Joseph Beuys’ Rediscovery of Man–Nature Relationship: A Pioneering Experience of Open Social Innovation
“Business, Innovation and Art” Special Series Issue #5
By Fabio Maria Montagnino*
Published in Special Issue “Business, Open Innovation and Art” for MDPI Journal of Open Innovation: Technology, Market and Complexity, October 2018
[A note from the editor:
Through the haze of California air, after the devastating fires which claimed many lives, I beam out the latest installment of our Special Series. The mood cannot be more fitting — 20th century multidisciplinary artist Joseph Beuys’ vision of “Every Man an Artist” in transforming a sick world to a healthy one as a social organism beckons with renewed sense of urgency.
In the spirit of Thanksgiving, Thank You to our readers for following our crusade tapping into art’s power to heal ourselves, heal each other, heal our habitat, humanize business and restore our creative nature. And maybe even make the world true and beautiful again! ]
“I would like to declare why I feel that it’s now necessary to establish a new kind of art, able to show the problems of the whole society, of every living being; and how this new discipline — which I call social sculpture — can realize the future of humankind.”
- Joseph Beuys, German Fluxus, happening, performance, installation and graphic artist, sculptor, art theorist, pedagogue and social activist.
EXCERPTS:
Introduction
“Beuys anticipated, through his artistic life and production, the combination of social open innovation methodologies, which are presently applied to support a contextual transition towards environmental, economical and social sustainability. The sense of urgency, an open and collaborative approach, the search for disruptive solution to be scaled-up at a global level, the fundamental role of individual engagement and creativity, and the idea of “shaping” the change, which are presently characterizing the social open innovation arena, can all be found along the artistic path of Beuys from the years of the Free International University to the ultimate 7000 Eichen urban art project in Kassel.”
Beuys’ Approach to Change: From Individual Artwork to Collective Transition
“For Beuys, transforming the acts of everyday life into art was the only way to really overcome the status of alienation that characterizes individuals and societies, both in the capitalistic and the socialist world.”
“A framework for transition was defined during Beuys’ participation in the Fluxus movement, which was challenging the traditional ‘boundaries between art and life and between the various arts’.”
Blackboards as Blueprints of the Creative Process
“The six blackboards of Rocca Paolina demonstrate the role of Beuys as a ‘pioneer investigator of the role of art in forging radical ecological paradigms for the relationship between human beings and the natural environment’. […] In these expressionist blueprints, he was underlining the need of a holistic view connecting the social, economic, and environmental level, preconizing the rise of a circular use of resources and of a socially responsible economy with an equal, distributed, and democratic access to wellness to be reached and maintained without overexploiting the planet.”
Beuys and Open Innovation Methodologies
“This creative approach is the essential kernel of the Open Innovation paradigm, which is now prevailing as the mainstream model to shape innovation, not only in the business landscape but also in the social and environmental domains […], in order to overcome the limitations of rigid systems and regulation in finding answers to complex global and local challenges […]. In the open innovation processes, the invention is substituted by the discovery; the aim of the process is challenge oriented and innovation is generated by experiments where even unreasonable paths are scouted, discussed, and verified. Disruptive innovations are primarily sought, and the aim is to generate new radical changes that could modify the reference context, scaling from proof of concept to the global level. The envisaged new organizational model is characterized by a porous structure, with knowledge absorptive capacity and systematic involvement of multiple stakeholders.
“Although these practices could be clearly recognized in the Social Sculpture movement, Beuys’ legacy and his anticipating action, has not yet been recognized, especially in the field of open social innovation and its applications toward the sustainable development transition. In Table 1 , we have summarized some key features of the open social innovation approach that were anticipated by Beuys’ artwork and have been reported in the previous paragraphs.
Table 1. Key open social innovation features anticipated by Beuys’ artwork (partial)
“Beuys’ legacy maintains its uniqueness in terms of an original
combination of open methodologies, social engagement, and radical ecological goals.”
