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There are two primary
concepts of Joseph Beuys: 1- All people have creative energy;
2- A collaboration in confrontations and in differences.
Lucrezia De Domizio
It is Nature that makes
us free, but free in thought, free to act to create, thus the
defense of Nature represents for Beuys the metaphor par excellence
of the defense of the freedom of the spirit.
Pierre Restany
In 1982, at Documenta 7 in Kassel, Germany,
Joseph Beuys presented his 7000 Oaks project. The initial goal
was to plant 7000 oak trees in the city of Kassel within five
years.
That same year Beuys said in an interview with Richard Demarco:
"I think the tree is an element of regeneration which in
itself is a concept of time. The oak is especially so because
it is a slowly growing tree with a kind of really solid heart
wood. It has always been a form of sculpture, a symbol for this
planet ever since the Druids, who are called after the oak. Druid
means oak. They used their oaks to define their holy places.
I can see such a use for the future .... The tree planting enterprise
provides a very simple but radical possibility for this when
we start with the seven thousand oaks".
Lucrezia De Domizio, Baroness Durini, and Joseph Beuys started
a process of intense collaboration - which would last a lifetime
- in 1971, more than ten years before the project announced in
Kassel. Soon after the 1971 meeting, Beuys spent part of his
existence living in the wonderful village of Bolognano, in the
Abruzzo mountains, near the Maiela, between Pescara and Rome.
Without any doubt, the 7000 Oaks project was born in Bolognano,
in Beuys' solitary walks through the mountains, in his long conversations
with Buby Durini - a brilliant marine biologist - and with Lucrezia
De Domizio. Clear evidence of this is present in Beuys' great
Discussion called Fondazione per la Rinascita dell'Agricoltura,
which took place in Pescara in 1978, four years before Kassel,
and which was organized by Lucrezia De Domizio.
Although Beuys' interest in Nature had always been present in
his life, as it is revealed by his contact with German biologist
Heinz Sielmann from 1947 to 1949 - when Beuys was about twenty-eight
years old - the late 1970s in Italy, with Lucrezia and Buby,
represented a fabulous leap in his approach to Nature. It was
at this exact moment that the FIU Free International University
for Creativity and Interdisciplinary Research, founded by
him, launching the Green Party in Germany and in the world. But
it is also at this time that masterpieces such as Olivestone,
Diary of Seychelles or the gigantic and fabulous Diffesa della
Natura - all these works were born in Bolognano.
Only those who do not know Beuys' life in Italy may not know
about his spiritual transformation in the magical mountains of
Abruzzo.
This magical cycle that had the Italian forests as its center
began with Lucrezia De Domizio in 1971. Now, in 2022, a fifty-year
cycle comes to an end!
So, as we have been doing since 1990, Lucrezia invited me to
create a new concert and a new movie. I am not in the least interested
on the promotion of great theaters, on the projection of the
Ego, or on the like. What interests me is philosophy, the love
of knowledge, that which makes us all human.
I met Pierre Restany again in Bolognano (we had been together
in Locarno before), There I met Harald Szeemann, Mario Merz,
Pistoletto, Renzo Tieri, Maurizio de Caro, Dino Viani, Vitantonio
Russo and many, many others, artists, philosophers, musicians,
thinkers.
Lucrezia took me to Italy and to Bolognano. I breathed its air,
lived its life, and in a certain sense I became a son and citizen
of Bolognano.
Now, about thirty-two years from the moment we met and started
collaborating in Milan, Lucrezia De Domizio invited me to create
a concert and a movie, for the "Closing of the Circle".
This is a point of reference and a reflection in relation to
the moment when a great Beuys cycle began in 1971. A cycle that
closes to launch another, as always happens in Nature.
I gave - both to my composition and to the movie I created for
such a unique event - a same title: 7000 Lights... Universe!...
or, in other words,Humanity!
That's exactly what Beuys was talking about.
The movie tells the story of this circle... the trees, Nature,
the sea, the people, the works... and again the trees.
We are the trees.
Beuys said: we change Nature, and Nature changes us.
The music is all based on a famous piece by Mozart. But about
which I cannot reveal.
How many magic circles do we have in our days?
How many moments like this do we have in a world of continuous
hyper-consumption, where people seem to become automatons enslaved
by digital systems?
At this moment in Bolognano, at the Closing of the Circle, everything
is reflection and consciousness of the human.
7000 Lights... Universe! had its world première at the
Closing of the Circle, in Bolognano, Italy, directed by Lucrezia
De Domizio, Baroness Durini.
Emanuel Dimas de Melo Pimenta 2022
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