Sunday 6 February 2005, 15.00
Sunday 27 February 2005, 15.00
Sunday 13 March 2005, 15.00

German artist Joseph Beuys (1921-1986) was one of the most influential and charismatic European artists of the twentieth century. He approached art and life as one endeavour, and constantly staged both aspects. This programme surveys several key Action films. They remain important documents which chart Beuys's charismatic examination of the connections between mythic events and magical effects.

1. KUKEI / AKOPEE-NEIN! / BRAUNKREUZ / FETTECKEN / MODELLFETTECKEN
(KUKEI / AKOPEE-NO! / BROWN CROSS / FAT CORNERS / MODEL FAT CORNERS)

1.1. Festival of New Art: ACTION / AGIT-OP / DECOLLAGE / HAPPENING / EVENTS / ANTI-ART / L'AUTRISME / ART TOTAL / REFLUXUS
20 July 1964, Aachen
Production: West German Broadcast, Cologne, 1964
approx 25 minutes

1.2. Festival of New Art: ACTION / AGIT-OP / DECOLLAGE / HAPPENING / EVENTS / ANTI-ART / L'AUTRISME / ART TOTAL / REFLUXUS
7 September 1964, Aachen
Production: West German Broadcast, Cologne, 1964
approx 9 minutes

To employ art to alter or resurrect life, and to fight against the forces of silence, Beuys made use of a piano in many actions. In this notorious 1964 Action, performed on the twentieth anniversary of the attempted assasination of Hitler, he fills the instrument with a mass of objects for the purpose of initiating a healing process. 'Only art is capable of dismantling the repressive effects of a senile social system that continues to totter along the deathline: to dismantle in order to build A SOCIAL ORGANISM AS A WORK OF ART,' he said. By this description and by his Action, the piano and art are one. 'The intention: healing chaos, amorphous healing, in a particular direction through which the frozen and rigid forms of the past, and of social convention, are dissolved and warmed, and future form becomes possible.'

2. WIE MAN DEM TOTEN HASEN DIE BILDER ERKLART
(HOW TO EXPLAIN PICTURES TO A DEAD HARE)
26 November 1965
Galerie Schmela, Duesseldorf

Sequences from two television reports:

2.1. Sequences one-four (approx 5 minutes)
Happening-Bewegung in der Bundesrepublik (Ausschnitt)
(Happening-Movement in the Federal Republic [detail])
24 January 1966
Production: West German Broadcast, Cologne, 1966

2.2 Sequence four
How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare
7 December 1968
Kunstakademie Duesseldorf
Production: West German Broadcast, Cologne, 1968

Beuys walks through an exhibition (his first solo exhibition in a private gallery) mumbling to the dead hare cradled in his arms. Then, seated, with his head covered in honey and gold leaf, he holds the dead animal very much like a grieving Madonna in a Pieta. Is he mourning the soul of the lost innocent or simply instructing it in the ways of art, as the title suggests?

'This was a complex tableau about the problem of language and about the problems of thought, of human consciousness and of the consciousness of animals, and of course the ability of animals. This is placed in an extreme position because this is not just an animal but a dead animal...Even a dead animal preserves more powers of intuition than some human beings with their stubborn rationality.' --Joseph Beuys

3. KUNST UND KETCHUP. EIN BERICHT UBER POP-ART UND HAPPENING
(ART AND KETCHUP. A REPORT ABOUT POP ART AND HAPPENING)
14 February 1966
Director: Elmar Hugler
Cinematographers: Dieter Mahrlen, Kurt Hirschel
Sound: Albrecht Muller, Manfred Muller
Editor: Heike Prasuhn
Voiceover: Charles Wirths
Composer: Dave Hildinger
Production: South German Broadcast, Stuttgart 1966
approx 15 minutes

Beuys performs und in uns...unter uns...landunter (And In Us...Beneath Us...Land Under) on the occasion of the happening 24-Stunden (24 Hours) in 1965 at the Galerie Parnass, Wuppertal (from 12am to 12am), organised by Beuys, Charlotte Moormann, Nam June Paik, Ekhard Rahn, Tomas Schmit, and Wolf Vostell. The action ends at midnight, marking the anniversary of D-Day on 6 June 1944.

4. CELTIC + ~~~
Cinematographer: Bernd Kluser
Appeared as a multiple, Schellmann & Kluser, Munich, 1971
Edition: Jorg Schellmann, Munich, 1971
approx 25 minutes

The idea of change and transformation is characterised by Beuys as the key element of every Action: 'The whole character of the action and the idea of the action is also the idea of a transformation, to break away from a traditional notion of art, to mark the border between a traditioned, traditional art, that includes modernism, and an anthropological art, an art directed at man in general, which has a much higher notion of itself...Thus the action as the transforming element in and of itself is also presented as a process of transformation.'

5. EURASIENSTAB
(EURASIAN STAFF)
1967 / 68
Sound: Henning Christiansen
23.30 minutes

Wearing one iron and one felt shoe, ostensibly to traverse the continent, Beuys installs four staffs in four corners of a room in order to accomplish his goal of uniting the divided lands. Within his iconography, this work exemplifies the activity of a healer, reuniting the bifurcated continent back into its Eden-like state.

Tate Modern  Starr Auditorium
£3.50 (£2 concessions), booking recommended

    

This event is related to the Joseph Beuys: Actions, Vitrines, Environments exhibition