonima group) – marking the first time that these artists had exhibited together on the international stage. This political and artistic openness differed from the more restrictive atmosphere in West Germany. In an interview, Klaus Staudt, a colleague and fellow student of Effekt members, described Zagreb as ‘an Eldorado of the Modern Age’.¹⁷ Staudt explained that West Germany took longer to return to avant-garde artistic activity following the war, but Zagreb had been pioneering new trends for over a decade when the New Tendencies shows began.¹⁸

Working within post-war Concrete and Neo-Constructivist avant-garde paradigms, the artists that would eventually form Effekt were introduced to the New Tendencies movement by a German colleague, Gerhard von Graevenitz (1934–83), at the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich, where in 1961 all four were students.¹⁹ Von Graevenitz, who was living in Paris at the time, was closely associated with GRAV and Meštrović.²⁰ What was striking for many participants of the first exhibition was the remarkable resonances among artists coming from disparate contexts. Mavignier stated: ‘The biggest surprise of the exhibition was the amazing kinship of the experiments by artists from different countries, although these artists knew little about each other’.²¹ Early New Tendencies artists used ‘art as research’ and developed new distribution methods beyond the traditional art market to make art accessible to all. These goals took shape through a focus on the grid and Op and kinetic art, which artists used to explore the impact of visual stimuli and perceptual theories on human experience. Many experimented with the illusion of movement and the interaction of colour relationships in an attempt to ‘stimulate a more active field of vision’ and interest the spectator in an ‘auto-creative process’.²²

Zehringer was the only Effekt member to exhibit at the first New Tendencies show in 1961, where he demonstrated an interest in the perceptual aspects of art through movement. His work in the first show, Objekt Nr.1 (Object No.1) FIG. 3, was made of wood and Plexiglas and featured a white backdrop with organised black dots. In his artist commentary for the submission, Zehringer outlined his goal of enabling viewers to observe separated objects and their shifting overlaps in relation to their movement, accentuating the eye’s reaction to spatial perception.²³ Random operations, gridded forms and the activation of a work of art by the viewer’s movement would become common themes of the collaborative work of Effekt.

Whereas Zehringer focused on perception and spectator engagement, Sommerrock used the grid as a symbol of equality and social justice, contrasting its precision with the political unrest in Munich. In 1962 Sommerrock experimented with silk-screening gridded compositions using geometric forms, such as circles, triangles and squares, typically in four alternating colours FIG. 4 FIG. 5. This process required precise planning to prevent overlap, resulting in colourful and mesmerising visuals that immersed viewers as they searched for patterns in the unified composition. Sommerrock aimed to create compositions in which each individual element contributed to the overall visual effect, thus breaking down any hierarchical structures. Her work reflected her engagement with the societal changes that occurred during their creation, such as the Schwabinger riots in 1962, which marked the beginning of the student movements in West Germany.²⁴ Hacker would confirm the social component of the Effekt artists’ early experiments with grids, stating: ‘The renunciation of artistic hierarchies in favour of statistical arrangements of the pictorial elements, for example, was also to be understood as a social model’.²⁵ In summary, the first New Tendencies show represented a conscious break from past artistic forms, showcasing experiments from Eastern and Western Europe aimed at creating a new art for an industrial society.²⁶ 

Intersecting European avant-gardes

Shortly after the second New Tendencies show, and in response to a growing dogmatism within the movement, Hacker, Reinhartz, Sommerrock and Zehringer decided to experiment with collective practice.²⁷ They were heavily influenced by GRAV and the Arte Programmata movement, particularly their incorporation of art, science and technology, and their use of participatory and kinetic practices. Although influenced by these interconnected movements, Effekt believed they significantly contributed to the rise of authoritarianism within New Tendencies.²⁸ GRAV played an especially key role in New Tendencies’ efforts to establish itself as a cohesive movement, which ultimately led to the expulsion of several artists and collectives. Of the situation following the second exhibition, Hacker remarked: ‘The radical-democratic claim that many artists of the New Tendencies made through their work led some of them to regimentation’.²⁹ The Effekt artists were inspired by the collective practices of New Tendencies but sought to revitalise its experimental spirit through their own approach to collaboration.³⁰

