Beuys 2021 - Programme subject of change
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Beuys 2021 – Programme [subject of change]
Aachen
Beuys, Fluxus and the Impact
The Festival of New Art in Aachen
Symposium
Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst und Lehrstuhl für Kunstgeschichte der RWTH Aachen
11 to 12 June 2021— [curated by Myriam Kroll and Annette Lagler]
The name Joseph Beuys is indelibly associated with an incident at the Festival of New Art on 20
July 1964 in the main lecture hall – the Audimax – of the RWTH technical university in Aachen. A
performance by Beuys took a dramatic turn when an agitated student landed a punch on his
nose, drawing blood, and the event was abruptly called to a halt. Photographs taken that evening
have become part of our collective memory, even if few people nowadays are fully aware of the
circumstances.
The symposium to be held in Aachen during »beuys 2021« will focus on the relationship between
Joseph Beuys and the Fluxus movement in the wake of that festival in Aachen. Participants will
critically examine that situation over fifty years ago in light of its importance to art, politics and
society today, with particular reference to works by contemporary artists.
Presented in cooperation with the Chair of Art History, this two-day symposium will welcome
numerous expert speakers to the Audimax (the original festival venue) and to the Ludwig Forum
Aachen.
Bedburg-Hau
Joseph Beuys and the Shamans
Exhibition
Museum Schloss Moyland
2 May to 29 August 2021 — [curated by Barbara Strieder and Ulrike Bohnet]
In his early works Joseph Beuys repeatedly focused on shamans and on the contexts in which
they operate. In a number of Actions he either assumed the role of the shaman or drew on
shamanic practices. For Beuys, Eurasia was a spiritual space that stood for the reconciliation of
opposites such as reason and intuition.
This ethnological exhibition highlights fundamental aspects of historical and contemporary
indigenous shamanism and of the shamanic worlds that Beuys so often referred to.
It will also include work by contemporary artists such as Marcus Coates, Lili Fischer, Anatol
Donkan and Igor Sacharow-Ross, demonstrating the relevance of the topic of shamanism to the
current artistic discourse with its particular interest in social issues and ecology.
Bonn
Beuys — Lehmbruck
Thinking is Sculpture
Bundeskunsthalle
Exhibition in cooperation with the Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg
25 June to 1 November 2021 — [curated by Johanna Adam]
In 1986, just a few days before his death, Beuys was awarded the Wilhelm Lehmbruck Prize. In
his acceptance speech, he stressed the importance the art of the Expressionist sculptor Wilhelm
Lehmbruck had for him. Marking the 100th birthday of Joseph Beuys, the exhibition »Beuys –
Lehmbruck. Thinking is Sculpture« explores this connection and presents the work of these two
artists.
There are not many artists who caused as radical an upheaval in the history of art as Joseph
Beuys. This exhibition brings together a series of key works by Beuys and presents them
alongside some of Wilhelm Lehmbruck’s most important sculptures. The focus of the exhibition,
however, is not on stylistic or formal similarities, instead, it seeks to shed light on a single pivotal
question: What is the revolutionary potential of art in the context of its time?Ticket to the Future
Joseph Beuys, Katinka Bock, Maria Eichhorn, Jon Rafman
Exhibition
Kunstmuseum Bonn
8 July to 10 October 2021 — [curated by Stefanie Kreuzer and Christoph Schreier]
Beuys was a magnificent draughtsman and sculptor and an artist whose ultimate aim was to
shape society as a whole. His Multiples, which were intended to bring homeopathic doses of his
thinking into every household, served him to this end. Between 1965 and 1986 he created 556
Multiples, of which more than 400 are part of the collection of Kunstmuseum Bonn. Ranging from
bags of dried hare’s blood to political manifestos,
these works reflect his thinking and his art. The Multiples lead to the centre of his oeuvre as a
whole.
The social, ecological and existential questions, raised in Beuys’s works underpin the great
topicality of his art. His works are signposts for a society in need of reform, which requires lateral
thinkers like Beuys. There is growing interest in his art, especially among the younger generation
of artists and researchers: Beuys is contemporary! The exhibition draws on the Kunstmuseum’s
Multiples and presents them alongside current artistic positions. Thus, the historical view of
Beuys’work is also a preview of what is to come.
Dortmund
Technoshamanism
Exhibition
Hartware MedienKunstVerein
9 October 2021 to 6 March 2022 — [curated by Inke Arns]
With the figure of the shaman that Joseph Beuys cultivated throughout his career as its starting
point, this exhibition focuses on »techno-shamanistic« artistic positions today. The artists in
question not only regard shamanism as a technology in its own right, they also use other
(speculative) technologies to seek out shamanic energies. Many of the tropes that Beuys so
iconically employed to heal and transform society, to cultivate a spiritual connection with the
environment, to overcome the power and the logic of capital are now deployed by contemporary
artists, who thus update his strategies and questions for the digital age.
