Institutionalizing Social Sculpture

Institutionalizing Social Sculpture

Beuys' Office for Direct Democracy through Referendum Installation (1972)

Claudia Mesch

Mesch, Claudia, and Viola Maria. Michely. "Institutionalizing Social Sculpture." Joseph Beuys: The Reader. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2007. 198-211. Print. 

Date: 10/8/2012

List of primary claims made in this reading:

Beuy implemented a “grassroots” process for public debate and discussion by creating an “unmediated public sphere” which became the “realization of social sculpture.” (Pg. 199)

Beuy recognized this public forum gaining momentum as more than just an “art” practice and began using his platform as an artist in an institution to re-establish true democracy by organizing open public discussions, lectures, public education committees, voting, etc.

In addition to “social sculpture,” Beuys uses the juxtaposition of materials and object as a vehicle for education, protest, and activism. 

List of facts/stats discussed in this reading:

Joseph Beuys founded the “German Student Party” in 1967. Later reconfigured into the “Organization of Direct Democracy” (1972).

Key Quotes:

“Buey institutionalized a public sphere within the museum, thereby reforming the museum in to a site for broad public rational discourse on matters of social and political change.” (Pg. 201)

“The Organization of Non-Voters hoped to replace a party-system vote with one that proposed alternative programmes and policies, and to transform citizens in all levels of society into activist in granting them a voice within a public debate.” (Pg. 204)

“Human compassion must also remain an element of rational thought in order for creative change to be implemented.” (Pg. 206)

“However, these routes of ‘infiltration’ into institutions, or of ‘doing something outside’ of them, are not anarchistic end goals but part of what Beuys called the ‘educational process.’” (Pg. 209)

“This process has nothing to do with the teacher-pupil relationship, but with the awakening of consciousness which begins ‘not at schools, but also in grocery stores…as soon as people talk to one another about these things’ (i.e. individual creativity to be used for the good of the social organism)”

(Pg. 209)

For Beuys, discussion is less the stud of ‘an example of the object of my thought or the object that I am trying to community to you’, as Wilson phrased it, but instead manipulates language as a creative and individual contribution to discussion which can benefit the greater social whole.” (Pg. 211)

How can you relate what you have read from this reading and directly apply it to your own practice, and/or present-day Social Practice?

I appreciate Beuy’s parallel process, of both having exhibitions that asked the viewer to participate, to become part of a movement and also having exhibition that featured his own personal activism and protest regarding issues he felt strongly about bringing to the table. I also find it appropriate that there is seemingly a clear division in instances where as a social practice artist he completely take the back seat in the process outside of organizing the scenario, the end product not being a resemblance of his voice but being an unadulterated discussion by the public.

Questions from the reading?

Was hosting these open public forums in institutions effective in actually giving the public a voice?

Does it matter to the premise of the work as a whole that the “open public forum” is still a very exclusive museum audience, as opposed to a more diverse audience if it was held outside the institution?