Failure as chance : Christoph Schlingensief's inoperative avant-garde in the age of neoliberal crisis
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- This dissertation presents a political history of the mature career of German director Christoph Schlingensief (1960-2010). It charts his turn in the late 1990s and 2000s from theater and film to avant-garde actions — a series of highly public, political performances attempting to integrate art and life. The dissertation analyzes these works in relation to their neoliberal political contexts, theorizing them as an "inoperative avant-garde" that stages its own failure as a generative political act — a project emblematized by Schlingensief's slogan, "Failure as Chance!" Confronted with a totalized market society, this inoperative avant-garde employed aesthetic strategies of ironic overidentification, critiquing neoliberalism by parodically adopting its ideologies and practices. Schlingensief also turned away from this ironic mode late in his career, ultimately leading to the integration of his avant-garde into the institutions of neoliberalism. This history of Schlingensief's avant-garde emerges through a series of case studies, including his interventions in German and Austrian electoral politics ("Chance 2000" and "Please Love Austria") and his late works in Namibia and Burkina Faso ("The African Twintowers" and the Opera Village). By situating Schlingensief's inoperative avant-garde within the history of global capitalism, this dissertation examines the potentials and limits of vanguard art in an era of neoliberal hegemony and interrogates the very possibility of an avant-garde in the 21st century.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2021; ©2021 |
| Publication date | 2021; 2021 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Stone, Matthew Colin |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Smith, Matthew Wilson |
| Thesis advisor | Smith, Matthew Wilson |
| Thesis advisor | Daub, Adrian |
| Thesis advisor | Jakovljević, Branislav |
| Degree committee member | Daub, Adrian |
| Degree committee member | Jakovljević, Branislav |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Theater and Performance Studies |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Matthew C. Stone. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Theater and Performance Studies. |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2021. |
| Location | https://purl.stanford.edu/wb643dv8114 |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2021 by Matthew Colin Stone
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