Beuys and me

[imomus]

Colour me gobsmacked, bollock-chuffed and flyposted all over town. Not only is there a one-page picture of me in Street magazine this month, I've just found another rather amazing picture in another of my favourite magazines.

Leafing through the September issue of British art magazine Frieze I found, on page 155, a picture of Joseph Beuys doing a didactic lecture-performance called The Jimmy Boyle Days at the Canongate Demarco Gallery in Edinburgh in 1980. It's an illustration for an article by Jan Verwoert called "Class Action". You can read the feature here.



"Fuck," I thought, "I went to that!" And sure enough, on closer inspection, there I am, sitting in the front row, a skinny, glaikit student wearing Doc Martens and Metzler Harvard spectacles. I don't even think I have any photos of myself aged 20, but it's me all right, a stern virgin with a big crush on art. How bizarre that it should appear in Frieze magazine, 26 years later! And that I should have morphed in the meantime into some kind of performance artist myself!

I was in that historic, hot little room (it took a lot to make me roll my sleeves up in those days) largely thanks to two people: dynamic Edinburgh curator and culturepreneur Ricky Demarco, who invited Beuys to Scotland several times, and writer Caroline Tisdall, who the year before had published a very big, very stern and grey book on Beuys which I'd bought at the Edinburgh Bookshop. It was full of strange introverted drawings of hares and honey, or grainy black and white photographs of performances. Perhaps I hoped to impress the art student I was currently longing helplessly for, Paula Garcia Sarria, or perhaps the book just tied in with the grim, grey, grainy aesthetic of the latest album from Dome.

"Caroline Tisdall's book on Joseph Beuys, published by Thames and Hudson in 1979, was the first contemporary art book I bought," I wrote last year. "I can honestly say it changed my life. I fell under Beuys' shamanic spell and, when Richard Demarco announced in 1980 that Beuys would deliver a lecture in Edinburgh as part of the Free International University (Beuys' informal university), I made sure I was there. About twenty-five of us sat in a little room in a courtyard off Edinburgh's Cowgate as Beuys, rather enfeebled by his hunger strike in solidarity with Jimmy Boyle, sipped from a glass of water and made one of his tortuously intricate spidery blackboards explaining the connections between the striking British Aerospace workers at Coventry and ancient Celtic snakelore. There is a connection, you know. Let's find that blackboard and I'll prove it."

Well, I know it looks a bit like a scene out of Gnarls Barkley's Smiley Faces video, but proof that I was there in that room with Kunstler Beuys in 1980 is now on page 155 of the current edition of Frieze. For me, it's a giddy thrill.

Comments

[cityramica.livejournal.com]

::grabs issue of Frieze::
:)))
well color me amused and jealous! good eye.

gosh you know as recently as last year i had classes at stanford based around Beuys. wish i could have been there 26 years ago.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

You could have taken my young maidenhead too, a year early!

[cityramica.livejournal.com]

i'm surprised you weren't smitten with the ambiguously gendered individual with the atomic-cloud afro seated next to you.

oh dear "the penis song" just came up on random. bad computer!

aw you were so cute & dorky.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Yes, a real dork. And amongst such a cool crowd of... well, sociology lecturers, by the look of them:

[cityramica.livejournal.com]

emphasis on cute, Nick.

ok fine. you're the hottest piece of ass in that room. i admit it.

[cityramica.livejournal.com]

oh hell is this public?

::runs away::

[charleshatcher.livejournal.com]

i'm surprised you weren't smitten with the ambiguously gendered individual with the atomic-cloud afro seated next to you.

The body language of said individual seems to suggest that any feelings would have been unrequited. Also, Mr. Currie, your posture is terrible -- it puts me in mind of Stephen Hawking, although he has his excuses.

bell telephone laboratories

[mongoltrophies.livejournal.com]

One of the voices in "A Complete History of Sexual Jealousy" sounds exactly like Stephen Hawking's, so maybe their similar physiognomy is reflected in the voices of their computers.

