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ENGLISH VERSION IN MOURNING I STRUGGLE
by collective debates, in which both art All these organizations demonstrate how impossibility of any relationship between
and social issues were discussed.” In 1971, much Beuys believed in transformation by art and society”, Fluxus had a more positive
Beuys came to occupy the secretariat of the institutional means, at a time when Germany view, which sought to link life and art.
Academy of Art, to protest the restrictions was shaken by associations that also sought It is remarkable that Marcel Duchamp’s
on the admission of students, then founding change, but by illegal means, such as the silence is overrated occurred just inside a
the Organization for Direct Democracy by far-left guerrilla group Baader Meinhoff, Fluxus event, because its members had great
National Referendum. which existed between 1970 and 1988. The appreciation for the french artist creator of
A little earlier, that same year, he had already use of instruments of direct democracy also the ready-made. Beuys’ connection to Fluxus
admitted in his class the 142 candidates who points out the importance of the thought was intense, but it did not last long, and the
were turned down by the Academy, but this set of each individual, against the principles of performance shows how the german artist’s
of protests ended up costing him the job and representative democracy. critical character was in the confrontation,
a lawsuit, which he won in 1978. Fundamental Even so, Beuys went on to run for the within the very space of the institutions where
here is to reinforce the libertarian character European Parliament in 1979 for the group it worked.
of his activity as a teacher, which represents Other Political Association (Sonstige This capacity for criticism also occurs in the
enabling each student to develop his own work, politische Vereinigung), which the following performance I like America and America likes
regardless of his work, as he stated in a 1972 year would become The Greens. On that me, in May 1974 for three consecutive days,
interview: occasion, he launched the manifesto “Call for eight hours each day, on the occasion of the
the Alternative”, published in the Frankfurter opening of the gallery of the German René Block
It is often said that in my classes everything Rundschau newspaper on 23/12/1978, and in New York.
would be conceptual or political. But for reprinted in 1979 for the first election to the Beuys arrived in the U.S. by plane and, from
me it is very important that it results in European Parliament. The text advocated JfK airport, set off in an ambulance, going
something sensually palpable, with broad non-violence, the transformation of the use straight to a cage built in the gallery, where he
epistemological foundations. My main of money and the organization of the State, lived with a coiote, an animal considered sacred
interest there is to start with the language questioning the escape from reality and even by the native peoples of the usa. According
and let the materializations follow as a the use of drugs. This manifesto became the to the myth of the performance, after three
correlation of thought and action. The poster that integrated its participation in the days, the artist would have been taken back
most important thing for me is that the 15th Bienal de São Paulo, with the title Call for to the airport, without having stepped on
human being, through his products, a global alternative, in 1979. American soil.
experiences models of how to co-act From 1980 to 1986, the Greens maintained, Beuys had been working with Block for a long
in the relationship with the whole; and under the direction of Johann Stüttgen, a time. It was in his gallery that he once covered
not only produce articles, but become a coordinating office in room 3 of the Academy the corners with fat, rounding the rigid shape
visual artist or architect in the entire social of Dusseldorf, the former Beuys room. of his architecture, bringing to it an organic
organism. The future social order will be character, which was transformed over the
formed according to the principles of art. 2.3 The art system days when the fat was exposed. Here one can
(CHRISTENSEN, p. 12) On December 11, 1964, Beuys presented the see how Beuys cares about the plastic issue,
performance Marcel Duchamp’s silence is but it is a vehicle for his ideas.
His belief in the power of institutional overrated (Das Schweigen von Marcel Duchamp In I like America... their action is more radical.
