Capital
capital
/{kæp{I}tl/ noun, adj.; noun
CITY | 1 (also capital city) [C] the most important town or city of a country, usually where the central government operates from: Cairo is the capital of Egypt. Troops are stationed in and around the capital. A tour of six European capital cities (figurative) Paris, the fashion capital of the world
MONEY | 2 [sing.] a large amount of money that is invested or is used to start a business: to set up a business with a starting capital of £100 000 | 3 [U] wealth or property that is owned by a business or a person: capital assets capital expenditure (= money that an organization spends on buildings, equipment, etc.) | 4 [U] (technical) people who use their money to start businesses, considered as a group: capital and labour
LETTER | 5 (also capital letter) [C] a letter of the form and size that is used at the beginning of a sentence or a name (= A,B,C rather than a,b,c): Use block capitals (= separate capital letters). Please write in capitals / in capital letters.
ARCHITECTURE | 6 the top part of a column-picture at arcade
make capital (out) of sth to use a situation for your own advantage: The opposition parties are all making political capital out of the disagreements within the government. adj.
PUNISHMENT | 1 [only before noun] involving punishment by death: a capital offence
LETTER | 2 [only before noun] (of letters of the alphabet) having the form and size used at the beginning of a sentence or a name: English is written with a capital 'E'.-compare lower case
EXCELLENT | 3 (old-fashioned, BrE) excellent with a capital A, B, etc. used to emphasize that a word has a stronger meaning than usual in a particular situation: He was romantic with a capital R.
Oxford dictionary, 2005 | www1.oup.co.uk/elt/oald/bin/oald2.pl
"CAPITAL is at present the work sustaining ability. Money is not an economic value though. The two genuine economic values involve the connection between ability (creativity) and product. That explains the formula presenting the expanded concept of art: ART=CAPITAL...
Art that can not shape society and therefore also can not penetrate the heart questions of society, [and] in the end influence the question of capital, is no art." | Joseph Beuys, 1985
Beuys imagined that an expanded application of human creativity--and the broader definition of "art" that would follow--would result in something he called "social sculpture." While the term encompassed many things for Beuys, it might broadly be defined as a conscious act of shaping, of bringing some aspect of the environment--whether the political system, the economy, or a classroom--from a chaotic state into a state of form, or structure. Social sculpture should be accomplished cooperatively, creatively, and across disciplines (he often cited the example of the beehive as an ideal working model). For Beuys, the need to change, or literally to re-form, was urgent. "All around us," he said, "the fundamentals of life are crying out to be shaped, or created."
The slogans "Art = Capital" or "Creativity = Capital," which Beuys often used in his artworks, could be understood as shorthand notations of his ideas, and suggest that creativity and art are the new currency for the transformation of society that he envisioned. The multiple La rivoluzione siamo Noi (1972), "We are the revolution," recalls Beuys' proclamation that "Art is the only revolutionary force." In this work, the artist seems to stride boldly into the future, urging us to accompany him on his way to the revolution.
-Joan Rothfuss, Walker Art Center curator, www.walkerart.org/archive/8/9C430DB110DED6686167.htm
The most common idea of capital is directly connected to the economy and commerce. Terms such as capital stock, to capitalise on, initial capital and accumulation of capital, all refer to the common economic idea. Even the critics of capitalism use the term capital in this sense.
The field in between the common idea and the utopia of capital is to be the basis of the Symposium Mohren 05.
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