Saturday 8th Dec Joseph Beuys and People Power
Joseph Beuys and People Power.
Joseph Beuys contributed some seminal writings about the power of art and social change which have much in common with APG ideals. He came into contact with thenm through their Symposia activities in Germany and Holland.
“Artist Power is not People Power. But it is and must be seen to be compatible with the encouragement of every person to make initiatives……”
”ARTIST POWER AS POLITICS……. The APG negotiation method and “brief” is a bid for real power in the everyday world of human affairs for the intuitive.”….From “ARTIST PRAXIS GROUP AND MARXIST HISTORICAL SPACE”
20042/3/1/23 2 of 6.
“I think art is the only political power, the only revolutionary power, the only evolutionary power, the only power to free humankind form all repression. I say not that art has already realized this, on the contrary, and because it has not, it has to be developed as a weapon..”
“EVERY HUMAN BEING IS AN ARTIST”.
“- I would like to declare why I feel that it’s now necessary to establish a new kind of art, able to show the problems of the whole society, of every living being – and how this new discipline – which I call social sculpture – can realize the future of humankind. It could be a guarantee for the evolution of the earth as a planet, establish conditions for other planetarians too, and you can control it with your own thinking… …Here my idea is to declare that art is the ‘only’ possibility for evolution, the only possibility to change the situation in the world. But then you have to enlarge the idea of art to include the whole creativity. And if you do that, it follows logically that every living being is an artist – an artist in the sense that he can develop his own capacity… … And therefore, in short, I’m saying, all work that’s done has to have the quality of art. “
“ Man is really not freeing many aspects. He is dependent on his social circumstances, but he is free in his thinking, and here is the point of origin of sculpture. For me the formation of the thought is already sculpture. The thought is sculpture.” * statement on ‘Man’ by Joseph Beuys: an interview W. Sharp, 1969; quoted in “Energy Plan for the Western man – Joseph Beuys in America –”, and compiled by Carin Kuoni, Four Walls Eight Windows, New York, 1993, p. 90
