Abstract

This is the first book to focus specifically on the late all-round German artist Christoph Schlingensief’s theatre work, which subversively merges art, politics and everyday life to imbue his productions both inside and outside the theatre with a re-energized concept of the political in art. The book proposes the pluralistic concept of the phantasmagoria as a means to decoding Schlingensief’s unique theatrical vision and examines how it achieves its political radicality, yet retains a critical ambivalence in regard to an explicitly political intention. Key questions such as how his theatre functions as a provocation, and how an artist can insert themselves into the powerful flows of imagery produced by the perpetual global news cycle, form a coherent line of enquiry throughout each of the chapters. The significance of Schlingensief’s artistic legacy of politicized theatre-making that pioneers new modes of active, aesthetic and public engagement in the political realm remains pertinent to topical socio-political debates and is of relevance to an international audience across a diversity of disciplines.