DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0008 Introduction: Decentering “Schlingensief” Jack Davis and Katherine Pollock Truman State University / Louisiana State University Shreveport Christoph Schlingensief ’s art encompassed a variety of forms, including cinema, theater, performance art, opera, and architecture� Born in Oberhausen in 1960, he began shooting films as a young man with groups of friends (including the comedian and musician Helge Schneider) and former Fassbinder actors, some of whom accompanied him throughout his career� He interned with experimental director Werner Nekes and worked briefly on the television soap Lindenstraße before achieving minor notoriety in Germany with the Wende -era avant-garde splatter film Das Deutsche Kettensägenmassaker (1990). After losing funding from German public television due to the provocative nature of the Kettensägenmassaker and the other films in his “Deutschland-Trilogie,” ( 100 Jahre Adolf Hitler (1989) and Terror 2000 (1992)), Schlingensief accepted an invitation to continue his artistic interventions with funding from the Berliner Volksbühne. While at the Volksbühne, he worked with actors and dramaturgs to develop a provocative and ambiguous blend of theater and live television which critiqued the German cultural, political and media establishment� Schlingensief attracted the attention of important festivals and institutions in Germany and abroad through his aesthetic interventions in the public sphere during the 1990s and early 2000s� He was invited as a performer and director to the Wiener Festwochen, the Zurich Schauspielhaus and the Festspielhaus at Bayreuth� Support from the international art world and German cultural foundations also enabled projects in the Global South, including the Operndorf Afrika (2009-), a settlement and school in Burkina Faso which he initiated during the final years of his life and which continues to this day. This cursory introduction necessarily simplifies the highly varied projects that Schlingensief carried out both within and beyond the German-speaking world� Furthermore, a chronological description fails to account for the serial and ongoing nature of his creations, which featured multiple points of interrelation with cultural institutions and collaborators, but ultimately coalesced, in some form or another, around the artist himself (Höving et al. 12). Schlingensief ’s work, person, and persona were intimately linked from the moment that he came into the public eye� He often foregrounded certain details of his 124 Jack Davis and Katherine Pollock DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0008 autobiography in his performances: for example, that he came from Oberhausen, that he had been an altar server in the Catholic church, and that his father had been a pharmacist� Many of his performance pieces situated this public persona at the center of the action: “Schlingensief” as a talk show host in Talk 2000 , or as a master of ceremonies in the political circus Chance 2000 � Schlingensief ’s charisma became part of an aesthetic strategy which allowed him to provoke audiences and his own collaborators without completely alienating them� Throughout the nearly thirty years of his artistic career, Schlingensief maintained a charm that people from all walks of life and political persuasions found difficult to resist, even if his art itself remained polarizing. His increased popularity in the German-speaking world during his final years was due as much to his prepossessing personality as it was to his public, tragic suffering and death from lung cancer� After his passing in 2010, academia and the art world faced the question of what was left of a body of work that had been seemingly so dependent on the persona of its creator� Many asked themselves the same question that the Berliner Zeitung posed to his widow, Aino Labarenz: “Kann man an Christoph Schlingensief erinnern, ohne sein Werk zu verklären? ” Labarenz shared this doubt, responding with her own questions: “Wie bekommt man den wahnsinnig lebendigen Menschen Schlingensief gezeigt? ” Without her husband’s presence, would the “living” work become a “Mausoleum”? (Labarenz; quoted from Janke and Kovacs 21)� Schlingensief commemorations often attempted to recapture something of Schlingensief the “outrageously lively human being” (to paraphrase Labarenz) by focusing on his biography and its relationship to his art� For example, Bettina Böhler’s celebrated 2020 documentary Schlingensief: In das Schweigen hineinschreien , was advertised with a trailer featuring single-word descriptions (“Familienmensch / Aktivist / Katholik”) that could have come from Schlingensief himself� Moreover, many of the institutions that had originally been resistant to his aesthetic program came to champion him in memory� The city of Oberhausen overcame its initial reluctance at embracing its hometown hero and renamed the street outside his childhood church Christoph-Schlingensief-Straße in 2012 ( Jünger 41—52). A school (also in Oberhausen) and guest professorship (at Ruhr Universität Bochum) named in his honor eventually followed� Schlingensief ’s absence was felt most acutely in the German art and theater scene. In 2020, ten years after his death, Vanessa Höving, Katja Holweck and Thomas Wortmann pointed out how journalists and political commentators have continuously bemoaned the “[…] Leerstelle, die Christoph Schlingensief im deutschen Kulturbetrieb hinterlassen hat […]” (8). They highlight the paradox at the center of Schlingensief ’s ongoing reception: while his works were tightly Introduction: Decentering “Schlingensief” 125 DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0008 bound to contemporary