Editing Joseph Beuys (section)

===''The Chief – Fluxus Chant'' (performance, installation, 1963–1964)===
''The Chief'' was first performed in Copenhagen in 1963 and in Berlin in 1964.<ref name="td94">[[#Tisdall|Tisdall]], p.94</ref> Beuys positioned himself on the gallery floor wrapped entirely in a large felt blanket, and remained there for nine hours. Emerging from either end of the blanket were two dead hares. Around him was an installation of copper rod, felt, fat, hair, and fingernails. Inside the blanket Beuys held a microphone into which he breathed, coughed, groaned, grumbled, whispered and whistled at irregular intervals, with the results amplified by a PA system as viewers observed from the doorway.<ref name="td94" />

In her book on Beuys, Caroline Tisdall wrote that ''The Chief'' "is the first performance in which the rich vocabulary of the next fifteen years is already suggested,"<ref name="td94" /> and that its theme is "the exploration of levels of communication beyond human semantics, by appealing to atavistic and instinctual powers."<ref>[[#Tisdall|Tisdall]], p.97</ref> Beuys stated that his presence in the room "was like that of a carrier wave, attempting to switch off my own species' range of semantics."<ref name="td95">[[#Tisdall|Tisdall]], p.95</ref> He also said: "For me ''The Chief'' was above all an important sound piece. The most recurring sound was deep in the throat and hoarse like the cry of the stag....This is a primary sound, reaching far back. ... The sounds I make are taken consciously from animals. I see it as a way of coming into contact with other forms of existence beyond the human one. It's a way of going beyond our restricted understanding to expand the scale of producers of energy among co-operators in other species, all of whom have different abilities[.]"<ref name="td95" /> Beuys also acknowledged the physical demands of the performance. "It takes a lot of discipline to avoid panicking in such a condition, floating empty and devoid of emotion and without specific feelings of claustrophobia or pain, for nine hours in the same position ... such an action ... changes me radically. In a way it's a death, a real action and not an interpretation."<ref name="td95" />

Writer Jan Verwoert noted that Beuys's "voice filled the room, while the source was nowhere to be found. The artist was the focus of attention, yet remained invisible, rolled up in a felt blanket throughout the duration of the event...visitors were...forced to stay in the neighboring room. They could see what was happening but remained barred from direct physical access to the event. The partial closing-off of the performance space from the audience space created distance, and at the same time increased the attraction of the artist's presence. He was present acoustically and physically as part of a piece of sculpture, but also absent, invisible, untouchable[.]"<ref name="e-flux">{{cite web |url=https://www.e-flux.com/journal/01/68485/the-boss-on-the-unresolved-question-of-authority-in-joseph-beuys-oeuvre-and-public-image |title=The Boss: On the Unresolved Question of Authority in Joseph Beuys's Oeuvre and Public Image |last=Verwoert |first=Jan |date=December 2008  |website=e-flux.com |access-date=18 August 2020}}</ref> Verwoert suggests that ''The Chief'' "can be read as a parable of cultural work in a public medium. The authority of those who dare — or are so bold as — to speak publicly results from the fact that they isolate themselves from the gaze of the public, under the gaze of the public, in order to still address it in indirect speech, relayed through a medium. What is constituted in this ceremony is authority in the sense of authorship, in the sense of a public voice....Beuys stages the creation of such a public voice as an event that is as dramatic as it is absurd. He thus asserts the emergence of such a voice as an event. At the same time, however, he also undermines this assertion through the lamentably powerless form by which this voice is produced: in emitting half-smothered inarticulate sounds that would have remained inaudible without electronic amplification."<ref name="e-flux" /> Lana Shafer Meador wrote: "Inherent to ''The Chief'' were issues of communication and transformation .... For Beuys, his own muffled coughs, breaths, and grunts were his way of speaking for the hares, giving a voice to those who are misunderstood or do not possess their own....In the midst of this metaphysical communication and transmission, the audience was left out in the cold. Beuys deliberately distanced the viewers by physically positioning them in a separate gallery room — only able to hear, but not see what is occurring — and by performing the action for a grueling nine hours."<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.frenchandmichigan.com/reading/joseph-beuys-and-martin-kippenberger |title=Joseph Beuys and Martin Kippenberger: Divergent Approaches to Relational Aesthetics |last=Meador |first=Lana Shafer |website=frenchandmichigan.com |date=8 November 2015 |access-date=18 August 2020}}</ref>