Dactyls: FIU Organisational Team – 24-hour preparation for the establishment of a Free International School for Creativity and Interdisciplinary Research
1983, 136 metal coat-hangers and a wooden shelf holding an elastic bandage, a rabbit’s tail and a wooden box with the number 4,587,076 written inside it.
Variable dimensions

On a visit to Delphi in December 1982, Beuys became captivated with the idea of making an installation inside the temple of Apollo there. His intention, of course, was the controversy: the direct dialogue with the shamanistic Greek god ― an integral factor in Western thought and the arts ― whose first temple, legend has it, was built by bees out of honey and feathers (another sign for Beuys!). But the plan fell through when the Ministry of Culture summarily refused him to issue him a permit to use the space. (Another space offered by a gallery did not interest him.) Thus Greece was one of the few European countries to forfeit the opportunity for a Beuys performance and installation.

However, it now seems that Beuys did in fact realize this concept outside Greece. Although his proposal was again denied by the Greek government in mid 1983, Beuys went through with his plans and completed a theoretical action that he called Dactyls: FIU organisational team – 24 hours preparation for the establishment of a Free International School for Creativity and Interdisciplinary Research, referencing his 1977 Documenta 6 installation, Free International University for Creativity and Interdisciplinary Research (FIU).

Upon completing the work in Germany, Beuys sent a letter to the Greek government in which he wrote the number 4,587,076, thanking them at the same time for denying his Delphi request. The origin and significance of this number puzzled Greek scholars for nearly twenty years until 2000, when the project was revealed in its entirety by the collector and friend of the artist, J.W. Frˆhlich.

The Dactyls are among the strangest primal beings in the Greek Pantheon. The sons and servants of the Great Mother Rhea, they were counted on the fingers and numbered ten. According to myth, they sprang from the earth of Crete, in the sacred cave of the Idhi Mountains, where Rhea braced her hands against the ground while giving birth to Zeus. Thus they were called Dactyloi Idaioi after Mount Idhi and Rhea’s fingers, or Curetes or Corybants, as the companions of the Phrygian Mother of the Gods, Adrastaea.

They protected the newborn Zeus with their swords and shields, and, thus armed, danced war dances; which brings us directly to the dactyl, the three-syllable metrical foot in poetry (-υυ).

Apollonius Rhodius says that there were 20 right and 32 left Dactyls. Joseph Beuys says that there were 40 right and 96 left Dactyls: The right were smiths and the left sorcerers or possibly an early race of humans, inventors of iron and metallurgy, ingenious dwarves with marked ithyphallic attributes. Beuys employed his entire Dactyl population as the organizing team for the FIU in the temple of Apollo.

Joseph Beuys announced a 24-hour meeting of the Dactyls at the temple of Apollo on May 17, 1983

To prepare the ground for the processes of creativity and objective thinking To benefit any mortal visiting the temple in either body or spirit from that time forward And backward since time (Beuys believed) is flexible.

The work consists of the metal coat-hangers that accommodated the Dactyls’ personal belongings (armour, swords and shields) outside the temple during the 24-hour meeting. Each hanger is inscribed with a number and assigned to a particular Dactyl. The hangers on the right side of the temple entrance held the personal belongings of the Dactyl-Smiths and are in absolute order as smiths are more scientific and practical. The hangers on the left served the Dactyl-Sorcerers and are in a jumbled pile as magicians are untidy, but resourceful and artistic. This team of wizardly and scientific minds fulfilled Beuys’s vision for the organization of a Free International University within the temple. A second component of the work is a wooden shelf holding an elastic bandage, a rabbit’s tail (from Delphi) and a wooden box with the number 4,587,076 inscribed inside it.

On the evening of the 17th of May 1983, the Dactyls assembled outside the temple and hung their belongings on the hangers. Naked, they then entered the temple where they spent the night disseminating and sharing energy, and generally spiritually enriching the space. On that same evening, Beuys produced a special number, devised by multiplying the number inscribed on each hanger by the total number of Dactyls participating in his installation and adding up the results. The sum of 4,587,076 was given as the total accumulated energy in the space, measured in artistic arithmetical units.