As a Cloud Shaped by the Winds

With the words “I hereby resign from art” imprinted on a postcard in 1985, Joseph Beuys seems to retrospectively summarize what has been the whole attempt of his art: withdrawing from the image, resisting the achieved discourse. Beuys shows, above all, the potentiality of this interruption: different equal possibilities dwell always in the same matter and no future form is predetermined or necessary. The matter does not have a unique destiny, but rather exposes an uncertainty that asks to be investigated in the present. The matter emerges from the point of view of its sheer contingency of becoming all forms, as a cloud shaped by the winds, and Beuys’ artistic measures all aim to bring the material into play as the non-human performer of the creation.

While opening a reflection on the concept of the possible, this article puts into question the very form of its presentation. Scholars in Humanities often use images when presenting their thoughts and reflections: powerpoints are prepared following a unique line, and images in a presentation are used to sustain a single given discourse. But what if these images, while refusing to follow a single line and appearing all together, as in a Warburgian constellation, were able to suggest completely different connections and different possible discourses in the empty space among them?

The article discloses a space where the notion of contingency affects content and form; it shares a possible discourse, but it presents it as a possible one; it discloses a space where images – in their different impulses, like winds coming from different directions – open up the vitality of their uncertain relation.