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Celtic (Kinloch Rannoch) Scottish Symphony, Celtic+, Agnus Vitex Castus and Three Pots for The Poorhouse (performances 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973)

Richard Demarco invited Beuys to Scotland in May 1970 and again in August to show and perform in the Edinburgh International Festival with Günther Uecker, Blinky Palermo and other Düsseldorf artists plus Robert Filliou where they took over the main spaces of the Edinburgh College of Art. The exhibition was a defining moment for British and European art, directly influencing several generations of artists and curators.

In Edinburgh in 1970, Beuys created ARENA for Demarco as a retrospective of his art up to that time, showed his installation The Pack (Beuys) and performed Celtic Kinloch Rannoch with Henning Christiansen and Johannes Stuttgen in support, seen by several thousands. This was Beuys' first use of blackboards and the beginning of nine trips to Scotland to work with Richard Demarco, and six to Ireland and five to England, working mainly with art critic Caroline Tisdall and Troubled Image Group artist Robert McDowell and others in the detailed formulation of the Free International University for Creativity and Interdisciplinary Research (FIU) presented at documenta 6 in 1977, in London in 1978 and Edinburgh in 1980, as well as in many other iterations.

In Edinburgh, at the end of the 1970s the FIU became among four organisations that founded the German Green Party. Beuys became entranced by the periphery of Europe as a dynamic counter in cultural and economic terms to Europe's centralisation, and this included linking Europe's energies North-South to Italy and East-West in the Eurasia concept, with special emphasis on Celtic traditions in landscape, poetry, and myths that also define Eurasia. In his view anything that survives as art and ideas and beliefs, including the great religions for centuries or millennia, contain eternal truths and beauty. The truth of ideas and of 'thinking as form', the sculpture of energies across a wide and variegated spectrum from mythos and spirituality to materialism, Socialism and Capitalism, and of 'creativity = capital' encompassed for him the study of geology, botany, and animal life, finding meanings and precepts in all of these as much as in the study of society, philosophy and the human condition, and in his art practice as 'Social Sculpture'.

He adopted and developed a Gestalt way to examine and work with both organic and inorganic substances and human social elements, following Leonardo, Loyola, Goethe, Steiner, Joyce, and many other artists, scientists and thinkers, working with all visible and invisible aspects comprising a totality of cultural, moral and ethical significance as much as practical or scientific value. These trips inspired many works and performances. Beuys considered Edinburgh with its Enlightenment history as a laboratory of inspirational ideas. When visiting Loch Awe and Rannoch Moor on his May 1970 visit to Demarco he first conceived the necessity of the 7,000 Oaks work. After making the Loch Awe sculpture, at Rannoch Moor he began what became the Celtic (Kinlock Rannoch) Scottish Symphony performance, developed further in Basel the next year as Celtic+. The performance in Edinburgh included his first blackboard that later appeared in many performances when in discussion with the public. With it and his Eurasian staff he is a transmitter and, despite long periods of imperturbable stillness interspersed by Christiansen's 'sound sculptures', he also creates dialogue evoking artists' thoughts and in discussion with spectators. He collected gelatin representing crystalline stored energy of ideas that had been spread over the wall. In Basel the action including washing the feet of seven spectators. He immersed himself in water with reference to Christian traditions and baptism and symbolized revolutionary freedom from false preconceptions.

He then, as in Edinburgh, pushed a blackboard across the floor alternately writing or drawing on it for his audience. He put each piece in a tray and as the tray became full he held it above his head and convulsed, causing the gelatin to fall on him and the floor. He followed this with a quiet pause. He stared into emptiness for over half an hour, fairly still in both performances. During this time, he had a lance in his hand and was standing by the blackboard where he had drawn a grail. He took a protective stance. After this he repeated each action in the opposite order, ending with the washing with water as a final cleansing. The performances were filled with Celtic symbolism with various interpretations or historic influences. This extended in 1972 with the performance Vitex Agnus Castus in Naples, of combining female and male elements and evoking much else, and extended further with I Like America and America Likes Me to have a performance dialogue with the original energy of America represented by the endangered yet highly intelligent coyote.

In 1974, in Edinburgh, Beuys worked with Buckminster Fuller in Demarco's 'Black & White Oil Conference', where Beuys talked of 'The Energy Plan of the Western Man' using blackboards in open discussion with audiences at Demarco's Forrest Hill Schoolhouse. In the 1974 Edinburgh Festival, Beuys performed Three Pots for the Poorhouse again using gelatin in Edinburgh's ancient poorhouse, continuing the development begun with Celtic Kinloch Rannoch. He met there Tadeusz Kantor directing Lovelies and Dowdies and was at Marina Abramović 's first ever performance. In 1976, Beuys performed In Defence of the Innocent at the Demarco Gallery where he stood for the imprisoned gangster and sculptor Jimmy Boyle in a manner associating Boyle with the coyote. In 1980 Edinburgh Festival Beuys was at the FIU exhibition and performed Jimmy Boyle Days (the name of the blackboards he used in public discussions), and where he went on a hunger strike as a public protest and led with others in a legal action against the Scottish Justice system. This was the first case under the new European Human Rights Act. The eight performances should be understood as one continuum.