PLANT FLOWERS AND TREES. The Beuys Banner Flight Project for Kassel and New York City, Part II, April 21/22, 2025, International Earth Day.
At the Invitation of the Department of Art & Art History at Hunter College, The City University of New York, partly funded through the Sainsbury Initiative and the Office of the Arts, supported by 7000 Oaks Foundation Kassel, formixx cultural management, and Museum Schloss Moyland, executed by High Exposure Inc., and promoted by the German Consulate General New York.
A text banner in tow of a small plane hovers over the Hudson River and the New York Harbor. White capital letters convey the message PLANT FLOWERS AND TREES. The wording extends the basic idea of the epochal artwork »7000 Oaks« by German artist Joseph Beuys, who initiated the planting of trees, each accompanied by an upright basalt stone, as a contribution to »documenta 7« in Kassel in 1982. It also draws attention to the 38 trees that were planted in the spirit of Beuys on West 22nd Street in New York‘s Chelsea neighborhood.
Part I of the banner flight project was accomplished on Sept. 21, 2022, the UN International Day of Peace, for the 7000 Oaks Foundation in Kassel. Given Russia’s invasion of Ukraine a few months earlier, flowers were added to the call to plant trees, implying both the demand for ecological »social sculpture« and for peace through diplomacy.
The work was carried out climate-neutrally.
PLANT FLOWERS AND TREES II. Flight over Liberty Island, with Governors Island and Brooklyn in the background, April 21, 2025.
Banner pilot: Garrett Bienert, chase plane pilot: Jack Fuller, High Exposure Inc. Photo: MK
Heading north along Liberty State Park with Jersey City in the background
Flight over Hudson Yards along the New York skyline
Top shot over the New York Harbor
A curve over the audience's meeting point on Little Island with the banner changing hue from white to gray as the sun shines from behind
Flugzeug über Manhattan. Rheinische Post, April 26, 2025
https://bit.ly/4b5qd88 photos and montages Kassel and NYC, press release, catalogue Klant (Google Drive)