Waves and Commons

Beuys didn’t come up with the idea that everyone is an artist. He got there by experiencing his own personal transformation in a crisis, a process he felt was sculptural. That same sense of immediacy applies to his views of democracy. Instead of reading political theory he looked to the world around him. And what he saw made him look for examples of how to make democracy more democratic.

Beuys’ encounters and collaboration with people in the Italian Lotta continua movement gave him many concrete examples of what could be achieved if people worked to enact democracy in small reliable ways. Having access to the media was a key objective of the movement in Italy. In the early 1970s, Beuys witnessed the rise of the free radio movement, which followed not long after in Germany and elsewhere in the world, firsthand.

In this bonus feature episode of the series, written and produced by the artist, writer and radio specialist Anna Bromley, we travel from Germany to Israel, Italy, Hungary, South Africa and Turkey and hear from some of the key radio activists in the movement. Many of them look back on a long history in the movement. Even younger activists have strong sense of the history behind them.

For all information on the anniversary programme „beuys 2021. 100 years of joseph beuys“ visit: https://beuys2021.de/