Dieter Meier (1945)
Switzerland

"Dieter Meier grew up in Zurich, where he studied law. Since the late 1960s he has been working self-taught as an artist, experimental filmmaker and musician. In 1979 he founded the band Yello together with Boris Blank - a pioneer of electronic pop music whose productions are still internationally present today (last CD Touch YELLOW 2009).

Meier first appeared as a conceptual and action artist between 1969 and 1971 with performances in public spaces in Zurich, Munich and New York (including 5 Days, 1969; Gang Confirmation, 1970; Going, 1970 - all in Zurich; This Man will not shoot / Two words, 1971, New York). His short films and videotapes, some of which won awards, were shown at various international festivals from 1967 onwards (Art Film Festival I.C.A., London, 1969; Oberhausen Short Film Festival, 1970; Tokyo Film Festival, 1971). His first experimental film, 81,000 units, was presented at the Cannes Film Festival in 1969 (Quinzaine des Réalisateurs); his feature films Now and Everything (1981) at the Taormina Film Festival 1982, Lightmaker (2001) at the Berlinale 2002 and in a second version in Zurich 2009. The first art exhibitions followed from 1970 in Switzerland, Germany and the USA (Luzern Art Museum, 1970; The New York Cultural Center, 1971; Documenta 5, 1972). In 1976 his work was presented for the first time as a solo exhibition at the Kunsthaus Zurich; From 1977 onwards, around twenty national and international solo and group exhibitions followed, including a representative exhibition of his work in the Tinguely Museum in Basel in 2007 (La conquête de l’inutile, works 1969–2007). Meier also works as an essayist, screenwriter, writer (Hermes Baby, 2006), singer, video, film and music producer. In 1997 Yello received the Art Prize of the City of Zurich.

Dieter Meier temporarily worked as an entrepreneur in the watch industry; He is involved in the company Euphonix (digital mixing consoles and DAW controllers in Silicon Valley), runs a farm in Argentina (Ojo de Agua), grows wine there, produces organic products and raises cattle. He recently opened a restaurant in Zurich. In keeping with his wide-ranging activities, Dieter Meier lives and works with his family alternately in Zurich, Los Angeles and Argentina.

Dieter Meier is an artist in the broadest sense. He performs, photographs, documents, films, sings and writes. He is an entrepreneur and producer, a locally rooted cosmopolitan. His complex artistic work, which evades clear genre and art-specific classifications, explores the possibilities of an unbounded concept of art that extends into the creative and entrepreneurial sectors. Meier loves networked thinking and operating in different contexts at the same time. This is articulated in an idiosyncratic, hybrid way in experimental visual and sound works of art that are characterized by fast, wild editing changes. Undogmatic and unpretentious, he cultivates a high artistic “dilettantism” that is dedicated to the situationist and neo-Dadaist ideal of a “conquête de l’inutile”, the conquest of the useless.

This philosophical exploration of “nothingness” and the “insignificant” was already evident in his first artistic actions and performances in public space; This attitude runs as a common thread through Meier's work and is to this day the life and art program of the "Association des Maîtres de Rien" which he founded and whose actions he finances with his wine production."
(Source, website, SIK)

Work :

• 1 minute - Autoportrait (1970)