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24/5/2007

Christoph Schlingensief

Haus der Kunst, Munich

18 Images a Second

For the last two years Schlingensief has again begun dealing with the medium film more intensely, something that is clearly reflected in his work for Haus der Kunst. Two filmed work complexes form the installation's focus: "African Twin Towers" and short films that are now being shot while the artist directs the "Flying Dutchman" at the Teatro Amazonas in Manaus, Brazil.

"African Twin Towers" is a film about Richard Wagner, the attacks of September 11th, Hagen of Tronje, Odin and Edda, living and dead Hereros (members of an African herdsmen tribe), spirits of the present and past. The film location is a "rotating disk," referred to as an "animatograph" by Schlingensief, on which a ship with two masts stands. On these masts hang the Twin Towers. All this stood in Lüderitz in Namibia, a former German colony in south west Africa. The German present is staged and each day the movie begins anew under the constant surveillance of different cameras. This time Schlingensief is everything: director, actor and one of four cameramen. He unites the Nordic and European world of legends with African shamanism and the present, the music of Patti Smith with texts by Elfriede Jelinek and the acting of the Fassbinder actress Irm Hermann. At the same time he has designed a portrait of everyday occurrences in which political "heroes" appear, as well as other figures. He is, metaphorically speaking, constantly in search of charging and discharging, of light and dark contrasts.

Schlingensief will shoot 18 short films in connection with his work on the "Flying Dutchman" in Manaus. The project's central theme is the idea of salvation. Richard Wagner was constantly preoccupied with this idea and in his last opera, "Parsifal" (1882), which Schlingensief staged in 2004 for the Bayreuth Festival, he tried to come to terms with it once and for all. According to Schlingensief, the Flying Dutchman is in search of an image that grants him salvation but finds none. And even Senta, as his loving wife, has an image that she would like to have redeemed and yet finds no happiness in it.

Schlingensief embeds the Manaus films in an installation, which is dominated by an over-sized carnival float on which Jesus and Mohammed partake in the Lord's Supper. Located underneath the carnival float are various swimming pool changing booths, in which the 16 mm format films from Manaus and Africa rattle away. The entire footage of the film "African Twin Towers" is shown on 18 monitors located in a crypt-like space, with a total playing time of 18 hours. Despite the collective rattling of the projectors and the aesthetics of the 16 mm Bolex camera used, each room is dedicated to a specific theme and creates its own celestial bodies.

"No film cutting can create what one can do with a Bolex. Even blind people can use the Bolex. It shoots... and after 30 seconds the material is used up. Then it needs to be reloaded. Even if you are blind you can shoot with it. Image for image... individual images... like with a revolver. And it is less cryptic than our family tree." (Schlingensief)

With the use of a rotating aperture, handmade fade-ins and fade-outs, material developed partially by hand, the grain of the black and white material and short loops, Schlingensief achieves a speed that carries viewers away. And still the viewer is kept grounded by the center created with the camera's gaze.

Schlingensief's radicalism lies in his subjective selection and in the non-hierarchical juxtaposition of images, themes and people. He believes in the sensual power of images and in the observer's ability to free himself from his desire for linearity. Following his overlapping installations in places such as Neuhardenberg (Animatograph II) and the Burgtheater in Vienna (Area 7), in which he transgressed the limits of theater towards installation, Schlingensief now will have his first large solo presentation in an art institution. "For Schlingensief it is not a question of sharply focused things but rather haziness. I would like to endorse this belief since things that are clear are not inspiring. The world in its entirety is, in fact, incomprehensible." (Stephanie Rosenthal)

Haus der Kunst
Prinzregentenstrasse 1 - Muenchen

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