Auto-destructive art is a comprehensive theory for action in the field of the plastic arts in the post-second world war period. The action is not limited to theory of art and the production of art works. It includes social action. Auto-destructive art is committed to a left-wing revolutionary position in politics, and to struggles against future wars.' (Gustav Metzger, introduction to Auto-Destructive Art: Metzger at AA)
Facsimile edition of a lecture transcript given by German-born artist Gustav Metzger at the Architectural Association in February 1965. This new edition is published 50 years on since its original printing in June 1965 by the AA's Action Communications Centre (A.C.C), reigniting Metzger's urgent and ever-relevant arguments which confront society's obsession with destruction and the detrimental effects of machinery on human life.'

Act or Perish accompanies the first extensive overview of Auto-Destructive art pioneer Gustav Metzger (born 1926), organized in 2015-16 at the Centre of Contemporary Art in Torun and Kunsthall Oslo and Stiftelsen Kunstnernes Hus in Oslo. The exhibition catalog provides readers with a rich array of theoretical contributions, including a conversation between Dobrila Denegri and Yoko Ono, Ivor Davies, Hermann Nitsch and Jon Hendricks, as well as Metzger's own writings. Essayists Pontus Kyander, Andrew Wilson, Mathieu Copeland, Dobrila Denegri, Leanne Dmyterko, Hans Ulrich Obrist and Manuel Olveira take up different aspects of Metzger's work, from the artist's early political activism to his experimentation with painting and his drafting of the manifestos for Auto-Destructive Art, providing an invaluable and much-awaited document of a pioneer of postwar art.

Manifestos and texts on auto-destructive art and beyond from countercultural artist and activist Gustav Metzger

Bringing together more than 350 texts written between 1953 and 2016, this comprehensive volume establishes artist and activist Gustav Metzger (1926-2017) as one of the towering figures of the 20th century, a long-overdue recognition of Metzger's influential vision.

Renowned for his use of unstable materials and chemical reactions to create artworks that embody processes of change, destruction and renewal, Metzger was also a prolific writer, theoretician and satirist. His interest in technology and science and his anti-nuclear activism influenced his development of the concepts of auto-destructive and auto-creative art, terms he coined with his manifestos on Auto-Destructive Art in 1959 and Auto-Creative Art in 1961. He put these ideas into action with artworks made to decay, disintegrate or change following natural processes.

Edited by Metzger's long-time friend, curator Mathieu Copeland, this anthology of writings makes Metzger's essential thinking from the 1950s onward available to a wide audience. It includes seminal writings such as Metzger's manifestoes of auto-destructive and auto-creative art, his essays about architecture, and an interview with R. Buckminster Fuller from 1970 and a retrospective manifesto on his own legacy, Remember Nature, from 2013. Also included are examples of Metzger's art criticism, political lampoons and lectures. Altogether Gustav Metzger: Writings presents a challenging reading of our artistic, political and technological moment as analyzed by one of our most pioneering, discerning thinkers.

The artist's biography as told by Metzger himself, a leader of the Auto-Destructive Art and Art Strike movements

This publication is a chronological retelling of the life and work of the visionary artist and radical thinker Gustav Metzger (1926-2017) in his own words. He recounts the key moments in his life and career: his Jewish Orthodox childhood in Nuremberg before the Nazis came to power, his arrival in England as part of the Kindertransport, his early development as an artist, and how he came to develop the idea of Auto-Destructive Art and later to coorganize the Destruction in Art Symposium in 1966 and the Art Strike of 1977-80. He also talks about his activism to combat environmental destruction as well as his deep admiration for Vermeer. Published to coincide with the PST ART exhibition, this singular volume is a monument to the rediscovery of Metzger in the 21st century, thanks to the urgency of his artistic position and to the enthusiasm and commitment of Metzger's interlocutor in this book, Hans Ulrich Obrist.