Duisburg
Lehmbruck — Beuys
Everything is Sculpture
Exhibition in cooperation with the Bundeskunsthalle Bonn
Lehmbruck Museum
26 June to 17 October 2021 — [curated by Söke Dinkla and Jessica Keilholz-Busch]
Is Joseph Beuys an artist? Or is he a shaman, a reformer and political activist who has changed
not only art, but society as a whole? The sight of a sculpture by Wilhelm Lehmbruck became a
pivotal experience for the young Beuys. Both Lehmbruck and Beuys were convinced that art has
the power not only to explain the world, but also to change it for the better. In keeping with
Beuys’s own maxim that »everything is sculpture«, this exhibition explores the special
relationship between two of the most important German artists of the twentieth century.
»Sculpture is the essence of things, the essence of nature, of that which is eternally human« –
Beuys took this insight of Lehmbruck’s as the starting point for his Social Sculpture, which
subsequently revolutionised the art of the twentieth century. Ever since then, sculptural forming –
making art – has not primarily referred to the shaping of materials but to the shaping of ideas, the
shaping of the social fabric as a whole. The Duisburg exhibition examines the progress of this
future-oriented idea from its inception to the present day.Düsseldorf
Mataré + Beuys + Immendorff
An Encounter between the Works of Teacher and Student
Exhibition
Akademie-Galerie – Die Neue Sammlung (Kunstakademie Düsseldorf)
27 March to 20 June 2021 — [curated by Vanessa Sondermann]
In spring 1947 Joseph Beuys became a student in the class of Ewald Mataré at the
Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, and in 1951 he became a master student under Mataré. Beuys’s
works from these years show that he engaged comprehensively and productively with the
aesthetics taught by his teacher, especially with regard to religion, mythology and anthroposophy.
Beuys later broke away from traditional notions of art and artistic-didactic concepts both in his
Actions and in his teaching
With its focus on early drawings, sculptures and woodcuts, this exhibition presents and analyses
the proximity and disparity of Mataré and Beuys’s artistic roots. Encounters between the works of
teacher and student reveal numerous aesthetic affinities and remarkable parallels in their spiritual
lives. In addition, one exhibition room is devoted to works by Jörg Immendorff. In these works
Immendorff, the »Beuys Knight« and future professor at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, reflects
on Beuys as a teacher and on his charismatic artistic persona.
Everyone is an Artist
Cosmopolitan Exercises with Joseph Beuys
Exhibition
K20 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen
27 March to 15 August 2021 — [curated by Eugen Blume, Isabelle Malz and Catherine Nichols]
The exhibition provides profound insight into the cosmopolitical thinking of Joseph Beuys as
manifested in his Actions. For here – as an acting, speaking, and moving figure – Beuys
examined the central and radical idea of his expanded concept of art: »Everyone is an Artist«.
The goal of his universalist approach was to renew society from the ground up.
In the exhibition, contemporary artists, along with representatives from the most diverse areas of
society, enter into a multi-layered, transcultural dialogue with Beuys. From today’s perspective,
they confirm, question, and expand his theses on the possibilities of a future conceived in terms
of art.
I’m searching for the dumbest person
Joseph Beuys and Science
Lecture Series
Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf, Department of Art History
12 April to 23 July 2021 — [directed by Timo Skrandies]
This lecture series brings together scholars and scientists from many fields with an interest in
Joseph Beuys’s call to create the conditions for a new life that can sustain the kind of thinking
that incorporates the principles of sculpture. Beuys’s universal plea for a revolution of concepts
will be critically examined through the prism of disciplines ranging from physics to poetry, from
economics to the law.
Sculptural Democracy
Forms of the »We«
Models – Parliaments – Lab
Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf
Public space in Düsseldorf
14 April to 23 July 2021 — [artistic directors: Eugen Blume and Catherine Nichols (beuys 2021),
Markus Bader, Frauke Gerstenberg and Andrea Hofmann (raumlaborberlin), Ludger Schwarte
(Kunstakademie), Timo Skrandies (Heinrich-Heine-Universität)]
Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf, raumlaborberlin and the
project team for »beuys 2021« will explore, discuss, revive, critically question and take forward
the stimuli for the radical co-creation of democracy that Beuys developed and transmitted to
others. For Beuys those stimuli culminated in his idea of a »university«; like figures such as
Wilhelm von Humboldt and John Dewey before him, Beuys regarded the university as a model of
society; Beuys then investigated this idea by setting up his own Free International University
(FIU) in 1973.This jointly conceived, three-part project for »beuys 2021« will open with an action on Beuys’s
birthday on 12 May 2021. Between April and June 2021 an experimental architecture will be
created under the direction of raumlaborberlin. This structure will be divided into three interlinked
areas with space for (1) research and comparison (Models), (2) discussion and negotiation
(Parliaments) and (3) communal being, working, thinking, eating and living (Lab).
