The action Ausfegen (Sweeping Up) took place on May 1, 1972, in West Berlin, following the Labor Day demonstrations. After the crowd passed Karl-Marx-Platz, Joseph Beuys, together with two of his students, began to sweep up the square. The rubbish was collected in bags associated with his political group, the Organisation für Direkte Demokratie durch Volksabstimmung (Organization for Direct Democracy Through Plebiscites), and later spread out in the René Block gallery.

At the time, Beuys had become politically active following the events of 1968. He had founded the Deutsche Studentenpartei (German Student Party) in 1971, then the Organization for Direct Democracy, and had been expelled from the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in 1972. Since then, his practice combined political and ecological interventions with more traditional art performances.

The seemingly simple act of sweeping conveyed Beuys’s extended concept of art. It addressed social inequalities and leftist political issues: the clean-up after the demonstrations was usually done by foreign “guest workers,” who were paid low wages and largely ignored by the unions, despite the Left’s rhetoric of international solidarity. By participating in this cleaning, Beuys and his students highlighted these disparities while demonstrating his belief that every individual is an active subject of history, capable of self-determination. Sweeping the square became both a symbolic and practical enactment of social and political transformation, reflecting Beuys’s vision of art as a tool for societal change.

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(Sources: Centre Pompidou; Hyperallergic)