“Christoph’s at the station, picking up the German Nazis.” So the press lady at Zurich’s
Schauspielhaus told me when I asked. The town was up in arms. A clear-cut case.
Typical. Hmm, but is that actually political? Those who wanted to know more precisely right away had failed to understand the moment. For the methodical examination of this sort of Schlingensief action amounted to a slowing of his creativity. Conversely: that was his permanent advantage. Because he permitted virtually no dissection of his work. That was how he always remained one step faster, ahead of those who thought they had finally come close, were finally right on it. Fiddlesticks. Because those moments were exactly when the twist came. Intuitive, hardly conceptual. And the mistaken belief of being on the same level with him thanks to “solid preparation,” that was even more wrong. Because then people needed to work off the ballast of their analytically approximate approaches when something altogether different was suddenly at issue.
Once we were all sitting on the rehearsal stage, waiting for the arrival of the starter. All
brimming with things to offer. Then Christoph came in and showed us his first film—which we were all familiar with—and the next thing he announced to us was that he was going to start off by doing nothing for a week. Major alarm! Never have so many very good dramaturges been seen (in one place) whipping themselves into a (perfectly unnecessary) frenzy. Instead of regarding the gap that had opened up in the daily theatrical grind as an opportunity, immediate measures were taken to “save the project,” and masses of additional materials were carted in with even greater urgency, materials condemned to assured uselessness. It wasn’t until I took part that I realized that only a certain amount of distance (at work, not in private life) created the possibility that one would be “part of it.” For in the Schlingensief cosmos, full immersion meant simple absorption for those visible in the light next to him. The others, the loyal fellow creators and fellow combatants, received special rewards, the highest of which was clear membership in the team or family. That was certainly why all the amateurs, the disabled people, and the ones who had their own major narcissistic disorders, were the only authentic possible people in the Schlingensief show trial. Because they ran along their own parallels, and so remained miraculously free. And the writers of reports likewise had an interesting aerial view of the whole thing only when they described the phenomenon and not the quality of the particular foreground, such as a successful/unsuccessful performance or an exhibition space featuring rotating-
stage recollections (the Animatograph). His theater was permanent. And always intentionally all-encompassingly consistently inconsistent. And yes: Christoph Schlingensief was not a political artist! That diminishes him. He played in many simultaneous spaces. These were society, fucking up, childhood dreams, anti-ideals, childhood curses, ultradirect philosophy, daring-oneself-in-not-bearing-it, love for art, existential sentiments, and “life” as much as “non-life.” And in his super-agility he was the super-fastest one, which made him a constantly interesting media artist.
“I’ve proven to you that there’s no way to stage this play,” he said after a dress rehearsal.
Major ala … !! And once again “the project” was “at risk.” I told him, well, he didn’t have
to be part of it, there were enough others. We ended up doing it the next day. With him
right in front, of course. He just needed to have briefly indicated the possible exit, only
the more vigorously to barge right in through the entrance. “Perhaps I’m not going to show anything this time.” And that is his greatest achievement: to demonstrate that it is possible to cancel art. The famous “chance” in failure. The idea “really” initiated was much more important to him than its orderly implementation. And that’s what they then call freedom. But freedom nonetheless brings the human being to an end, and so this insight was useful to Christoph Schlingensief the bearer of himself forever only for a very brief moment. So stay on it. Standstill is detachment. Better to smack the next fat piece into the greedy maws of the project providers as they tremble with joy. Heating the stew is still how you set it in motion.
And I am so grateful to have seen it. How there were fresh and daring ventures. How new things were tried out. With the most direct dedication. It was, in the more recent past, the last culmination of a gigantic contraption of ribbons in which the individual threads derived from the greatest moments of experimentation. And it was laid out completely openly for all to see, everyone was free to join in and have a look. In a daydream. We miss that immensely. The gap between our real days and Christoph’s fantastic constructions of them won’t be closed for a very long time. And that was what my aunt Anke sensed when, together with innumerable people he had touched, she felt an intimate loss when Christoph died, even though she had only read his book from a safe distance.
Fuck that silence.
Schorsch Kamerun for Christoph Schlingensief. From the book accompanying the German Pavilion 2011, Sternberg Press (ISBN 978-1-934105-42-9).