Today Bazon Brock turns 80. Being an unique mixture of an artist and an polymath, Bazon Brock studied with Theordor W. Adorno, helped to bring Fluxus to Germany in the 1960th and was a close collaborator of Joseph Beuys and Wolf Vostell. Brock is emeritus Professor of Aesthetics and Cultural Education at the Bergische Universität in Wuppertal, Germany. He developed the method of “Action Teaching”, in which the seminar hall becomes a place for staging oneself and others. From 1968 until 1992 he launched the documenta-schools for visitors. As „Bazon“ is the Greek word for a talkative person, Bazon Brock developed talking and the mediation of art to an art form, always driven by on the one hand his fury against Hitlerism, which he suffered severely of as a child, being a refugee at the end of the Second World War from the east, and on the other hand by his euphoria to be alive.
Previously to his 80th birthday, Bazon Brock gave to me a very poignant and insightful interview about his impressive life: He told me about his impulses in life and his terrifying childhood during war times, about his love for Switzerland as his ideal of Europe, about his professorship in Wuppertal and his latest projects until eternity.
Happy birthday, Bazon Brock! May you stay with us much, much longer.