"Trees have Rights Too !"

A great final tour of the exhibition with a mixture of people who were engaged with the exhibition and knowledgeable about Beuys so we were able to have a broad based discussion about the work, the ideology and the materials used Beuys. All things fatty and felt like were admired and discussed as was his tightly controlled image and iconic 'look' - some picked up on his trickster character and ability to spin lots of stories and ideas together to create a series of rather confusing contradictions and double bluffs.

A surprising visual analogy was made between the poster advertising the 7.000 Eichen where the piles of basalt waiting to be planted resembled the piles of bodies found at concentration camps photographed at the end of the WW2. One member of the tour thought the connection would be obvious to anyone of the generation who directly experienced the Second World War.

It is interesting that Buchloh, a fierce critic of Beuys, felt he had sidestepped recent German history, yet years later on reviewing his original analysis of the artist, found that in fact Beuys was the only artist of the immediate post war period to really address issues relating to horrors of the Second World War.

Artists Ackroyd and Harvey were the guest speakers at Speakers Corner and they spoke about their project using acorns taken from the original Oaks used in 7,000 Eichen in Kassel. Beuys’s Oaks were planted 27 years ago and theirs are just 2 years old, yet the potential to spread the word about the importance of trees for the global community is huge. In his social sculptures like 7000 Eichen Beuys promoted the idea of regeneration, the passing of time and the connection between life forms on the planet and how they can be sustained and supported by the broader community in creative ways.

Ackroyd and Harvey posed a number of questions :
Why are we unable to find global agreement about the preservation of forests?

The creation of cities and civilizations, stretching back to the first city created by Gilgamesh to defend his people from outside threats , depended largely on clearing large areas of forest in order to both create the space to build cities and the materials with which to construct them. The Romans too cleared large areas of temperate forest to grow crops on and for domestic and industrial use. With ever increasing deforestation civilizations soon decline and the 20th century in particular has seen not only continued deforestation, particularly in tropical climates, but also an associated increase in desertification.
The suggestion was made, via an Antarctic survey and a meeting with comedian Marcus Bridgestock, that every small step that politicians and world leaders make to halt this destruction, should be supported and applauded by the rest of us (preferably whilst wearing a suit and tie !)


What do we need to do stop the drive for economic growth ?

This often means the wealthy increase their wealth at the expense of the
poor.
The drive to exploit the planet to create wealth is deeply embedded in the
west and increasingly in the rest of the world. Belief systems
that see-saw between Plato who lamented the loss of forests in his day and
Socrates who dismissed nature as kind of folkloric fantasy mirror similar
swings between a romantic view of nature and the thinking dominated by
logic, reason and the capitalist drive to make greater and greater profits from natural

resources.

We know that around 50% of forests are cleared for domestic dependence on fuel and that this rate of deforestation is not sustainable but there are some positive actions made by groups and individuals which could well lead the way to better understanding of how we might work together to ensure forests and other resources are sustained and regenerated for the future.

Manchester, for example, has a long term tree-planting strategy and has increased its stock by many thousands. This follows research that suggests that by increasing our tree stock by 10 % in urban areas we can lower the temperature.

In Turkey 2 business men have planted 850,000,000 acres of oak trees.

In the face of violent opposition 30 million trees in Kenya have been planted by women’s groups led by Wangari Maathai.

Ecuador recently voted on a new constitution that would give Ecuador's tropical forests, islands, rivers and air similar legal rights to those normally granted to humans.

China, the Philippines and Haiti have taken steps to preserve and maintain their forests.

Polly Higgins, a barrister and environmentalist, started a website and blog - Trees Have Rights Too which led to her going to Sweden to present the call for a Universal Declaration of Planetary Rights at the Tallberg Forum and later at the United Nations UK & Northern Ireland conference on Climate Change.

Books :
Forests: The Shadow of Civilization by Robert Pogue Harrison

A keen audience of 22 contributed to the talk with informed insights and knowledge about a range of environmental issues. It has been interesting to note that for the talks that I have been a part of that much of the audience has been made up of those interested in the subject of the talk (rather than coming at it from an artist's angle) It would be interesting to know how many of the particpants spend time looking at the exhibition before hand and whether the work of Beuys in any way illuminates or resonates with their interest in war, education, forestry, bees etc !