Let Them Eat Money
Which Future?!
Guest performance by Deutsches Theater Berlin
Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus
Spring 2021 — [Andres Veiel in collaboration with Jutta Doberstein]
Are we capable of shaping society and our own future? The play Let Them Eat Money. Which
Future?! revolves around this question. For Andres Veiel, director of the award-winning film
portrait of Joseph Beuys (Beuys, 2017), this stage play has a lot to do with this artist: »Beuys was
an artist who looked ahead. He was already asking the right questions thirty years ago, because
he thought his way into the political space.« (Andres Veiel in conversation with Deutsche Presse-
Agentur, 2017, trans. from: »Andres Veiel: Beuys stellte die richtigen Fragen«, Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger,
14.02.2017.)
On behalf of the Deutsches Theater in Berlin, Veiel and Jutta Doberstein developed the idea of
posing Beuys’s questions once again and of addressing them in a »laboratory« set up as a form
of social sculpture. In collaboration with institutes such as the Shell Futures Scenario
Department, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and the Humboldt Forum
Foundation in the Berlin Palace, they examined ways that the public, stakeholders and experts
see, foresee – fear and shape – the future.
Beuysradio
Radio – Podcast – Audiothek
Various locations in NRW
27 March 2021 to 31 January 2022 — [artistic direction: Eugen Blume and Catherine Nichols]
Is everyone an artist? Are trees more intelligent than people? Is sculpture a synonym for the
humane? Are we the revolution? Do we live in a pseudo-democracy? Are capitalism’s days
numbered? Joseph Beuys posed many of the questions that we most urgently face today.
beuysradio investigates what Beuys actually said, how that is pertinent and why his ideas remain
the subject of such heated debate today. This free online audio programme dedicated to Joseph
Beuys presents 100 voices exploring him as a person, 10 podcasts on his most provocative
questions, 25 reports on the festivities comprising the centenary programme »beuys 2021« and 5
playlists introducing the music he listened to, made and influenced.
Heiner Goebbels: A House of Call
My Imaginary Notebook (2020)
Concert
Ensemble Modern Orchestra at Tonhalle Düsseldorf
7 September 2021 — [Ensemble Modern Orchestra, Conductor: Vimbayi Kaziboni, lighting
director: Heiner Goebbels, sound director: Norbert Ommer]
The Beuys celebrations in 2021 could not pass by without special consideration being given to
his impact on other art forms and on the work of artists today whose ideas, methods and themes
would hardly have come about in their present form without his influence. The artist and
composer Heiner Goebbels is inspired both by Beuys’s musical Fluxus actions and by the
political and ecological dimensions of his art. Goebbels’s most recent orchestral work »A House
of Call. My Imaginary Notebook« has multiple connections with prominent themes in Beuys’s
work: foreign voices from Central Asia, Georgia and Iran are heard in this »lieder evening for
orchestra« as are ritual language forms devised by Samuel Beckett and Heiner Müller, which are
juxtaposed with shamanistic recitations by indigenous peoples in Colombia. As if executing
secular responses, the whole orchestra reacts to these cries, utterances, prayers and
incantations.Joseph Beuys-Handbuch
Leben – Werk – Wirkung
J. B. Metzler Verlag; Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf, Department of Art History
Book Presentation
Haus der Universität am Schadowplatz
May 2021 — [edited by Timo Skrandies and Bettina Paust]
»Joseph Beuys. Leben – Werk – Wirkung«, a 400-page handbook edited by Timo Skrandies and
Bettina Paust, with over 80 articles by around 50 authors, will be the first ever comprehensive
compendium on the artist Joseph Beuys. Its publication by Metzler Verlag in Stuttgart in early
2021 will mark the beginning of Beuys’s centenary celebrations.
On the one hand, the handbook will serve as a repository of knowledge and ideas for current and
future Beuys research and provide inspiration for further research. On the other hand, it is also
designed to serve as a standard reference work and source of information for a wider public
interested in Beuys and, in so doing, to promote the discussion of his oeuvre.
