The ZKM commemorates

Today, May 12, Joseph Beuys would have turned 100. For four years, the ZKM | Karlsruhe has been working together with the Joseph Beuys Estate and supported by the Kunststiftung NRW on a DVD edition of all available audiovisual recordings of Joseph Beuys' action art.

It will present his well-known, often legendary actions and, in an accompanying publication, provide an overview of other photographically documented actions by the artist. The DVD edition will be published by Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König in German and English in August 2021.

To the extent that Joseph Beuys pushed the expansion of the concept of art, he himself as early as 1976 no longer distinguished »between an action with classical objects or an action without such or a lecture or a pure theory«.¹ Following this maxim, the edition defines a canon of Joseph Beuys' actions. It offers the unique opportunity to view previously isolated film documents, which were only accessible with difficulty or not at all, in compressed form and in chronological order, and which are published by the ZKM as first releases or new editions. Since recordings of not all of the artist's important actions exist, drawings, scores and photographs in the accompanying publication also provide further insights.

This compendium provides scholars and private users with valuable visual and research material to approach one of the most multitalented and influential artists of the 20th century. The edition documents the means, materials, and forms of expression Joseph Beuys used to commit himself to »Soziale Plastik« (»Social Sculpture«), to a »concept of art that relates to everyone and to all the questions and problems of the social organism in which people live«.² This shows the high relevance of Joseph Beuys, not only in the Beuys Year 2021.