BEUYS CONFLICT CONTINUES

Another point of contention has arisen between Joseph Beuys’s heirs and the Museum Schloss Moyland foundation, which is home to a considerable collection of the artist’s works. As dpa and Monopol report, Schloss Moyland has gone ahead with a new research prize named after Beuys, despite protests from his family. The “Joseph Beuys Prize for Research” is doted with $14,000 and will be awarded for the first time this November to a young researcher who has made a major contribution to studies about Beuys, who died almost twenty-five years ago on January 23, 1986. The artist’s remaining family––his widow Eva and the couple’s children––have qualified the prize as a “challenge” against them, which violates the interests of the intentions of Beuys’s work and name. But Moyland’s director Bettina Paust has the law on her side. “Legally, the matter was cleared up a year ago,” she said. “I want that Joseph Beuys and his work stay in the foreground again.” The last dispute between the heirs and the foundation dealt with the foundation’s exhibition of documentary photographs of a Beuys performance.

BANKSY BAIL FOR VOINA REFUSED

The renegade UK graffiti artist Banksy is not permitted to pay bail for the Russian activist artist group Voina. As the Süddeutsche Zeitung’s Sonja Zekri reports, two members of Voina, Oleg Vorotnikov and Leonid Nikolayev, are in prison after being arrested for hooliganism in Saint Petersburg. In a gesture of solidarity, Banksy had auctioned off some of his works to raise funds to have the artists released on bail before their hearing. But a court in Saint Petersburg refused the bail payment because there was not enough information about the person who put up the money. Banksy makes public appearances in a black ski mask; his real name remains unknown. Vorotnikov and Nikolayev face up to seven years of prison for overturning police cars.

JURY STILL OUT ON PANAHI

The jailed Iranian film director Jafar Panahi will keep his place in the jury of the upcoming international Berlinale film festival. By refusing to replace Panahi with a new jury member, the festival wanted to make a gesture to support Panahi’s struggle for freedom. The fifty-year-old director and a young fellow filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof were sentenced in Tehran last December. Panahi is set to spend the next six years in prison and has been prohibited from making films for twenty years. His film Offside won the Silver Bear award at the Berlinale in 2006. The Berlin film festival’s gesture comes shortly after another Iranian filmmaker, the director Rafi Pitts, asked filmmakers around the world to stop working for two hours next February 11 as a gesture of support for his imprisoned colleagues. February 11 marks the thirty-second anniversary of the Iranian Revolution.

— Jennifer Allen