Tom Albrecht
Egg excavation (1971)
Performance, Super 8 documentary. Two actors, spade, silver can, water, egg, Rhine meadow

Action on Düsseldorf’s Rhine meadow. The actor Tom Albrecht approaches the Rhine meadow in Düsseldorf with a spade, digs a hole, puts the egg in it. The second actor pours water on the egg with a silver pot. The hole is filled again and covered with the sod. Credits. Inspired by the actions of Joseph Beuys in Düsseldorf. Elements earth, water and egg. The artist “plants” the egg in the ground. His action stands for the creative, for growth, future, change. Watering stands for caring for life in the earth and thus for sustainable living in the future.

Tom Albrecht
Homage a Beuys (2021)
Object, wax from remnants of candles, moss, string, scrap cardboard

A female and male figure made of white old wax lie in a used shipping box on moss connected by cords. Beuys created the similar object “untitled”, 1949/50. In T.A., the figures lie on moss with different proportions and more clearly with their sexual characteristics. The used scrap materials cardboard, wax indicate sustainability in the factory. Human togetherness can only happen on the basis of nature, embodied in moss. The linked sexes relate to the more or less sustainable future through their possible offspring.

Jenny Lyn Bader
Tree Confessions ( 2021)
Radio play

In a new piece, a tree speaks. The tree tells us a story. His words remind us that humans and plants live in an interconnected ecosystem. We are not alone on this earth.
Please download the audio link to your cell phone.
Go outside, sit under a tree, and listen to the tree speak to you.

Arsonist
THE SOCIAL PLASTIC Art Direct (2010)
Video documentation

Documentation of a participatory action at the artists’ fair Rheinland-Pfalz in the Rheingoldhalle Mainz. The interdisciplinary action artist Brandstifter builds a social sculpture out of PET bottles with visitors over several days in order to change society together in the Beuysian sense of “plasticizing”. “Since Hartz IV and the plastic deposit, poor people in Germany have had to dig through the trash. I want to make this visible, discuss it, denounce it. I connect the objects to the social sculpture, freely after the extended art concept of Beuys. After several stops in Mainz and New York, the action ended with the redeeming of the deposit value for a social cause.” https://thesocialplastic.wordpress.com/ http://www.brand-stiftung.net/

NEDE aka Peter Debusi
Consumer sports racing sled (2020)
MixedArt. Wooden sleds from the 70s and Redbull drink cans.

The work “Consumption sports racing sled” is inspired by Beuys “The Pack” (The pack). A naive modern version of it, with the thought transference that all you need to get through life is a sled and an energy drink. With a wink. I’m also concerned with a dialogue on the theme of “Always higher, faster, further.”

Jeanne Fredac
L’ essence humaine (The essence of man) (2016)
Wood, metal, stool, punching ball, boxing gloves

The sculpture “L’ essence humaine” depicts the earth as a punching ball that can be knocked out with boxing gloves. The sculpture deals with the mindsets and behavior patterns of consumer society and examines our reckless treatment of the planet and its resources – with a humorous wink.

Stephan Groß
Field of ear (2021)
Computer graphics, digital print on dibond

The graphic “Field of the Ear” shows a second graphic structure under the dominant view of ears of grain, which at first glance gives the impression of sepals. It is only on closer inspection that one recognizes the pictograms from which these ears of corn grow as representations of sport shooters. Enlisted as a professional soldier in the Third Reich, Beuys later stood for grassroots democracy, tree planting, and an expanded concept of art. My work deals with this biographical contradiction of swords and plowshares and Beuys’ resolute vision of transforming negative energies into positive ones.

