Media Art Net | Beuys, Joseph: Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes, No No No No

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Joseph Beuys, «Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes, No No No No», 1969
Photograph: Kunstmuseum Bonn | ©

Keywords: Material | Voice

Works by Joseph Beuys:

Beuys und Wolfgang Feelisch Felt TV (multiple) Felt TV: Shown in TV broadcast 'Identifications' Intuition Green Party Land Conference Speech made during live satellite telecast of opening of documenta 6 Sun not Reagan and in us ... under us ... flooded Election Poster for the Green Party

Germany

Joseph Beuys
«Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes, No No No No»

Inside a stack of 20 slabs of felt is a reel of tape on which Beuys speaks an endless monologue in chorus with Hennig Christiansen and Johannes Stüttgen. ‘Ja Ja Ja Ja Ja, Nee Nee Nee Nee Nee’ – a familiar utterance in the Rhenish dialect applying to everything and nothing – here functions, unadulterated, as an ironic symbol of the irrevocable dialectic of everyday life. Meaningless from a strictly logical viewpoint, the ambivalence of Yes/No precisely conveys a frame of mind.