Is Art Lighthearted?
A Dialogue between Joseph Beuys & Theodor Adorno

18-21, 25-28 June, & 9-12 July 08 (Studio 65); 20 December 08, Art Claims Impulse Gallery, Berlin

A film by Mischa Twitchin and Britt Hatzius

Sound: Joseph Beuys, Ja, ja, ja, ja, ja, Nee, nee, nee, nee, nee
Performance with Johannes Stüttgen and Henning Christiansen,
Düsseldorf Academy of Art, 14.12.68

Text: Theodor Adorno, Is Art Lighthearted?
(tr. Shierry Weber Nicholsen) from the Süddeutsche Zeitung, 15.07.67

'Is Art Lighthearted?' began as a live performance at a Shunt Cabaret. Rather than simply document it, however, we decided to make a film with the material of the performance. The 'dialogue' character of the piece was spatial as much as conceptual in the live version, with the Beuys sound track played from behind the audience and the Adorno text spoken live, with just the performer's face lit, in front of them. Although this has been condensed in the film, a 'dialogue' is still maintained between the sound and the image by deliberately not synchronising them. The two, very distinct, vocalised texts both offer a critique of the 'yea saying', or 'affirmative character', of cultural production. The connection of this critique with the political is evident in the piece (indeed, in its very question) through the joke - as funny as it is serious - from Johannes Rau, who in his very negation of the artwork nonetheless attests to its actual possibility.