politics, they had nevertheless held their fascination long after the events that inspired them had become irrelevant� This is due in part, the authors maintain, to Schlingensief ’s unique ability to create captivating, enduring images (10). This position echoes Susanne Gaensheimer, curator of the German Pavilion dedicated to memorializing Schlingensief at the Venice Biennale in 2011: “Jetzt ist es unsere Aufgabe, diese Bilder am Leben zu erhalten, sie zu zeigen, uns sie wirklich anzusehen - unabgelenkt durch die starke persönliche Präsenz, die Christoph Schlingensief immer hatte - und sie endgültig in unser visuelles Gedächtnis einfließen zu lassen” (40). Gaensheimer argues that Schlingensief ’s absence is not an impediment to confronting his art, but rather the necessary condition for truly evaluating it� After his death, it now seems possible to engage directly with the content of his work� However, the fact that both Gaensheimer and the editors of Resonanzen focus on images (“Bilder”) indicates one of the preconditions for this new engagement: the work lives on only in the form of films, videos, photographs and other forms of documentation� Because Schlingensief ’s performance pieces were highly singular and dependent on their situatedness in a particular location at a particular time, they cannot be reperformed or (re-)experienced. While installations such as the Animatograph and Eine Kirche der Angst vor dem Fremden in mir have been recreated as part of exhibitions for museums and academic conferences, they necessarily lack the social, political and personal contexts of the original works� There are further challenges when considering Schlingensief ’s oeuvre� Many of his projects overlapped and flowed into one another, occurring over long periods of time in a series of iterations� His provocative engagement with the media in and around the performances became part of the works themselves� Faced with the scale of Schlingensief ’s interventions and the difficulties of determining the limits of a given project, describing and studying Schlingensief ’s work from a scholarly perspective becomes a serious challenge� Sarah Ralfs provides an apt description: Das Oeuvre des Künstlers Christoph Schlingensief ist so umfassend, vielfältig und komplex, dass es unerschöpflich ist und deswegen umso mehr dazu einlädt, es zu beschreiben, zu umschreiben, es anzuschreiben und fortzuschreiben� Dabei muss es notwendig stets verfehlt werden� Ein Anspruch auf Vollständigkeit seitens der Schreibenden wäre angesichts des Gegenstands vermessen. (Ralfs 307) In the spirit of Ralf ’s notion of writing “towards” and “around” Schlingensief ’s work while also writing it “forwards,” this special issue grapples with the constellations surrounding his oeuvre. By decentering “Schlingensief ” (his image, 126 Jack Davis and Katherine Pollock DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0008 person and persona), his work becomes legible as the product of networks, institutions, artistic and political discourses in the German-speaking world and beyond it� The contributions to this issue make clear that Schlingensief ’s artistic constellations, while tied to their historical moment, also presage contemporary debates concerning migration, right-wing populism, disability, social networks, the media, social justice and performance aesthetics� 1 The issue opens with two investigations of Schlingensief ’s work in television and film. Thomas Wortmann argues that Schlingensief ’s final project for television Die Piloten should be read not as a failed attempt to create a television program that never aired, but as a simulation of television� Die Piloten puts television production processes themselves on display and problematizes the “authenticity” expected of performers� Wortmann shows that Die Piloten is not a fragmentary work less deserving of scholarly attention than Schlingensief ’s Talk 2000 - which actually aired on German television - rather, it represents a distinct medial intervention in its own right� If Schlingensief takes the German word “Talkmaster” literally, it is to employ this “mastery” in overcoming the inherent limitations of the medium itself� Kai-Uwe Werbeck also examines Schlingensief ’s work within the constellation of television� Werbeck reads Das Deutsche Kettensägenmassaker not only as a transgressive allegory for German reunification, but also as a critique of the content and representational practices of mainstream German broadcasting� By examining the ways in which the film participates in discourses surrounding mediatized violence and horror films in the late 1980s, Werbeck argues that Das Deutsche Kettensägenmassaker critiques German unification through its central allegory of cannibalism, its reflection on the medium of television and its (surprisingly) subtle adaptation of its two English-language inspirations, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 � The next three contributions examine Schlingensief ’s performative interventions in the public sphere from the late 1990s and early 2000s� While television continues to play a role, the focus shifts to the complex interrelationship between live performance and the frameworks of action allowed by the media� Ina Simova’s reading of Bitte liebt Österreich , Schlingensief ’s (in)famous “Container-Aktion,” contends that Schlingensief draws attention to the processes of gamification within the attention economy of late capitalism in order to critique the biopolitical mechanisms of exclusion which create asylum seekers� As in the performances analyzed by Wortmann and Werbeck, one of Schlingensief ’s central interlocutors in Bitte liebt Österreich is television, specifically the program