FREE INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY
For Creativity and Interdisciplinary Research
BATESVILLE,ARKANSAS, USA
MISSION
STATEMENT
A study of Free International University
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PRE-AMBLE
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JOSEPH BEUYS
Beuys' Theory of Social Sculpture
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My objects are to be seen as stimulants for the transformation of the idea of sculpture. . . or of art in general. They should provoke thoughts about what sculpture can be and how the concept of sculpting can be extended to the invisible materials used by everyone.
THINKING FORMS--how we mold our
thoughts or
SPOKEN FORMS--how we shape our thoughts into words or
SOCIAL SCULPTURE--how we mold and shape the world in which we live:
SCULPTURE AS AN EVOLUTIONARY PROCESS;
EVERYONE IS AN ARTIST.
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Joseph Beuys: 'Creativity isn't the monopoly of artists. This is the crucial fact I've come to realise, and this broader concept of creativity is my concept of art. When I say everybody is an artist, I mean everybody can determine the content of life in his particular sphere, whether in painting, music, engineering, caring for the sick, the economy or whatever. All around us the fundamentals of life are crying out to be shaped or created. But our idea of culture is severely restricted because we've always applied it to art. The dilemma of museums and other cultural institutions stems from the fact that culture is such an isolated field, and that art is even more isolated: an ivory tower in the field of culture surrounded first by the whole complex of culture and education, and then by the media which are also part of culture. We have a restricted idea of culture which debases everything; and it is the debased concept of art that has forced museums into their present weak and isolated position. Our concept of art must be universal and have the interdisciplinary nature of a university, and there must be a university department with a new concept of art and science'.
1979, From interview with Frans Hak
FREE INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY WORLD ART COLLECTION
Statement for and on behalf of FIUWAC, from Waldo Bien, Founding-Director.
A central tenet of the Free International
University for Creativity and Interdisciplinary Research, founded in 1972 by
Joseph Beuys, as part of his enlarged conception of artistic action, and
Heinrich Böll, the Nobel Prize laureate, is perfectly captured in Beuys's
remarks: " Economics is not only a money making principle. It can be a way
of production to fulfill the demands of people all over the world. Capital
is human kind's ability in work, not just money. Thus economics includes the
creativity of people. Creativity equals Capital". One of the most pressing
issues for the Free International University for Creativity and
Interdisciplinary Research was how to help realize the capacity of each
person to be a creative being; how to formulate the concept of individual
freedom as the ability to shape social forms, through the transformation of
resources.
Joseph Beuys developed the concept "social sculpture" to describe the
interplay between spiritual, material and social spheres, where, thanks to
the principles of freedom and equality, economics would create bonds of
community, cooperation, creative flows of energy. For Beuys constant change
and permanent dialogue was the source and process for social sculpture. His
belief was that such a work of transformation had the power to release the
binding patterns of history and the potential to bring forward in society
the energies that emerge in creativity, in any realm in which it manifests
itself.
Such a social sculpture requires a free flow of information, democratic
initiatives, production-sites that could overcome barriers between
structures, between knowledge and instinct, to become a genuine practice of
interdisciplinary research where the organic and the technological,
intuition and intellect would melt and reconfigure into new social wholes in
which creativity can flourish.
Art is everyone's capacity, thus, Beuys's dictum: "Jeder Mensch ist ein
Künstler". The activity of F.I.U. has helped to create fusions and crossing
points, survival bridges between people and economy. It is a permanent
platform and conference with individual freedom as the primary creative
datum.
The F.I.U.Amsterdam has proposed with the co-operation of the environmental
and socially concerned TRIODOS BANK, "where more than money counts", to
create a "modern collection", which reflects new needs in the imagination
for the future, and thinking for all resources, natural, human, ecological
and social.
The Free International University World Art Collection (FIUWAC) on my
initiative and with the TRIODOS BANK has as its aim an open and transparent
collection, which belongs to everyone and will be available, world- wide, to
any group willing and capable to host and support it.
By accepting this proposal as value, TRIODOS has enabled FIUWAC to form and
acquire, by gift, loan, donation, acquisition and purchase, the kernel of a
pluralistic and multicultural collection, which uses the archive of its own
formation, the so called F.I.U.tures, as a guarantee that in 25 years its
sale will redeem the money in the first instance as a loan against its
formation. Creativity has its own economic mutuality in the trust of this
cooperation between FIUWAC and TRIODOS. As part of the permanent conference
lectures, publications, the building of active websites will continue to
promote the presence of these creative agencies within the collection.
Active members of the F.I.U.Amsterdam, Jacobus Kloppenburg, Babeth Mondini
vanLoo, Hilarius Hofstede, Alfons Alt, Patrick Healy, Brendan O'Byrne and
friends and supporters as Walter Hopps, Virgil and Deborah Grotfeldt, inter
al, have made donations and contributions. In conjunction with the
magnificent and generous loan to the FIUWAC from the Rudolf Steiner archive
in Dornach, Dr. Walter Kugler, has drawn our attention to comments, which
Steiner made when speaking out on August 11, 1919, that we need new heads on
our shoulders when we wish to ensure a wise future for mankind. The
abstraction of value in money must be returned to the flows and needs of a
properly human and spiritually alive existence, where human, animal and
plant potencies are reanimated as care and responsibility.
The formation of FIUWAC manifests concretely the search for the realization
of spiritual and creative goals for society, which can create a vital
enchantment for the world.
Waldo Bien Founding Director, FIUWAC sept.1 1999
F. I. U. AMSTERDAM
