Lebenskünstler

…socially engaged art is not simply a development within the art field to be described from an art historical perspective alone, but rather a specific form of activity within society.

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This is because Beuys was concerned with the development of an understanding of art in which artistic practice is understood as an anthropological activity and not as a social field in which existing questions and discourse of the art establishment are negotiated. Beuys wanted to create a radically inclusive concept of art that could be applied to the creative dimension of all possible human activities…

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Against this backdrop, it would be a major misunderstanding to see Beuys’s founding of parties, the Organization for Direct Democracy, and the FIU as activities independent of his artistic work. If one takes seriously that Beuys regarded the transformation of the social sphere as an artistic process, then these activities belong, without any doubt, to his artistic practice.

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The Situationists, too, were concerned with a concept of art that shape life: “Against preserved art, it is the organization of the directly lived moment […] Against particularized art, it will be a global practice with a bearing, each moment, on all the usable elements.”

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…the turning away from the aesthetics of reception toward an aesthetics of collective action…They left behind euphoric and playful revolutionary scripts for artistic production strategies.