felt tv / joseph beuys. 1970

Joseph Beuys
«Felt TV: Shown in TV broadcast ‘Identifications’»
As a contribution to Gerry Schum’s ‘Identifications’, Beuys adapted for television the ‘Felt TV’ action previously staged for a live audience at a Happening festival in Copenhagen in 1966. It was the only Beuys action executed specifically for the camera. It opens with Beuys seated in front of a TV set showing a programme which is invisible because the screen is covered by felt. The boxing-gloves used later in the action lie at the ready beneath his chair.

Beuys turns up the bottom left corner of the felt, revealing a glimpse of the faulty TV picture. The voice of a TV reporter, who is talking about current milk and meat prices, is still audible. Beuys declares he has ‘undertaken a gradual elimination’ by ‘filtering away’ the picture first while leaving the sound, ‘but when the picture has gone, the sound becomes absurd.’