In addition to the documentary screenings, F/T14’s Schlingensief retrospective also features a special opening lecture by Carl Hegemann, the dramaturge who worked closely with the artist on “Passion Impossible – 7 Tage Notruf für Deutschland”, his political party Chance 2000, “Parsifal”, and many of Schlingesief’s other works.

11/18 (Tue) 19:00

Free. German with Japanese interpretation

Photo: Aino Laberenz, ©Filmgalerie 451

Schlingensief’s last bold vision: an opera village in Africa. Fascinated for a long time by the African continent, he aimed for a new definition of “opera” under the slogan of “Learning from Africa”. The “opera” that Schlingensief had in mind was a kind of “social sounding body”, a place where people would gather, combining various functions such as hospital, school, theatre and cinema. This documentary, shot between 2009 and 2011, looks at the process leading up to the opening of the opera village located 30 km from Burkina Faso’s capital Ouagadougou, while Schlingensief was fighting the illness that would eventually kill him.

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©Ahoi Media

A documentary about Schlingensief’s project “Passion Impossible, Wake Up Call For Germany”, a week-long “mission station” in 1997 near Hamburg’s main station. This work, which he created for the Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg, and that took place at a former police station in St. Georg, one of Hamburg’s most deprived areas, saw large numbers of people, homeless, drug addicts, members of the Salvation Army, actors and the public all come together to debate, perform, make music and eat soup. This place was in very a true sense open to everybody and allowed anyone to raise their voice, and in a short time created a kind of “movement” in Hamburg involving the Mayor and many other public figures of the city.

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©Ahoi Media

In 1998 Schlingensief set up a political party called Chance 2000 for the 2000 federal elections. Candidates running for the party were actors, the unemployed and people with mental disabilities. Together with Schlingensief they campaigned for the election all over Germany with the slogan “Vote for yourself“, generating a storm of media attention. Zealously probing the rules of an election campaign from the party’s founding assembly to the production of TV commercials, Chance 2000 at the same time exposed the culture of political devices by promising nothing. Is this genuine political activism? Or a political satire?

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“Ausländer raus” by Paul Poet, ©Filmgalerie 451

A container house set up right in front of the Vienna Opera House. On its roof a huge banner: “Foreigners Out!” Inside the container live 12 asylum-seekers, observed by the passers-by through window-slots offering a view on the foreigners’ condition. Each day of the week-long installation one of the foreigners is selected by the audience for immediate deportation to their home country. The last asylum-seeker remaining in the container wins the top prize: a residence permit for Austria. All while the controversial installation was running, day by day more and more Viennese people gathered in front of Schlingensief’s container, their debates intensifying into brawls. The documentary looks at this now infamous project in 2000 during the Wiener Festwochen. The experience was also broadcast on TV and produced a storm of discussion and protest among the public.

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