Abstract

This essay examines Schlingensief’s reframing of the relationships between violence, terrorism and art in Atta Atta – Art Has Broken Out (2003) as a response to the shifts in foreign policy after the terror attacks of 11th September 2001 in New York, and the build-up to the war on Iraq. His engagement with avant-gardism is foregrounded in this production that can be read as a melancholic evocation of the attempts made by the avant-garde to break new ground, a phenomenon viewed by Schlingensief as implausible in the post 9-11 era. I then turn to a subsequent and inter-related project, the Church of Fear (CoF, 2003), a multi-media artwork that encompassed installation, performance and activism. Drawing on discourses relating to the politics of fear (Frank Füredi), the construction of crisis by the media (David Altheide), and the concept of counterpublics (Michael Warner), I analyse how Schlingensief attempts to position his art in a meaningful way in the context of the overwhelming spectacles of war, terrorism and hegemonic military discourses. The essay examines the interplay between Schlingensief’s political intentions and artistic interventions in a period marked by predominant political discourses on fear and post 9/11 geopolitics and also sets out the shared territory between his work and that of the German artist Joseph Beuys, whose concept of social sculpture is alluded to and revitalised in the course of Schlingensief’s project.