CV

Marc Zeier/G*Park is a sound researcher and visual artist. Born 1954 in Jersey City USA he lives and works in and around Zurich as a composer, installation- and video artist on the interface of acoustics, science and sculpture. His exploring and processing of acoustical phenomena, his extensive knowledge of acoustics and his unmistakable penmanship have led to a worldwide respect for his recordings and performances. His profession as a plankton fisherman has without doubt shaped his creative work.

He has performed and exhibited in various museums, galleries and festivals (including Valencia, Berlin, Brighton, London, Bristol, Bremen, Hamburg, Münster, Cologne, Murcia, Boston, Lausanne, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Beijing, Zurich, Basel).

His soundworks have been released on labels such as Tochnit Aleph, Zabriskie Point, Blossoming Noise, Zelphabet, Banned Production, 23five Incorporated, Helen Scarsdale Agency and others.

“G*Parks cryptic sound assemblages manifest through technically precise yet psychologically strenuous strategies of musique concrète and controlled noise. The source material from human voices, piano, and field recordings is shifted into disfigured utterances, uncomfortable passages of creaking wood, metal, etc. and whipcrack punctuations of sonic violence. Zeier locates these razor-cut activities against deathray and blackened shadow“ - Jim Haynes (Helen Scarsdale/The Wire )

“When you enter this room, you enter a "black box". At least that's the name of the dark room that Marc Zeier has set up. The sounds inside are gloomy, the films playing are dark. There are dirty, yellow plastic canisters around in which biomass is enriched. Another pair of rubber boots, with which Zeier himself pursues his profession: fishing for plankton.

Zeier's work and art are closely intertwined. He has practiced his profession as Switzerland's only plankton fisherman for zoos, pet shops and the renaturation of bodies of water since 1981, following his art studies. Plankters are the individual organisms of plankton and are often called "water fleas" in our freshwater latitudes. They are usually small crustaceans, one to three millimetres in size, which are extremely important as food for larger animal species in our waters as well as in the large oceans. They were also at the beginning of evolution. Plankters are creatures that cannot swim against currents and are thus, to a certain extent, drifters in the water that have adopted their own strategies to master upwelling and downwelling.

In the black box, we dive into a world of drifting around. The life form of the plankton becomes a symbol of what is going on in the black box. For the black box in its original form, in behaviorism, is a system for processing all mental and cognitive processes: The person receives a signal (a stimulus), processes it in the black box, and a behavior (a reaction) occurs. If we follow beaviorist theories, then we cannot know what exactly happens in the black box. This is why Zeier's black box is so exciting: it leads us into a world of experience. On the one hand, with the sounds (which are, among other things, plankton songs amplified in extremis and amplified plankton barking) and the films offer a fascinating interpretation of the functioning of a black box. On the other hand, he strongly connects this inner life with his own person. The props from his profession are also an indication of self-reflection. We find ourselves in a multimedia laboratory of a life between art and profession. In his black box, Marc Zeier constantly balances art and life as a state of limbo, a state between structuring and drifting.”

Text: Michael Kathe, for the exhibition “Blackbox” at Kunsthalle Wädenswil, 2022