!!!!!!!!!!! E ! N ! E ! R ! G ! Y !!!!!!!!!!!!

The afternoon of September 12th was one of shifting currents of thought and energy. In the gallery there was a steady movement of people looking at Beuys.

One couple had returned following an earlier visit and had brought friends back to show them the exhibition, even though they felt they didn’t really like it and thought it didn’t belong in the De La Warr Pavilion. They led me round the exhibition asking animated questions and demonstrated a deep fascination with Beuys’ choice of materials and sculptural arrangements.

The Fat Chair provoked quite a bit of discussion, which led onto talking about how art can be made out of anything and that rubbish can be recycled into artefacts.

I really enjoyed talking to them because they had what I can see, upon reflection, was a kind of constructive resistance to the work that allowed them to question, doubt and be opened up to possibilities of understanding.

After experiencing the Speaker’s Corner discussion all about energy led by Steve Martin, physics teacher, I could describe their engagement with the exhibition as manifestations of kinetic, potential and elastic energy:

They moved enthusiastically from work to work, with an attitude of boundless enquiry bursting through a thin veneer of mocking deprecation of Beuys. This was their kinetic force.

They were keen to have their minds opened and find out more, I felt we could have talked all day. This was the potential energy they exhibited.

And they were willing for their minds to roam, for us all to take part in a spirited and lively conversation that took us in many directions. And in this way they showed what elastic, mind-energy can be like. (I apologise to Steve for stretching an interpretation of his explanation of the forms of energy to its limits.)

Steve’s talk was well attended by up to 25 people. He was very energetic in his demonstration of seven types of energy: kinetic, potential, thermal, gravitational, sound, light and elastic, using an elastic band as a prop. He communicated his enthusiasm for his subject very well to the gathered group.

His basic thesis was that the universe, having been created by a big bang was full of energy and that energy cannot run out, it can only be transferred. Therefore, on the one hand, there is nothing to worry about in terms of an energy crisis because energy is readily available everywhere if we only harness it sensibly. On the other hand, however, humans are constantly showing how wasteful we are of energy and seem incapable at the moment of properly investigating and implementing sustainable forms of energy.

The discussion turned around ideas of how to plan more constructively

for our future energy use and despair at how we, as humans, let greed and profit motivate us in the short term instead of acting sensibly in the present to conserve our future energy needs.

There was a sense in the group of shared interests and some irritation at the actions of others. We formed a kind of microcosm for that moment of people bonded by a common need for rational approaches regarding the production and consumption of energy.

Many thanks to all who were present on the afternoon of the 12^th. If any of you would like to add anything here do make your own contribution to the blog.

Art Education

This Saturday's 'Speakers' Corner' tackled the thorny issue of art education. If we take as a starting point Beuys' statement, 'Everyone is an artist', then how can art be taught? Beuys lost his teaching position at the Dusseldorf Academy due to his refusal to limit access to his course.

Leo Powell introduced some reflections on his personal experience as an art student today. In particular, he is interested in how our environment affects the way we work and think. He described the problem of certain kinds of seating, for example in a pub, where individuals can find themselves excluded from the conversation. For him, a round table is not just a table but a philosophy. Showing us a series of images, he traced the historic development of art school environments beginning with a seventeenth-century, amphitheatre-style arrangement. From students seated at easels, each working from the model, there was a radical departure in the 1960s when dialogue rather than instruction took centre-stage. In today's art studio, the laptop - portable technology - is a key component of the working environment.

In today's art school, the communal, studio space is often empty with many people preferring to work at home where they have easy access to the kettle/internet. Whereas Leo had looked forward to the freedom offered by the art school experience, with the emphasis on the student pursuing his/her own interests independently, he found it a challenge to work in a vacuum. His conclusion was that the most important thing an art school can provide is not studio space or tools but a community. Developments in technology mean that this community can be constructed in different ways. For example, his tutor answered a question sent by email, responding using her Iphone while on the bus. What do these experiences mean in terms of the student-teacher relationship?

