Wie man dem toten Hasen die Bilder erklärt [or How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare] by Joseph Beuys (1965). Performance, Galerie Schmela in Düsseldorf, Germany. 

Recording the late German artist and activist JOSEPH BEUYS‘ performance in 1965, this film documents Beuys as mediator between the material and immaterial.

Covering his face in honey and gold leaves, he talks to a dead hare, showing him the paintings of a gallery whilst the public observes him through a glass window. Beuys’ choice of the hare is symbolic – the hare is the animal which presides in rituals of transformation in shamanic traditions. Beuys had been introduced to shamanism through a healing time he spent in the community of Tatars in Russia.

Attached to his right foot, Beuys wears a long sole of steel, and sits repeatedly on a stool under which lies a pile of bones. In a meditative conversation with the hare, Beuys transcends the rational codes of communication imposed by society, summoning the spiritual through the hare’s connection with the Underworld. Wie man dem toten Hasen die Bilder erklärt is Beuys’ act of poetic madness merging contemporary performance to ancient shamanic practice and knowledge, seeking out an intimate reconnection to the spiritual through Art.

Wie man dem toten Hasen die Bilder erklärt is on view as part of the Masters of Disorder exhibition at the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris, until July 28 2012.

Text by Sophie Pinchetti.