From Bayreuth to Burkina Faso

Christoph Schlingensief's Opera Village Africa as Postcolonial Gesamtkunstwerk?
Erscheinungsjahr 2022
ISBN: 978-94-6270-358-2
Verlag: Leuven University Press

Buch, Englisch, 294 Seiten, Format (B × H): 159 mm x 231 mm, Gewicht: 454 g

The postcolonial Gesamtkunstwerk: Disrupting the Eurocentric perspective on art history and addressing Germany’s colonial history

Opera Village Africa, a participatory art experiment by the late German multimedia
artist Christoph Schlingensief, serves as a testing ground for a critical
interrogation of Richard Wagner’s notion of the Gesamtkunstwerk. Sarah
Hegenbart traces the path from Wagner’s introduction of the Gesamtkunstwerk
in Bayreuth to Schlingensief’s attempt to charge the idea of the total artwork
with new meaning by transposing it to the West African country Burkina Faso.
Schlingensief developed Opera Village in collaboration with the
world-renowned architect Francis Kéré. This final project of Schlingensief is
inspired by and illuminates the diverse themes that informed his artistic
practice, including coming to terms with the German past, anti-Semitism,
critical race theory, and questions of postcolonial (self-)criticism.

From Bayreuth to Burkina Faso introduces the notion of the postcolonial Gesamtkunstwerk to disrupt the Eurocentric perspective on art history, exploring how the socio-political force of a postcolonial Gesamtkunstwerk could affect processes of transcultural identity construction. It reveals how Schlingensief translocated the Wagnerian concept to Burkina Faso to address German colonial history and engage with it from the perspective of multidirectional memory cultures.

This publication is GPRC-labeled (Guaranteed Peer-Reviewed Content).

Autoren/Hrsg.

Hegenbart, Sarah

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Architektur Architektur: Allgemeines
• Geisteswissenschaften Kunst Kunstformen, Kunsthandwerk Installations-, Aktions-, Computer- und Videokunst
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Kolonialgeschichte, Geschichte des Imperialismus
• Geisteswissenschaften Kunst Kunst, allgemein
• Geisteswissenschaften Theater- und Filmwissenschaft | Andere Darstellende Künste Theaterwissenschaft Theaterregie, Theaterproduktion
• Medizin | Veterinärmedizin Medizin | Public Health | Pharmazie | Zahnmedizin Medizinische Fachgebiete AINS Traumatologie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgements
IntroductionOpera of Ambiguities
Chapter OneEgomania – Germany Without Hope? Rectifying the impression that Schlingensief staged a Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk at the Venice Biennial 2011
Chapter TwoFrom Bayreuth to Burkina Faso: Stripping the Gesamtkunstwerk of its German coordinates
Chapter ThreeThe Mission of a Contemporary Parsifal: Redeeming Germany in Burkina Faso
Chapter FourRevolving Opera and Psychic Interiors: The Animatograph
Chapter FiveReadymade and Azione Scenica: Schlingensief’s Expanded Definition of Opera
Chapter SixOpera Village as postcolonial Gesamtkunstwerk?
ConclusionThe Gesamtkunstwerk: Smashed or revived?
Notes Bibliography Index

Über Autor(innen)

Hegenbart, Sarah
Sarah Hegenbart is lecturer in art history at Technical University of Munich and previously acted as a substitute for the professorship of art research with a focus
on contemporary arts at the Braunschweig University of Art (HBK Braunschweig). She is a member of 'Die Junge Akademie Mainz' and member of the consortium of the Horizon 2020 research project ‘Art and Research on Transformations of Individuals and Societies’.