In the imagined art studio of the future there are, for Leo, 4 key points to be taken into consideration:

Access to information
You no longer need to physically visit the library and much course work can be delivered virtually. Open access to knowledge means that the traditional authority of the teacher is undermined - and this is a good thing! The teacher becomes a facilitator/catalyst.

Communication
Online learning environments make you focus on the content rather than the mode of communication.

The computer used to be seen as an an additional tool in the learning environment - now it is the environment.

Interface
If you consider the way Microsoft Office is structured, does being forced to organise everything into files and folders make us work and think like office workers?

The group discussion focussed on notions of time, play, the encounter with real objects (books) and focus. If the teacher-student relationship is irrevocably changed as a result of open access to knowledge, is the 'inspirational' teacher still something to hope for? What about the example of Beuys as shaman? What is the role of passion and the emotions in the teaching of art? Are one's peers the most influential teachers?

Meaning, Context and Interpretation

Two questions continue to crop up when looking at Beuys, namely: how and where do we find meaning? This week our tour opened with a discussion on Beuys' wartime experiences and the possibility of extreme events shaping life. I spent some time with Adrian who had come from Margate to see the show; what he knew about Beuys was sketchy and he talked about the difficulty separating fact from fiction. Some things seemed far-fetched yet turned out to be true, for example, he had heard that Beuys had at one time been an acrobat in a circus, but surely this was just another story spun to add mystery to a charismatic artist? We looked at connections between Monument to the Stag, Coyote II and the significance of traditional animal myths and their spiritual power in Beuys’ work. The potential for healing took us to the artistic legacy of 7000 Oaks and Adrian drew a parallel to his own experience of urban regeneration, talking of the Turner Contemporary being an integral part of the Margate Renewal Partnership plans. As a fellow artist, I was interested in how Adrian saw himself getting involved in the gallery’s current community projects.
Sue, her friend and their two sons were whispering about the strange use of materials when I joined them. Looking at Fat Corner (Process) we talked about energy and warmth, making a connection to social sculpture and environmental change. But the work looked so simple, the materials everyday, it seemed to the boys as if anyone could do it. Maybe that was the point, if everyone could be an artist, using found materials might be part of that message?


In the spirit of Beuys, Rohan Jayasekera, Associate Editor for Index on Censorship, held Speakers Corner standing in the gallery where people were free come and go. There was strong language from the start, which Rohan neatly identified by raising a hat in the air shortly before it’s arrival, giving spectators the chance to leave, or to stay and gauge whether the offense was worth the knowledge imparted.
It was fascinating to hear him speak about the reasons why we censor others and ourselves. Here are just a few of the many aspects of censorship and freedom of expression that he talked about.
Setting rules and “bad language”: Individually, we all set our own rules about what language we are prepared to use and tolerate and our reasons are various. Rohan addressed the importance of considering context when deciding what is or is not offensive and to guard against the temptation to be politically correct. As one example, he cited the renaming of Guy Gibson’s dog in the classic WWII film The Dam Busters, and the continuing debate around its racial offense. Some words, once overwhelmingly abhorrent are now considered by some to have lost the power to harm, having been ‘reclaimed’ by the intended victims.
Censoring extremists and Freedom of Expression: Should those who speak to offend as well as those who offend while speaking have the same freedom of speech? What about extremists such as David Irving and Geert Wilders? Someone asked about the row concerning Rohan’s decision to appear with David Irving at the Oxford Union, declining to comply with the “no platform rule” refusing fascists the right to a shared public forum. As Rohan supports the general principle of freedom of speech, he believes that principle should be extended to extremists also. The Oxford Constabulary decided to cancel the event, citing concerns regarding public order – censorship or real concern?
Rohan turned our attention to the restriction the individuals right to Freedom of Speech, particularly when expressing political dissent near Parliament and the restrictions imposed by the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005. But what about fundamental freedoms found within Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights?
Interpretation of the rules and fear of prosecution: Rohan argues that Human Rights Act 1998 is open to selective interpretation. Obviously, the Act can be and is used to good effect, but there are times when it can be seriously misused to control information to serve personal or commercial interests. The case of Mosley v News Group Newspapers Limited came up, in which Max Mosley challenged an invasion of his private life.
Freedom of the Press: Journalists around the world face serious danger for simply doing their job. Rohan spoke specifically of the jail sentence recently meted out to J.S Tissainayagam, found guilty on terrorism charges after criticising the army’s treatment of Tamil civilians. The Government interpreted his reports as false, accusing Tissainayagam of stoking ethnic discord, sentencing him to twenty years hard labour.
These are just some of the many aspects of Rohan’s presentation. We ended with a discussion exploring how complex the issues surrounding censorship are and how important it is to defend the right to freedom of speech. Context and interpretation of rules and law seem to be the central issues. The advice Rohan gave us on parting was: consider the context, consider the rules, but watch the law.
I

