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"A connecting string and a positive and negative poles and the two begin to exchange information."

Jörg Schellmann, Bernd Kluser:

The object Telephone T--------R (1974) appears to be a primitive form of the technological transmission of information. What knowledge can be gained in referring back to this original form?

 

Joseph Beuys:

Well, no knowledge in a direct way. Art is not there to provide knowledge in direct ways. It produces deepened perceptions of experience. More must happen than simply logically understandable things. Art is not there to be simply understood, or we would have no need of art. It could then just be logical sentences in a form of a text for instance. Where objects are concerned it's more the sense of an indication or suggestion.

With the two tin cans I took the most childlike form of communication and characterized them with a positive and negative pole. This underlines that in the universal sense communication has to be there. The form of the tins has to be extended, since it is only then that the thing takes on a meaning. The tins themselves cannot offer that. They indicate merely a simple elementary procedure: the concept of transmitter and receiver. . . that means two stations, whether they are individuals or groups of people that are connected. A connecting string and a positive and negative pole and the two begin to exchange information. But that is still not a declaration of what a contemporary theory of information could be. The tins cannot offer that, but they can stimulate an impetus if an intuitive person comes across them. But it doesn't have to be like that. Another person could come and just see the things-two tin cans-that are anyway no worse than a Brancusi sculpture. . . .[2]

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