Re: bell telephone laboratories

[charleshatcher.livejournal.com]

No longer, alas. (http://www.gizmag.co.uk/go/2708)

Re: bell telephone laboratories

[mongoltrophies.livejournal.com]

How sad.
At least Momus' computer's voice has, if anything, become less "natural sounding." To me "Sempreverde" is mostly unintelligble, so it's good the lyrics are provided.
Check out this synthesized speech (http://www.box.net/public/j2ny3n9m66) from 1961, on punch cards. (The last part was Stanley Kubrick's inspiration for a certain part of 2001.)

Re: bell telephone laboratories

[charleshatcher.livejournal.com]

Listening to Handheld (http://www.phespirit.info/momus/20010114.htm) always brings a tear to my eye. The only other work of art that can do that is Blake Edwards' Breakfast At Tiffany's, when Miss Golightly almost loses her cat. There's something about the human-pet relationship that just gets me.

[pixelmist.livejournal.com]

Some years ago (OK, it was two), I saw myself in a picture of the protests against the Republican presidential summit in New York. Much to my chagrin, I looked like a bored, restless snob amongst a bunch of screaming, happy, passionate kiddies. I can't find the picture now, but it was an odd moment.

And I wish I'd read about another twenty year-old stern virgin with a big crush on art five years ago. Where were you when I was having my crisis of sexuality, Momus? Where?!

[klasensjo.livejournal.com]

Beuys's look somewhat resembles "art brut" music extraordinaire Jandek.

[sparkligbeatnic.livejournal.com]

My former favourite cafe in Kyoto, Pachamama, which closed a few years ago when the owner moved into the hills to grind coffee beans for a living, was, amongst other things, a shrine to Beuys.

Here's a remixed (http://sb.stanleylieber.com/beuys_bali_remix.mp3) Balinese soundscape including Beuys' voice.

Didn't read much of that Frieze article, however the quote at the beginning is inspiring: "To be a teacher is my greatest work of art". This is followed later by an ominous image of him being kicked out of the academy, escorted by the police, just as Documenta 5 (or was it 4?) was beginning. Dramatic!

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Interesting, that Balinese soundscape thing actually sounds quite like some of the audio art my art school crush Paula is now doing. She mixes the sounds of her own body, captured with medical equipment, with ticky tocky beats, as in this piece (http://www.atra42.dsl.pipex.com/sounds/02%2520caryatid.mov).

[uberdionysus.livejournal.com]

Wow.

I'm jealous that you got to hear Beuys speak.

[(Anonymous)]

Beuys, Beuys, it's a sweet thing...

Actually did you notice that Beuys gets a namecheck on a song on Scot Walker's latest album?

[petit-paradis.livejournal.com]

beuys keep swinging
beuys always work it out

[bikerbar.livejournal.com]

I love the way Beuys dispensed with centuries of European art, developed under the rise of empires, and threw his focus much further back with the Celts and transiberian nomads. Far too much is made of his airplane crash, but it makes for good copy. The objects he left behind, except for the early drawings, tend to make for rather boring museum views. But thats not the point of his work. The man and his ideas are what resonates. There is a lot of Rudolf Steiner in Beuys, and in this way he links with a spiritual German ethos, pre WWII value structure that I believe many are wary of today, unfortunately. He's also very much a child of the 60s, and that's a spirit that must never die.

Nice to see you there young Nick - interesting how photos from the 80s have that patina of nostalgia now ...

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Well, in Scotland 1980 was still very much a part of the 70s, as you can see from the way most people there are dressed.

I think I was wearing my "irridescent" New Romantic trousers. They were purple when you looked at them from one angle, green from another. (But of course I still managed to look like the third Proclaimer.)

[alphacomp.livejournal.com]

I'd say Neil Tennant!

I'm curious to know something..

[svenskasfinx.livejournal.com]

How exactly did you go from international boarding school to "art school"?

Isn't that just what the "posh" warn their children NOT to do?

Re: I'm curious to know something..

[imomus.livejournal.com]

How exactly did you go from international boarding school to "art school"?

I don't really understand the question... Is it for me? I didn't do this. I was at a boarding school for three years in my early teens while my family travelled doing TEFL stuff (so the fees were partly paid by the British Council). I never went to art school.

Re: I'm curious to know something..

[svenskasfinx.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry I implyed something that you are not.. thats why I thought it seemed so curious.. and yet you teach as a guest teacher as well as your tour guide stint in New York, perhaps you can direct me to some reading to give me some understanding of how one gets to one point in one's life which does seem contradictory to end up on the red spot marked "you are here and everyone knows it"..