The publication comprises seven section: Time and Persona; Works, Groups of Works, Forms of
Work; Recognition; Contexts; People; Trends and Institutions; Terms and Concepts; Reception;
Appendix and Index.
Anyone who doesn’t want to think will be thrown [throw themselves] out
Joseph Beuys and the Shape of the Future
Exhibition
Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Düsseldorf
28 October 2021 to 20 January 2022 — [curated by Anne-Marie Franz and Inga Nake]
The exhibition »Anyone who doesn’t want to think will be thrown [throw themselves] out« in the
foyer of the University and State Library Düsseldorf at the Heinrich-Heine-Universität focuses on
Joseph Beuys’s boxing match for direct democracy through referendums. Beuys’s fight on 8
October 1972, the last day of documenta 5, is symbolic of the physical attrition and absolute
commitment without which, according to Beuys, nothing new can be created.
Visitors taking the exhibition tour in effect enter the ring for four rounds alongside the artist and
thinker Joseph Beuys. The coalescence of Beuys’s artistic career and work, his art and his life, is
mirrored in the boxing match. Analogies between boxing and Beuys’s lifelong fight will be
explored using boxing terminology and selected objects, including items from the collection of the
University and State Library, thereby providing a new perspective on the work of one of the most
important artists of the twentieth century. The fight for life and death, in the ring and in society, is
a fight to shape the future.
Essen
The Invisible Sculpture
The Expanded Concept of Art after Joseph Beuys
Exhibition
Stiftung Zollverein/Ruhr Museum, UNESCO-Welterbe Zollverein, Hall 8
10 May to 26 September 2021 — [curated by Heinrich Theodor Grütter, Rosa Schmitt-Neubauer,
Christoph Schurian, Johannes Stüttgen, Achim Weber and Carla Zimmermann]
This exhibition at the UNESCO World Heritage Site highlights the socio-political dimension of the
work of Joseph Beuys and addresses its importance for the present and the future. Beuys’s
visionary commitment to democracy expanded the international concept of art. This exhibition
revisits his work in the context of the present global debate on ecology and democracy.
Taking Joseph Beuys’s expanded concept of art as its starting point, »The Invisible Sculpture«
resists the historicization and canonization of his work. The juxtaposition of seminal works by
Beuys with specially selected materials – including many unpublished items – is designed to
reignite the debate regarding the significance of his oeuvre and to locate his work in a broader
cultural and socio-political context. To this end, there will be a particular focus on the
philosophical and aesthetic aspects of Beuys’s work that relate both to the current discourse on
social coexistence and to the relationship between humankind and nature.Kleve
Intuition!
Dimensions of the Early Work of Joseph Beuys 1946–1961
Exhibition
Museum Kurhaus Kleve
19 June to 3 October 2021 — [curated by Harald Kunde, Susanne Figner and guest curator
Wolfgang Zumdick]
The exhibition »Intuition! Dimensions of the Early Work of Joseph Beuys 1946–1961« examines
the period between Joseph Beuys’s return to Kleve after the war at the age of twenty-four and his
appointment as a professor at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in 1961. During this »incubation
period«, themes relevant to his future work emerged and a series of three-dimensional essays on
these themes now provides a framework for the exhibition: 1. Biography as material for artistic
forming, 2. Kindred spirits (Lohengrin, Cloots, Steiner, Lehmbruck), 3. Early companions
(Lamers, Getlinger, Mataré), 4. Christian influences and Eurasian horizons, 5. Depictions of
animals: from elementary experiences to the body politic, 6. Self-image – image – action, 7.
Universalist thinking today?
The aim of the exhibition is neither to venerate a local saint nor to topple an artist from an earlier
generation. Instead it highlights the influences, ideas and caesuras that saw Beuys develop from
a »sensitive traditionalist« into a »visionary social sculptor«.
Krefeld
Beuys and Duchamp
Artists of the Future
Exhibition
Kunstmuseen Krefeld, Kaiser Wilhelm Museum
8 October 2021 to 16 January 2022 — [curated by Magdalena Holzhey (Kunstmuseen Krefeld)
and Kornelia Röder (Duchamp-Forschungszentrum, Schwerin)]
This exhibition will be the first large-scale juxtaposition of the work of Joseph Beuys with that of
Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968). Beuys repeatedly referred to his »challenger« Duchamp, not least
in the Action »Das Schweigen von Marcel Duchamp wird überbewertet« [The Silence of Marcel
Duchamp is Overrated]. Yet there are in fact deep links and connections between these two
artists, which, for all the dissimilarity of their work, can be seen in many themes and aspects of
their art. This exhibition will not be purely retrospective, but will review their work from today’s
perspective and shed new light on the forward-looking potential of the radical, interdisciplinary
strategies of both artists. The dialogue between these two protagonists also raises fundamental
questions regarding the role of art in daily life and in society as a whole, and these will be
pursued in greater depth with input from works by a number of contemporary artists.
