Zapp magazine

Zapp Magazine (Corinne Groot, jack Jaeger, Arnold Mosselman & Rob van de Ven)

29 October 2019

6pm Artist's talk and presentation with founders of Zapp Corinne Groot & Rob van de Ven

7pm Opening with 90s music

Long before Video on Demand, smart TV, webcams, YouTube, UbuWeb and Facebook Live, there was Zapp Magazine – a (initially) quarterly magazine on VHS videotape, which allowed you to watch exhibitions from the comfort of your own couch. The parts you didn’t like you could fast-forward through, the ones you did you could watch on endless repeat.

29 October - 30 November 2019

@ TABSP Milan

Come and scroll through the Zapp Magazine Archives, the third event of an international tour, after Amsterdam and Berlin, to Milano, and on to Paris, Toulouse, New York, Copenhagen and more.


Share on Facebook / Twitter

Zapp was an initiative by Corinne Groot, Jack Jaeger, Arnold Mosselman and Rob van de Ven. With the help of correspondents from all over the world, these four Amsterdam-natives had eyes and ears everywhere and covered exhibitions, performances (and afterparties) in institutions, artist run spaces, and studios, from New York to Antwerp, from Arnhem to Anaheim.
Perhaps this is something we now take for granted curled up on our couches scrolling the Instagram feed of this month’s hottest new artist…But back then – the 90s! – Zapp was fresh.

Their first issue, #0, was unofficially spread among friends; followed by an official launch of #1 three months later in the vibrant Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam (SMBA).

Zapp’s aim was to transgress the written page and give their audience a chance to see the work of art, listen to the sounds that accompanied it, experience how the interviewed artist spoke, sounded, and looked. It came at a time when video art was still a relatively young medium, when most art magazines still couldn’t afford to print their entire publication in full color, long before the advent of sharing via social media, or, for that matter, the profusion of budget airlines. Zapp brought it all to you, live and in full color and gave the viewer the opportunity to view how it all…moved.

Unfortunately the magazine was criticized for being rather expensive (60 guilders per issue or about €30) and even though each tape came with an exclusive artist’s edition, it was not enough to keep the grassrooted operation viable. Zapp Magazine disappeared after the #11 issue and, one might argue, has since been supplanted by other forms of media. Still, it heralded a new way of experiencing art – and looked far forward to the digitized and the online.

Kunstverein invites you to come and binge-watch all the original tapes, as well as an enormous amount of unpublished footage of behind the scenes material featuring the then upcoming artists of the 90s. With: Mike Kelley, Cady Noland, Rita Ackermann, Vito Acconci, Carsten Höller, Vanessa Beecroft, Maurizio Cattelan, Philippe Parreno, Kathe Burkhart, Giuseppe Gabellone, Maurizio Nanucci, Bob Flanagan, Roman Signer, Barbara Visser, Lily van der Stokker, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Cosima von Bonin, Kai Althof, Lothar Hempel, Wolfgang Tillmans, Paul McCarthy and many, many more!