Effekt demonstrated similar interests in kinetic and Op art, inviting spectator agency and play like GRAV, who in 1963 incorporated these themes in Labyrinth at the 3rd Paris Biennial. Labyrinth invited spectators to walk through twenty environmental experiences, which were made up of wall-mounted reliefs, mobile bridges and light installations. GRAV sought to generate new visual processes for the viewer, as they believed that expanding perception was the first step towards increasing autonomy and combating alienation. GRAV’s accompanying manifesto for the biennial, ‘Assez des Mystification’ (‘Enough of Mystifications’), states: ‘A viewer conscious of his power of action, and tired of so many abuses and mystifications, will be able to make his own “revolution in art”’.³¹ GRAV’s position emphasised participatory and kinetic art not just to foster viewer interaction but to revolutionise the art experience itself. GRAV aligned politically with the Situationist International, aiming to create ‘situations’ that reawaken authentic desires and liberate everyday life from passive consumption and the inertia of capitalist routines. However, the Situationists criticised GRAV’s installations for limiting viewer interaction to predefined options set by the artists. Although both GRAV and the Situationists shared a critique of consumerism and focused on participation, GRAV aimed to shift audience perception. Like Effekt, GRAV would dissolve in 1968, after recognising that they could no longer sustain a unified approach.³²

Arte Programmata – another movement that influenced New Tendencies and Effekt – embraced the methodologies of information aesthetics. Emerging in 1960s Italy, Arte Programmata began as a collaboration between Bruno Munari and Olivetti, an Italian technology manufacturer, which grew into a series of exhibitions that included individual artists and collectives involved with New Tendencies.³³ Part of a more general fascination with science and technology in art in the 1960s, Arte Programmata directly influenced broader international movements like New Tendencies. Closely linked to kinetic and Op art, Arte Programmata utilised mathematical algorithms, systematic processes and technology to create dynamic, structured works of art. Umberto Eco’s Opera Aperta (The Open Work; 1962), which had quickly become a key text for art theory, provided the theoretical foundation for Arte Programmata.³⁴ Eco explored concepts such as ‘openness’ and ‘plurality of interpretation’, emphasising spectator involvement, much like musicians interpreting scores, whereby the composer provides a framework that leaves room for variation and individual performance.³⁵ In 1962 the inaugural Arte Programmata show in Milan demonstrated this concept through kinetic works powered by electrical motors, creating ever-changing visual experiences.

An example of this is Strutturazione fluida (Fluid Structuration; 1960) FIG. 6 by Gianni Colombo (1937–93), a double-paned glass box containing steel ribbons powered by small motors that create a continuously shifting image. Made two years later, Hacker’s Spielobjekt (Play Object) FIG. 7, a work that he would later show at Effekt exhibitions, also featured a glass box with moving elements. Here, the glass box was filled with soap bubbles that constantly formed and deteriorated, reflecting a belief that, as an aesthetic form, the action of play must continually renew itself in order to maintain its impact. However, unlike Strutturazione fluida, the movement in Play Object was ephemeral, aligning with Hacker’s approach to kinetic art that did not strive for permanence. Eco’s description of Arte Programmata aptly describes both works: ‘form, art and beauty were no longer something immobile, waiting to be seen, but something in the process of “becoming” while we watched it’.³⁶

The kinetic potential of Spielobjekt would be expanded when Effekt created the Seifenblasenraum (Soap Bubble Room) FIG. 8 FIG. 9, an entire space filled with soap bubbles that formed, collided, dissipated and transformed. This evolution from the kinetic aesthetic object to the interactive environment confirmed the group’s desire for more democratic practices. Like GRAV and Arte Programmata, Effekt utilised installations and kinetic elements to invite spectator intervention and different kinds of motion. However, Effekt considered their approach to be a departure from the models of these other movements, as they took economic considerations, such as how to organise exhibitions, into consideration. Effekt believed that engaging spectators could model direct democratic processes, and that using de-commodified and non-hierarchical exhibition practices could present a more utopian structure of economic relations. The shift from kinetic art objects to kinetic art spaces thereby signified a theoretical shift to focus on understanding social systems, but also a perceptual change for the viewer. It was no longer enough that a viewer could observe the events and objects in a kinetic room; Effekt sought to transform observers into active participants to further their political aims.

