The Transformative Power of Art (London, 5-6 Feb 16)

The Courtauld Institute of Art, Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 0RN, Feb 5–06, 2016

Jessica Akerman

The Transformative Power of Art: 's Gesamtkunstwerk and Christoph Schlingen- sief's participatory experiment Village Africa

The aim of this conference is to explore Christoph Schlingensief's participatory art project Opera Village Africa against the backdrop of Richard Wagner's idea of the Gesamtkunstwerk. We wish to approach this topic from the perspective of multiple disciplines including anthropology, art histo- ry, cultural studies, history, musicology, philosophy, postcolonial studies and theatre studies.

The founding of the Opera Village Africa in is inextricably linked with Schlingensief's critical engagement with the writing and music of Richard Wagner, who served Schlingensief throughout his career as a touch-stone for a process of working through the heritage of the German past. The soundtrack to Salvador Dali and Luis Buñuel's Un Chien Andalou (1928) initially evoked Schlingensief's ambiguous fascination for Wagner, which carried through his career work as filmmaker, theatre and opera director, actionist and performance artist. Schlingensief's production for the on which he collaborated with the conductor in 2004 became pivotal to his subsequent projects. Disillusioned about the elitism and inaccessibility of opera, Schlingensief desired to do justice to the young Wagner's anarchist ideas of a Gesamtkunstwerk that is accessible for everyone. His strategy to enable a diversity of audiences to participate in the Gesamtkunswerk was the Animatograph - a travelling rotating stage, which he developed out of his stage set for Parsifal and toured to a diversity of locations, such as , Namibia and Neuhardenberg. This journey provided inspiration for Schlingensief's Opera Village Africa in Burkina Faso (2008-ongoing). Did Schlingensief succeed in bringing Wagner’s Gesamtkunstwerk to life in the twenty-first centu- ry? This is the question our conference will address and, we hope, attempt to answer.

Organised by Sarah Hegenbart and Professor Sarah Wilson (The Courtauld Institute of Art)

PROGRAMME

FRIDAY, 5 February (DAY 1)

12.30 -13.00 REGISTRATION

13.00 – 13.15

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Welcome 13.15 – 14.00 Aino Laberenz (Director, The Opera Village Africa): Introducing the Opera Village Africa 14.00 – 14.30 Marlene Rutzendorfer (): Learning from Gando - Schlingensief, Kéré and the participatory building process 14.30 – 15.30 Chris Dercon (Director, Tate Modern): title TBA 15.30 – 16.00 Anna Teresa Scheer (University of New England, Australia): Schlingensief’s Republic, Wagn- er’s Ring and a Failed Gesamtkunstwerk

16.00 – 16.30 TEA/COFFEE BREAK (provided – Seminar room 1)

16.30 – 16.45 Ulrike Hartung (Frankfurt): Prelude to Schlingensief's Parsifal

16.45 – 18.00 Keynote Lecture: Professor John Deathridge (King's College London): Wagner's Parsifal and Sch- lingensief's. Jumble-sale kitsch or transformative art?

18.00 RECEPTION (Front Hall)

SATURDAY, 6 February (DAY 2)

09.30 – 09.50 REGISTRATION

09.50 – 10.10 Marcin Bogucki (University of Warsaw): Opera Village Africa and Halka/Haiti – two responses to Fitzcarraldo 10.10 – 10.30 Sarita Patnaik (The Courtauld Institute of Art): William Kentridge and the Contemporary Gesamtkunstwerk'

10.30 – 11.00 TEA/COFFEE BREAK (provided – Seminar room 1)

11.00 – 11.30 Agnes Zenker (Vienna): Re-Wiring the "Power Plant of Emotion" - Reading Christoph Schlingensie- fʼs approach to opera against the backdrop of 11.30 – 12.00 Fabian Lehmann (University of Bayreuth): The African Roots of Wagner’s ' Schlingensief’s unsettling montage in the booklet Festspielhaus Afrika (2009) 12.00 – 13.00 Gregor Muir (Director, ICA London): title TBA

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13.00 – 14.00 LUNCH (provided for the speakers only – Seminar room 1)

14.00 – 14.30 Sarah Ralfs (Free University, Berlin): Schlingensief, Wagner and Negative Dialectics 14.30 – 15.00 Dr Mauro Fosco Bertola (Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg): Why bother, if the rabbit truly rots? Christoph Schlingensief, Parsifal and Slavoj Žižek’s Hegelian Wound

15.00 – 15.30 TEA/COFFEE BREAK (provided – Seminar room 1)

15.30 – 16.00 Dr Sarah Pogoda (The University of Sheffield): Distressing the Gesamtkunstwerk 16.30 -17.00 Dr Lore Knapp (University of Bielefeld): Radical Autonomy of Art in the African Opera Village 17.00 – 17.30 Panel Discussion 17.30 END

Please find the full programme here: http://courtauld.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/The-Transformative-Power-of-Art-5-6Feb166 .pdf

Ticket/entry details: £26 general admission (£16 students, Courtauld staff/students, and conces- sions) book online: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-transformative-power-of-art-richard-wagners-ge- samtkunstwerk-and-christoph-schlingensiefs-tickets-19709332143

Reference: CONF: The Transformative Power of Art (London, 5-6 Feb 16). In: ArtHist.net, Jan 15, 2016 (accessed Oct 1, 2021), .

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