WE ARE THE SOCIAL SCULPTURE! THIS IS THE THIRD SCULPTURE! YOU ARE THE THINKING SCULPTURE!
I wish to open up our understanding of life. You are my friend,
my enemy, my sculpture. We are here to explain the notion of
Social Sculpture, an idea given to us by Joseph Beuys during the
Sixties, an idea very much related to German Nationalism and
consciousness during the post-war years. As I am an American my
distortions of his genius shall take a personal form without
practical political applications. I will set forth a batch of
ideas that expand Social Sculpture to include the personal, to
include the intimate sides of our life, the embarrassing moments
without the transcendental meaning of a shaman, and show how
everyman and everywoman is an artist now, without the
prerequisite of a transformed society, of the Green Party or the
Party for Direct Referendum. I will explain how a baby's cry, a
banker's greed, and a Brice Marden line should all be considered
as sculpture, as an expression to communicate our existence
without the trappings of intellectual intimidation and unhealthy
power trips.
As a community we shape our lives through communication with
others. We talk to the grocery store cashier and experience his
or her life for a moment. We share our own life. We present
ourselves and simultaneously mould the other and the self. We
take this plastic relationship and depend our life upon it. In
fact, it is our life. It is our episteme. Together, the cashier
and I, create a moment with a multitude of meanings. We create a
memory to be recalled or to be stored away within our respective
sub-consciousness, a thought which helps to confirm or alter our
outlook and behavior. It is a thought which has a communal
existence and therefore can alter a community. It is a thought
which is expressive of and shaped by a community. It is a Social
Sculpture.
In between the self and the other there exists a space. A
malleable space determined by both the self and the other, by
myself and the cashier, by myself and you. It is a space which
exists simultaneously as a positive and negative space. It is
both the anti-object of communication and the object of
communication. It is both the bridge and the chasm which we
construct. And yet, it isn't something to be frightened of; it
isn't an area which renders communication impossible or isolates
people. It is out of this third space, this space between you and
me, that personality comes, that love, hatred and humor arise and
cause us to spend an afternoon together. It is because of this
area, this Third Sculpture, that you and I understand and have a
sense of an other.
As an active participant in our meaning, our community, you and I
are each Thinking Sculptures. The verb of Sculpture is to think,
to understand and to participate. And yet, because we exist
within a web of interconnectedness, our active participation is
the participation of the whole. It is the everyday fulfillment of
an ever changing premise, of our fears, loves, shame and joy. It
is the birth and death of banalities, promises and sex.
The Thinking Sculpture is the Third Sculpture is the Social
Sculpture.
Ben Kinmont, 1990 |