“We consider Beuys’ obsessive attention for the engagement of individuals around a core set of values, a truly distinctive feature of its philosophy and a point of reference for understanding and improving the actual social open innovation dynamics. As a matter of fact, they rely upon collaborative organizational structures and behaviors, but “revolutionary” individuals — the “social entrepreneurs” — are usually pivoting the change, catalyzing the available energies around the transitional actions. The concept of “social entrepreneur”, introduced by Banks in 1972 […], in the context of the sociology of social movements, has been fully expanded in the Beuys’ direction of individual creative engagement, which can be clearly recognized in the motto ‘everyone a changemaker’ coined by William Drayton, founder of the global network of social entrepreneurs Ashoka […].”
“As in Beuys’ vision, ‘will’ is the engine that drives creativity into the transformation of the economy. Thus, the innovative social ventures, flourishing in the open innovation field, could be seen as a new declination of the Social Sculpture action, where the creative attitude of a multidisciplinary team of individuals is ‘shaped’ by the entrepreneur who is scouting the paths
toward a globally scalable transition. Thus, we recognize a formidable source of inspiration in Beuys’ work for innovative social entrepreneurs who are embracing the Sustainable Development Goals challenges. They should consider themselves ‘artists’ in Beuys’ sense, being part of a global
open and cooperative movement — a global ‘beehive’ without distinction of disciplines and specializations — of creative individuals engaged to build a better future. Pier Giorgio Perotto — who led[…] design of the first personal computer — affirmed that: ‘the world needs poets, scientists, entrepreneurs generating fertile and prolific variances, who operate[…] as systemic creators […], really embracing the creative schumpeterian destruction’ […]. Joseph Beuys still has many things to teach them.”
Conclusions
“The long-term Beuys’ legacy can be found in his ability to implement pedagogic, change-making actions centered on the empowerment of individuals through creative development, with a counter-institutional vision to be brought into a global perspective to address both social equality and preservation of the natural world in a holistic approach […]. He tried to stimulate the interconnection of people to generate a positive change in defense of nature and against the alienation of humanity. His terrain of intervention was Bateson’s “ecology of mind ” […], the ability of creating situations — at a room, city, or global scale — empowering people’s capacity, willingness, and ability to imagine alternative and desirable futures. ‘Art is the image of man himself’ […] and of the power to change the world that is hidden in everyone. Paraphrasing Walt Whitman, Beuys’ work shows everybody the concrete opportunity and urgency to ‘contribute a verse’ to the ‘powerful play’ of ecological transition.
“As he claimed, it is time to shift from a short- to a long-term view, exploring our creative and entrepreneurial potential for great collective step toward a new evolutionary stage of humanity that is characterized by a holistic view of society, economy, and nature. As a true artist, he really anticipated our time and, in particular, the emerging global generation of social innovators who are trying to afford the challenge of sustainability in the open innovation framework. In this light, Beuys’ whole artistic philosophy and production should be further investigated in order to increase the awareness of the fundamental role of art and humanities, together with science and economy, in this crucial phase of human history.”
Read the full article in MDPI Journal of Open Innovation: Technology, Market and Complexity.
*Fabio Maria Montagnino is Managing Director, Consorzio Arca, a tech incubator in Palermo, Italy.
“Art is the only possibility for evolution, the only possibility to change the situation in the world. But then you have to enlarge the idea of art to include the whole creativity. And if you do that, it follows logically that every living being is an artist — an artist in the sense that he can develop his own capacity. And therefore it’s necessary at first that society cares about the educational system, that equality of opportunity for self-realization is guaranteed.”
- Joseph Beuys
Past issues:
(BIA) Introduction
(BIA Issue #1)
Twenty-First Century Leadership: A Return to Beauty
by Nancy J. Adler and Andre L. Delbecq
(BIA Issue #2)
(BIA Issue #3)
Arts and Design as Translational Mechanisms for Academic Entrepreneurship: The metaLAB at Harvard Case Study
by Luca Simeone, Giustina Secundo and Giovanni Schiuma
(BIA Issue #4)
Recombining Hand and Head
by Piero Formica
Coming up next:
(BIA Issue #6)
Classical Guitar Study as Creativity Training: Potential Benefits for Managers and Entrepreneurs
by Jonathan Gangi
To be followed by:
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