Aesthetic Commoning: Christoph Schlingensief Beyond the Theater

Christoph Schlingensief’s excursions beyond the theater are well known for their disruptions of public space (i.e., streets, theaters, art museums, churches, and shopping centers). This essay reorients the discussion of these projects, moving from a focus on public spaces to the social labor of ‘aesthetic commoning.’ Considering Passion Impossible (1997), Chance 2000 (1998), the African Edition of Schlingensief’s Animatograph (2005), his Operndorf and Via Intolleranza II (2010) as a network of activities rather than discrete projects draws attention to the publics who were part of Schlingensief’s performances outside of the theater and who (in some cases) continued them on their own terms. This article sheds light on the irresolvable tension between spontaneity and the quotidian that troubled Schlingensief’s projects in the long term, including his interventions in Africa: the immediacy of collective creativity emerges out of and is sustained by the ongoing labor of everyday commoning.