Big Brother � Simova shows how the reality game show format encouraged contestants to become entrepreneurs of the self, selling their authenticity and baring their souls for a chance at a prize� By selecting asylum seekers as Introduction: Decentering “Schlingensief” 127 DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0008 contestants, Bitte liebt Österreich reveals the inherent contradictions and ethical impasses in the marketization of authenticity, affect, self-disclosure, and human rights under liberal democracy: the “game” Schlingensief stages cannot be won� Katharina Schmid-Schmidsfelden’s analysis of two Aktionen from Chance 2000 - Baden im Wolfgangsee and Einkaufen im KaDeWe - also puts questions of social inclusion and the media front and center� Must political action and solidarity necessarily involve physical presence? Drawing on Hannah Arendt’s concept of “acting in concert” and Judith Butler’s reflections on performative assembly, Schmid-Schmidsfelden demonstrates how Chance 2000 reveals the possibility of collective action without physical presence� Whereas Baden im Wolfgangsee stages absence as presence to create solidarity from afar, Einkaufen im KaDeWe performs the limits of physical presence in creating a political assembly� Both analyses decenter the persona of the artist himself, focusing on the participants in the action� Katherine Pollock also employs theories of solidarity and performance to examine Chance 2000 , tying it to Passion Impossible and the African Edition of the Animatograph � Pollock introduces the concept of “aesthetic commoning,” which emphasizes the social relations and quotidian labor surrounding the sharing of resources at the center of all three performances� This analytic framework highlights the interconnectedness between Schlingensief ’s individual projects and the bonds they forged between participants� At their most successful, these actions disrupted hierarchies, brought visibility to excluded minorities, and enabled collective action. This dynamic collectivity proved difficult to sustain over the long term, however, specifically in the postcolonial context of the African Animatograph � Nevertheless, “aesthetic commoning” represents an element of Schlingensief ’s legacy which may remain productive in the present� Lore Knapp’s article on Mea Culpa. Eine ReadyMadeOper is both a call for methodological pluralism when it comes to understanding theatrical performance and an illustration of this approach’s productivity� Knapp argues that neither an account of the performance itself ( Aufführungsanalyse ) nor a reading of the director’s script and notes ( Regiebuchanalyse ) are adequate for capturing Mea Culpa’s complexities� Textual details submerged within the sensory overload of the performance resurface upon careful review of the Regiebuch � At the same time, repeated confrontations with the staged version of the piece reveal new meanings not contained in the script� Knapp’s method and its results exemplify how scholars can work with archival traces to (re)construct the meanings still slumbering in Schlingensief ’s work� Sara Pogoda’s contribution both embodies methodological pluralism and opens the legacy of Schlingensief to the future� Pogoda writes as an academic and a member of Neue Walisische Kunst-Aufbau Organisation ( NWK-AO ), an ar- 128 Jack Davis and Katherine Pollock DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0008 tistic collective that situates its own project playfully with respect to Schlingensief and the avant-garde: “Wir machen billigen Schlingensief-Abklatsch, der uns teuer zu stehen kommt�” Pogoda’s group takes Schlingensief ’s own practice of “abweichende Nachahmung” - as exemplified in works such as Talk 2000 or Das Deutsche Kettensägenmassaker - and applies it to Schlingensief ’s works themselves, so that a “transcreative” avant-garde process emerges� The NWK-AO transplants, transforms and (mis)translates Schlingensief ’s work into a Welsh language-context, creating not only new artworks, but also new perspectives on the avant-garde in the 21 st century. This type of artistic appropriation - one that engages with Schlingensief in a “Schlingensiefian” manner - is a promising way of both memorializing Schlingensief ’s work and keeping his legacy alive� Notes 1 In this regard see Höving et al. (8) as well as several contributions to the Schlingensief-Handbuch , which appeared with Metzler in 2025� Works Cited Gaensheimer, Susanne. “Rede zur Eröffnung des Deutschen Pavillions auf der 54. Biennale von Venedig�” Der Gesamtkünstler Christoph Schlingensief � Ed� Pia Janke and Teresa Kovacs. Vienna: Praesens, 2011. 39—41. Höving, Vanessa, Katja Holweck, and Thomas Wortmann. “Schlingensiefs Fehlen.” Christoph Schlingensief. Resonanzen . Ed. Vanessa Höving, Katja Holweck and Thomas Wortmann. Munich: edition text + kritik, 2020. 7—13. Janke, Pia, and Teresa Kovacs, eds� Der Gesamtkünstler Christoph Schlingensief � Vienna: Praesens, 2011� Jünger, Kurt-Dieter. Christoph Schlingensief. Erinnerungen, Dokumente und Würdigung � Oberhausen: Karl Maria Laufen Buchhandlung und Verlag, 2022� Kovacs, Teresa, Peter Scheinpflug, and Thomas Wortmann, eds. Schlingensief-Handbuch. Leben, Werk, Wirkung. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2025� Pilz, Dirk, Ulrich Seidler, and Sabine Vogel� “Ich werde nicht Christoph spielen�” Berliner Zeitung 6 May 2011� Web� Ralfs, Sarah. “‘Wir sind eins - Total Total.’ Selbstinszenierungen in Christoph Schlingensiefs späten Arbeiten�” Der Gesamtkünstler Christoph Schlingensief � Ed� Pia Janke and Teresa Kovacs. Vienna: Praesens, 2011. 307—26. Schlingensief. In das Schweigen hineinschreien . Dir. Bettina Böhler. Film Gallerie 451, 2020� Film