Talks & Events

• Talk

  ALLEN FISHER
  November 18, 2003

  Artspeak, in collaboration with the Kootenay School of Writing, is pleased to present Allen Fisher’s talk Monuments to the Future: Social Resonance in the Art of Joseph Beuys at Blake’s.

  Fisher’s narrative embeds upon two complementary, London installations by Joseph Beuys. The narrative is encouraged by Beuys’ arrangement of his works and is stimulated by the show production of meaning the viewer participates in through research. Beuys’ aesthetic and non-aesthetic functions encourage the viewer to innovate in this research and thinking. This tension between the non-aesthetic and aesthetic promotes an imaginative meaning in his work. It is a meaning that never fixes but allows the enigma, that Beuys’ work often creates on first viewing, to remain as a potent residue for meaning to accrete. Beuys’ explorations compress aesthetic and non-aesthetic functions and transformed this compression into sculpture with social resonance.