Wolf Vostell
Year, Birthplace 1932, Germany
Year, Place of death 1998
Wolf Vostell was a photolithographer before attending the School of Applied Arts in Wuppertal and then coming to Paris, where he invented the principle of dé-coll/age. He was fascinated by technological upheavals, above all by the hijacking of the media and their productions. This became central to Vostell’s approach, first with ripped-up posters, then with a magazine. In 1959 he used radio and television stations, combining disparate elements among them, including for example a number of TV sets in a Cadillac. From the beginning, he was integrated into the Fluxus movement. As a participant in the establishment of Fluxus in Germany, Vostell organized the first Fluxus International Festival in Wiesbaden in 1962, in collaboration with Nam June Paik and George Maciunas. In 1963 Vostell produced his first experimental video, Sun in your Head, using scrambled television images, faded or completely destroyed. In 1976 he founded the Museo Vostell Malpartida near Cáceres in Spain, and did significant work with the Portuguese avant-garde, particularly with Ernesto de Sousa, an active participant in the three ‘Weeks of Contemporary Art’ in Malpartida (SACOM) between 1977 and 1983. J-FC