Rethinking Political Assembly in Schlingensief's Chance 2000

This article examines Baden im Wolfgangsee, an action performed by Christoph Schlingensief during the election campaign of his political party Chance 2000. Schlingensief sought to make marginalized people visible by calling for Germany’s six million unemployed to enter Austria’s Wolfgangsee simultaneously, while he invited others at home to enter their bathtubs to show solidarity with the unemployed. By contrasting this action with Einkaufen im KaDeWe, in which Chance 2000 party members entered a posh shopping mall, this article demonstrates how solidarity overcomes the distinction between presence and absence and turns the private sphere of the home into a political sphere. Drawing on theories of assembly and performance by Hannah Arendt and Judith Butler, I read these two actions as different acts of solidarity.