The Work of Art in the Post-Human Age, symposium, Tate Liverpool

Felt Suit (1970) is a two-piece suit comprising a jacket and a pair of trousers made from coarse grey felt. In the Tate collection, it is number eighty-seven in an edition of one hundred identical suits, all produced in the same year by the German artist, Joseph Beuys. The exhibit appears in the Tate Liverpool, handing from a wooden coat hanger, although the artist has stated that the work can be displayed in any way. More precisiely, when asked in an interview how the work should be displayed, Beuys answered: 'I don't give a damn. You can nail the suit to the wall. You can also hang it on a hanger, ad libitum! But you can also wear it or throw it in a chest' (Beuys in Schnellman & Klüsser 1980, unpaginated). And in the chest it ended up alright, but hold tight: that's the end by which another story begins. So grab your handheld device, connect, put on your headphones and off we go...