Mary Corporal
Thinking with the knee (2021)
Digital and analog animation with photo and charcoal drawing

During a walk in the streets of Beuys’ city Düsseldorf, I photographed a piece of garbage lying on the asphalt. Later I anthropomorphized it and animated it with charcoal drawing. By transforming the garbage with the help of associative drawing, I want to make it clear that humanity is destroying its environment. Fortunately, it also possesses a strong creative power that it can use to improve the world and shape the future. To quote Joseph Beuys, “The only revolutionary force is the force of human creativity.” The title of my video refers to Beuys’ saying, “I think with my knee anyway.” By which he meant that linear, logical thinking with the head or brain would not correspond to the complexity of artistic thinking. That’s why good artists think crosswise and around corners. And that only works with the knee.

Petra Lehnardt-Olm
NOAH’S ARK (2021)
Installation: animal bones, wire, paper, cotton twine, traces of earth, moss, ink and pigments.

Bones. Post-mortem changes due to time and weathering dissolve the outer forms, revealing the finely constructed inner framework. The porous material increasingly combines with the traces of the environment. Fine shades of color absorbing. Over time, the bones become more and more abstract due to permanent decay. Without their former material context, their origin thus increasingly recedes into the background. Despite this subtle aesthetic, however, they are also an image of our excessive consumption of meat. All animal bones used here are leftovers from meals or accidental finds.

Rachael Mellors (artist) Pete Hudson (moving image)
Illuminations (2020)

moving image MP4 H264 1080p

Illuminations’ documents Mellors’ intuitive response to her immersive relationship with the natural world. Place specific practice is rooted in Earth’s cycles and processes, in synchronicity with the seasons, sun rising and erosion. She makes sculptures, referencing her body, with clay fallen from eroding cliffs and uses the luminosity of the rising sun to capture imprints of her shadow body on the cliff. Chance and spontaneity are integral to her embodied practice.
The work is part of a project exploring ecological sustainability and the principles of the circular economy in artistic practice.
Mellors’ creative processes resonate with Beuys’ intensely personal and physical relationship with nature. In Aktion im Moor 1971 Beuys spontaneously immersed his whole body in a marshy peat bog and then standing in the bog daubed his arm and shoulder with mud, embodying the living natural world.

Annegret Mueller
City park to go (2021)
Poster plant crib; wood, earth, various plants

To consider a plant as a sculpture, as art, is perhaps unusual. Living Art. About 39 years ago Joseph Beuys started the action to plant 7000 oak trees. What a feat of strength. Shaping the future sustainably also means tirelessly planting and sowing. It is more urgent than ever to take this gamble again and again. This inspired me to create my “City Park to Go.” Plants to fill gaps or create a small new cosmos. In the front garden there is a crib with various plants. My wish is that the plants will find new owners at finnisage and grow in other places. On this day I will pack the plants, to go, for you.

Angela Preusz
MAILTO_ Between Borke&Kern – GOOD AHNEN SEIN “Dendron and Homo Sapien in conversation” (2020/21)
Netart, photography

The living being tree (Greek: dendron) and the “understanding, understanding, wise, reasonable human being (Latin: Homo sapien) are called upon to communicate with each other. Trees are archives of their environment; their annual rings store environmental events, climate changes, and much more. Everyone is invited to question their own trees, to philosophize about sustainability, to develop their own forms of communication between humans/flora, flora/humans. Using GPS data, tree locations are determined and photos and stories of the trees are visible on an Internet land map. My tree received a felt ribbon with the GPS coordinates: 53°, 96′, 13″ N 11°, 15′, 65″ E. The inscription maps and defines the location, at the same time becoming a statement about the limited lifetime of man. 7000 Beuys trees have been planted since ‘Dokumenta 7’ – the project plants 7000 trees on the Internet.

