Binary Beuys REMIX feat. Destiny’s Choice: 1 Nee nee No no

FESCH.TV INFORMIERT:

2016

I have separated the Yes‘ and No’s from Joseph Beuys‘ audio piece ‚Ja ja ja Ne ne ne‘ from 1968 and divided them into two different audio tracks. Ideally these tracks should be played separately, either spatially apart or together, depending on the exhibition context.

According to one interpretation, Beuys was commenting on the situation of cultural critics, who arbitrarily are deciding what is in the cultural canon and what isn’t. Via my interpretation of Beuys‘ work, by separating the continuous streaming ‚Yes’s and ‚No’s, I want to clarify, more so than the original work has done, that this cultural canon is not an effect of arbitrariness but an effect of a binary world view that ultimately benefits those in power, and marginalizes those not in power.

What is deemed culturally ‚inside‘ or outside‘ can change any minute. Yet the arrival of the internet, hailed as affording everyone the democratization of the means of production, has not entirely eradicated the cultural inside and outside, nor the binarity of Who gets to speak and why. Chris Kraus has informed this timeless phrase that has currency within all marginalisation discourses, and that has reached global cultural significance only 20-odd years after having been written.

This is the reason why I have also extracted and separated the ‚Yeah’s und ‚No’s from the song ‚No, No, No Pt. 2‘ from 1998 by Destiny’s Child and sampled one ‚Ja‘ and ‚Nee‘ each from Beuys‘ work for an additional remix called ‚Binary Beuys feat. Destiny’s Choice‘. The remix is my attempt to discuss the perception of elitist and popular culture as dichotomous. Only few artworks can travel freely between high and everyday culture without being reduced to the Other, foreign in the recpective text. Destiny’s Child is headed by Beyoncé who in her output has frequently referred to the art world as a status symbol, very recently in her video for ‚Apeshit‘ from June 2018.