Black Box Play

Abstract

1970, Joseph Beuys uses the phrase “Social Sculpture” to describe his theoretical concept concerning the cultural and political function art. Beuys argues that every aspect of life can be approached creatively, hence everyone has the potential to be an artist. He believed in universal human creativity and in the potential art can have to bring on social and cultural change. But the social world Beuys was writing in was very different form the one we live in now. in 1970 the population of the world was approximately 3.7 billion, the internet was invented in 1983, and it wasn’t till 1990 when the world wide web was invented by Tim Berners-Lee, today in 2019 moving into 2020 the world population is at approximately 7.7billion, social, cultural and political states we live in have greatly changed since Beuys came up with Social Sculpture in 1970. To recontextualize and rethink the idea of social sculpture today, a number of aspects need to be addressed. The rise of social media and its impact, and the ever growing evolution of technology has changed many aspects of arts, and how we view it. In many cases taking away the in person experience some art can have that Beuys valued as well. On March 20th, 2020 New York state went into a mandatory lockdown with stay home orders in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. A section of this paper was written before this and left unchanged to show the effect Covid-19 had on this project.