Art and activism in Munich

In the early 1960s, student movements and grassroots activism burst forth in cities across the globe, including Paris, Berlin, Frankfurt, Berkeley, Prague and Munich. Developing empowered individuals and collective resistance were particularly pressing issues for West German student activists like the members of Effekt. After the Second World War, many West German students sought to combat lingering fascism in universities, police and government, rejecting the passive acceptance that they believed characterised their parents’ generation.³⁷ Many West German student revolutionaries, including Sommerrock and Zehringer, associated themselves with the SDS. The left-wing student movement faced particular challenges in Munich, where Effekt’s members lived and worked, as the city had a more conservative political climate compared to other West German cities such as Berlin and Frankfurt, where student activism had developed more robustly. Munich was dominated by the conservative Christian Social Union (CSU), led by Franz Josef Strauß, making it more resistant to Leftist student activism and creating tension with its radical youth.³⁸

While Sommerrock and Zehringer openly aligned as communists and participated directly in student revolutionary demonstrations, Hacker and Reinhartz adopted more modest political positions, sympathising with the student revolutionaries but not participating in concrete political actions.³⁹ However, the four members of Effekt were unified by their belief that the economic structure of contemporary exhibition practices was fundamentally flawed. For Effekt, the pervasive exhibition models, based on a capitalist market-based economy, promoted passivity and disillusionment. They demonstrated their anti-capitalist sentiments and promoted an anti-hierarchical approach through the creation of ephemeral works of art, such as a small box that doubled as an invitation FIG. 10. Its lid prominently features the text ‘Gruppe Effekt’ and ‘Kinetisches Kabinett (Kleines Kabinett) von der Effekt Gruppe’ (‘Kinetic Cabinet; Small Cabinet; from the Effekt Group’), suggesting both the box’s physical form and the group’s kinetic environment, Kugelkabinett. The box is black except for the white printed text, which also includes details for and a cordial invitation to an exhibition. It contained dark glitter, echoing the playful spheres of the Kugelkabinett. Moreover, the glitter cannot be collected once it has spilled out, parodying the unsatisfactory cycle of commodity consumption inherent in capitalism. In this way, it functions as both a tactile, participatory art object and an advertisement, blurring the lines between fine art commodity and ephemeral memento and allowing spectators to determine its material worth. This assertion of spectator power radicalises the art experience and buoys the belief in individual agency to resist oppressive systems by redefining value.

Effekt was not the only group exploring anti-capitalist strategies during this period. Many artists and art groups in West Germany, such as Joseph Beuys (1921–86), Fluxus and the Capitalist Realists, also employed anti-commodity strategies in their work. A well-known example of this are Fluxkits, a series of containers that hold a variety of multiples and printed items made by Fluxus members. Using everyday materials, they challenged the exclusivity of traditional works of art, promoting art as an experience rather than a commodity. The art historian Natilee Harren has described Fluxkits as ‘transitional commodities’ because these objects dissolve the categories of commodity and capital, aligning with Marx’s idea that value is realised through circulation.⁴⁰ Harren argues that by utilising multiples and lowly materials, the Fluxkits frustrated the spectator’s desires about what commodities – particularly works of art – might provide in a capitalist system. Effekt’s work similarly transformed the passive capitalist commodity into an active didactic tool that communicates utopian ideals of economic self-determination, collective authorship and a vision of self-emancipation through play. A person handling an Effekt object is neither obligated to fetishise the artistic object nor dispense it as mere advertisement – the spectator’s agency is paramount in determining the outcome of a work.

Effekt believed that the dominant capitalist exhibition models fostered spectator boredom and indifference, thus prompting them to propose a new (albeit vague) approach to exhibition practices. In their manifesto ‘Über einen neuen Ausstellungstyp’, displayed at Nova Tendencija 3, they argued that disillusionment with modern art stemmed from bourgeois and elitist practices, and they sought to create an alternative economic model that would liberate artists and spectators from institutional dependence and reconfigure traditional power hierarchies.⁴¹ The manifesto states:

Would the needs – by exhibitions organised for the public – from conventional exhibitions be fulfilled? Barely? And why? Because this type of visual object is too boring! Art should be in service of pleasure! Exhibitions of this type require a basic new economic structure. […] Entrance fees will be used to finance the events. From art exhibitions come a show.⁴²

This proposal envisions a new art exhibition model that shifts focus onto public engagement, pleasure and economic restructuring. It prioritises inclusivity by incorporating public input into design and moving away from elite-driven standards. Instead of selling works of art, a rental company would rotate large, site-specific pieces between cities. Although this exhibition model still necessitated entrance fees, Effekt believed that providing spectators with experiences as opposed to the selling of works of art as commodities would make the arts more democratic. It emphasises accessibility and interaction, transforming exhibitions into dynamic, entertaining events that blend art and showmanship, making gallery exhibitions more of a public experience than a marketplace.