Leverkusen
The Catalyst
Joseph Beuys and Democracy today
Exhibition
Museum Morsbroich
28 March to 8 August 2021 — [curated by Ania Czerlitzki]
Joseph Beuys’s »Straßenaktion« [Street Action] of 1971 in Cologne chimed with the aims of a
younger generation that self-confidently demanded the opening-up of society. Beuys
sympathized with their revolutionary stance, particularly their ideal of direct democracy, which he
supported with his »Straßenaktion«. He felt it was worth fighting for direct democracy as a form of
political coexistence, which would see the power to make decisions no longer the preserve of
elected representatives but rather the outcome of widespread participation in a daily discourse.
Fifty years later, this idea is still topical. The exhibition »The Catalyst« thus examines whether
and how, in our current situation – an era of global complexity and digitization that is changing
almost all areas of life – new forms of political coexistence can be developed, indeed, whether
democratic values are in fact immutable? These questions will be examined on the basis of
contemporary artistic positions – sometimes explicitly, sometimes implicitly.Mönchengladbach
Institutional Critique
The Museum as a Site of Permanent Conference (J.B.)
Exhibition
Museum Abteiberg
3 June to 24 October 2021 — [curated by Felicia Rappe and Susanne Titz]
Institutional Critique: The Museum as a Site of Permanent Conference. Two exhibitions displayed
at Museum Abteiberg from 3 June to 24 October 2021 as part of »beuys 2021«. The two
exhibitions will comprise of one solo exhibition and one archival exhibition. The solo exhibition will
comprise of works by the London-based artist Ghislaine Leung as commissioned by Museum
Abteiberg and produced in 2020 and 2021. The archival exhibition will comprise of materials by
Joseph Beuys from the Collection and the Andersch Collection and Archive at Museum Abteiberg
and will be presented alongside materials by FLUXUS and related artists from the 1960s through
to the 1980s. The solo exhibition will be curated by Susanne Titz and the archival exhibition by
Felicia Rappe. This information is provided as per the required 1000 characters and has been
edited by Ghislaine Leung, Susanne Titz and Felicia Rappe. Details are correct as of April 2020
and are subject to change dependent on requirements and resources available.
Wuppertal
The Infinity of the Moment
Performances after Joseph Beuys
Kulturbüro Wuppertal
Various places in Wuppertal
3 to 6 June 2021 — [curated by Bettina Paust, Barbara Gronau (Universität der Künste Berlin)
and Timo Skrandies (Heinrich-Heine-Universität)]
In Wuppertal, the city of performance, the Kulturbüro will present a festival from 3 to 6 June 2021
with artistic and scholarly contributions that will engage with the impact of Joseph Beuys’s art on
performative trends in art today.
It was specifically in the realm of performance that Joseph Beuys so crucially influenced
contemporary art. This performance festival will bring together international and local artists and
artists’ collectives whose work has widely varied points of contact with Beuys’s Action art. The
Infinity of the Moment, which will take place at various locations in Wuppertal, will provide the
only platform dedicated to the ephemeral art of performance during the Beuys centenary
celebrations. Lectures by leading academics will examine the special features of Beuys’s Actions
with a particular focus on their current artistic reception.
Torn out of Time
Joseph Beuys: Actions – Photographed by Ute Klophaus. 1965 – 1986
Exhibition
Von der Heydt-Museum
19 September 2021 to 9 January 2022 — [curated by Antje Birthälmer]
Taking its lead from the »24-hour Happening« at Galerie Parnass in Wuppertal in 1965, this
exhibition of photographs by Ute Klophaus (1940–2010) focuses on her images of actions by
Joseph Beuys. Her shots of moments »torn out of the flow of time« in Beuys’s performances also
capture the special charisma, intensity and energy of Beuys in action.
The 24-hour Happening, where other participants included artists such as Nam June Paik, Bazon
Brock, Tomas Schmit and Wolf Vostell, was both one of the most important events in the
international Fluxus movement and a key experience for Klophaus who was born in Wuppertal.
That encounter with Beuys crucially informed her subsequent development and she went on to
photograph Beuys and his work for over twenty years. In the process, she developed the ability to
give visible form to perceptions that go beyond the visual and to convey a sense of the hidden,
elusive factors that also informed Beuys’s designs for the world.You can also read
