Premiering at the 2003 Venice Biennale, it elevated “belief in fear” to dogma. Two directions develop from this point: backwards to the political and per-formative interventions of the late 1990s and early 2000s (e.g., Chance 2000 and Please love Austria) and forward to his cinematic and operatic works (e.g., The African Twin Towers).

Without being a retrospective in the classical sense, the exhibition brings about a dialogue between central elements of his oeuvre and visualizes how his artistic strategies recipro-cally permeate theater, film, installation, and performance to form a composite image of his way of thinking. Not the completed work, but the movement of questioning, doubting, and failing are at the heart of Schlingensief’s practice: “My view is that one can fail despite desire, passion, and purpose. In my own work, failure inevitably was brought about by the dissolution of straightaway and finish, of space and time. Inner acceptance of failure as a necessary precondition for releasing poten-tial makes a lot happen.”

Guest Curator: Raphael Gygax in collaboration with Aino Laberenz (Schlingensief Estate)
Assistant Curator: Max Appel-Palma






The Vienna Festival would like to thank its main sponsors, Erste Bank and Wiener Städtische, as well as its sponsor, the Arbeiterkammer Wien