JOSEPH BEUYS AT WARDLOW II___ INTERNATIONAL CENTRE OF MOVING IMAGE
At the heart of Melbourne, Australia’s vibrant Fitzroy cultural precinct, Wardlow II stands as a unique hub for the moving image, driven by a passion for innovative storytelling and creative exploration. Founded by filmmaker Brodie Higgs (with feature films premiering at Berlinale and MIFF), Wardlow II is quickly gaining recognition for hosting curated events that bring together Artists in Residence, international and Australian artists, intellectuals, cultural icons, and guest curators.
Wardlow II offers a range of creative environments including a Moving Image Gallery, Cinema, Symposium Space, Artist Residence, and a Production Company, all spanning across three tiers: Moving Image Art, Crossover Art/Film, and Traditional Long-Form Film.
The launch program was a two-day event showcasing select Joseph Beuys moving image works, speeches, documentaries, and an expert panel discussion exploring the overarching theme, ‘How relevant is Beuys today?’
With co-curator and artist, John Saint Michel, Brodie Higgs decided it was the perfect time to bring Beuys’ legacy into the public’s consciousness, presented through the immaterial medium of moving image and panel discussion.
John Saint Michel became fascinated by Joseph Beuys’ work many years ago when he came across the “7000 Oaks” installation in Kassel, Germany. For this piece, Beuys planted 7,000 oak trees, each paired with a basalt stone.
As a young adult from a working-class family, and with no formal art education, John Saint Michel would have probably been one of those students at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, where Beuys taught. He was dismissed from this institution as he did not believe he had the right to decide who was or was not granted the ability to study art.
Beuys’ work took Saint Michel into a space that was truly reflective, purposeful, and even spiritual—away from the noise and competitive chaos of the 21st century, where art’s purpose was merely to create a spectacle and make money. Through Beuys, he came to learn that museums were fast becoming the new department stores, and he had to decide whether to adapt to this new world or die.
Beuys was, no doubt, ahead of his time. His works and ideas are prophetic. Especially in a time when society reminds us that the only way to achieve a very basic level of ‘success’ is to be aggressive. Beuys critiqued even back in his day, that to be an artist, was to quickly learn how to be fiercely competitive, to compete and package yourself better than your peers. You can see this clearly demonstrated in his work, “How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare”. His solution to this was a total rethink of what ‘art is’ and how it can be viewed and applied across all levels of society.
Brodie and John are currently in-studio, putting together a feature film in Australia and Paris, while also developing an extensive program at Wardlow II, Melbourne. Their film touches upon several facets of Beuys’ ideologies, for example, the concept of ‘Show Your Wound’ (‘Zeig Deine Wunde’), in that healing can be achieved through the strength in vulnerability. It is a great reminder that the chaos happening ‘within’ us is what we impart across our family, our social circles, our society, and what we inflict upon mother earth.
Wardlow II’s Beuys program, as he would put it, was a form of ‘Social Sculpture’—a community working to transform a sick world into a healthy one—the true purpose of art. Showing our wounds, so we can express our truer selves rather than our falsities through competitive aggression.
Dr. Rhea Thonges Stringaris, a former curator of Documenta in Kassel and a longtime friend of Beuys, was a key panelist at the ‘How relevant is Beuys today?’ event. She was very excited to see this kind of curation happening on the other side of the world.
“What your community is presenting at Wardlow reminds me of my time with Beuys when we founded the Free International University.”
Joining Rhea on the panel was Ian George, a Beuys collector and founder of the Joseph Beuys Cafe in Melbourne’s Nicholas Building, and John Halpren, an activist and filmmaker who documented Beuys during his solo show installation at the Guggenheim in New York.
In terms of what the attendees took away from this event, it was simple: the responsibility of being authentic. To be human. That it is okay to be a lone wolf in a world of (as Dr Thonges-Stringaris puts it) ‘robots’.
One of the films screened as part of the program, was Beuys’ final speech before he died in 1986 at the Wilhelm Lehmbruck Museum in Duisburg, Germany. Beuys had received a sculpture award where he touched on the individual responsibility to keep the flame alive. In this final speech, he spoke of the great potential of art, the possibility that the human spirit could transcend the confines of forces imposed on humanity by a man-made society and system, one that was becoming quickly sick. Prophetic indeed. He went on to explain that social sculpture transcends materialistic value. As part of the discussion, one of the key themes was technology and artificial intelligence. Ian George offered the idea that perhaps we should spend our energy focusing more on being human—with soul.
The most memorable moment was when Ian George closed the symposium with a beautiful poem by the Persian poet Rumi. It was a delight to be in a room with a small group of people where the vibration was like no other. This event was a great reminder that celebrating the life of Beuys was not limited to his legacy, but a living and breathing mode of activism, perhaps even, art. Art is sometimes as simple as people coming together.
“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field.
I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase “each other”
doesn’t make any sense.
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.” Rumi.
Wardlow II would like to thank:
Goethe Institut
Ian George
Andres Veiel
John Halpern Di Leva
Schloss Moyland
Werner Krüger
Helmut Weitz
Dr. Wolfgang Zumdick
Dr. Rhea Thönges-Stringaris
RMIT University
Madman films
ZKM Karlsruhe
Nikka Whiskey
An extended thank you to Joseph Beuys Cafe for making this event possible.
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Interview by Nancy Bugeja. Words by John Saint Michel.
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