Na na na
A meditation on/for/with Joseph Beuys
Participatory installation
Concept and creation from Sasha Amaya
Curated by Johanna Gustafsson Fürst and Benjamin Gerdes
Produced by Silvia Thomackenstein
Transcription and Translation Assistance from Falk Grever
Sound Editing Sasha Amaya
Premiere 2021
Royal Institute of Art Stockholm in cooperation with the Goethe Institut Stockholm
Audio installation available upon request
When the project of creating a work responding to Joseph Beuys was first proposed and the research embarked upon, one thing I was struck by was the way in which much of Beuys's thought has been diffused into, and taken up by, both middle European artistic culture at large, as well as echoed in certain sectors of society more broadly. Provocations he once made -- startling enough to bring the guffaws of crowds and the a fury of debate -- are now greeted as evident truths at best, platitudes at worst. I hear Beuys's aphorisms echoed back to me by my peers, in community forums, and in yoga studios. While Beuys is not the only one to have had such ideas, and indeed drew from spiritual and folkloric practices that have continued to have their own influence, one of the powers of his words comes from their distinct ability to dissolve themselves from his name, and diffuse rapidly into contexts so that they appear as evident ''goods'' about how we ought to be thinking about art and how we ought to be working.
Beuys's own rhetoric in the Kunst / Antikunst debate includes both a strident artistic proclamation and a rousing call for individuals to aid in a collective existential awakening. In reframing it through the lens of a downloadable meditation, I reframe how these words are cast, and how they are heard, pointing to methods of mass communication (how would Beuys spread his message today?), how ellision between artistic ideas of the 70's and new age spiritualism today (amongst many other commonalities, the questioning of science itself appears in both), and personality complex of a leader (Beuys's own attempts at erasure of a personal life to exist only as a public figure, and the form of so many spiritual guides today).
This meditation is, therefore, an invitation to both visit the seed of so much of Beuysian thought, but also to remain critical of the way it has infiltrated and continues to influence our world today, often without an anchor.