Jean-Michel Rolland
Affordance (2020)
video art

” Nature must be obeyed to be mastered”, Francis Bacon. Around a low tree with twisted branches, a man searches for peace. It splits. One raises its paw, clings to a branch, the other sits on an uncomfortable bend, like a monkey trying to build its nest. Now there are three, then four, to explore the possibilities for action that the plant offers. The tree was waiting for him. The figure stretches, hangs, lengthens. He becomes one with the tree, settles there and promises to visit it without hurting it. Of course, the tree is instrumentalized by becoming a chair or a bed, but no one cuts its branches or puts them together to make them useful. The tree remains a tree, it becomes a temporary shelter, the act is reversible, and when the visitor has left,

Lydia Schend
DAX values (2018)
Oil, newspaper, on printed cardboard sheet

The earth dries up, withers away, the “death zones” (Beuys) sprawl. The bison, which nourished and warmed the people of Europe since time immemorial, was nearly wiped out, a harbinger of the progressive death of species caused by man and his prevailing economic system – to the point of destroying its own basis of existence. What are we driven by? Values, Dax, stock market…away? Where are we going? How?

Mark Swysen Projects
Requiem for Homo supposedly Sapiens (2018)
VIDEO of a spatial kinetic installation by Mark Swysen, violin performance by Leila Faust in the gallery FLOX www.galerie-flox.de in Dresden (DE), camera by Uwe Nimmrichter www.projektn2.de

This room installation was inspired by the floating plastic dump in our oceans, and the ubiquity of microplastic particles in our environment, to drinking water in plastic bottles. Inside, the sound of a violin weeps and comforts the audience, offering hope for a greener future.

Vidal & Groth
1000 oaks less (since (since) 2016 )
Cyanotype on watercolor paper

For the series “1000 Oaks Less” we treated watercolor paper with a cyanotype solution. The application by hand with sponge and brush creates streaks and spots, omissions and double coatings that give each sheet a painterly duct. On each of the treated papers was placed a young tree, torn from the ground. The exposure of the object is en plein air in our garden. The shadow image of a small oak tree is created. The portraits of the little trees are reminiscent of deforestation, broken down to the individual tree. Weeding these plants is part of our gardening, in which we have found a metaphor for the opposition of nature and culture. The title provocatively refers to Beuys’ “7000 Oaks” and questions whether this opposition can be resolved at all.

Misha Waks
Nikkei SDGs (2021)
Glass, vegan pill capsules, tree seeds, fragments of “Financial Times”.

“Nikkei SDGs 2020 – participants discussed the various ways in which business innovation can contribute to a more sustainable world.” Big words, like medicine, are supposed to reassure us, to give us a positive outlook, but the truth is that not much has changed since the 1960s. Politicians, companies do too little. With a lot of money and no action, they commit crimes against nature and humanity. This cynical game is getting us nowhere. Words, words. In relation to the works of J. Beuys, each of us is an artist, just as each of us can have a positive impact on the world. So let’s not expect politicians or big business to save us and the planet. We can save ourselves. We can be the medicine, our actions can help move the world for the better. Deeds, deeds

Kai Wolf
DRAW FROM THE FULL (2018)
Magnet sculpture. Iron, golden rain wood

An iron ladle threatens a wooden ball turned from golden rain wood. The ladle seems to literally devour the planet-like sphere. Under the wooden ball, a smaller iron ball is held in suspension by magnetism. An imaginary threatening mood hovers in the room. The construct seems to collapse at any moment. The theme of this object sculpture is the advancing exploitation of our earth. A topic that is becoming increasingly topical and explosive these days.

Yana Zschiedrich
HYBRIS R.1 (2021)
Relief, feeding traces of mealworms, styrodur

The work deals, among other things, with the condemnation of nature through the spread of a human-centric worldview and people’s attempts to escape subsequent effects. A temporary laboratory for sculptural research has been created in the artist’s studio. In it, she has insulation material decomposed by mealworms, which in turn produce peculiarly amorphous sculptures. The three-part relief shows a Greek goddess eaten by mealworms along a template in the insulation material. Feeding time per plate from left to right: 20 / 10 / 5 days.
The creation of this work was made possible by a grant from the Cultural Foundation of the Free State of Saxony.