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A Realism of Protest: Christoph Schlingensief's Television Experiments

2012; Routledge; Volume: 87; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/00168890.2012.734753

1930-6962

Tara Forrest,

Artistic and Creative Research

Abstract This article focuses on three groundbreaking, politically engaged reality television experiments produced by German artist Christoph Schlingensief: Bitte liebt Österreich (2000), Freakstars 3000 (2002), and Quiz 3000 (2002). Although only Freakstars 3000 took on the form of a television program, each of the productions is closely modeled on a reality television format that was popular in Germany and elsewhere at the time. Drawing on Alexander Kluge and Oskar Negt's writings on the public sphere, and through an examination of Kluge's conception of the task of a realistic method, this article draws out some important points of contact between Kluge's delineation of an active public sphere and Schlingensief's television experiments. In doing so, it also provides a context in which Kluge's very apt description of Schlingensief as a “public sphere generator” (Öffentlichkeitsmacher) can be illuminated and explored. Keywords: Alexander Klugepoliticspublic sphererealismChristoph Schlingensieftelevision Notes I would like to thank Demetrios Douramanis and two anonymous referees for their constructive feedback on an earlier version of this article. Alexander Kluge, “The Sharpest Ideology: That Reality Appeals to its Realistic Character,” in Alexander Kluge: Raw Materials for the Imagination, ed. Tara Forrest (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2012), 192. Christoph Schlingensief in Christoph Schlingensief and Carl Hegemann, Chance 2000: Wähle Dich selbst (Köln: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1998), 14–15. Unless otherwise noted, all translations from German sources are my own. For an overview of Schlingensief's career, see Christoph Schlingensief: Art Without Borders, ed. Tara Forrest and Anna Teresa Scheer (Bristol and Chicago: Intellect, 2010). Helmut Kohl was the German Chancellor at the time and the title of the performance (following Joseph Beuys) was Mein Filz, mein Fett, mein Hase! (My felt, my fat, my hare!). This predilection is also apparent in Die Piloten (The Pilots): a series of pilot episodes for a new talk show that was shot in 2007 at the Akademie der Künste in Berlin. As evidenced in Cordula Kablitz-Post's film documentation of the program entitled Christoph Schlingensief—Die Piloten (2009), the focus of the first episode of the pilot series is “sickness” and features Schlingensief discussing, among other topics, his degenerative eye condition with his guests. The series, which originally screened on SAT 1, RTL, Kanal 4, and ORF, has also been released on DVD. See Cordula Kablitz-Post (director), Talk 2000 (2009). Alexander Kluge, “On Film and the Public Sphere,” in Alexander Kluge: Raw Materials for the Imagination, ed. Tara Forrest (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2012), 40–41. “Freiheit für Alles, 2 Teil: Gespräch zwischen Alexander Kluge and Christoph Schlingensief,” in Schlingensief's Ausländer Raus: Bitte Liebt Österreich, ed. Matthias Lilienthal and Claus Philipp (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2000), 191. Schlingensief, who was a friend of Kluge, regularly appeared on the latter's television programs. See, for example: “Das halten von Totenschädeln liegt mir nicht!,” on the DVD: Alexander Kluge, Freiheit für die Konsonanten! & Grenzfälle der Schadensregulierung (2008), and “Das Phänomen der Oper” on the DVD: Alexander Kluge, Das Kraftwerk der Gefühle & Finsterlinge singen Bass (2008). For Kluge's thoughts on Schlingensief's work, see Alexander Kluge, “Foreword,” in Christoph Schlingensief: Art Without Borders, ed. Tara Forrest and Anna Teresa Scheer (Bristol and Chicago: Intellect, 2010), 1–4. For studies of Schlingensief's work that draw on the ideas of Kluge (and Oskar Negt) see Tara Forrest, “Mobilising the Public Sphere: Schlingensief's Reality Theatre,” Contemporary Theatre Review 18, no. 1 (2008): 90–98; Richard Langston, “Schlingensief's Peep-Show: Post-Cinematic Spectacles and the Public Space of History,” in After the Avant-Garde: Contemporary German and Austrian Experimental Film, ed. Randall Halle and Reinhild Steingröver (New York: Camden House, 2008), 204–23; and Solveig Gade, “Putting the Public Sphere to the Test: On Publics and Counter-Publics in Chance 2000,” in Christoph Schlingensief: Art Without Borders, ed. Tara Forrest and Anna Teresa Scheer (Bristol and Chicago: Intellect, 2010), 89–103. Walter Benjamin, “On Some Motifs in Baudelaire,” in Selected Writings, Vol. 4, ed. Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), 315–16. Oskar Negt and Alexander Kluge, Public Sphere and Experience: Toward an Analysis of the Bourgeois and Proletarian Public Sphere, trans. Peter Labanyi, Jamie Owen Daniel, and Assenka Oksiloff (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), 108. Brecht quoted in Public Sphere and Experience, note 9, 103–04. See also Hans Magnus Enzensberger, “Constituents of a Theory of the Media,” New Left Review 64 (1970): 13–36, in which Brecht's analysis of the possibilities of radio is employed to make a similar argument about the possibilities of television. See also Walter Benjamin's “Reflections on the Radio,” which opens with the statement: “The crucial failing of this institution [the radio] has been to perpetuate the fundamental separation between practitioners and the public, a separation which is at odds with its technological basis.” Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings, Vol. 2, ed. Michael W. Jennings, Howard Eiland, and Gary Smith (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 543. Negt and Kluge, Public Sphere and Experience, 114. Brecht quoted in Negt and Kluge, Public Sphere and Experience, note 9, 103. Negt and Kluge, Public Sphere and Experience, 103. Harmut Bitomsky, Harun Farocki, and Klaus Henrichs, “Gespräch mit Alexander Kluge: Über Die Patriotin, Geschichte und Filmarbeit,” Filmkritik, 275 (1979): 510. Jan Dawson, “But Why Are the Questions so Abstract?: An Interview with Alexander Kluge,” in Alexander Kluge and the Occasional Work of a Female Slave (New York: Zoetrope, 1977), 37. Edgar Reitz, Alexander Kluge, and Wilfried Reinke, “Word and Film,” October 46 (1988): 87. Kluge, “The Sharpest Ideology,” 194. Schlingensief and Hegemann, Chance 2000: Wähle Dich selbst, 14–15. See Kluge's television program “Die Kirche der Angst/Erste attaistische Nachrichten von Christoph Schlingensief,” News & Stories, SAT 1 (24 August 2003). Dawson, “But Why are the Questions so Abstract?,” 34. Kluge, “The Sharpest Ideology,” 191. Ibid., 194 and 192. Theodor Adorno and Hanns Eisler,Composing for the Films (London: The Athlone Press, 1994), 87. Christoph Schlingensief, “Betroffenheitstypen,” in Schlingensief and Hegemann, Chance 2000: Wähle Dich selbst (Köln: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1998), 17. According to Liesbet van Zoonen, the first season of Big Brother to air on German television (between March and June 2000) “received a unique market share of 28 percent.” Moreover, she claims that the Big Brother web page “received an average of 3.5 million visitors a day […] peaking at 5 million on some days, making it the most visited web site in Europe.” Liesbet van Zoonen, “Desire and Resistance: Big Brother in the Dutch Public Sphere,” in Big Brother International: Formats, Critics and Publics, ed. Ernest Mathijs and Janet Jones (London and New York: Wallflower Press, 2004), 17. The German channel that screened the program (RTL II) is also broadcast in Austria, so Austrian viewers would have been familiar with the program as well. Schlingensief claims that the container compound was not dissimilar to a real “container village” for asylum seekers that he visited in Oberhausen in 1992 during the production of his film Terror 2000. See “Freiheit für Alles, 1. Teil. Gespräch zwischen Alexander Kluge und Christoph Schlingensief,” in Schlingensiefs Ausländer Raus: Bitte liebt Österreich, ed. Matthias Lilienthal and Claus Philipp (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2000), 137. As Elfriede Jelinek has pointed out, the asylum seekers’ biographies were fictional in the sense that they were constructed out of a collection of different, albeit real, stories. See Elfriede Jelinek, “Der Raum im Raum,” in Schlingensiefs Ausländer Raus: Bitte liebt Österreich, ed. Matthias Lilienthal and Claus Philipp (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2000), 160. Ruth Wodak and Anton Pelinka, “Introduction,” in The Haider Phenomenon in Austria, ed. Ruth Wodak and Anton Pelinka (New Brunswick, NJ, and London: Transaction Publishers, 2002), xv. Alexander Kluge, “Theater der Handgreiflichkeit/Christoph Schlingensiefs Wiener Container,” News and Stories, SAT 1 (22 October 2000). Thomas Mießgang, “Im Land der Lächler. Über Jelinek, Wuttke und Schlingensief, über Salzgurken und Sachertorten: Sittenbilder aus dem Künstlerkampf gegen die neue Regierung in Wien,” Die Zeit (29 June 2000). Kluge, “Theater der Handgreiflichkeit.” Walter Manoschek, “FPÖ, ÖVP, and Austria's Nazi Past,” in The Haider Phenomenon in Austria, ed. Ruth Wodak and Anton Pelinka (New Brunswick, NJ, and London: Transaction Publishers, 2002), 6. Helmut Schödel, “Die Indianer von Wien,” in Schlingensiefs Ausländer Raus: Bitte Liebt Österreich, ed. Matthias Lilienthal and Claus Philipp (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2000), 173. Haider and the FPÖ received much public support from the media and from Austria's largest tabloid newspaper, Die Kronen Zeitung, in particular, which actively supported both the FPÖ's anti-immigration policies and its unapologetic take on Austria's involvement with the