ABSTRACT
Joseph Beuys’ involvement in politics since the 1970s was considered controversial. He joined the Green party and used various public occasions for spreading his ideas about the interconnectedness of life and art. Contextualising Beuys’ work within the Hamburger Bahnhof means to situate it within one of the largest contemporary art museums in Europe. The museum was founded by the City of Berlin with the private collection of the real estate businessman Erich Marx acting as its founding basis. Mediated and using different formats of the voice and image recordings, monumental works by the artist provide a supplementary bodily experience that facilitates engagement with Beuys’ oeuvre. The chapter analyses the installation Tramstop. A Monument for the Future serves as an instructive case study in order to outline and theorise a conflict of interests between two forces: the market and the state. The Berlin curators point out that their intention with the retrospective was not to construct a hagiography of the artist.
