Christoph Schlingensief - German Pavilion - 54th Art Biennale of Venice

After the artist's death on August 21, 2010, the German Pavilion presents an exhibition with existing works of the artist. In the main hall of the German Pavilion we have installed the stage of the Fluxus Oratorio A Church of Fear vs. the Alien Within, which the author conceived at the 2008 Ruhrtriennale as the second part of his illness trilogy, after Der Zwischenstand der Dinge and before Mea Culpa. Written immediately after the artist had undergone surgery to remove one lung and several months of chemotherapy, the play was first performed in Duisburg. A Church of Fear vs. the Alien Within portrays the artist's illness openly and unsparingly, using his own painful experience to examine the existential circle of life, suffering and death. The stage is a reconstruction of the church of his childhood where he served as an altar boy for years. The theme of religious faith, of belief and doubt, which had always been central to his thinking, is scrutinized in a highly subjective perspective and with a keen eye for its ambivalences. His engagement with Richard Wagner's music as well as the art of Joseph Beuys and the Fluxus movement find expression in A Church of Fear vs. the Alien Within. The pavilion's right side wing features a movie theater with a program of 6 selected films. The pavilion's left side wing is dedicated to the artist's Opera Village in Africa. Located in Burkina Faso, it includes a school which houses film and music classrooms, a café, a hospital, and a central theater building with a festival hall. In keeping with Beuys's idea of the social sculpture and the expanded concept of art, the project seeks to merge art and life and to serve as a research laboratory for the reunion of art and non-art.

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Education

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