Just as I was leaving the gallery I bumped into Jean, whom I recognised from an earlier talk. She told me how she loved the Beuys season and had visited on several occasions. Jean wasn't sure we need to understand everything we see, 'getting it' can often be illusive and transitory; the most important thing for her is to keep coming back and allowing the work to take effect. We discussed how the show taps into what matters generally in life; the importance of connection, to other people and the consequences of our actions, be they personal, local or global.


Thanks once more to Rohan, and all those who were involved in the gallery tour. Apologies for omissions. You are very welcome add any comments if you weren't at the discussion but are interested in the themes.

Saturday 12 September

At Speakers’ Corner on Saturday 12 September

We cannot create or destroy energy, just change its form. What is here now, will always be here… so why all this worry about an energy crisis?

Science teacher Steve Martin will be exploring our understanding of energy, from Big Bang theory to the nuclear question, via wind up torches!

Saturday 5 September

At Speakers' Corner on Saturday 5 September:

From ‘good manners’ to ‘prevention of terrorism’ – the many reasons why people censor themselves and others and what it costs free expression. Parental Advisory: Strong language and occasional legal references, from the start…

Rohan Jayasekera
Associate Editor
Index on Censorship
www.indexoncensorship.org

TOUR & SPEAKERS’ CORNER 29th AUGUST 09

EXHIBITION VIEW

Only art is capable of dismantling the repressive effects of a senile social system that continues to totter along the deathline. JB

Our focus in the gallery today was very much on politics and Beuys’ concept of social sculpture, in which society as a whole is seen as one great work of art to which each person can contribute creatively. We talked about 7000 Oaks, Beuys’ action involving the planting of 7000 oak trees in the town of Kassel, Germany. And we wondered whether those trees - now 27 years old - and the basalt rocks positioned next to each of them, have survived the plots and schemes of town-planners and developers to ‘improve’ the town! We thought that they probably have survived because their status as ‘artworks’ gives them a kind of protection that ‘ordinary’ trees don’t always enjoy. It's a strange world we live in!

Talking about trees, I told one of my favourite traditional tales about a greedy landlord who threatened to evict an old woman from her house and the field next to it, where every Spring she grew beans or corn. “Please let me plant just one more crop,” said the old woman. “Very well,” said the landlord. “But when the crop is ready, you must go.” After harvest time, the landlord returned to claim his property. “But my crop isn’t ready yet,” pleaded the old woman. “Look!” She took the landlord out to the field and triumphantly showed him what she had planted: acorns!

In the context of planners and developers, I mentioned an adamant Bexhill taxi driver I recently met who told me that the DLWP was “a waste of public money” and should be immediately pulled down! He was also convinced that the local council shouldn’t have spent public money on refurbishing the town’s Edwardian train station and that what the town really needed on that site was a car park! I thought of a verse from American singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell’s 1970 song Big Yellow Taxi:

They took all the trees

And put them in a tree museum

Then they charged the people

A dollar and a half just to see 'em

Don't it always seem to go,

That you don't know what you’ve got

‘Til it’s gone

They paved paradise

And put up a parking lot

On a more positive note, in the gallery today we stopped in front of Rose for Direct Democracy (1973) and Capri Battery (1985) to talk about how Beuys’ political/environmental ideas chime so well with contemporary movements focused on direct action and localised campaigns. This took us very neatly into the subject of today’s Speakers’ Corner - the Transition Towns movement, which is trying to find new, community-based solutions to the issues of climate change and the depletion of oil supplies.

