Beuys as Unidentified Curator
Joseph Beuys' expanded view of art and creativity which he termed Social Sculpture was a bid to reach a third way politics within the context of the Cold-War globe: "This is how he described his ideal of Social Sculpture: first of all the extension of the definition of art beyond the specialist activity carried out by artists to the active mobilisation of every individual's latent creativity, and then, following on from that, the moulding of the society of the future based on the total energy of this individual creativity." Beuys was keen to understand his aspirations in terms of a naturalised and spiritual base in which the body and mind be seen as aesthetic tools; the larynx and mouth acting as casting implements for the moulding of thought as voice and speech. "Through speaking and the progressive addition of further materials (for example, by writing the next step with pen and paper), there originates from man a sculptural procedure whose expansion in material advances and finally embraces all existence, so that human creativity can be materially communicated." However, where many would be satisfied in reaching such a body-centred position (and categorise themselves 'live artists' or 'performance artists'), Beuys appears to have been uneasy with this as an end and sort the means to 'explode' the rubrics of performance into a discursive zone with broad social implications. His '100 Days of the Free International University' at Documenta 6 in 1977 was a 'statement-in-action' of these concerns.
"Hundreds of supporters of the Free International University (FIU) from all over the world took part in the hundred days, from 24 June to 1 October 1977, setting up activities in which the visitors to Documenta 6 could take an active part. Trade unionists, lawyers, economists, politicians, journalists, community workers, educationalists and sociologists joined actors, musicians and young artists in the workshops… The thirteen consecutive workshops in which these people from as far apart as Chile and Borneo pooled and compared their practical experience were designed to cover a wide range of pressing themes in which radical and creative new thinking is urgently needed, discussed in the interdisciplinary way which is otherwise impossible in a world of rigidly separated specializations. Inspired by Beuys, financed on the strength of his reputation, and animated by his presence, the workshops were an organic part of a work of art ('Honey Pump'); but they were also a practical forum for the pressing issues of society. Art was subsidizing life."
This work on direct democratic processes as sculptural material relied on no conventional 'curation' to take place. The 'One Hundred Days of the Free International University' incorporated Beuys' own unself-conscious mode of curating in which discursive explorations were facilitated to those in attendance. Ultimately though, (and looking back a decade after his death), it is questionable whether Beuys' expanded notion of the artist ('everyone is an artist'), inadvertently validates the very structures of power and administration which he so clearly states are problematic. Furthermore, Beuys' object-work is utterly curatable and collectable in conventional terms, a factor which obfuscates his political potential. His use of myth and pan-celticism adds a veneer of exoticism and 'universalism' to the situation, the potency of which offers the dealer, collector and the curator a value-added imperative to proceed unaffected.
