From the essay Interview with Richard DeMarco, found in Energy Plan for the Western Man, Joseph Beuys in America, writings by and interviews with the artist with introductory essays by Kim Levin and Caroline Tisdall, compiled my Carin Kuoni (Four Walls Eight Windows, New York, NY 1990).

 

I wish to go more and more outside to be among the problems of nature and problems of human beings in their working places. This will be a regenerative activity; it will be a therapy for all of the problems we are standing before... That is my general aim. I proposed this to Rudi Fuchs when he invited me to participate in the documenta. I said that I would not like to go again inside the buildings to participate in the setting up of so-called artworks. I wished to go completely outside and to make a symbolic start for my enterprise of regenerating the life of humankind within the body of society and to prepare a positive future in this context.

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 heartwood. 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 as representing the really progressive character of the idea of understanding art when it is related to the life of humankind within the social body in the future. The tree planting enterprise provides a very simple but radical possibility for this when we start with the seven thousand oaks.

I think that is a kind of proportion and dimension, firstly because the seven represents a very old rule for planting trees. You know that from already existing places and towns. In America there is a very big town called Seven Oaks, also in England at Sevenoaks. You see that seven as a number is organically, in a way, related to such an enterprise and it matches also the the seventh documenta. I said that seven trees is a very small ornament. Seventy is not bringing us to the idea of what I call in German Verwaldung. It suggests making the world a big forest, making towns and environments, forest-like. Seventy would not signify the idea. Seven hundred again was still not enough. So I felt seven thousand was something I could do in the present time for which I could take the responsibility to fulfill as a first step. So seven thousand oaks will be a very strong visible result in three hundred years. So you can see the dimension of time.

Joseph Beuys

 

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