joseph beuys’ proposition of social sculpture in the 1970s was built on a premise that “society as a whole becomes a work of art” (biddle) in which the tools of creativity can be applied across all divisions of life and anyone can wield those tools (hence, “everyone is an artist”). to beuys, the project of social sculpture would “reach fruition when every living person becomes a creator, a sculptor, or architect of the social organism”, and could thus only be created through a complete dismantling and rebuilding of society of which “only art is capable”. as such, social sculpture has been interpreted by some critics as a utopian proposal, but i would push back against this reading, as this positions social sculpture as a static design rather than as the “organism” beuys described, the latter’s potency deriving from the fact that it takes no singular form and mutates continuously through processes of citizen-driven action and creative discourse. beuys’ conception of art at its highest form—as an “evolutionary-revolutionary” force, to borrow his turn of phrase—is thereby one which does not rest within any kind of established structure “after” it is created, but rather is always subject to change and debate, and is itself created on unstable terms. social sculpture is, in other words, a kind of sculptural temporality—a form of creation which does not presume that the emancipatory condition (or any condition) can be frozen into the dna of a single art object, but rather understands that emancipation is a state of constant motion, dialogue, and adjustment, and thus proposes a sculpture which works in step with this process.