‘Nova Tendencija 3’: humans in a modern industrial world

Effekt’s urge to transform modern exhibitions as a means of empowering spectators coincided with many of the social issues that the organisers of the third international New Tendencies show hoped to explore. This pivotal exhibition laid bare what exactly was at stake – in political and aesthetic terms – for the network at the time. The organisers wanted to create a more coherent vision of the movement, a matter that Effekt interpreted, as previously stated, as overly authoritarian.⁴³ To encourage a narrow focus, they invited artists to submit works that addressed a particular issue: the role that modern humans played in industrial modernity.⁴⁴ In the exhibition catalogue foreword, ‘Art as research’, the Italian art critic Giulio Carlo Argan argued that modern life, shaped by technology and industry, alienated humans and devalued the self.⁴⁵ Citing Friedrich Schiller’s On the Aesthetic Education of Man (1794), Argan called for an aesthetic revolution, rooted in German Romanticism, as the solution to this alienation, emphasising liberation through personal experience to achieve political and economic freedom.⁴⁶ Argan’s theories resonated with the kinetic and participatory focus of many New Tendencies artists who framed their work as a pursuit of social liberation. An interest in networked systems and systems aesthetics, which was emerging more generally as communication technologies advanced in the 1960s, developed at Nova Tendencija 3. Systems aesthetics applied cybernetics and systems theory to art, creating pieces that modelled political and social conditions.

An example of Effekt’s systems aesthetic was their artwork Mausbild (Mouse Picture) FIG. 11, which, by engaging themes of unpredictability within a gridded system, evoked the futility of social and economic hierarchies within a non-hierarchical compositional format. Inhabited by fifteen white mice, this kinetic Bild – meaning both ‘image’ and ‘picture’ – was a constructed black box with eight floors and twelve holes on each floor. The choice of white mice echoes Effekt’s and New Tendencies’ shared interest in conflating aesthetic experience and scientific experiments. The movements in this kinetic work were caused by the random appearance of the mice moving in and out of the corridors of the structure. The mice could ascend or descend the levels at will, but their movement was restricted to the closed system of the structure. The mice’s confined movements confronted the viewers with a symbolic evocation of the capitalist cycle of production, one that perpetuates human’s alienation from material and one other. Despite the kinetic image’s sinister undertones, it also offered viewers an unpredictable yet playful performance by the mice that encouraged spectators to connect play to social consciousness.

Conclusion

In June 1968 amid the peak of the West German student movements, the Effekt group disbanded. Some scholars have interpreted this as a symbol of both the failure of the 1968 revolutions and the collapse of West Germany’s revolutionary spirit.⁴⁷ Reflecting on this time, the Effekt members themselves view their collaboration as a youthful and utopian project.⁴⁸ Closer examination of these artists’ careers after 1968, however, counters this history. While Hacker, who opened an art gallery in West Berlin, is the only Effekt artist to continue the group’s trajectory of politicising artistic production, each member continued to produce art after the dissolution of the group.

Zehringer pursued work in a BMW factory to agitate passive workers to action.⁴⁹ Together with his wife, Uta, he developed an anti-authoritarian kindergarten, designing all the furniture using his academy training to promote communist models of collaboration.⁵⁰ Reinhartz carried out painting and design work for private customers. Sommerrock resisted any involvement with the art world after the dissolution of Effekt, but her subsequent career as a political activist centred on the organisation of political actions and Brechtian Street theatre. After the parallel dissolutions of the Effekt group and SDS, Sommerrock would become the founding member of a communist party (KDP) splinter group, the AB group (1973, Arbeiterbund für den Wiederaufbau der KPD or Workers’ League for the Reconstruction of the KPD) in Munich.⁵¹ These new initiatives, rather than demonstrating that Effekt was a failure of 1968, instead illuminate the beginning of what was already growing  in the fertile soil of that eventful year.