Re: I'm curious to know something..

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Don't worry, I'm not annoyed, but I just don't quite understand what you're asking. It seems to me that all sorts of people can get asked to a creative conference, or even to participate in a biennial. You just have to be spotted at some point by people whose job it is to recognize talent. Nobody will ever even ask if you went to art school. They'll just look at what you do and find it interesting, or not, and include it, or not.

Re: I'm curious to know something..

[svenskasfinx.livejournal.com]

... sorry about the confusion. I should be doing your chart properly to find out.. and then come back to it, but I know anyone can get a degree in anything - basicly unrelated to their work, and for you, well it was a sociology degree then, or english.. I can't recall.. but you were creative, you formed a band, like me and many of my friends did at one time... but I was at the time curious to understand if at anytime in the past when you were following this direction did your family step in and give you a world of "hell" for it, even if it was for one day over the dinner table?

Then there is the underlying question of contradiction, I mean, if you generally come from one place (not always because I too have to look at my own life and where I come from) one generally stays there.. surpasses it or totally rejects it, which of these did you do?

Ah, maybe I'm just getting question crazy, but I would like your take on it, not so much about the random recognition which happens to many who are standing on the stage, but where you intentionally find your tallent for being in the right place in time in the whole world. I know its an assumption but there has to be some intent on your part if it even be in just the idea of hope, or wishing for "something".

Forgive my curiosity. I'll try not to pester you any farther after this. :)

Re: I'm curious to know something..

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I was at the time curious to understand if at anytime in the past when you were following this direction did your family step in and give you a world of "hell" for it, even if it was for one day over the dinner table?

No, they've been supportive.

Then there is the underlying question of contradiction, I mean, if you generally come from one place (not always because I too have to look at my own life and where I come from) one generally stays there.. surpasses it or totally rejects it, which of these did you do?

Well, the Scottish contradiction is that it's actually very Scottish to leave Scotland. That's why large parts of the population of Canada, Australia and New Zealand are "Scottish". I'm in the diaspora, and there are more of us here than there are in Scotland, many times over.

where you intentionally find your tallent for being in the right place in time in the whole world. I know its an assumption but there has to be some intent on your part if it even be in just the idea of hope, or wishing for "something".

I may have caught a few boats, but I've missed many, many more. I think the important thing is not to stop producing. Don't lose heart after a few rejections. Believe in yourself, even when no-one else does, and finally other people will too. How Polonian (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polonius) of me!

Thank you !

[svenskasfinx.livejournal.com]

Thank you-


For taking the time out to answer my sudden bunch of crazy questions..
I really am in awe that you've taken time out to be so kind. I'm kind of impressed also that you "Stick to it" (the action of creation) without self doubt.. Howard Devoto could actually learn alot from you!

My inner critic hardly keeps silent enough these days to find the time to do my "work", but then again I have had it both good and bad and in the face of that I've always noted that the action of creation is, even without an audiance, the therapy - the release of energy and the perpetuation of itself.. so it only makes sense, not to doubt, and not to stop. Same is true of love, not to doubt and not to stop.. even if its like a kind of punishment without rewards.

Thanks once again for your answers!

Dorian

[jasongtokyo.livejournal.com]

The first thing I thought of when I saw the picture was that it looks like a still from the set of my beloved Heaven's Gate, specifically this scene (http://braddourif.org/panf/heavens_gate/02-1.html).

[telephoneface.livejournal.com]

http://www.ubu.com/film/beuys.html

Beuys tried his luck as a pop singer as part of his political commitment. His song 'Sonne statt Reagan' attacks Ronald Reagan's arms policy. The song was issued as a record and Beuys appeared before big audiences with it during the peace movement's demonstrations and also with the group Die Desserteure in the ARD television broadcast 'Bananas' on 3.7.1982.

'Regen'', pronounced like 'Reagan', is the German for 'rain'.

[(Anonymous)]

I hope i'm not mistakened or repeating something someone else may have already mentioned or you already know, but i'm sure you were mentioned by name in one of the articles too, and not in reference to the photograph.

I'll have to go and check.

[mini-snape.livejournal.com]

Ah you used the word glaikit! I love you!