Nazis. Schlingensief quoted in Karin Cerny, “Wien, erster Tag,” Berliner Zeitung (14 June 2000). Paul Poet, Ausländer Raus. Schlingensiefs Container DVD (2005). “Freiheit für Alles, 1. Teil, 148. The leaflets stated: “A performance of the Wiener Festwochen is taking place here. […] The director Christoph Schlingensief would herewith like to comment on the difficulties of the foreign asylum seeker in our industrialized and globalized society and, at the same time, to promote discussion about Austria's domestic and foreign political situation.” Quoted in Helmut Schödel, “Die Ausländer-Beschwörung,” in Schlingensiefs Ausländer Raus: Bitte liebt Österreich, ed. Matthias Lilienthal and Claus Philipp (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2000), 154–55. Schlingensief, in “Zeit im Bild 3, ORF, 13.6.2000,” in Schlingensiefs Ausländer Raus: Bitte liebt Österreich, ed. Matthias Lilienthal and Claus Philipp (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2000), 100. Thomas Rottenberg, in ibid., 98. The film has been released on DVD: Christoph Schlingensief (director), Freakstars 3000 (2003). Alexander Kluge, “Das halten von Totenschädeln liegt mir nicht!/Christoph Schlingensief inszeniert Hamlet.” This discussion has been reproduced in Christoph Schlingensiefs Nazis Rein, ed. Thekla Heineke and Sandra Umathum (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2002), see 128. For an analysis of the strategy of “performative recitation” employed by Schlingensief in the context of his 1998/1999 Wahlkampfzircus-Chance 2000 (Election Circus-Chance 2000), see Solveig Gade, “Playing the Media Keyboard: The Political Potential of Performativity in Christoph Schlingensief's Electioneering Circus,” in Performative Realism: Interdisciplinary Studies in Art and Media, ed. Rune Gade and Anne Jerslev (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2005), 19–49. I have discussed this “lack of fit” in more detail in an analysis that draws on Theodor Adorno's writings on Arnold Schönberg and atonal music to explore the productive sense of discord generated by Freakstars 3000. See Tara Forrest, “Productive Discord: Schlingensief, Adorno, and Freakstars 3000,” in Christoph Schlingensief: Art Without Borders, ed. Tara Forrest and Anna Teresa Scheer (Bristol and Chicago: Intellect, 2010), 123–35. For an analysis of the various ways in which Schlingensief undermines the limited image of disability generated by media and medical discourses, see Morgan Koerner, “Subversions of the Medical Gaze: Disability and Media Parody in Christoph Schlingensief's Freakstars 3000,” in Cinema and Social Change in Germany and Austria, ed. Gabrielle Mueller and James M. Skidmore (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2012), 59–75. Schlingensief quoted in Anonymous, “Keine Wiener- ‘Konzentrationswoche’,” Die Presse (7 June 2000). Freakstars 3000 Gästebuch, entry 20 (10 August 2004). The guestbook can be found at: http://www.freakstars3000.de (accessed 29 October 2011). Ibid., entry 51 (10 August 2004). Carol Poore, Disability in Twentieth Century German Culture (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007), 75−78. This book provides a comprehensive analysis of the representation of disability in German culture spanning the Weimar period up until the early years of the twenty-first century. My analysis of the performance/program is based on the pilot episode that was staged/shot at the Volksbühne in Berlin on March 15 and 16, 2002. I am grateful to Frieder Schlaich for providing me with a copy of the production. In contrast to the million-dollar prize money touted by Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, the prize for which the Quiz 3000 contestants competed was a briefcase of notes and a secondhand car. Kühlbrodt, who has appeared in many of Schlingensief's productions, also served as a Senior Public Prosecutor for Nazi crimes and is thus able to provide further context for the contestants/audience on topics pertaining to the Holocaust. A selection of the Quiz 3000 questions can be accessed on the program's official website: www.quiz3000.de/fragen16.3.pdf (accessed 29 October 2011). To cite just a couple of typically anodyne examples: “Who received seven gold medals at the 1972 Olympic Games?;” “A popular form of American folk music is called Country & … ?;” and “Where in the human body does one find the cruciate ligament?” Walter Benjamin, “The Storyteller: Reflections on the Works of Nikolai Leskov,” in Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt (London: Fontana Press, 1992), 88. Walter Benjamin, “The Handkerchief,” in Selected Writings: Vol. 2, ed. Michael W. Jennings, Howard Eiland, and Gary Smith (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 659–60. Alexander Kluge, “The Political as Intensity of Everyday Feeling,” in Alexander Kluge: Raw Materials For the Imagination, ed. Tara Forrest (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2012), 284.