We present a selection of texts that inspire the team of Sa Llavor and share in the weekly meetings as part of their pedagogical path.
JOSEPH BEUYS, “Every man an artist.” Conversations in Documenta V (1972). Compiled by Clara Bodenmann-Ritter.
Over a hundred days, Joseph Beuys spoke and discussed “social plastic”, an expanded concept of art that would lead us to a new model of society and the world, in whose center is the creative human being, the art and creativity as the only revolutionary forces.
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Question: So what you do is a direct political action?
Answers Joseph Beuys: No, for me it is an artistic action. Because that artistic concept is designed to make the self-determination demanded by democracy be seen as the possibility. There are many people who say “yes, well, but the human being cannot determine himself, he has no internal freedom.”
So what we want to discuss is a science of freedom. We want to start more and more of self-determination, of human freedom as a creative starting point, that is, artistic. So it is a cultural issue first of all. And also, a matter of education and parenting in general, right?. So we do not start from the means of production, but from the freedom of the human being as a creative creature that determines itself, and there we find the primary means of production that acts in history and creates the future. To that extent, it is a complement of Marxism, a necessary complement.
Q: It is the principle of humanism.
JB: Yes, I would say of a libertarian humanism. And in saying that, that concept of freedom naturally refers to the free individual. And in that case it is not necessary to use the word humanism at all, because that is basically the human question: the human being who determines himself as a free individual, and shapes the next phase of history.
P: Yes, I would say…
JB: Precisely creativity in self-determination; and that means that I have to take responsibility now. I have to participate, cooperate. I can no longer live selfishly just for myself.
Q: But there are many people who don’t want that.
JB: Sure. But on the other hand it is important to make humans try as it is because they know, as if we were saying, that they really take the taste to live as human beings when they do not think selfishly, but live, why not say it? Christianly , that is, nothing for me, all for others. And that is much more exciting than taking drugs, isn’t it? Let them prove the experiences that living like this provides.
