Goethe Scenes

Beuys’s Mighty Oaks

Lush albeit virtual landscape: Joseph Beuys’s social sculpture project 7000 Oaksis being re-enacted in Second Life. At the seventh documenta in 1982, the felt-hatted anarchist confounded Kassel’s urban structures with an army of seedlings, each accompanied by a basalt column. While the stones retained their shape and mass, the seedlings unfolded their mighty leafed canopies. In real life back then a tree cost 500 deutschmarks. On Goethe Island, the raw materials are stacked and available for free: anyone’s avatar can be the artist here.