education does not end with his departure wird uberbewertet), an action broadcast live He lives with an animal, wrapped in felt and,
from the Düsseldorf Academy of Art in 1971. on German tv Zdf, as a member of the Fluxus leaning on a cane, approaches the interactivity
Three years later, he founded the International group, using in addition to speech, its typical with nature, so important to the idea of “social
Free University (F.I.U. – Freie Internationale materials such as fat and felt. sculpture”. The performance, in fact, points out
Universität), which served for the development how the artist lived his own utopia in his work,
of many of his projects, such as Seven Duchamp was an indolent who created showing that the realization of his proposals
thousand oaks in the Documenta de Kassel beautiful and interesting provocations is feasible, besides pointing out a character
in 1982. for the bourgeoisie and made the affronts of non-objectual art, non-commercial, anti-
In Documenta itself, but in 1977, in its brilliantly in the aesthetic typology of his representational. This is because Beuys,
6th. Edition, The F.I.U. was responsible for time. (CHRISTENSEN, p. 32) who called himself “a reincarnated caveman”
organizing Honey Bomb in the workplace, a [Borer, p. 30], was living his proposals, was not
room in which Beuys and his collaborators This anti-Bourgeois spirit in Beuys’s speech is creating mere illustrations for them. Experience
spent a hundred days – the usual time of exactly one of the main characteristics of the is an essential part of your actions.
duration of the show, debating the “social Fluxus group, created in 1961 at the ag gallery in This action is also a good example of how,
sculpture”, that is, the new model of society. New York by Lithuanian artist George Maciunas. in Borer’s conception, Beuys can be seen as
However, the F.I.U. was not created as simply With an international character, Fluxus was a pastor:
an alternative to the German university system. not characterized by a formal style among
As Beuys declared in 1985: its components, but by a common principle: The pastor leads his disciples to a place
to abolish the objectual question of art as only he knows – a promise of a higher state;
The International Free University is an the primacy of its existence and to value the he is the man looking for a path, a path
international research community. Its process in its constitution. more extensive and vast than him: he opens
circle of collaborators is relatively small. Beuys joined the group through colleague passage. (BORER, p. 23)
It is not possible to attend the F.I.U. It is Nan June Paik, a Korean artist who was also
simply the project of a new society, beyond a teacher in Düsseldorf. In addition, also This occurs in a great way in his project Seven
capitalism and communism. To accomplish participated in the events organized by Fluxus thousand oaks, which the artist started in 1982,
this task, each has to find support in himself. artists such as the American musician John on the occasion of Documenta 7, created from
(FARKAS, p. 45) Cage, whose experimentations were decisive F.I.U. Its goal was that 7,000 such trees be
for the group, and the Japanese Yoko Ono. At planted throughout the city, always next to
As in all of Beuys’ work, F.I.U. also did not Fluxus festivals, Beuys performed especially a basalt column. Again, one sees here the
constitute a conventional structure of actions, anticipating the idea of performance, insightful ability of Beuys to work with images:
established standards, but proposed a new which had not been characterized as a to this day, those who visit Kassel face the
possibility to disseminate the artist’s thinking in language. oaks planted by Beuys and his collaborators.
a pragmatic way. To think, in Beuys, is to realize. Fluxus is linked, in general, to the anti-art
character of the Dada movement, which The symbolic beginning of the vital
2.2 The political system also used everyday elements and ephemeral reforestation of the Earth must take place
In 1979, the F.I.U. was one of five organizations actions, questioning the commercial value in Kassel. [...] This is a rational action; in
that created the Green Party in Germany, making of art. Maciunas, for example, created this case, tree planting. [...] One must
Beuys one of its founders. Before, in 1967, he several multiples, such as the Fluxus Boxes, first create a global understanding to –
had already created the German Student Party an idea that would then be used by Beuys. wherever possible – make such processes
(Deutsche Studentenpartei) on the eve of the The use of the video, especially due to sustainable. (FARKAS, p. 41)
revolutions of May 1968. the influence of Nan June Paik, was also
Then, in 1970, he created the Organization recurrent in Fluxus, not only because of the In Seven thousand oaks, Beuys concretizes
of Non-Voters – Free Plebiscite (Organisation emergence of the new medium, but because his idea of “social sculpture” transforming
der Nicht Wahler, Freie Volksabstimmung), and of the characteristics it provided, that is, the the environment. And it does so with the
in 1971, because of the crisis at the Dusseldorf possibility of its retransmission, which would collaboration of those who are willing, so that
Academy of Art, the Organisation for Direct also be widely used by Beuys. However, while each person who lives on Earth can become a
Democracy by Plebiscite (Organisation fur the Dada had a negative character, as Giulio creator of forms, a sculptor, a designer of the
direkte Demokratie durch Volksbastimmung). Carlo Argan defines, by “demonstrating the social organism.
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