Christoph Schlingensief. Deutschlandsuche (Searching for Germany)

As part of Berlin Art Week, Crone Berlin is showing the exhibition Christoph Schlingensief | Deutschlandsuche (Searching for Germany). It comprises a wide range of film and video works, photographs, objects, manuscripts and materials from Schlingensief's work complexes Hamlet, Chance 2000 and Deutschlandsuche, some of them previously unpublished and on view for the very first time.

Christoph Schlingensief (*1960 in Oberhausen, † 2010 in Berlin) did not conceive of his work in terms of traditional genres, but rather merged film, theater, literature, performance, television, time-based media, visual arts, and political activism. 

Consistent characteristics of his works were a clear, striking language, the fascination with trash and the mainstream, whose mechanisms he exploited with relish, and an ethical and moral concern that he expressed through radical campaigns. The seriousness with which he questioned everyday life in Germany in the face of an insufficiently processed history went hand in hand with a humorous view of himself and others. His artistic practice was pervaded by a loud, challenging outcry that was not intended to scare, but to arouse and unite. 

The exhibition Christoph Schlingensief | Deutschlandsuche (Searching for Germany) presents three of his major works, which enable a comparison with today's ideologically motivated activist art. Particular attention was paid to performances that intervened directly in social and political processes: In Hamlet, Schlingensief brought avowed Neo-Nazis onto the stage, with Chance 2000 he founded something like a performance party and for Deutschlandsuche he embarked on an intercontinental expedition to find the new German hero in the global world. 

The three work complexes, which Schlingensief created between 1998 and 2003, inevitably raise the question: How do his approach, his aspirations, and his concerns differ from the diverse current intermedia, cross-genre art practices, which are undeniably in Schlingensief’s tradition, but—according to criticism and perception—often only seek self-assurance, self-affirmation, and self-referentiality?

In these polarizing times, it is particularly worth taking a look at Schlingensief’s work. It is often said that someone like him is missing today. But how would his art perform in the current bombardment of constant provocations, permanent truth-stretching exercises, and ongoing social divisions? One of his mottos was: “Shout into the silence.” Would he say today: “Shout into the noise”? 

The Schlingensief exhibition at Crone, his first solo show in Berlin in ten years, is intended to help contextualize his work against the backdrop of current events. It is curated by Anna-Catharina Gebbers, who, together with Klaus Biesenbach and Susanne Pfeffer, was jointly responsible for the major Schlingensief retrospectives at KW in Berlin in 2013 and at MoMA PS1 in New York in 2014, and is being realized in close collaboration with Aino Laberenz, who manages and preserves Schlingensief’s estate.