IN THE SPIRIT OF LOVE
Politics could be the loving coming together of different worlds. The world of the stay-at-home father, who needs space for his children to play. The world of the investor, who requires building land to make a profit. The world of the artist, who needs undefined, open space. A politician could take care of proportionally dividing and arranging people and things within a space, so that everyone gets an equal share of sunlight.
The documentary 7000 Oaks centers on the eponymous work by Joseph Beuys. During Documenta X, he arranged for 7,000 oak trees to be planted throughout Kassel, each accompanied by a large stone: a basalt stele.
7,000 oaks. Not 7. Not 70. Not even 700 — though that would already have been more than enough. No, it had to be 7,000. A number that, from the outset, takes on the form of a parable. Something you would tell your child at bedtime. Once upon a time, there was a man in Kassel with a hat and a strange coat. Something so outrageously grand that it seems impossible to be true.
Let’s assume a fully grown oak weighs around 100 tons. 7,000 oaks would weigh 700,000 tons. A mid-sized airplane weighs about 80 tons. It would be as if someone scattered 8,750 airplanes over a small town.
The documentary shows how this artwork stirred the minds of the people of Kassel.
Civilians:
“Where there are trees, there will be birds, and where there are birds, there will be droppings. And those droppings will land on cars.”
“The trees will shed enormous amounts of dead leaves.”
“The stones aren’t meaningful — if you play football here, you could hurt yourself.”
It became a negotiation between different parties. One wanted trees. Another wanted parking spaces.
Joseph Beuys:
“To solve problems in the spirit of love.
So that we do not have real adversaries.
So that we do not fight against the people.
But solve the problems together with our political opponents.”
This excessive idea had to coexist with several other worlds. It wasn’t merely the Aristotelian act of pressing a form (7,000 oaks) into matter (citizens, officials, streets, and squares). It was a process of negotiating, persuading, charming, reformulating, and reimagining. And this took place on every level of the urban fabric.
The social sculpture is the place, the action, the form where this resolving of problems — of differences in opinion, of conflicting needs — in the spirit of love unfolded. Because the sculpture exists within a social fabric, it must engage in the spirit of love with the need for parking, the fear of droppings, the aversion to dead leaves, and the risk of physical injury. The social sculpture is the loving bringing together of Beuys’ world with other worlds.
Art becomes political when it ventures into the unknown: the worlds outside of art. When it stands in the wind, the mud, and the rain. Where foreign needs and values take precedence. Where people shout at you. Where people don’t want art at all. Where, first, you must clear a little space for art — in the spirit of love. And in the act of clearing that space, of brushing away the dust but also accepting the dirt, the sculpture takes on its social form.
This process is both an unyielding standstill and a turning with the wind. Like a basalt stele: never budging from its place! Resolutely clinging to its idea! Eternally unchanging! But also like a tree: subject to the wind, to the rain, and to animals nibbling at you. And through this, constantly changing, growing, moving.
I cannot speak about trees without thinking of Hesse, who lets a tree grow in every story. “Every farm boy knows that the hardest, noblest wood has the narrowest rings, and that the most indestructible, strongest, most exemplary trunks grow high in the mountains, in constant danger.”
The basalt stones and the trees are a model for a future concept of making together — for a political art practice. For constancy within change. A loving bringing together of worlds. The inside of art and the outside of the non-art world. In the spirit of love. For a resilient kind of art, far away from its familiar habitat, high up in the mountains, in constant danger.