In the middle of this discussion - and as a kind of aside - one person was very keen to know what happens to the red rose, when it needs to be replaced in Rose for Direct Democracy. “I don’t know,” I replied. “I’d really love to have one,” he said. “As a kind of souvenir.” “You’ll probably need to write to the Exhibitions department and make a formal inquiry,” I said. But just then one of the curators appeared in the gallery holding in her hand ... a fresh, red rose. “What are you going to do with the old one?” I asked, after she had removed it from its scientific-looking vase and replaced it with the new one. “Throw it out,” she replied. “Can we have it,” I asked. “Why not?” she said.

So the man got his red rose and left with the biggest, beaming smile I think I’ve ever seen.

A smile for direct democracy.

It is impossible for human beings to bring their creative intention into the world any other way than through action. JB

SPEAKERS’ CORNER

I find the concept of politics increasingly impossible. JB

transition: from the Latin transitionem, meaning ‘a going across or over.’ A noun of action from transire meaning ‘go or cross over.’

Beuys’ 1974 lecture tour in America was called Energy Plan for the Western Man. Of course, he wasn’t just talking about energy in the literal sense - nuclear versus solar, etc - but also about the creative energy of individual human beings and their potential to transform society. This is the orbit of politics which seems to have interested Beuys the most: the politics of personal transformation or transition from one state to a better one.

Our speaker today was Martin Grimshaw, who spoke about the Transition Towns movement and in particular the movement’s work in Brighton & Hove. Martin explained that this work is based on a wonderfully positive premise: that the skills and energy which have brought us to this stage in our evolution can take us forward to face future challenges and opportunities. Transition Towns is about very localised initiatives that seek to harness the skills and expertise of individuals for the greater good of the community - creating a kind of ‘collective genius.’ It’s about imagining positive visions of what kind of society we want to live in and then thinking backwards - ‘backcasting’ as opposed to forecasting - about how these visions can be realised. Above all, it’s about enabling a kind of ‘personal alchemy’ which acknowledges that meaningful transition can best take place when an inner transition has paved the way.

That’s why the Transition Towns movement looks to the world of therapy and personal counselling - as much as to the world of political activism - as a paradigm of effective change. Martin put it quite simply: let’s look around and see who’s actually making a difference in our communities and then let’s learn from them. What is it that drug counsellors or Alcoholics Annonymous or psychotherapy is doing that manages to change peoples’ lives? Isn’t it all based on building personal resilience so that individuals are stronger and better equipped to face change? So let’s use this model of building personal resilience but then extend it to help us face the two big global issues that have to be addressed now and in the coming years: climate change and peak oil.

Peak oil is the point at which we reach the maximum amount of oil that we will ever be able to pump. The beginning of the downward slide may already be happening. The point is, as Martin said, that the repercussions of climate change and peak oil can’t be fixed by a wish or the fantasy that someone else will magically fix it for us. It’s not about them. It’s about us.

How did previous generations negotiate radical changes in their lives? What can we learn from our elders? These questions yield another source of inspiration for the Transition Towns movement and Martin gave several useful examples. When the Soviet Union ceased to exist and its oil supplies to Cuba dried up, Cubans found ways of bringing agriculture into the cities - digging up areas of concrete, growing food in gardens and window boxes - so that they weren’t reliant on tractors and oil-derived fertilisers. Closer to home, in recent flood situations it was often the older people who knew what to do because they’d faced the problem before.

Martin kept his account of the Transition Towns movement brief as he wanted to hear about the ideas and experiences of the group. We had a wide-ranging discussion in which we tried to focus on the small, practical things that we can do to change our towns and our experiences of living in them. Of course, it’s sometimes easier to cite examples of how NOT to improve our environments and we heard plenty of examples of incompetent or insincere initiatives! Some of us felt that the financial pressures on younger people to conform to the standard, ‘business as usual’ model mitigated against involvement in movements for positive change. Towards the end, however, somebody raised the question of how the arts can help to generate transformative ideas or give sharper focus to issues and this seemed particularly appropriate as the discussion was taking place in the entrance to the Beuys is Here exhibition!

According to Beuys, the inner needs of a human being should be met not through ‘things’ but through the “production of spiritual goods” in the form of ideas, art and education. We didn’t change the world today. But the air was filled with exciting ideas that made us think about our small place in it. And that's a start.